Monday

The Lord Provides

Sometimes the Lord provides for you before you know you need it. Today we received our rebate check! One hour before the check arrived I broke a tooth. I'm sure I will have to get a crown/cap at the tune of $800 (maybe more.) He knows what we need and provides even before we know!
"Remember, your Father knows exactly what you need before you ask Him!" Matthew 6:8 (Life Application Bible)

Granted we had big plans for that rebate check. I'm hoping we'll have money left over to get my new camera! ;-)

Thank you Lord!

Katherine

Sunday

Sing Praises to the Lord!

We are singing praises to the Lord Jesus for the good report my husband, Joe received at Mayo Clinic yesterday! He is still in remission from the lymphoma he had last year!! The doctors are very optimistic and are even removing the port next week (meaning they don't expect him to have any more chemo any time soon!!) He will still have checkups every three months. If he can go three years without reocurrence, he should be home free! Please continue to pray with us and praise and thank the Lord for answered prayers!

I appreciate all your time and prayers!

In His Love,

Katherine

Thursday

Show and Tell

I haven't been able to participate in Kelli's Show and Tell for a few weeks and have missed all of you. I have something I want to share with you. When we went to Alabama last month we stopped in Birmingham to visit my 90-year-old Aunt Thelma. She is my mother's sister (my mother passed away at 75 seventeen years ago.

Aunt Thelma knows I love tea things and she told me to look in her china cabinet to see my grandmother's (her mother) bone china tea cup. I didn't even know she had one! The tea cup is such thin fine china I was scared it would shatter while I was holding it! I have no idea how old it is but my grandmother acquired it back in the 30s when they bought their house, the house came with many boxes of wonderful antiques the seller left. The tea cup was in those things. I'm sad to say I will never get this tea cup because Aunt Thelma has a daughter who it will be passed on to!



I took a few more pictures of items in her china cabinet. I thought this tea pot and cup and saucer so unique and cute, I've never seen any like them!



This small fine bone china bowl has a china ladle that matches. It was also my grandmother's.


Aunt Thelma has always been special to me. I told her she is the prettiest 90-year-old lady I've ever seen! Here she is with me, and her daughter Kathleen (and little doggie.)

I hope you enjoyed my Show and Tell this week. Go to Kelli's for more fun!

Katherine

Wednesday

Sweet Caden!


I can't believe I'm still without a camera! I still haven't started that big search for the manual, hubby is waiting for me to find it! He is in no hurry for a camera. In the meantime, I'll do what grandmothers do - I'm showing pictures of our little Caden! My daughter sent new pictures today! This one is my favorite. They always find really good photographers.

Please bear with me! Thanks for visiting!
If you would like to see his big beautiful eyes, and the other nine photos of Caden, let me know and I'll tell you how to get to my granddarlings blog!

Katherine

Sunday

Garden Tour

I would have liked to have been on Cielo's garden tour, but it was one day- yesterday, the first day of summer. Even though I'm late, I'll show a few flowers around our house. I wish I had a yellow rose arbor to show you, but I don't! I do have an arbor and it is loaded with bouganvillia. Below is our courtyard where the arbor is, it is beside our front entryway.

Below is a picture of the courtyard before it grew to be so full and lush. This is the only picture I have of it now.

Look to the left of the picture above and you will see our alamanda plant. Below is a close-up of the beautiful yellow trumpet alamanda flowers on the bush. Sometimes this bush wants to grow as tall as the house, we have to keep it trimmed back.

In Florida, almost everyone has a hibiscus bush. Ours is pink. They come in red, yellow, pink, salmon, white, and maybe other colors.

Our hibiscus bush blooms year round. It also thinks it is a tree, and tries to grow to the top of the house! We have to keep it trimmed back as well.

In our backyard we have a magnolia tree. It is beside the lake. We wish it would grow taller!

Below is my special orchid, it isn't in a garden, it's on the back porch. It now has 23 blooms on it!! Orchids blooms stay about three months. I've never had one with this many blooms on it before.

I hope you enjoyed seeing a few of the flowers around our house. I had to make do with the photos since my camera isn't working.

We also have four fuschia colored crepe myrtle trees that are blooming now, but I don't have a camera to take a picture of them. I guess my old pictures of them must have been on the old computer that crashed!

I hope you enjoyed seeing a few of my flowers around our house! For other beautiful gardens, go to Cielo's House In The Roses blog!

Katherine

Saturday

Trying to get back to normal.

We arrived home Wednesday night, but had to get up at 5:30 a.m. Thursday and drive back up to Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, then didn't get home till late again. Friday was spent running errands, buying groceries, etc. We are totally exhausted from all this running around! Today some friends took me to lunch for a late birthday celebration. Tomorrow afternoon we have a church picnic, and our pastor is being moved to another church :-( I don't like change, I resist change, do you? This is an area I have such a hard time trusting God with - the unknown. I guess it's a form of control, I want to be in control. Some things we have absolutely no control over and are forced to trust, and to have faith. Most of these times things turn out very well, and I almost feel foolish for questioning what God is up to!

My husband had a pretty good report on his check-up at Mayo Clinic (he had lymphoma last year and had chemo and radiation treatments most of the year.) His Pet scan showed something that the doctors are hoping is a "false positive," Pet scans often give false positives. They are doing a CT scan this coming Thursday, just to make sure it isn't more. Please pray this is nothing more! Here again, we are trusting that the Lord is truly in control of our lives and knows what is best for us.

We enjoyed our two nights in Charleston, and our three nights with my daughter's family, and little Caden! It was a nice distraction from all that is going on in our lives, but all the traveling is taking a toll on these two old bodies! We don't have anymore travel plans until August, so hopefully we can get rested up by then!

Nope, we didn't get the camera working yet, and still haven't found the manual. Actually I haven't had time to search for it since we have been home. Thank you for your suggestions, we did look up the manual on the net, and did some troubleshooting, but Joe thinks he needs to reprogram it to get it going again. Betty, I think it was you, suggested we use a card in our cell phone, I'm not sure we can do that on our phones, but they do take pictures. While we were at my daughter's we used her camera, so we did get a few photos of Caden. We hope to see him again the first of August, he has his second birthday. I made a mistake when I said he was 20 months old, he is really 22 months old now!

I hope I can think of ways to blog until I get my camera fixed (or buy a new one.) I'm trying to catch up on all your blogs, and will start making comments soon. I've missed all of you!

Thanks for visiting!

Katherine

Thursday

Another Road Trip

I had planned to join in on Kelli's Show and Tell, but something is wrong with our digital camera and I can't take pictures of my subject. To make matters worse, I can't find the manual for the camera. And -- it's gets worse --

We are leaving tomorrow morning (Friday) for another road trip! We are spending two days and nights in Charleston, SC, (without a camera!!) We have been there several times, but I can't imagine going without a camera. I may have to purchase one of those disposable cameras! That's the bad news. The good news is: We are also going on up to Florence, SC to visit my daughter and her family. Her little boy, Caden, is 20 months old and such a delight! I haven't seen him since March and I'm so looking forward to quality time with him! Here's a picture of him taken last Sunday.

They were filling his little swimming pool, and he jumped in - clothes, shoes, and all!! LOL! Good thing he had on his Crocs! He also has a boo-boo on his nose, this little boy keeps one all the time! I can't wait to see him!
I'll be back in a few days (if I can tear myself away from this little guy!) Thank you for visiting my blog!

Katherine

In my absence, please visit my friend who has a fairly new blog, Nikki, at Scarlett Rose Garden. I know you will enjoy her posts! She also has links to some of my other friends who have blogs, she has presented all of us with Arte y Pico awards! Thanks, Nikki!

Tuesday

Emma's Tea Room

On Thursday before the reunion fourteen of my classmates met for Afternoon Tea at Emma's Tea Room, Huntsville, AL. The front and back sides of this sign had real tea pots attached!

Two special friends in front of Emma's Tea Room. It is an old restored house on Pratt Avenue.

Some of my classmates are experiencing their first Afternoon Tea! They loved it!

We started with fruit served in the pretty little tea cups (below)
Next was the apricot scones!

If you look closely you can see the hankie favors I made.
I forgot to take a picture of those!
They were made from handkerchiefs with a
silk yellow rose, and a scroll with a poem
about tea cups and people being similar.

I also forgot to take a picture of the table
with all the tea pots on it. We were served
five different teas!

I hope everyone that attended is in the pictures!

As usual, I was caught talking!

Fresh flowers for the centerpiece, fresh flowers are a nice touch, a good sign that this is going to be a tea room that does special things! Those delicious scones are apricot, they were served with Devonshire cream and homemade black cherry jam!

The 3-tiered trays were filled with chicken salad croissants, ham and cheese "purses," mini BLT's, and cucumber sandwiches. Desserts were mini lemon or strawberry sponge cakes, and mini chocolate cakes with real whipped cream! (Another special touch!)

More desserts! Cream puffs and large plump blackberries! Alabama blackberries, it seems they taste better! (Also brought back memories of my grandmother's blackberry patch!

Another dining room, very pretty with soft green and other pastel colors.

The front dining room. The items in the window are for sale.

The hand painted rug in the hallway!
Looks like a lot of work!

These framed prints were also in the hallway.

Some items for sale in the gift shop

What a pretty set of tea cups, and they are for sale!

I'm so happy my classmates were able to take tea together! Thanks for coming ladies!

And to my blogging friends, I hope you enjoyed seeing the photos of our reunion tea!

Katherine

Saturday

50th Reunion

Some of you said you would like to see photos of the decorating I did for the reunion.

The yellow rose centerpieces. On each table a green Coke glass sitting on a text book held three yellow roses. Small 57 Chevy or Thunderbird cars filled with mini Moon Pies and retro candy were on one side, and 50s memorabilia on one side.

Joe and Kathy with Marilyn and Elvis!

Some of my friends, we all dressed in black and white, and it wasn't planned!
L to R: Reba, Pat, Kathy, Nancy

Other decorations were added to the display tables later.
This was the center display table, it held sports and cheerleader memorabilia,
that's my photo album in the middle.

The display table on the left.

Several easels held display boards.

The display table on the right.

Judy and Kathy in the DJ and dance area.

The Memorial Table. A memorial board with pictures of all our deceased classmates (22.) A table for two with two place settings, a lit candle, with magnolias around it. (Cups and saucers were also on the table.

Whew! We finally finished!! Just in time to go home, shower, get dressed and come back!! Thanks, Judy, for all your help! She did my leg work for me because I was in another state! Thanks, also to Eileen, Delores, and Luann, we recruited them to help!

The registration table. L to R: Lou Jean, Alice, and Pat

My Joe covered all the books for us! Thanks, honey!

The bigger 57 Chevy's were filled with two Moon Pies,
and retro candy! After registration, all the decorations were added to the display tables.

For those who don't know about Moon Pies - they are big cookies filled with marshmallow cream. I think you can only get them in the South. There used to be a song (and/or a joke) about an "RC Cola and a Moon Pie!" As a gag gift we gave an RC Cola and a Moon Pie to the classmate who came the longest distance, since they aren't able to get them where they live!

I hope you enjoyed seeing the decorations! Soon I will post the photos of going to a tea room with my reunion classmates!

Katherine

Thursday

I'm back!

We returned today from our trip. The reunion was a real success, along with all the festivities. I have tons of pictures. The one above is me in my glory with the four dozen yellow roses we used in the table decorations at the reunion dinner. I hope to show all the decorations soon.

I'm exhausted, but can be home all weekend to rest up. I've missed all my blogging buddies!

Katherine