Friday Favorites!

Meet TE, my new friend, fellow cancer warrior, & tea lover!

If you're the praying type, TE is having surgery this coming week & could use prayers for the days of preparation left, the actual day of the surgery, & the days of recover to come. All before starting radiation in February.

TE & I were able to celebrate my cancer-versary together the other day with 100 calorie klondike ice cream bars - 100 calories to make up for the candy we ate later that night at a church event. She hugged me & said I was her inspiration, but she's my inspiration of juggling cancer & being a mom of 4, a wife, a grandmother, an active community & church member, a daughter, & sister, & friend to many.

We knew we were kindred spirits before we even met face-to-face.

Here's to kindred-spirits!

Friday Favorites!

TGIF!

What a week it has been. Many fun things, many hard things, many crazy things.

LIFE!

Jack-o-Lanterns!

The Young Americans

Trick-or-Treat!

Friday Foto Fun!

Ever have a moment like this? Maybe you didn't catch your ice cream cake with your face & it fell all the way to the ground! Somewhere out there is another photo of me laying on the kitchen floor because a perfectly delicious marshmallow jello something (salad?) had fallen out of the refrigerator & upside down on the floor, while still in the bowl. I just laid there looking at it, wondering if there was anyway to scrape it off the floor & still be delectable.

Life is funny!

What's your funny oops moment of the week? We all have them, so share the joy!

Friday Foto Fun!

photo courtesy of Shutterstock 5/10/13

Have you ever been waiting & waiting for something & then it arrives?

I'm guessing we all have been here. Maybe you were waiting for a birthday, graduation, wedding, or vacation. I've been waiting for the green leaves to return. This morning, they're back! They're small, but they're there.

It's a little piece of promise for a changing tomorrow.

Friday Foto Fun!

Photo courtesy of The Line Media

As we transition with life there are places that I realize I haven't gone to regularly while I've lived here, but I will miss once we're gone. The Finnish Bistro is one of these places. Tonight we were blessed to be able to spend time with a potential student & his family & have dinner at the Finnish Bistro. There's always good food, good baked goods, & it's attached to a Dunn Bro's Coffee - or the Dunn Bro's is attached to the bistro. Dunn Bro's isn't my favorite coffee shop as a non-coffee drinker, but from our good friend PMc, we hear that they have the best coffee around.

When I was in college the place I always visited (often with AJO, MB, or JMDT) was Cup O Joe.

Where's your missing bistro or coffee shop?

Wondering what my next place will be...

Friday Foto Fun!

Photo Courtesy of T0M & Jerry's Wordpress Blog

While everything seemed to be melting & letting Spring come up, the Ice Queen reared her ugly head (with awesome dreads) & graced us with more ice & snow. The only place I've seen flowers like this are in church or the grocery store. In Minnesnowda, they really haven't had a chance to start to bud yet.

No, not the most uplifting reality of Spring, but a piece of beauty in the gray winter weather.

Where do you find beauty amidst the gray?

Friday Foto Fun!

photo courtesy of Camp Watcha Wanna Do

Do you have a place that you can go & simply escape? 

When I was 7 years old I was the poster child (literally, the only bald kid who was willing to be on camera) for the new camp for kids with cancer in Northern Indiana. Camp Watcha Wanna-Do (Be Watcha Wanna-Be) is a memory of the past. A past part of me that is scary to look back on because it is easy to forget the scary things in life. A past part of me that is wonderful to be reminded of because I met one of my life-long best friends there & dealt with things in life that we didn't know how to talk about with other friends. I got to go up in a hot air balloon & try high ropes course challenges. One of my favorite memories is that I used to pack my clothes for camp up to two weeks early. I LOVED camp!

Where is your camp?

Friday Foto Fun!

photo courtesy of LuLuSoSo 3/22/13

Did you ever loose something & just knew that it was magically taken from you? 

I have had this happen a few times in life & genrally it reappears within a year or two tops. The problem is, if it has a mate (like a sock) I move housing often enough (at least once a year since 2003) I have typically thrown the other half away. 

This morning I was in the trunk of our car, getting out my bag chair (aka camping chair for some) for a friend to borrow & lo & behold the individually wrapped piece of salmon that we thought we were shorted of back in at least November, was hiding under the bag chair at the very back of the trunk. In the last couple of months we have smelled something funny once or twice, but nothing so horrible that we had to investigate. SO THANKFUL we found this before it really warmed up outside!

Friday Photo Reminder

Photo Courtesy of: Southwest Florida Waterfront Properties 3/7/13

Daydreaming is a new hobby of mine. Two years ago when I was working on the plans for Z's & my wedding day (with Z & others) I often drifted off to wonder what "that day" would actually be like. Now, with life in the continuous fast lane, I find myself wondering what life will be like after we graduate. 

We don't have jobs yet, but we know that we are more than well taken care of. The fact that we don't have jobs yet is what makes it more fun to daydream. Our whole future is in front of us wildly staring us back taunting us to want to know more.

What we do know is that we'll be taking a vacation to Ft. Myers Beach, FL in just a few short months!

What do you daydream about?

Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie (daydreaming) is its pleasure.  ~Victor Hugo

Friday Photo Reminder

Photo courtesy of: Silver Lake Sand Dunes Area Visitors Bureau 3/1/13

As a child I loved going camping with my family at Silver Lake, MI. We went for several summers in a row. Growing up I didn't realize how unique the sand dunes were though. The campground is on one side of the lake & the other side is the dunes. Today I want to look around - you can do this too - and breath in something truly unique to its location. 

"God looked over everything he had made; it was good, so very good!"

Genesis 1:31a The Message Bible