Rainy Days and Mondays...

I can't believe that the month of June is almost over...here it is the first day of summer already! Although here in Florida it has felt like summer for a couple of months...

I have been admiring this beautiful picture on my John Sloane's Country Seasons June calendar...

"The Rose Arbor".  Oh, wouldn't it be lovely to have a rose arbor covered with so many beautiful roses? 

I don't seem to have the green thumb to manage such beauty, so I rely on God's handiwork for summer flowers:

These lovely pink flowers adorn the shore of Still Waters Pond right now. They are so lovely to look at from my "Room With a View"

I was outside picking these flowers and listening to the rumble of thunder coming from the distance...

So I had to hurry and pick a few and bring them inside so I can enjoy them here as well:

The rain is just about to start, and Lily Grace has been sitting there watching for the bluebirds all day as they come and go, building their nest in the birdhouse getting ready for the next clutch of eggs to be laid.

We haven't been out on many "adventures" lately, so Lily just has to be patient until the rains go away and we can get outside and do something fun again.

However, our family did do something fun yesterday for Father's Day. After church we headed down to the local "Hog Wild Country Cafe" bbq place for lunch.  It's always a fun place to gather with friends and family for a good meal.

Here's hubby with two of our wonderful sons.

And here's our sweet daughter in love Rose with our oldest son Benton.

It's always fun to have some of our church friends go out to dinner with us.

Today being a rainy day and Monday, I won't let it get me down...been thinking about some sweet memories from childhood.  My sister Doris posted this picture on Facebook this morning. It is a vintage greeting card, but it really got her attention and she had to send it to me.  She said, "Here we are!"

And yes, I had to agree!  When we were little girls on the farm in Pennsylvania, we had a beautiful wicker baby doll buggy much like this one below,  except ours was a pretty shade of light green. We loved playing with our dollies out in the yard of our old farmhouse...which looked a lot like this picture.

Sadly, when I was five years old, my daddy sold the farm and we moved to Florida. Farming was very difficult back in the 1950's.  You either had to have lots of money or borrow lots of money from the government to keep going, and he didn't want to do that.  It was a sad day when our house and most all of the furniture and the farm equipment and animals, etc., were all auctioned off...even our beloved dog Laddie was sold.  What furniture we wanted to keep was put in my uncle's barn until we could come back and pick it up to move it to Florida. Then we loaded what we could into a small trailer that Daddy pulled behind our '55 Chevy, and off we went to Florida, to live in a small apartment until a better house could be found. Eventually Daddy built us a wonderful house, and we went back to Pennsylvania to bring down the rest of our things, which included our beloved doll buggy.  However, when we got to my uncle's house, it wasn't there anymore. I'm not sure what happened to it, there never was a good explanation as to what had happened to that and some other things.  I was very young and really don't remember the details, except for the fact that our beautiful doll buggy was gone. I've never forgotten it.

Well, fast forward 50 + years, and we were cleaning out my parents' home after their passing.  Up in the attic of the "carriage house" workshop that Daddy built was this beautiful little wicker doll carriage. My mother collected dolls and had found this buggy somewhere and it was stashed away among their "treasures". 

Of course I wanted it as soon as I saw it, but wanted to make sure that it would be okay for me to take it.  My oldest brother was the executor of the estate and saw no problem in me having it. 

My other brother and my sister both agreed that I should have it as well...

because you see not long before that I had been given this special sweet baby doll,

"Baby Elva", whom, if you've known me for very long, you should already know her story.  If not, HERE it is again.

And so, even though it isn't the exact same baby doll buggy from my childhood, it is close enough and it is as though my mother had saved it for this special baby who arrived a few years after my mother's passing.

So that's my story for this rainy Monday afternoon. I hope you enjoyed coming along with me down memory lane for a little while.

Just some thoughts from the "Choose Grace" devotional:

"Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous.

Yes, wait patiently for the Lord." 

Psalm 27:14