The Merry Month of May

It's time to play "catch up."

I feel like I often spend too much time playing this game, but sometimes, you gotta do whatcha gotta do.

So, I've decided to be merry about it. Yep. It's time to spend a few minutes catching up on the merry month of May.

At the first of the month, we found ourselves in celebration mode in Rochester, MN, at the wedding of my niece, Lauren Wynn, to Ryan Residence. It was beautiful, holy, and joyful!

Delightful table/name cards

Mayowood Stone Barn was beautiful.

Succulents for centerpieces

Sweet nieces from the PNW came in for the festivities

My brother, Andy, dancing with his daughter, Lauren

Three of my beautiful nieces with a grand nephew and grand niece thrown in!

I'm a sucker for Daddy/daughter pictures

The next weekend was Mother's Day. It was the first one for me without my mom. It's still weird to know that. I miss her.

In our world of social media, it's always interesting to see what ends up there on those kind of days. Some of the kids did the IG thing, some didn't.

The ones that didn't still love me ;)

Our annual jumping pic where one of us didn't jump

The Cali kid harkened back to 2012

We also celebrated this girl's 24th bday this month! 

About 6 hours after those fun pictures....

Mayday! Mayday!

My Lou and I picked a bad time to miscommunicate. We were about 2/3 of the way through a delightful bike ride when I thought we were going left at a corner, and he thought we were going right. When you are riding side by side, that doesn't work. In the middle of our collision, I screamed and then both of us proceeded to hit very hard asphalt. Lou's right collar bone took the brunt of his fall. My right rib cage took the brunt of mine. We've both also enjoyed some bruising and road rash. Good grief. Talk about an unexpected inconvenient event! Not what we had planned, but seeking to glorify God in the midst of it.

Two weeks after our wreck, Lou had to have surgery to fix that broken collar bone and make it line up and heal correctly. Grateful to God that all went well.

The doctor is the patient

You can imagine the teasing we're now receiving as a result of our Mayday! moment. I laughed out loud when I received an email from my brother, Andy, with the following limerick.

Well, four days after the wreck, broken rib or not, I was going on a long planned for and much anticipated trip with friends to To Kill A Mockingbird land. Sue Roweton, Marla Kemp and I have been chatting about going to Monroeville, AL, the home of the author of TKAM, Nell Harper Lee, for over a year. Every spring, her home town puts on the play on weekends. We hit town to enjoy the 2nd to last show of the season. Such a great time with the dearest of friends.

And, if you haven't read To Kill a Mockingbird, stop reading this, and order a copy and read it.

So, so good.

Side trip to Selma, AL, to walk over this and remember. #bloodysunday

Lots of interesting things to see/read in the Monroe County Museum

1st act of TKAM is outside

Not gonna let a little rain stop us!

Selfie stick fun

A short week after my Alabama jaunt, my man and I journeyed to Fayetteville, AR, with 4 of our buddies to celebrate our friends, Marla and Wes Kemp, birthdays. We toured around the town and the University of Arkansas, where we've sent 4 of our kids and a ton of our money. Then, we spent a bunch of time geocaching!

If you haven't Geocached, you should. With the help of a handy dandy app, wave points, and clues, you go on a "treasure" hunt for the caches. Once you find them, you write your name in the log in the cache and, of course, take a picture. I think we found 6 while there. Tons of fun!

Marla, Wes, Lou, me, Connie, and Kerrick

We called ourselves the Liber8ors :)

I actually didn't travel the entire month. I stayed home long enough this week to watch our good friend, Lane Nutt, plow up our garden spot. Talk about a good neighbor!! 

He and his wife even ran over later that day with some extra corn seeds and planted a couple of rows of that for me! I think I'm going to garden like this every year!

Well, here we are at the end of the month. I've included so much - and left out so much.

Each full, busy, hard, easy, happy day is such a gift from God, isn't it? Each marriage, each Mayday!, each trip, each friend - all gifts of grace.

I'm grateful. Just as I know you are for the gifts of grace in your life.

Thanks for stopping by and sharing my merry month of May with me.

Blessings!

Mother/Daughter/New York

Saying yes to one thing means saying no to another.

I think I first read that quote in one of Elisabeth Elliot's books. I've been applying that quote to my blogging life for most of March. I've been saying yes to planning and going on a mother/daughter trip to New York with our 18 year old, Faith.  So, I've been saying no to blogging. As much as I love to blog, even that enjoyable pastime has to be put on the back burner when it butts up against time with a beloved daughter. Daughters always trump time with Wilson (my mac).

We are home now, and it's time to document some of the adventures of that fun trip. One interesting difference between this trip and a similar trip I took with my oldest daughter back in 2009 (another amazing time!), is that the pictures were all taken with my cell phone! The technology at my finger tips still boggles my mind.

With that said, time to say yes to reading about our trip.

Being Lou-less for a span of time is often the hardest part of any trip I take without him. Snapped this before I left just so I could look at it some while I was gone.

Once at the airport, and because we had no luggage to check, Faith and I were able to print our boarding passes at this kiosk. Neither of us had ever done it without Lou there, so we were way more than proud of ourselves that we did this!

When we landed at La Guardia airport in NYC, we deplaned to this gate area. There is no question in my mind that this is the future of all public spaces.

Wall-e

From our hotel in Midtown, we jumped on the subway and headed downtown.

Obviously, it's cold

 The 9-11 Memorial is still a work in progress, but is moving and beautiful.

All those names...all those souls.

At St. Paul's Chapel, where 9/11 relief workers received round the clock care, we saw this clock. It gave us shivers.

Inside that chapel, was this plaque (which obviously, had no connection to 9/11). I appreciated the description "in the midst of his usefulness." It's a good thing to be useful. I want to be useful.

After the memorial, we braved the cold and wind (!) and ventured out on the Brooklyn Bridge. Quite the impressive structure, it's hard to believe that it was completed over a 100 yrs ago in 1883.

Building being built in background is the new Freedom Tower at the 9/11 Memorial

As we left the bridge, this interestingly strange building came into view. I couldn't stop staring at it.

Wanting to get the scoop on it when I got home, I googled, "weird building near the Brooklyn Bridge."
The first hit called it Beekman Tower. A little more digging, and I discovered that that name is so last year. It's now known as 8 Spruce Street and/or New York by Gehry. (Can we please pick a name and stick with it?) The Gehry in that last name refers to architect Frank Gehry, who designed this tallest residential building in NYC.

You can't miss it if you are in lower Manhattan. So very interesting.

A perfect end to our first day in NY was attending the musical "Once." Go see it if you get the chance.

Because our traveling buddies, dear friends, Louise and Heide Forrister, knew the aunt of the Tony nominated supporting actress, we got to go backstage and meet her.

Very cool.

Heide, Elizabeth Davis, Faith

Another perk I had on this trip that I didn't have in 2009, was this:

We still used our paper map most of the time, (because Louise and I both love seeing the big picture and find reading maps really fun), but when our eyes wouldn't focus well on some of those little streets, this came in mighty handy.

The next day, we hit the iconic Empire State Building. The skyscraper in the background will, at completion later this year, be the tallest building in the western hemisphere. It's the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center Complex. To the right of it on that island in the harbor, you can also see the outline of the Statue of Liberty.

Whenever I'm in a city where there's an Anthropologie, I always make a point to visit. The one in NYC  is huge, which means there's lots of beauty to behold. This display of "flowers" draped over the lattice work was gorgeous. The flowers were pompoms!

If you want my autograph next time you see me, I'll completely understand. I've now graced the screens in Times Square.  Faith, Heide, and I are front and center. Very Fun!

Times Square at night is pretty much sensory overload.

Also not to be missed in NYC is a trip to the restaurant, Serendipity, famous for their frozen hot chocolate and the movie by the same name.

Sunday, on our way to worship at Tim Keller's church, Redeemer Presbyterian, we happened to walk by this restaurant. Recognize it?

It was in the movie You've Got Mail. The banter between Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in this restaurant is one of my favorites scenes of the movie.

Sunday afternoon we visited one of my favorite places in NYC - The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since it is massive, you have to pick and choose where you're gonna spend the bulk of your time. We enjoyed the European paintings and the American Wing before viewing their special exhibit, Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity. Simply Amazing.

From there, a stroll through and some pictures in Central Park...

before Tea Time at Sarabeth's. Delightful!!

Although our week there was colder than any of us would have liked, it couldn't have been any warmer on the inside. My history with my dear friend, Louise, goes back to 1987 when we first met in Tulsa, OK. Faith and Heide have literally been friends since birth. Our families have vacationed together many times. What a rare and beautiful gift they are to us!

What a rare and beautiful time I enjoyed with my Faith.

Grateful to God for her. Excited to see what the next chapter of her life holds.

Much love.

InstaFriday - InstaJanuary

Was my last InstaFriday really at the end of November 2012?

Yes, it was. But I'm ready to rock a few cell phone pictures from the first month of 2013.

We began this year by winging our way to the great Northwest. Our initial motivation for heading that way was the marriage of the son of dear, dear friends. A major fringe benefit to the location of that wedding was the fact that my brother lives in that same area! So to Seattle and Portland we went!

Departing at 6:30 a.m. on New Year's Day, we were at the airport by 5 a.m. (*yawn*). We were a force at the ticket counter.

The personal screens on the seat backs of our plane out of KC kept the girls entertained hypnotized all the way to Seattle. This shot is almost a little too "Wall-E" for me.

Once there, the phone commandeering began. Elizabeth and Mary Grace were joined by cousin Savannah.

My brother showed us one of his favorite sights in the area, Chambers Bay Golf Course, which will host the 2015 U.S. Open. See that tree in the distance? The only one on this links course.

We also hit the very first Starbucks. They are a well oiled machine at that place, moving the hoards of people in and out in record time. It's actually nothing like any Starbucks you go to anywhere else. It's a narrow warehouse type space with no chairs and tables. But it is, of course, very cool.

After a couple of days in Seattle, we made the 2 hour drive south to the Vancouver, WA/Portland, OR, area. My very generous brother let us borrow 2 of his cars. I followed and Lou led. This was my view the entire time we were there.

I let Lou drive Keith's BMW - and yes, it rained a lot.

While in Portland, we took in some of the local sites.

But our main focus in the Portland area was our friend's wedding. We've been friends with Sky and Louise Forrister since the summer of 1987. Stuart, their first born, was born 4 months after Luke, which means they've been friends their entire lives also. It was very cool that Stuart asked Luke to stand up with him as he married his beautiful Tirzah.

We flew home the day after the wedding and because our flight was delayed out of Seattle, we wandered around that airport. If you're stuck in an airport, it's a good one to be stuck in. It has some fun stores...

interesting and unusual products on sale...

This kind of made me sad

and a free touch screen football throwing game thing on a wall.

We pulled in to our driveway on January 6, and because our two college kids had a couple of weeks before they reported back to class, our "parking lot" was full most days.

Kids' cars + friends' cars

But now, the 3 older kiddos are back in Fayetteville, and we had a week of "normal" before I hit the road again. Lou and I managed to squeeze a walk in on a cold but decent day. Remember, there's no bad weather, just bad gear.

Lou's first selfie

A week ago today, I drove these two lovelies to Little Rock, AR, for a soccer showcase.

Grace vanHoornbeek and Mary Grace 

On the way home, and sporting their YOLO shirts, I made them pose once again. They had a little fun and face juggled that picture. Those juggles are so funny but so strange... Who thinks of these apps?

Home from that trip, we've made a little time to craft. I saw a heart wreath made of Pom-Poms on Pinterest. Making pom-poms is fun and easy!

And, I've happily and successfully de-cluttered 40+ items this week. Old (with whiskers) magazines made up the lion's share of this week's group of exiting items. Good-bye and good riddance!

On Wednesday, before the cold weather and cold wind hit, Lou and I peddled a few miles. So much fun.

And lastly, I'm including a recipe that I took a picture of and sent to a friend. She called because she had misplaced her recipe and was having a molasses cookie emergency!

You want this recipe.

Lou's former nurse, Jamie Campbell, used to make these and Lou would come home raving. Now I have to make myself make another kind of cookie because the only kind I ever want to make is molasses - and that praise from a major chocoholic!  I always make a double batch. They freeze great!

Before I end this and make a batch of cookies myself, :) I want to share a verse that I've committed to memory this first month of this new year. It has spoken to me and reminded me of rock solid truth. It's Joshua 1:9.

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”

Blessings!