Random Ramblings

So, the first thing I want to talk about is a picture I took of Tim 2 days ago taking a nap that sparked a walk down memory lane.  When the triplets were born, they were all put in an incubator together, and Nathan had one hand out of the blanket and on his face like Jack Benny the old comedian used to do.  So here is a picture of Jack Benny, and then Nathan, and then Tim.  Quite the resemblance of all 3, don't you think?  :-)  Oh My!

The nap was after a wonderful trip to the beach we took Thursday morning with our dear friends, the Perrella's.  I just want to say I was severely outvoted as to the time we went to the beach.  I ask you, if you were planning on going to the beach and you basically had the whole day to go, what time would you go?  I've been asking people that question since our little excursion on Thursday and most people, like me, said they like to go around 10am or 11am.  So what time did the Perrella's and Tim want to go??  7:00AM!!!  What the heck?  So I had to drag my butt up at 7am to go to the beach (wanna give me some cheese with my whine?).  I was slightly appeased when the Perrella's showed up with bagels and coffee.  I'll tell you what, we had our pick of parking spaces, that's for sure!  We decided to go to Pass-a-grille Beach, and it was really lovely.  I was a little concerned about the red tide, but we didn't see any signs of it while we were there, thank God!  Here's a picture of the 4 of us, and then one I snapped of Lee & Marie - aren't they the cutest?

We walked across the street for lunch at the iconic Hurricane restaurant for their famous grouper sandwiches - yum!  We're so grateful to have the friendship we have with Lee & Marie.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the 4 of us lead the marriage ministry at our church on Thursday nights, so we can find ourselves talking 'business' a lot, and this was a deliberate effort to put all that aside and just go and have fun together, and we definitely accomplished our goal!!  As they say, a great time was to be had by all!  :-)
When we last left off, I was sharing about our incredible sailing adventure we took with WinShape Marriage July 7-14.  Just a couple weeks later we headed up to the WinShape retreat center July 27-29 to be the host couple for their Courageous Hearts retreat.  It was such a blessing to be there again!
The next weekend we drove up to the Cincinnati area to be with the guy who led Tim to Christ on Tim's 16th birthday many moons ago, lol.  He is suffering from ALS, and when we first arrived both his head and his spirit were down.  We talked and prayed with him throughout the weekend, and when we left on Monday morning he told us he felt like a new person and that he felt like something had literally fallen off of him (can you say a spirit of oppression?).  While we were there we met up with a couple we had met the weekend before at the WinShape retreat who live in Cincinnati.  It was definitely a divine appointment as they shared how alone they had felt in their marriage and their struggles, and through the grace of God we were able to remove some of that aloneness and provide hope.  It was an amazing time together.    
Mid-August saw the kids all heading off to their 4 separate colleges.  Nicole and Nicholas are still living at home and commuting to college, while Nathan and Noah moved into dorms at theirs!  Nathan enjoyed moving into a brand new dorm at Trinity College, while Noah is enjoying a private room (within a quad) at Polytechnic.  

I was taking Nicholas to college for his first day of his first class that started at 8am in St. Pete, about an hour away.  It was about 6:45am on August 15, and we were about 5 minutes into our journey when bam, someone hit me!  After the phone call to Tim to ask him to reschedule with his corporate client so he could come and get Nicholas and take him, he actually arrived on time (whew!).  The damage doesn't look that bad, but my car was in the shop for 2 weeks (thankfully, the guy's insurance paid for a rental for me during that time), and I just got it back yesterday!  

August 22-24 saw us heading back up to WinShape to be facilitators at a Host Couple Training.  We reunited with one of the couples from our sailing adventure who were at the training and the wife actually works for WinShape!  It was a very sweet time and again, just a blessing to be there with all the wonderful people and all the deer!  We were invited to do a testimony of our WinShape Sailing Adventure, so if they post that to their website, we'll let you know!

Today wrapped up our marriage conference at our church, and it was probably one of the most smooth conferences I've ever been involved in at our church!  There was a date night last night with food trucks and a comedian, and then this morning was the teaching time.  Tim and I did a breakout session on Fighting Fair today, which is basically about communication tools for better connection in our marriages, and we really enjoyed ourselves and received great feedback.  Our facilitators from our marriage class did an AWESOME job as the volunteers for the event, which I think was a main reason every thing went so smoothly!  Actually, I think it was mainly a huge answer to prayer.  There was a lot of unity and camaraderie, and we are hoping and believing it helped provide many couples with the hope and help they were looking for.  It is SO cool to be doing something the Lord told us years ago we would be doing.  There's nothing like it!

Finally, I think I want to talk about my hair.  I don't remember if I've even mentioned any of this in any of my previous posts, but last fall my hair started falling out (oh, I just got that pun - last fall it started falling! lol!), due to an autoimmune response I had to the clinical trial drug I was on last year.  It got so bad I started wearing a wig in February of this year, just about the time it (thank God!) started growing back. It took a few months to get long enough for me to feel comfortable ditching the wig, which happened around May.  Since then, I decided to grow out my gray hair since I already had a 3 month start.  It is actually all white for about 3 inches of the new growth in the front, and then salt and pepper for 3 inches everywhere else.  But to avoid that awful line of demarcation, I'm using a temporary spray color to cover up the worst of the demarcation.  I'm a little over 6 months into the process, and I think I have another 18 months to go!!  Argh!!  I went to get a trim this week, and my hairdresser cut it way shorter than I expected because she said the colored part of my hair is going to eventually need to be cut off anyway as it is not going to magically become my natural color.  True, but I've had long hair as far as I can remember, so this short stuff (as you can see how short above) is taking quite a bit of getting used to!  Eventually, I plan to ditch the temporary color, so don't be surprised if one time you see me with dark hair and the next time I see you I'm a lot whiter and grayer than the last time! 
Well, I think that's it for the random ramblings!  Hope everyone is having a nice weekend, and I wish blessings to you all until next time!