Vacation Again!!!!!

Our church gives us a great benefits package. They make employment with them as appealing as possible. It has enabled me to have paid holidays and quite a few vacation days since I have been on payroll there over ten years now. At 5 o'clock today, I punched the time clock and don't have to go back until January 4 - - and I will receive full pay for both weeks. Isn't that wonderful? My husband gets the same schedule beginning around lunchtime tomorrow. It is worth saving days until the end of the year and then getting a long break to rest or travel or do some projects at home.

Speaking of travel, I am going to connect you to my sister's blog to see most of our Gatlinburg pictures. There is no sense in me posting them since I would use the same ones she did. The two she did not post are the ones I have shown you. Santa was in the lobby of the Wyndham timeshare and insisted everyone sit on his lap - - no matter the size of the person. He must have had bionic legs!

I must work the works of Him that sent me, while it is day . . . John 9:4a

Pretty Plumber

Have you ever heard the expression, "The faster I go, the behinder I get!"? I think it is supposed to mean that when you do things in a hurry, you are apt to make mistakes and have to go back and correct them. Whereas if you do things at a "normal" pace, you might not make any mistakes and will get done in better time.

Well, that definition is not the one I am looking for. Ours is the more we repair in this house and the faster we work, the more repairs need to be done. It is one thing after another and in some instances more than one at once.

The good news is the den door is done. Now the "public" bathroom sink drain has new pipes. Our neighbor, my sister, and my wonderful husband get credit for the last project. We still have a leak in the basement that will require some outside digging - - - and now a kitchen overhead light fixture to replace. It sounds like a green Christmas for the hardware stores and some more manpower on our part. We are ready to finish with repairs so we can move on to some face-lift stuff - - - like painting walls!

Praise God for the energy to do this and pray it holds out a few more years until we finish it all.

Let them repair the breaches of the house. 2Kings 12:5b

P.S. Gatlinburg pictures should be on my next post.

My Sister's Visit

My sister is coming to visit TODAY!!!!! She will be here about supper time. Tomorrow, she and I and my husband will leave for the Gatlinburg area for a weekend vacation. The plans are shopping, Dixie Stampede, sight-seeing the tourist areas, riding the trolley to see the Christmas lights, and then come home Sunday afternoon. The weather forecast is COLD. However, the three of us are ready to relax and just enjoy being together at this wonderful holiday time of year.

I took a vacation day today to get some stuff done around the house. That way I can enjoy this evening before we leave in the morning. I may or may not be blogging again for a few days.

This week has been very busy during the day and evening. However, I have been reading your blogs even if I haven't had time to comment.

Don't you know HE enjoys giving rest to those HE loves? Psalm 127:2b The Message

A.M. & P.M.

This was the view in back of our house this morning. Remember I told you yesterday that this might happen?!!

It is pretty though, isn't it?

And since the accumulation was not much more than this, we did not have any power lines break or any tree branches fall. I thought these trees in the front side yard were interesting. See the one on the left. It still has some green leaves. In the middle near the back is a magnolia tree. Then there is one to the right with dead brown leaves. The colors were pretty against the snow.

Speaking of color, how do you like this bush with red leaves?

Here is is close-up.

The best part about this snow is it didn't stick to the roads because it was not cold enough. That is the best kind of winter weather to have - - - the beauty but not the inconvenience. Since we could travel with no difficulty, we left to complete some business we started yesterday. It was time to make a purchase since it was ten years ago a similar sale was made. That's a big hint. Do you know what we bought?

A 2009 Hyundai Sonata. It has 33,000 miles on it - - - broken in for us. It is supposed to get 40 mpg on the highway. Didn't they shine it up nice for us? When I took the picture, I thought there was dirt or a dent on the front passenger door but realized it is a reflection of the leaves in the driveway. Our salesman was a very nice Christian man - - shared his testimony with us. The head of their service department is also a Christian. The reason we went there to start with is our son-in-law's dad works in the service department. He and and also the internet give this car high ratings - - and our son-in-law owns a Sonata and loves his.

We had a very good car-buying experience. There was no high pressure selling from our salesman. Bill basically told him, "We are here to buy a car. I'll tell you what we want. You tell me what you've got. I know what I want to pay. If I like the deal, I'll buy it and if not, then I'll look elsewhere. I'm not here to play a game or wheel and deal. I'm here to talk straight." Long story short is we had a VERY GOOD experience at Gray Epperson Hyundai and would highly recommend them to others! Let us know if you want our salesman's name. At some point - - - - - we will need a second vehicle to replace our '94 Concorde. We will go back to them to look for a small to mid-size truck - - - - but it is not in the budget yet. - - - - - And notice the trees and the ground - - - no more snow! It was gone after lunch. That's generally the beauty of living in the South!

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Psalm 51:7b

Snow

I love reading your posts each night and am so sorry that I only seem to get to mine on the weekend. Speaking of weekends, ours has snow in the forecast. Many people are happy. I could live without it. We have 100% chance with accumulation up to an inch but hopefully if we do get any, it will melt since the temperature is getting up to 41°. However, there will be a NNW wind of 10 - 20 mph so that will keep it colder. The problem with snow in our area is our subdivision won't get the roads cleared and we live at the top of a shady hill. Oftentimes when snow is predicted for our area, it will hit the mountains near Chattanooga and get diverted - - so we will not get too excited or apprehensive until we wake up in the morning.

We do have a funny story in our family history about being awakened early one morning. It was probably early winter of 1993. About 4 a.m., our 4th grade daughter woke us up saying, "The dog sees something outside and won't stop barking." We were more than a little bit spooked. So here we go sneaking toward the kitchen and peering around the bedroom door frame to try and see what was going on. We could see the dog was sitting on the floor looking out the glass double doors - - - - barking like crazy at something he did not think should be out there - - - - - - - big white snowflakes falling from the sky! He wasn't a year old yet and it was the first time he had ever seen snow. We were relieved and also amused to see the perplexed look on his face. Somewhere in our albums, there are pictures of him trying to catch snowballs. He loved the snow as much or more than a child.

Back to the present time - - if it doesn't snow and the roads are clear tomorrow, I will have a good picture to post sometime Saturday.

He giveth snow like wool. Psalm 147:16a

Thanksgiving Weekend

As wonderful as our Thanksgiving celebration was, these last two days have been even better. Why? Because we have had no schedule - - no set places to be. And how have we used it? Relaxing and decluttering. How do we all manage to collect so much stuff? Bill has been decluttering the yard. He is gaining ground on eradicating piles of leaves. There are still a few on the trees but the trees are close to bare. His relaxation has been lots of football. - - - seems like there were two games yesterday and two today . . . . can you guess that the sport holds no interest for me? All I see are persons abusing their bodies by running into others. Then I feel the arthritis they will suffer later in life due to their injuries.

My relaxation has come from reading - - - as much as I have wanted. I am about to finish the New Testament within the ninety day challenge given by one of our pastors - - about 3 months ago! I had fallen behind but this weekend gave me time to catch up. It has been good to stay immersed in this project and to be reminded continually of God's love for us but also how our lives are to reflect that in our behavior toward others.

My projects have included rearranging and clearing a spare room. It now holds a project table that was on sale at Ace Hardware this past week. The table is a 6 ft hard white plastic that can be folded in half when not in use. It even has a handle to make transporting easier. It is just like the one my son-in-law let me borrow a couple of weeks ago. They knew how much I liked it and found the sale for me. Ace is great for rain checks - - - at least the one in our town is. They call you when your item comes in and save it in a room not on the sales floor. The first project it held for me this weekend was sorting through a couple of boxes. It is so much easier to do stuff like that sitting down in a chair rather than on the floor.

All of us worked a few minutes this afternoon in our garage. Now there is more room and either Goodwill or Habitat for Humanity have some contributions coming their way. So do the trash pick-up people!

Another project that gets done in bits and pieces is typing out my recipes for a notebook. Also, I am putting menu choices in an Excel file. There are columns for types of foods - - like meats, salads, etc. Hopefully when we are wondering, "What's for supper tonight?", this will give us some different ideas.

Speaking of food, do you ever visit recipe websites? On www.pacefoods.com they have a recipe for Sweet & Spicy Barbecued Brisket. We had it for lunch today. It was quite tasty - - reminded me more of a Swiss Steak. Perhaps that is because we only use mild salsa. It a recipe I would repeat again. We will probably use the leftovers in quesadillas or maybe even some soup.

Now it is time to get the little bit of ironing done for the week. I have a movie to watch while doing that. I'll talk to you next weekend unless I find a spare minute this week.

The Lord is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation; He is my God, and I will praise Him. Exodus 15:2a NKJ
God is my strength, God is my song, and, yes! God is my salvation. this is the kind of God I have and I'm telling the world! Exodus 15:2a MSG

On Top of the Mountain

We had a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving celebration yesterday "on top of the mountain at our younger daughter's & husband's home. She has much better pictures of the view than I have posted here. This is the view from their front porch. I think the camera was on close-up because that house is not really that close. Getting to their home normally takes just under an hour from our home but as I mentioned on November 13, the rock slide has turned that trip into 2 hours. As the saying goes, "you can't hardly get there from here." We took two different routes. On the trip there, we went north to Sweetwater and then south. The trip took us through the Cherokee National Forest, passing through places like Coker Creek, Tellico Plains, Turtletown and Ducktown. The curves you see on the roads on the map are deceptively mild compared to the actual journey. If you are prone to carsickness and riding in the front seat usually cures that; you still need to consider taking a Dramamine before traveling that route. However, it is a GORGEOUS drive. If you were having a leisurely day, I would definitely recommend it. Returning home took us through Georgia and then back up to Cleveland - - through Blue Ridge, Ellijay, and Chatsworth. The difference was only 8 miles. The time was about the same but the roads home were much straighter and a lot of divided four lanes. I am glad our kids are only having to travel this trip twice a week since they are staying in town with his parents.

If you have looked at our daughter's post, you already saw these decorations. My husband and I had taken a picture of ourselves in front of this tree last year so I wanted to repeat it. We weren't the only ones in attendance. Josh's parents, sister and husband, our older daughter, an uncle and his wife, maternal grandmother, and paternal grandfather were all there for a DELICIOUS dinner of fried turkey, ham, and all the traditional side dishes. Since our parents have all died, we are blessed to get to join Josh's family for holidays. I've said it before. We not only gained a wonderful son but another extended family who have become friends.

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. Psalm 121:1-2 KJV
I look up to the mountains; does my strength come from mountains? No, my strength comes from God, who made heaven, and earth, and mountains. Psalm 121:1-2 MSG