Thursday Thankfulness

 Well, if you have read my most recent post HERE, you will know that I was expecting some special guests today at Dixie Cottage! It seems as though Dixie Cottage has become THE gathering place for blogging friends and other friends as well.  I love it!!!  People can come meet me here at the store and I don't have to clean my house to entertain them! LOL.  (Well, unless they want to come see Still Waters Pond too, lol).   Anyway, true to my word, we did have some very special guests today at the store:

Gary, Barbara, Yours Truly, and my hubby John

Yes, some of you may have already guessed it...our friend Barbara and her sweet "heartthrob" Gary, of Sweet Tea and Sandals fame.  If you follow Barbara, you will know that she and Gary are in the process of combining their households, and Barb has been clearing out much of her unneeded furnishings and decor items.  And so today they brought a car load of lovely decor items to be sold at Dixie Cottage on consignment.  If you know Barbara at all, you know she is a lady of exquisite taste and charm, and so I know that these items will be very popular and won't last long! I can't wait to go through them all myself and get first choice! LOL.  

After a fun tour of of the store, we headed over across the road to Nanna's County Cafe' for lunch. Sorry, I didn't get any pictures there.  And actually, if you wait a while, I am certain Barbara will be sharing more pictures of their adventure today when she writes her next post.  We had a lovely visit, and yes, Gary is just as dreamy as Barbara has already painted him to be in her blog. They make a very sweet and adorable couple, and we wish them  all the happiness in the world. God has truly blessed them both to have found one another.

This week has been a rather busy week, but in a good way.  Our Ladies' Bible Study started back on Monday, and we will be studying the Twelve Disciples.  Here's a picture of the book we are using:

Sounds like it will be a very interesting study, and I am thankful for the group of ladies who participate. We cover a lot of stuff in that one hour session each week...applying the Bible study to our personal lives and encouraging one another in the process. 

That was on Monday. On Tuesday evening we started back to Choir Practice for the year.  We always take off for the summer. And we had a couple of new people join the choir. Our choir is still small and we are certainly not professional, but we "make a joyful noise unto the Lord", and that's what really matters. I am thankful for our Choir Director, who puts a lot of thought into planning what we will sing...and our pianist and our sound man and well, just everyone who participates to make it all come together for the glory of God.

On Wednesday morning we had our monthly United Women in Faith meeting, which also is growing! It was so nice to have 21 ladies attending. Lately our little church is showing signs of growth, which is another blessing in itself, and it is carrying over into our women's groups, men's groups, Sunday School, and even the choir.  I am thankful for each of these ministries and how they are a blessing not only to our church family, but also as an outreach to our community.

So that brings us back to today, and you already know what a joy and blessing we had today!

Tomorrow, Friday, is a "normal day"...and we will be helping out at Dixie Cottage again in the morning.

Saturday morning is our church's monthly Community Breakfast, which is open to the public for a small fee. It is always well attended and they give us lots of good food. From there we will go to Dixie Cottage again until noon.  Then that takes us back to Sunday...which is another wonderful day, spent with our church family in Sunday School and church and usually we go out to lunch with several people as well.

Whew! It's been a rather busy week! But all good stuff and we are blessed and thankful

Oh, when we were at Nanna's for lunch, I saw this flyer on the counter and picked one up:

It also listed the cost and contact info, and if you are interested, I will be happy to share that with you. I would LOVE to go to this and hope I can talk some others to go with me. I think it would be so much fun. I just don't know if I can come up with any "period dress" to wear. I might be able to create a hat and gloves, but I don't have any "old dresses" from 1880's laying around. Do you? I wonder where I could find one. My birthday is the week before this, and I told my husband this would be a lovely birthday present to me, what do you think?  We'll see what develops.

On another note, also on my last post here again, I talked about wanting to go to Pennsylvania to take care of my parents' final wishes and burial.  Many of you encouraged me to pursue that, and I thank you for your kind words and thoughts about this.  Well, one of my nieces also reads my blog and she saw that and contacted me privately and said that she would love to see that happen as well. And actually my son and sweet DIL have already been talking about it and trying to make it happen...and so now the younger generation of cousins are all talking and making plans about how to bring this all together sometime next year. It may not be in May because there are already too many other conflicts on people's schedules then, but no matter the date...we just need to make it happen sooner rather than later.  I am thankful for these "kids" of the next generation taking the reins in hand and making things happen.  I pray it will all come together as we hope. I know my parents would be so proud to see their grandchildren actually being the ones to take on this project to honor their memory.  God is good.

Amen.