fall break

i had such a great afternoon today.
officially, i'm on fall break at the college, so that's what i did. i took a break to enjoy the fall.
the boys and i went for about a 90 minute walk around a nearby neighborhood. what a glorious day--perfect temperature, perfect sunshine, perfect smells of the season.
emmaus fell asleep and israel and i sang songs (his current favorite is 5 little monkeys jumpin' on the bed). i don't think he fell asleep, but he sure mellowed out and enjoyed the ride.
and then to top it off, i had a coupon for a free cup of coffee from kidd coffee. highlander grog on an autumn afternoon is hard to beat.
i'm not saying that i'm more blessed than you for i realize that we all had the same afternoon here in town. but, perhaps unlike you, i know Who deserves the praise for a glorious creation.

Father God, You are amazing. thank You for showing Yourself to me today in the simple pleasure of an afternoon walk.

too many things in my head

today i find it hard to blog.
i definately don't have writer's block--just the opposite. i have 'writer's-broken-dam-flooding-too-fast-too-write-it-all-down'. i guess some people would call this feeling stress. i really don't feel stressed. it's just taking time to sort through all of it.
i sort of feel like my computer when i ask it to do too many functions at once. it eventually it'll work through all of these requests. it just takes time.
in the mean time, i cuss the stupid thing, complaining that it's too slow. it's not slow, it's methodical. it is doing everything asked of it in the proper order.
so, as one supercilious t-shirt said, "i can only please so many people in one day. today isn't your day and tomorrow isn't looking good either."

an unwelcomed visitor

saturday was a day full of sweets at our house. (of course, the love flows freely, so all of them are my sweeties.)


but, as you know Christmas is coming quickly. that means we've begun the process of preparation for our annual open-house. this past weekend brought 3 flavors of fudge and 2 bon-bon-type of candies. the smell of chocolate was everywhere. and, having such great weather, we opened the windows and doors.


but, about 8:30 pm, we heard something strange on the back porch. that's not unusual as there are several neighborhood cats and about 9 deer that frequent our grazing space. in that we always like to point out the deer to israel (who calls them 'dogs'), we turned on the porch light to see what we could see.





it was not a cat...


it was not a deer...


it was not crazy uncle tony...

a mere 4 feet from our screen door...
staring at me through his darkened eyes...
licking his lips and twitching his nose for the smell of chocolate...