Saturday's Scribbles

Good Saturday to you from our bitterly cold Arctic home.  Okay, it is not that cold.....yet.   It has been pretty warm the past few days, but we reached our high of 11 degrees early this morning and are now in single digits for today with winds giving us a wind chill.  I know we won't come close to winning any awards for " coldest place in the Midwest" this weekend.  Seems North Dakota will be having -60 wind chills and ours will be only -30.  Yes, -30 below wind chills when Joel heads off to preach with a 45 minute commute Sunday morning.  We are grateful today, that the cold front has cleared out the fog and we are having sunshine!

Joel has spent a great deal of time this week chipping away at the ice on our driveway, and with the warmer temps and rain earlier on, he has had to deal with slush, too.  It is good exercise, but I am not seeing any fun for him in the process.  Needless  to say, we are lamenting being stuck here when the desert is so inviting in winter.

For me it has been another quiet week here with lots of resting, a few naps and 9 hours of sleep at night, but I am finally seeing improvement!  The nasty upper respiratory thingy is winding down, energy is slowly returning, my voice is back, the burns all have new skin, and the cloud of discouragement has lifted.  Hallelujah!

We said good-bye to our Christmas tree this past Monday and it has joined a few others on our block as they wait for pick-up next week.  We like having a real tree, but this year's had a strong pine smell, and now that is gone so have my sniffles and sneezing.  Hmmmm  I slowly put away all the decorations, which makes the house look stark in comparison now.  Kinda like January..stark.

After the kids were here this time, they came up with a list (with me) for what we need to replace....like our cutting board.....potato peelers, pots (our one dances on the flat top stove while it heats), a new manual can opener, etc.  In fact, I have been adding to the "I have been meaning to replace" list in the past week.  It is time.

Speaking of time, it is time for the political ads to all go away.  Ugh....And for our phone to stop ringing here in Iowa as the caucus draws near.  It is time.

Our oldest daughter and her family gave us a new set of seasons canvases that we hung on our living room wall.  What is cool about these is that they were all taken from slides Joel took over the years. Beth and Abbi, our granddaughter, had spent hours putting all the slides on a USB and used these four to have pictures made for our wall.  The winter scene was taken in Montana in 1980!  Love it!

Are you Downton Abbey fans?  It started last week, and we both like to watch.  Madam Secretary still holds a top spot for us along with NCIS and Blue Bloods.  That's about it with TV, although we still are interested in Tiny Houses on HGTV.  Joel has always wanted to build a house.  When he goes to bed at night. to relax he visualizes building a house.  We wonder if it may be time to fulfill that dream......

We are reading aloud a book called "Contact" on how we hear the voice of God, and I am reading a mindless fiction light mystery plus Beni Johnson's book on health.  The hearing God's voice is something Joel and I are both seeking more of this year.  Discerning it from ours or the enemy's.....hearing it clearly......and in the many ways it comes.  Through His Word, through the voices of friends or colleagues, through the spoken or written words of others.  I have also watched a few teachings and am still working on a puzzle that takes up half the dining room table.  It is definitely not a winter scene!  ha... It is actually a fall scene, my favorite season of the year.

Hope and pray your 2016 has had a great start.....
Until next time..............