Home Again, Home Again jiggety jig

 There's no place like home...there's no place like home...LOL.  We are SO thankful to be back home from our little trip. We had a WONDERFUL time visiting family, friends, and seeing beautiful scenery in the mountains...every day was an amazing new adventure...and I will try to share more in the days and weeks to come.  I don't want to overwhelm you with too many pictures all at once so will try to break it up into events and places.  However, tonight I am tired from traveling all day long, leaving literally at the crack of dawn before the sun came up over the mountains of Northeast Georgia.  After traveling for about a half an hour, this was our view at a scenic overlook:

You can still see the mist in the mountains as the sun was rising over the hills...it was absolutely stunning.

For those of you who saw my Facebook post last week on our trip up to North Carolina for the family reunion, you will know that because the rental car we got turned out to be a little smaller than expected, my DIL Rose and I had the great joy of holding two sweet grandpups all the way up to NC from Florida, and all the way back home again today from GA.  Here we were last week at the beginning of our journey...Rose is holding Spice, and I am holding Sugar.

This was the view in my lap on the way home today...that's pretty much the way we rode for all of our trip all day long, except for pit-stops.  But thankfully these pups are the sweetest and best and they fully cooperated and slept most all the way.

However, I believe the doggies were just as happy to get back home as we were! LOL.

I will cut through all the fine details for tonight and show you this picture of our family reunion:

This is my side of the family, members of each of my sibling's families and also a close cousin (Becky) and her hubby (Pat).  There were four of us siblings, and my oldest brother Russell has passed on in 2019. But his oldest son and daughter in law were there. My next oldest brother Clifford and his wife Caryl and their two daughters were our hosts for this reunion. Some of their grandchildren also we able to attend. My sister Doris and her husband Art were also there from Florida, and their oldest daughter Debbie also came. Then there was me (the baby of the family), and my hubby John, and our oldest son Benton and wife Rose.  We were each missing some of our kids and grandkids, but still this was a pretty good representation of our family.  We are so thankful that we were able to do this and hope to do it as often as possible in the future, Lord willing and as our health permits.

This is how our "original family" looked many years ago...

My how times have changed!!

I will share more pictures from the reunion in future posts, as well as pictures from the cabin where we stayed for the rest of our vacation in the north Georgia mountains.  But for tonight I think this will be enough as I am very tired, and tomorrow hubby has the (outpatient) medical procedure that we've been waiting for for quite a while. It will be a long day and I don't expect I'll be able to do much writing tomorrow...but we shall see how things go this weekend.

So I will close with a few pictures of some of the many wonderful little inspirational signs that were hanging in the cabin where we stayed. The owners of this "AirBnB" cabin have named their cabin "Our Mountain Blessing"...and I must say it lives up to its name....

I loved each of these different little plaques and signs...they truly did bless us as we spent our days there together...

I like what this says "Collect moments, not things..."   Oh yes!!!

Amen to these verses!

And I saved the best for last..."Friends are God's way of taking care of us."  

I do hope to get caught up with each of you in the days to come. I feel like I've been away forever and I haven't been able to read blogs while away due to lack of computer (and it's too difficult to do on my phone) and spotty internet.  So I know you all have your own special stories and adventures and maybe even prayer requests going on out there.  Hopefully we can get caught up with each other really soon.

Until then, 

Thank you for being very special friends.

Good Night and God Bless you all!

Mountains in the Clouds?

Do you ever look at the clouds and pretend they are mountains? Where we live in Florida of course there are no mountains...but if you look at the clouds as the sun is setting and lighting up the tip tops of the clouds you can almost imagine snowy white peaks with the sun glistening across the tops of them...

The pictures never do them justice, of course. You had to have been there.  But for a few fleeting moments I could imagine myself in the Alps, or the Rockies, or maybe the White Mountains of New Hampshire...

And as the sun was setting even further, the crescent moon was appearing above the trees, and the "mountain range" turned a lovely shade of blue.  Actually, I was trying to capture a picture of the heat lightning that kept lighting up my "mountains" in the distance, but my finger was never quick enough to catch the flash, so we will just enjoy my "mountain range" in the dusky twilight.

Kind of puts a new perspective on the evening skies, doesn't it?

There was a time in our lives when we had moved from those gorgeous White Mountains of NH to the plains of Kansas.  Nothing could have prepared us for the stark flatness of the horizon at sunset. The sun looked so close and huge and bright you would think you could almost touch it. There was nothing between us and the sun it would appear. Very few trees, absolutely no hills of any kind...just mile after mile of flat fields of sunflowers or whatever other crop they were growing in that sweltering heat.  It was no wonder that one evening as we drove the twenty mile trip back home from the nearest city where we did our grocery shopping that I looked to our left as we drove and it appeared that there was a range of mountains in the distance.  Of course I knew it had to just be the clouds, but it looked so real to me that all the way home I could imagine that we were back in our beloved mountains of NH and not 1500 miles away in the desert of Kansas.  I literally cried all the way home.  Our move there was a mistake and we were extremely homesick.  Needless to say, when we realized things were not all that we had been promised in our place of employment, it did not take much convincing to decide to move back "home" to the mountains where we had left behind family and friends.  Of course, eventually we would make our "final" big move back to Florida, where our elderly parents were in need of our attention, but by then we had gotten the mountains out of our system a little better, and at least Florida was not quite as flat as Kansas.  But whenever I see these "mountains" in the clouds, I think about that time in Kansas, and I thank the Lord for taking care of us even when things were difficult...and also for making a way of "escape" for us when we needed it most.

Do you ever find yourself dreaming of a better place, better times, happier memories? It isn't always easy to just pack up and move when things get difficult or disappointing.  But God sends us reminders that He is always with us no matter where we are.  It may be a vision of mountains in the clouds, or it may be something more tangible...a visit from a friend or a phone call that gives you such joy to hear the voice of someone you love.  It may be a promise of His love and care found in His Word...

Isaiah 49:13-16

"13  Sing, O heavens!

Be joyful, O earth!

And break out in singing, O mountains!

For the Lord has comforted His people,

And will have mercy on His afflicted.

14 But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me,

And my Lord has forgotten me.”

15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child,

And not have compassion on the son of her womb?

Surely they may forget,

Yet I will not forget you.

16 See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands;

Your walls are continually before Me." 

Surely God will never forget His children, no matter how much into the wilderness or desert they may have wandered.  He tells us He has "inscribed you on the palms of My hands..."   I like to think of that as the nail prints in the hands of Jesus...those holes are in His hands because of His love for us...He died for us, so how could He ever forget those He gave His life for?  Never could He ever.  So no matter where you may find yourself, no matter how disappointed or lost you may feel...God has not forgotten nor forsaken you. He will make a way out of no way and will comfort and care for you.  He may even provide those lovely mountains for you to enjoy once again...whatever it takes to show you His everlasting love.  

Isaiah 49:23b says:

"For they shall not be ashamed who wait for Me."

Rejoice in this hope.

Wednesday Treasures...Just Checking In

 Hello friends in Blogland! I am so out of touch as we have been away for several days, and just got home last night. I've been playing catch up with laundry, groceries, and preparing for a potential "hurricane/tropical storm" headed our direction tomorrow.  So I haven't had much time for visiting with you all, and I must say I have missed our daily communications.  And now I discover that many of my friends on Facebook have been leaving for other social  media outlets, i.e.; Parler or MeWe? I haven't had time to check them out and haven't really decided if I want to make that move. I have so many years worth of memories stored in Facebook albums. I know I can copy and paste, etc., but that's a lot of work and I'm just not anxious to start over at this point. And then there is the fact that many of my last communications with my son who passed away in 2014 are still there on his facebook page...and many pictures from that season of life. I love to go back there every so often and see what he wrote and remember our conversations.  Of course we talked on the phone almost every day for a long time, but I have no recordings of those conversations and very few handwritten letters, so the facebook conversations are the only tangible record of many special moments.  So you see, it isn't that easy for me to just walk away. 

Plus, many of my friends on Facebook are people that I've only met through Facebook and/or Blogging. We have developed warm and wonderful friendships that I've truly enjoyed and would hate to see come to an end.  It would just get too complicated for me trying to find everyone on different formats and I really don't want to spend that much time on social media anyway. I do understand about the political issues that created times of censorship and other negative communications.  Over the past few months I have tried to avoid much of that because it just became too difficult to always be so careful of what was true and what was hype, and what was "fact-checked" and what was conspiracy theory, etc., and I just wanted to be there to enjoy fellowship with friends and family and to share my faith with anyone who might be out there seeking some encouraging words in the midst of the chaos.

So all that being said, I want all of my friends near and far to know that I cherish your friendship whether you are here or there, and I hope that we will be able to stay in communication at least through blogging if not anywhere else. If things get too crazy on Facebook I may go looking for alternatives, but for now I am just not up to making that big of a change.

Now, on to my "Wednesday Treasures", which are, for today, some pictures from our trip to the Georgia Mountains with our kids.  We actually not only were just having a great time, but we were also celebrating their third anniversary! It was very sweet of them to invite us to come along on their special trip. We rented a house in the north Georgia mountains, and traveled to many interesting places from there...mostly to the tops of mountains! Whew! What views! I will post pictures without a lot more dialogue except to tell you where we were. Just let me say, the pictures do NOT do the views justice. I wish I had a 3D camera to show you the depth of these mountain top views, but then you might get dizzy and fall off your chair! LOL. Buckle up, Here we go!

This one speaks for itself: Welcome to Georgia! Our son was driving our "new" car, and I was in the back seat trying not to "drive". LOL.

Hubby was co-pilot in the front seat...

And Daughter in love Rose and I were supervising from the back seat...

We all got excited when we began to see the colors changing as we started to reach the higher altitudes:

Picture may be blurry because it was taken through the car window, but it was so neat to see the beautiful autumn leaves...

We stopped in Helen, Ga., before we began the winding steep ride up into the mountains...

Here we go:

 Up, up and around and round, many hair-pin turns and dizzying drop offs...

And finally we reached our destination, a lovely private home that is rented out through a airnb or something like that. Actually, the owners live next door so they are handy in case we run into a problem.

But the house was cozy and the surroundings were so lovely...

The property sits beside a rushing stream...

And this barn/garage that seems to have a strange personality if you look at it's "face". LOL.

Many of the autumn leaves had already fallen around their property, but there was still some lovely color to enjoy.

After settling in we headed to the nearest town where we could find some supper, and found this great BBQ place that had the best view of the lake and mountains across the street:

The mountains and scenery were surrounding us everywhere we went. This picture below was from the parking lot of the local Dollar General this next morning...sunrise over the mountains:

The morning started out kind of cloudy, but thankfully the sunshine managed to break through and it was a glorious day.

From there we headed up to "Brasstown Bald" mountain, the highest point in Georgia:

The sun played peekaboo with us, but we managed to see some amazing mountain views surround the top of this mountain:

Always be sure to pay attention to the signs!

At the summit of the mountain there is a wonderful museum and observation tower. And an old locomotive from the past trips in the mountains:

All aboard!

There were also some wild animals about...4 legged and 2 legged:

Oh, and you may wonder why we are so bundled up...well, it was quite cold and windy at the top of the highest point in Georgia.

One of the views:

Yes, this is a part of the Appalachian Trail:

As if one mountain peak wasn't enough, the next day we had to conquer another. This time we went to Black Rock Mountain State Park:

That's our "newlyweds" above...

I wish these pictures could help you see just how high we really were:

Hubby and me doing a selfie in front of the "view".

And another picture of the "young lovers":

Here's my own selfie:

And hubby and I found our perfect Christmas tree...now just to figure out how to get it on top of our car and take it all the way down the mountain and back to Florida! LOL>  (It's probably 40' feet tall).

Here we are at another overlook, and Benton is explaining to Rose what we are actually looking at:

I almost think we are high enough to touch the angels in the clouds:

I wanted to sit a spell at the Trading Post of the State Park campground...

But "Willie" was keeping watch over the store since no one else was there. So we decided to leave...

In the evening we watched the sunset over the mountains from the yard of our house:

And we had a bonfire and wiener roast:

The Mallard Ducks went swimming past us:

Nothing tastes better than hot dogs cooked over an open fire:

Unless it is marshmallows toasted over an open fire:

And made into s'mores:

(I think my pants were on fire! LOL)

I sure am enjoying that s'more!

Here! You want a s'more?

(I'm really not standing in that fire pit and my pants are not really on fire...)

My son took this scary picture of me as we were cleaning up stuff and putting out the fire for the night...

Maybe this is a good place to stop for today. There's a lot more to show you, but I will save it for another post so as not to totally bore and overwhelm you.

One of the Psalms we read in our morning devotions was Psalm 46. I thought these first 3 verses and then verses 10-11 were appropriate for us since we were in the mountains, and also because of all the turmoil that is going on in our country right now:

1.  "God is our refuge and strength,

A very present help in trouble.

2.  Therefore we will not fear,

even though the earth be removed,

and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

3.  Though its waters roar and be troubled,

Though the mountains shake with its swelling."

10.  "Be still, and know that I am God;

I will be exalted among the nations,

 I will be exalted in the earth!

11.  The Lord of hosts is with us,

The God of Jacob is our refuge."

Until next time, be blessed my friends, and be at peace.  Let us remember to pray for our friends...several of whom have some health concerns, and also for our nation.  May we "Be still and know that I am God..."  Amen.