Friday Foto Friends and Praises after the Storm!

Good Morning from "Sunny Florida", the morning after Hurricane Helene swept through during the night.  This was our sunrise this morning. We awoke to check things out all around us, and to give thanks to the Lord for His protection over our home and family during the night.

Thankfully, we never lost power except for a flicker around midnight that messed up our clocks, but that was it!  We could hear the rain and wind on the roof throughout the night, but never anything really serious.  I know that people to the west of us and to the north had it much much worse, and many are without power and some have experienced flooding.  Our thoughts and prayers go out to them, but thankfully, as far as I know, everyone is safe.  My song this morning at sunrise was the Doxology:

"Praise God from Whom all blessings flow;

Praise Him all creatures here below;

Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts;

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Amen."

I really don't have any pictures from the storm, because the majority of it was after dark last night. Yesterday was mostly just a cloudy day with a few quick showers and wind gusts, but nothing major.  This was the sunrise yesterday morning before the storm began:

So I want to thank all who have been praying, and please continue to pray for those who may still be in harm's way further north as Helene continues to push through GA., the Carolinas, Tennessee, and even into Kentucky later on. Some of our friends in GA. had already been getting flooding rains from another rainstorm that had passed through in the preceding days, and then this came on top of it.  They were also under severe tornado warnings, and one of our blogging friends, "Sparky" over at My Thoughts Exactly, lives in southeast GA., and she reported on her Facebook page that they may have had a tornado come through their yard last night as many trees were down and they got a lot of rain. I haven't checked on too many others yet, but I hope people will check in as they are able.

Yesterday morning I enjoyed some pieces of that wonderful home made bread that dil Rose baked for my birthday.  Son Benton said he wanted to see a picture of me eating it in front of the fire...so I put a "fire" in the fireplace (without the heat, of course, as it was quite warm here already), and sent him this picture of my breakfast.  I purposely did NOT include a picture of me, because, after all, it was at breakfast time and I don't know of too many people who want their picture taken at breakfast, unless you are all dressed up and go out for "brunch" somewhere. LOL.    The bread is delicious. She added extra honey to the mixture, and it made it really moist and flavorful. I am enjoying it perhaps too much, but, it's only one loaf, and it will soon be gone. Then I'll be back to plain old ordinary bread and not as much of it for a while!

I haven't shown you any updates on the house next door for a while, mainly because things have been moving rather slowly.  It takes forever to get inspections done and also for the workers to come back and finish their jobs...I think there is just too much development going on in our county and it is getting hard to keep up.  Anyway, I was SO happy to see the workers come and finally put the siding on the ends of the house before the hurricane came:

This is the view I can see from our house. Oh, also, they finally hooked up the AC/Heatpump unit and put a power "pole" connection on the end of the house, ready for power, but not connected yet.

This is the other end of the house.  Next will come the skirting around the bottom, and it will look much better.  Someone mentioned before when I shared pictures of the house that they would want a porch and/or a deck on it. Yes, that would be really nice, but that would be up to the new owner to add once the house is purchased.  It definitely needs a back porch overlooking Still Waters Pond!

I  went over this morning and checked on the house/lot to make sure no trees were down on the house. I do keep in touch with the current "owner/developer", as she lives in Jacksonville and can't get down here to check on things very often. We met when she bought the lot and started the process for clearing/developing.  Yes, it is a woman who is in charge of this project, and this is not her only project here in our town.  She will list this for sale when it is completed and ready for occupancy.  Actually, there is a listing for it already on Zillow...Here is a link to it on Zillow in case you are interested. The pictures are of a model with the same floor plan. The color scheme may be a bit different, but you will get the idea.

This morning the only issue I could find after the storm was this big mud puddle in front of the house, but they are not finished with the landscaping, etc., yet, so I am sure this area will be corrected when they do all of the finishing touches.  You can see our house over there on the far left. That's how close of a neighbor I would be if you lived here!    

After I did my walkabout this house and our house, hubby and I went outside to our front yard and raked up a LOT of branches on the ground and on our driveway from the big Oak trees in front of the house.  That was really the only issue we had to take care of, and we are VERY thankful indeed.

I didn't take any pictures of us working out there, but here's how it looks now:

You can see how big those oak trees are, and they are very messy trees.  If it's not branches falling every time the wind blows, its acorns and leaves!  Plus it is very hard to get any grass to grow under them, but I do appreciate the shade, so I'm not complaining (much). LOL.

And here is how Still Waters Pond looks this morning...nice and full of water!  So the Herons and Sand Hill Cranes and fish  and turtles should all be happy.

Well, that's about it for today. I mainly wanted to thank you for your prayers, and to let you know that prayers have definitely been answered. We continue to pray for those who have had a harder time than we did. May God speed help to them and restore their power and get them safely back into their homes soon.  

Isaiah 40:31  NKJV

31 But those who wait on the Lord

Shall renew their strength;

They shall mount up with wings like eagles,

They shall run and not be weary,

They shall walk and not faint.