Day 120: Puppy Dog Eyes

It was much cooler out today, so we again took advantage of the spring weather and grilled and ate outside. I just cant resist her eyes when she looks up at me longingly. It's possible she ended up with a few scraps of chicken...

Day 119: Daddy Bird

This the little baby bird's daddy. He was too far up, so I couldn't get a great picture. He sure is a beautiful cardinal, though.

Day 118: Pretzel

Someone brought these fancy pretzels for us today. They were quite tasty, and bigger than this one looks in the picture. Yum! I love chocolate covered pretzels.

Day 117: Administrative Professionals

Yesterday was administrative professional's day, so the doctors gave us all little gift bags with Bath and Body Works lotion. This smells so good, and is definitely a nice treat!

Day 116: Sweltering

I know that it is almost May and that summer is just around the corner. But it's not here yet. So why, oh why is it 104 degrees out today? It looks like we'll hit triple digits tomorrow as well. I certainly hope this isn't indicative of the temperatures we have to look forward to this upcoming summer. And it makes me want a pool!

Day 115: Babies

We've had some baby birds hatch in our back yard over the past couple of days. You can barely see their little heads in this picture, because the rose bush makes such great cover. One of our dogs already got to one baby, so hopefully the others will make it!

Day 114: Conference

We got this in the mail at work today, and I thought it was very interesting. I didn't realize there were a bunch of aspiring novelists stuck playing doctor and lawyer, but perhaps there are.

Day 113: Fall 2012

I will officially be attending Baylor this fall to get my master's in Museum Studies. I decided earlier this week, so I thought I'd announce it on this blog. I'm so excited to begin my study of, and hopefully career in, museums!

Day 112: New York Rangers?

Baseball season has begun, and with it comes lots of Facebook posts about the games. Facebook informed me that my Texas friends are all posting about the New York Rangers. Hmmm. I don't think those are the right Rangers.

Day 111: Starbucks

I got a new travel mug this week and I used it today for the first time. And I love it! It keeps my coffee super-hot for hours. This was most definitely a good purchase.

Day 110: Sushi

The drug reps brought lunch from Bonzai today, a Japanese steakhouse in town. Along with yummy rice and meat, they brought sushi and California rolls. I must admit, I'm just not a huge fan of the raw fish. I'll always try it, though!

Day 109: Manna Bags

We studied the Great Commission tonight at church and Anna asked the kids who had ever been out of the country. Several hands shot up and one sweet boy asked, "Does Fort Worth count?"

We also made manna bags, which are bags that we fill with water, applesauce, crackers, vienna sausage and a granola bar. The kids decorate a paper and then hand these out to anyone who might need food. One little boy, as quickly as he could, drew pictures of lava boy to place in the bags.

Day 108: Tax Day

I love Happy Hour at Sonic! I almost always get my favourite cherry limeade, and today was not different. However, today was all-day Happy Hour, because it's also tax day. I also got to leave work early, so a nice cherry limeade at one this afternoon was fantastic!

Day 107: Manna and Quail

A dear friend brought our family dinner this evening, saying she would bring us manna and quail. She brought us a lovely Japanese curry, but she also brought this little baby quail. So cute!

Day 106: Highland

This is Highland, the church I have called home for the past 15 years. Today our preacher presented a new vision for the church, a restoration movement, which the leadership has been working on for a while.    It is an exciting new vision for church body to better form and be community. It's strange that in just a few short months I will be looking for a new church.

Day 105: Five

We're a family of five and for many, many years all five of us sat down together for dinner each night. All five of us are rarely together anymore, despite the fact that we're still all in the same town. My sister lives in another house, so it's usually just four of us these days. So, when I was setting the table for dinner tonight and found myself getting out five place settings, I found myself a little sad.

Day 104: Shaved

Java got her hair cut today, and she looks fairly ridiculous. Her fur is all shaved, but her tail is still bushy like a squirrel. She sure is cute, though!

Day 103: 70,000

My car hit 70,000 miles today, which feels like a lot. However, I don't suppose that's actually too much for my little 2000 Toyota Solara.

Day 102: Dirt

At church this evening we studied the resurrection of Jesus. As part of our lesson the kids planted little beans. Luckily we just had five kids, because a bunch of Kindergartners and a bowl of dirt is a lot of fun!

Day 101: Driving

I haven't driven this way to work in many weeks. This road faces East and the sun is just so bright in the mornings that I've found another way, which doesn't involve me being blinded by the sun. But on cloudy days like today, this is my preferred route.

Day 99: Christos Anesti

Christos anesti - He is risen! Today has been a wonderful Easter Sunday, full of reminders of the resurrection to Jesus. We had a lovely service and reception at church this morning, which included the singing of "Arise, My Love," which one man in our church sings every year. It is always so moving.

And today also marks the end of the Lenten season, so I'm back on Facebook and back reading blogs! The past forty days have been for me a much-needed fast from time spent on the computer.

Day 98: Calzone

You can't really tell from the lousy picture, but we had some tasty calzones for dinner tonight. Ordering a pizza is good, but you just can't beat homemade pizza dough.

Day 97: For the Cure

The Abilene fire department sold these shirts last year to raise funds for breast cancer awareness and research. As several of my coworkers are married to firefighters, most of us bought shirts. I've worn it before, but today I wore it for a new reason, for my mom. She was diagnosed with breast cancer a couple of weeks ago and today she underwent surgery to remove the tumor. Prognosis and preliminary reports are good, praise God. But wearing this shirt hits a little closer to home today.

Day 96: Seder

"I am the one," says Messiah, "I am the one who destroyed death and triumphed over the enemy and trod down Hades and bound the strong one and carried off humanity to the heights of heaven.

"Come then, all you families of humanity, and get forgiveness of sins. For I am your forgiveness. I am the pascha of your salvation. I am the lamb slain for you.

"I am your ransom, I am your life, I am your light, I am your salvation, I am your resurrection, I am your king."

The Cup of Redemption is poured with these words at our Passover seder. This cup symbolizes Christ's atoning sacrifice for us, the blood of the Passover lamb. These are some of my favourite words from the Haggadah that my dad has put together. Though Passover officially begins tomorrow at sundown, we celebrated tonight.

Day 95: To Seed

You've probably noticed that I really like taking macro pictures. This blog certainly ends up with a lot of them. The cilantro has gone to seed and these are the flowers mean we better eat as much of it as possible before it's gone. I think the hot weather -95 last week-is confusing our plants.

Day 94: Baylor

Mom and I drove to Baylor today to look around the campus and visit with the museum studies department. It was a good trip and I'm excited about this fall, when I will be back in school. I received my acceptance letter from Baylor last week, which I'm incredibly happy about, though I'm still waiting to hear from Texas Tech.

Somehow I forgot to take a single picture of the campus. The wildflowers were absolutely incredible between here and Waco, so we did stop and take a few pics of those.

Day 93: Puppy Love

My sweet baby. Not a lot of exciting photo opportunities today, so I took another one of my sweet doggy, who I love to death.

Day 92: Cilantro Ice Cream

This time of year the cilantro is flourishing. There's far more cilantro in our garden then we can use, but we've been using what we can. Dad made this cilantro ice cream for us today, and it was tasty! The cilantro flavour was very light, though he used over three cups of cilantro in the mix.