Easter

R is for The Old Rugged Cross

I have lots of favorite words, but if I have to pick a favorite favorite it is this one-hope. And never does that word pack more of a punch than on Easter morning. I like the quote by Thomas Aquinas that says, "Faith has to do with things not seen, hope with things that are not at hand." 

Easter for me is definitely a time of reflection. Everyone has something they're dealing with, and Easter reminds me to put my focus back on a God who is faithful. Who is all-knowing and never surprised or caught off guard by what life brings. 

No matter what small hill or giant mountain lies before us, what fire we're walking through, or what pit we're trying to climb out of, Easter morning tells us there is hope.

Sometimes the old hymns really do say it best-

A Cinderella Style Post

As in Quick! Write something for the A-Z challenge before the clock strikes twelve. Works for me-

Q is for Quick! 

We sat down to dinner tonight and it was only then I realized I hadn't blogged today. I asked for suggestions for letter Q and hubs said how about quit raining! He has a point. It was an absolute gully washer here today. 

Maybe more of a deluge than gully washer because when I looked up the definition of gully washer it said extremely heavy rain of short duration. Ours lasted the whole ding dong day, but I do love the word gully washer. It's delightful. 

Daughter1 has been doing much of the print design for her sister's wedding which is coming up super quick, and I think we finally got the last piece proofed and ready for printing today. That means she won't get ten emails/texts/phone calls from me every single day asking -can you make the font bigger, now it's too big can you change it back?, I moved person x from table one to table five-hey I moved person x back to table one so can you put the seating chart back the way it was three emails ago? can you send me a pdf to proof?, why can't I see the pdf? how do I make this booklet thing print right side up? wait just one more thing I promise....I know she's delighted-ha! 

This little man will be here for Easter-

He's had a big boy haircut since we saw him last, says new words and sentences every day, and is my favorite tiny human on the planet. Super delightful! 

This has nothing to do with anything, but last night we went out for Mexican food and daughter2 suggested we stop for ice cream on the way home. I mean we were driving right by, so how could we not? Also, it was educational.  

They make your ice cream one bowl at a time in the mixer right in front of you, adding liquid nitrogen at the end to make it freeze. Delicious and entertaining! 

Quick topic change-

With everything we have going on here currently I made the executive decision to order Easter dinner from Honey Baked Ham. I guess it wasn't so much an executive decision as a thought I spoke aloud in the presence of my daughter as something I was considering, and she leapt on the idea as soon as the words left my mouth. 'Do it Mom!' and so I did. 

Their hams are always wonderful and the deal I opted for comes with three sides and two desserts which are currently sitting in my frig and freezer just waiting to be warmed up. I know some of you are thinking what's the big deal, but I'm fussy about holiday dinners. I like homemade and I enjoying cooking these big meals and I make too many sides but that's tradition. This year is kinda kicking my behind though, so I'm giving myself a smallish break. Still doing Easter baskets, having ten people for dinner, and hosting a wedding a week later, but not cooking the whole meal somehow feels like a little break. 

I'll still make deviled eggs because is it even Easter dinner without deviled eggs? Daughter2 said we still have to make our favorite pineapple stuffing, but that's easy peasy to prepare so low stress. And I know people will tell me to use paper plates but I cannot. I literally can.not. If that's your thing then I say go for it. It is not in my DNA to serve Easter dinner on paper plates so I will set the table with my wedding china because thirty-five years in it still delights. 

And yes, this is a quick post when you're me. 

Pressing On

We're more than half way through the A-Z blog challenge and in spite of ten thousand things going on here I'm managing to stay mostly on track.

Since I don't normally blog on Saturdays I've been using those posts to make lists of small things that delight centered around the day's letter. We're rolling in to the Easter weekend and I have something else in mind for this week's Saturday post so will make my list today instead.

Here we go-

P is for Pint-Sized Delights

peonies

Princess Kate

lightly salted popcorn

encountering patient people 

a package at the front door

Paris in the spring

overcoming the urge to procrastinate

old photos

homemade peanut butter cookies

lounging in my pjs

accomplishing a difficult task because I persevered 

porch sitting

a walk in Central Park

lots of stamps in my passport

opening up a brand new planner 

the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle

pearls

the first peach of the season 

playing peek-a-boo with the mancub

hitting publish

O is for Oops

As in oops I dropped the blog ball yesterday with letter N in the April A to Z blog challenge. Not to worry though, because I'm picking it up today by way of a combination post. Two letters for the price of one you might say.

N is for Nature and O is for The Great Outdoors

See, it's gonna be fine.

I love high heels, pearls, and sipping champagne in a skyscraper restaurant overlooking Manhattan. I also love comfy jeans, a hike in the mountains, and running barefoot off the dock into the crystal clear lake waters of my own backyard.

Part country mouse, part city mouse.

Cities are noisy, energizing, and alive, but getting out into nature helps me remember I'm not in charge of the universe. The quiet of the woods on a gorgeous autumn day silences the soundtrack running on a loop inside my head.

 A mountaintop view gives me room to think and dream.

Standing in front of a seemingly endless expanse of ocean makes me feel small and sure there is a God.

A stroll through a lovely English garden tells me to stop and smell the roses.

We spend so much time in the 'connected' world these days that it's really hard to disconnect without physically leaving the places we plug in. We rely on our phones and computers to tell us about the world around us as opposed to standing in wide open spaces and observing for ourselves.

A trek up a mountain means I have to dip into my well of grit and determination, something that's not needed for scrolling the internet.

A starry night sky away from city lights inspires my sense of creativity and curiosity, and waves kissing the shore over and over and over again brings a sense of order to a very disorderly world.

There is peace and there is perspective and there is gratitude to be found in the great outdoors.

Let's all go out and get us some.

I See The Moon And The Moon Sees Me

Well today got away from me but I'm not giving up on the A to Z Challenge just yet. We happen to hit the middle of the alphabet today so let's keep calm and blog on.

M is for the Moon

In case you missed it my theme for this challenge has been centered around the word delight. The obvious M word to blab on about here would be motherhood, but I feel like I might have covered that in letter D. 

Let's go with something completely different here today-the moon. 

I tend to talk too much here about all things sky related-weather, clouds, sunrises, sunsets, and a brilliant moon in the dark night sky. Maybe it's the way it hangs over the lake or maybe it's that I have more time to notice, or maybe it really is more remarkable in the 21st century, but we've had so many incredible moonlit skies these past several months. 

The kind where we run out on the porch in our pjs just to get a better look. The kind that feel close enough to touch. Moons so bright and so brilliant and so seemingly close to where we're standing we snap thirty five pictures with our cell phones in an effort to capture beauty we know cannot be captured. 

There have been supermoons and blood moons and blue moons and harvest moons, each one a delight. In the words of Taylor Swift, some nights it really does feel like 'a spotlight on the lake'. 

The first thing I think of when I see a big full moon is the little rhyme I used to say to my girls when they were small. Back when I still tucked them in tight in their rooms upstairs. When I listened to their worries and their stories and their prayers and kissed their foreheads and said Mama loves you to the moon and back. 

"I see the moon and the moon sees me, God bless the moon and God bless me" 

There was something comforting in that old familiar verse...

There still is. 

L Is For The Little Things

Keeping with my Saturday plans to mention small things that delight. And since we've reached the letter L in the A-Z challenge we'll call those small things little. Perhaps too little to merit individual blog posts, but not so little they don't deserve a mention.

L is for Little Things That Delight

a garden full of lavender
an empty laundry basket
newborn lambs on an English hillside
Thanksgiving leftovers
learning something new
love that lasts
the occasional lazy day
loons on the lake
a freshly mown lawn
long leisurely lunches
knowing all the lyrics to a song
lobster rolls on the coast of Maine
that perfect shade of lipstick
memories of London
the ocean lapping at your toes
a bowl of lemons on the kitchen counter
a letter in the mailbox
a perfectly pressed linen tablecloth
leaves changing color
red licorice

Okay, your turn...what's on your 'L' list?

Kruising Into The Weekend

Winding down week two in the A-Z Challenge and I'm still here. And it's Friday and my teacher daughter is on spring break next week so whoohoo! I think I'm as excited as she is not to be getting up before the crack of dawn for a solid week. Cheers to the weekend and sleeping past 5 AM!

I don't have a lot of time to blog, and if I'd been better organized I'd have written these A-Z posts weeks ago.  I probably didn't have time then either so here we are crawling into the weekend with one of the harder letters in the alphabet challenge.

I press on...

K is for Kindness

Not just the random unexpected kind either, but ordinary everyday kindness. Who doesn't feel delight at ordinary everyday kindness in the year 2019? I think this used to be what we called good manners, but now we call them 'acts'. 

Holding a door open for the person behind you, letting someone jump in line who has just a handful of groceries to purchase, picking up trash we didn't drop, returning the shopping cart, a baked treat for the new neighbor, going out of our way a little to help someone who needs helping, not saying everything you think. Saying good morning-thank you-you're welcome-I'm sorry. 

Kindness extended in even the simplest of ways lifts the spirit of both the giver and the receiver.

Then there are the random unexpected acts of kindness that come our way. The theme for my A-Z challenge this year was born out of one of these unexpected acts. Three months later and that small big act continues to delight me every single day.

Early in January I wrote about my word for this year. Someone read what I wrote and they acted on it. Two weeks later I had a package in the mail and I am still not over it. Every day I put that bracelet on my arm and every day I feel that same sense of delight all over again.

And now I've written two blog posts about it and it's only April.

Sometimes it feels a little obvious, trite, cliche to write about kindness. We're bombarded now with t-shirts, slogans, social media hashtags urging us to be kind but like most things that matter in this world, things that make a real difference in peoples lives, it's the doing as opposed to the 'talking about doing' that creates change.

Can kindness change the world?

In a word yes.
Our little corner of it anyway.