Karen's questions

1. What is your favorite season and why?2. Do you have a Bucket List and what is one thing you have on it?3. Do you go to Starbucks(or another coffee chain) and what is your favorite drink there?4. What book are you currently reading(or just finished)?5. Do you take pictures? What kind of camera do you have and share a current picture with us!6. What is your favorite genre of music and favorite group, band, individual from that genre.7. Where was your most favorite vacation and what made it your favorite?8. What is your favorite thing to cook/prepare and share the recipe

Hey Karen. Thanks for the chance to share with you. After the answers you may think i am a hum-drum person, but here goes.

1. Favorite season has to be the fall/autumn because of all the seasons this is the one that shows the wonder and awesomeness of my God. I know there is not a paint mixer anywhere that could match what He puts out there.
2. I do not have a Bucket List. Just haven't taken the time to make one.
3. Don't go to Starbucks much since we do not have one close by, but i do frequent our coffee shop, Lobby Lattes, at the hospital. My favorite varies.
4.It is a book by terri Blackstock, "Last Light" (I think.) Anyway, it is a mystery set in Birmingham.
5. I do take pictures but not a lot. My camera is a Kodak digital and I would love to share some of them if I knew how.
6. My favorite genre of music is country/gospel. Right now I am listening to a lot of the Gaither CD's. I am going to the concert in B'ham in December so I am practicing so I can be in fine voice that night.
7. Gosh, all of the vacations Joe and I took were favorites, but I guess the most favorite was when he surprised me by taking me to Buffalo NY where my dad was from. We even searched until we found my grandparents old home. Was I ever disillusioned when I saw it. It looked like the house, but not like it did when I was 11-12 years old.
8. I have cooked so little lately I just don't know. Let me see. I guess it would be the old stand by chicken casserole and I think everybody has that recipe. I have learned a little trick from one of my friends. Use both cream of chicken and cream of mushroom soups and add sliced water chestnuts. Also, put a layer of the Ritz crackers on the bottom of the pan. Yummo!!

Thanks again, Karen.

What a beautiful day!!

That is my feelings about today. This is supposedly the official end of summer. The temp isn't quite cool enough yet, but it is getting there. Now when the leaves start doing their grand show, this girl will be one happy person. I have ALWAYS loved the fall. I used to say it was because my birthday is in the fall, but no, it is just my kind of weather. It gets cool and the air has a certain feel about it. It feels so good to go out and you get this little tingle on your face and the air smells so clean kind of like I remember when we took one of our trips out to Utah, Idaho and that area. When you took a deep breath all you could smell was clean air.

I attended a Beth Moore class a few weeks back. Missed the last one because of my new found career, but I have continued to do the book study here at home. One day, my study was from Psalm 130. Let me tell you I feel in love with that particular Psalm, particularly verse 7. And from reading that verse, my love for God went up about umpteen million billion points. In my paraphrase it says, " God's love in everlasting and his redemption is full." That tells me that He loves me longer than forever and that He forgives ALL my sins (of course, I have to ask His forgiveness), not just some of them, but ALL OF THEM. I know that God's favorite thing for us to do is to love others as much as He has loved us. But that verse just about knocked my socks off. Don't ask me why that verse at that exact time. I don't know. I think it is what I like to call a "God thing." I have been having a lot of those lately and it just makes me feel so wonderful. I know my Redeemer lives.

God's beauty and goodness is another reason I love the fall. No one can duplicate the colors He paints on the trees. They are so vibrant and so pure and so, so, so . . . I can't even come up with the words to describe them.

I guess football has gotten here in full force. Alabama won, the other school won, Jacksonville State really pulled a biggie and little old Oakman High won. Guess that about covers my knowledge of football.

Life in the gift shop is going great. I have an idea working in my head for the baby section. It needs a make-over and I hope Melissa will let me do what I have in mind. Some of the baby items are so cute that I keep trying to find expectant friends and family to buy for. I know I have Jimmy Dan and Gina and Libby and Jay. Some of the things are in the keeping category rather than clothes. Seems like they always get more clothes than baby can wear.

Our collegiate things are coming in and Melissa and I began setting up each school's displays. Wish we had room to do local high school displays, but we are not big enough to afford to stock items to cover all 7-8 schools in the county. Maybe we can think of something. We keep things for people to buy for patients, but people don't realize that hospital gift shops carry things for other people as well. Next time you need a gift try your local hospital gift shop. You might be in for a surprise.

Time to get back upstairs and get our meal (late lunch/early supper) ready. Got most of it put together already, but still got the potato salad to make.

Have a good week and enjoy God's upcoming display.