Celebrating Adoption! (Part One)

My friend Alethea invited me to a special luncheon a couple weeks ago.  The luncheon is a special annual event each spring to support Colorado Christian Services, an adoption agency. Specifically, it is Alethea’s adoption agency!  I have attended before and it is always a lovely luncheon with a silent auction and wonderful program.  This year was no different.  Alethea invites many of her friends and I think she ought to get a prize for having the most friends attend!  We took up almost two tables!  This year CCS was celebrating their 50th anniversary!  Just think of that…fifty years of helping women choose life over abortion!   Fifty years of placing babies into the arms of women who otherwise might not have any children!  Fifty years of building families, counseling families, and honoring life!  Now that’s a celebration!!

I am both blessed and  privileged to have in my life a wonderful friend like Alethea.  Would it surprise you to know we met at Bible Study Fellowship?  She is the teaching leader of our class.  I remember when she and her husband moved to Englewood and she joined our group here in Denver.  We were both discussion leaders at the time.  She was asked to be the substitute teaching leader at the same time I was asked to be the class administrator.  That was about six years ago.  It was at that time I got to know Alethea a little better and she shared her struggle to have children.  When our class staff would meet to pray, her request was often along the line of having a baby.  And when that door was tightly closed, the request became about  wisdom  if, or how to adopt.  Alethea often describes those days as “darkness.” 

Over the years we have shared much of our lives as we studied God’s Word, learned to apply it and grow from it.  God brings different experiences into our lives to teach us and to cause us to become more like His Son, Jesus Christ.  We don’t necessarily get to choose those experiences because He sees what we can not.  He knows what the perfect tool is to bring about the changes necessary to bring out the beauty in a life and in which He alone is glorified.  The tool God used in Alethea’s  life was infertility.  The tool did its work.  Work is not always easy or enjoyable.  But because Alethea cooperated with God in that process,she stepped out of the “darkness” into His wonderful light.   She is now the busy Mom of two beautiful little girls!  And she loves to take every opportunity to share about her journey through adoption, CCS and all that the Lord has taught her.  (That could be the secret why so many of her friends gladly say yes to her invitation to attend the luncheon each spring!)

This is Alethea and her Mom, Chris.  She also is a Teaching Leader in Bible Study Fellowship. Next is Alethea’s Grandmother, and then two of our class leaders, Kristen and Gail.

That’s Gail again with Angela, Michelle, Debbie, and Rhonda…all BSFers!

This is Table #2…Elyse, Alethea, Charis, and Whitney. 

Also at Table  #2 was Kristen and Pam, above, and Hope and Loral, below.

Adoption is a blessing and a reason to celebrate! What a wonderful picture of the greatest adoption of all, that of being adopted into God’s family and becoming His sons and daughters!  I am so glad to know Alethea and have a better understanding of all that God has given us by what she has walked through.  My next post is from her.  You will be blessed as well! 

“…just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, ⁵ having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, ⁶ to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.”  Ephesians 1:4-6

Thankful Thursday

At the end of January I joined a water aerobics group.  It was a class that had been meeting at the Denver Country Club and a couple of our residents were part of it.  They had asked to use our indoor pool over the winter months and permission was given.  Wally kept encouraging me to join…but I don’t really do water too well.  I really do not swim.  I can float and paddle about some.  But one day I gave in and I have to say, I really enjoyed it.  Well in May the outdoor pool at the Country Club reopens and the group is returning.  Today was our last class.

I am thankful for the time I had in the class, for meeting new women with a lot of interesting lives, for Karen our teacher, and for the fact that I didn’t drown! Tonight I am sitting here on my couch, dead tired…we had a pretty good work out this afternoon.  But I think I’m thankful for that too…and hopefully, I’ll keep working out on my own!

Here’s a cute card I made for Karen our teacher

April Showers

It is April 16 and we are nearly a month into spring.  I have moved into tulip and daffodil mode and left the winter wonderland behind.  But this is Colorado and my tulips and daffodils have long been buried under white stuff.  Here they are after our storm from last week.  I don’t think they are going to be able to perk their little heads up again!

The snow started falling yesterday afternoon and as the temps dropped it began to stick.  Wally decided he should drive me to Bible Study…we already had a couple of inches on the ground in Denver.  On the way, Wally commented on how beautiful the trees were, covered in the freshly falling snow…I reminded him of that tulip mode I was into.  But this morning, I gave into the winter wonderland feel…it was so beautiful…all twelve inches of it!

I kept hearing the song of birds and when I looked out back, the bare trees were full of confused robins.  I think they are discussing whether they migrated back too soon or not.  I clearly heard one of them say, “this is for the birds!”

And one day this little corner on our balcony will finally be all about sunshine and flowers!  In the meantime, we are to get another three-eight inches of the white stuff tomorrow! 

Thankful Thursday

Remember last week how I showed you a few thank-you cards on my Thankful Thursday post?  How about if I do it again?  Only these cards were made by my sister, Robin.  Last Friday I went to her house and toted along some supplies so she could make some cards.  So many people have been coming along side their family and doing so many wonderful things to help.  And this is just surgery recovery stage…chemo yet to come!  I have no doubt though that Robin and Terry will continue to be surrounded with love and care.  It is how God’s family cares for one another.  How very thankful I am for that too.

When I arrived last Friday, I almost had to take a number.  Robin’s living room was full of friends and I think someone else had been there earlier.  One couple departed.  This is Mary Byers with Robin.  She had brought lunch over…and enough fixings to make several more lunches!   Then she joined us in a little card making.  Before I left, a co-worker arrived with dinner. 

This card we CASED from Pinterest here.

And this card cam from Dawn’s Stamping Studio.  “Oh so cute!” as Dawn would say!

While I was there Robin’s wound nurse, Vicky, stopped by.  She comes every other day to clean the wound and empty the wound vac.  Robin has an open wound in her belly…healing from the inside out.  I wasn’t too sure if that looked like a good thing.  Mary is also a nurse and she was really enjoying everything Vicky was doing.  When the vac was unhooked and the wound exposed, both Mary and Vicky were “oohing” and “aahing” over how beautiful it looked!  I just wasn’t seeing it.  It was kind of cool though that when a new sponge was inserted into the opening and the vac hooked back up, it kind of went “slerp” and closed over the hole.  I guess you had to be there! 

I don’t know if you can see the white box on Robin’s wrist or not…but it is taking Robin’s blood pressure.  I thought that was pretty interesting. 

Here’s Robin and Vicky, all  upright!  So thankful for you Vicky…and your  care and expertise!

And so thankful for you Robin, my sister and my friend!  I love you!

Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love,
in honor giving preference to one another;
Romans 12:10

Spring Showcase

  These are my favorite kind of spring showcase…all the flowers in bloom.  These tulips are outside my door and kind of different…they open wide like stars and close up tight at night.  That’s the only time I think they look like real tulips.  I thought I planted some red and yellow bulbs, but this is what came up!  I took a picture just a few days ago and today the daffodils and pansies seemed to have sprung and opened and the pansies are up…a real spring showcase!

Last Thursday Wally and I attended a spring showcase of another kind…for property management.  We even earned continuing education credits…if only we were still in school!  So we just took the nice certificate!

The day consisted of classes that cover all kinds of issues…from the marijuana issues, (now that it is legal in Colorado) to insurance  and technology helps.  Wally took in the technology class and I sat in on one called “What not to Wear.”  Then there was a hall where vendor and contractors were displaying their businesses.  We spent a lot of time there gathering contacts and info.  We also gathered a lot of paraphernalia!!  When you sign into the conference they hand you a pretty nice bag and we pretty much filled both of ours.  I kind of chuckled as I looked at one booth which was a law firm.  While most booths had snack size candy out, they had full size bags of skittles and M&M’s. 

Tablets, sticky note pads, pens, pencils, calculators, tons of chap sticks, those squishy stress reliever balls, mints in cute little boxes, high lighters, flashlights, hand sanitizers, magnetic clips, and candy!!  Even some trash cans on wheels and a couple of lounge chairs.  Just perfect for some little doll or stuffed animal.  So we took two of most things…and they are in a box to send to the grands!  (Sorry Andrea, but the kids will love it and you won’t feel bad when you toss it!)

At lunch we met up with Diane and Rebecca.  Rebecca is our boss and Diane is her assistant.

Also at lunch there was a motivational speaker.  I was kind of looking forward to hearing him speak except that the sound was so poor in the room, and there was a lot of lunch time conversation still going on…I could not understand one word.  And do you know who the speaker was?  Haven Moses, of the Denver Broncos…back in the day of  the Orange Crush!  (I can’t believe I even know that!)

And here’s a fine looking couple…Wally and me!

On the way out of the convention center, I snapped a picture of the Big Blue Bear, looking in.  (Rebecca’s idea)

And when we got outside we saw he was getting a scrub.  The Big Bear had recently been vandalized with green paint.  It’s been in the news… a.whole.lot!  We heard one reporter on the radio lamenting why it could not have happened to the ugly horse that greets everyone coming to the airport.  Talk about ugly and expensive!  If you live here, you know what I mean.

We stepped outside into a beautiful afternoon in downtown…wish we could have stayed and walked the mall! 

Thankful Thursday

What can be nicer on a Thankful Thursday, than to be sending out a thank- you note---or two---or three even--- because someone did something nice for you?  And I can also thank Pinterest and Stampin Up for the ideas to make my cards.

This card is for my sweet Mrs. Binkley who turned 93 in February.  She loves tulips and I remember at Stamp Camp a couple years ago we made this tulip card using the owl punch. 

  Two of our residents gave us a flower arrangement over Easter;  a beautiful Lily arrangement and just a small pot of spring flowers.  These cards are going to them.  This idea was a take on a card from Pinterest.

I am so thankful for the people God has put in our lives!  Not just because you sometimes “get” something from them.  But just because of their presence.  Sometimes its all good and other times it is rather stressful.  But always there is an influence in your life that teaches you something.  People are rather interesting…what would our lives be like with only those we want to be with or those we “get” something from?    People definitely keep life interesting!  I am learning to be thankful even for the difficult people in my life…they probably just won’t be getting a thank you card from me! 

Happy Resurrection Day

Yesterday we had a wonderful day from beginning to end.  Wally has a few chores he has to do every day here at the Polo Club, even on our days off.  He came back in exclaiming what a gorgeous day it was…like the grass and trees had just popped overnight and the birds were chirping everywhere.  I replied, “just like a resurrection morning, huh?”  We hope you had a wonderful celebration yesterday. 

Our church presented a musical drama entitled You Are The Christ…as seen through the eyes of Peter. It was “Peter’s” thoughts back through the years from when Jesus first called to him, ‘follow me”  through his denial of Jesus and the resurrection.  The young man who portrayed Peter was just excellent!  The choir accompanied his monologue and they too were excellent!  The hand bells also played…”Up From the Grave He Arose.”  I do not know how they make the music they do with just bells. 

We came home to a wonderful dinner.   We were totally experimenting, but it turned out great.  Recently Wally bought a smoker and we smoked an entire pot roast meal and two apple pies for dessert.  It was delicious.  We need to fine tune it a bit, but nobody complained!

Hmmm, are you hungry yet? 

For our Colorado family we had my Mom and Dad and Scott over, and Wesley.  Robin and her family had out of town friends in who took care of them.  It was a pleasant day from beginning to end.

Family pictures on Easter are just a tradition.  For a long time I took them at church.  As the family has now spread out here and there it is a bit of a challenge. Last year I was able to get all the kids to take their family picture and send me a copy to keep up the tradition. This year I sent out the email reminding them, but alas, one of them forgot.  I hate to shame one of my own kids so I won’t mention names.  But you should be able to figure it out who is missing. 

It was nice to squeeze one more Easter photo out with Wesley.

Elaine, Nolan, Ben and Andrea…very large with those twins!

I received this picture in a text Sunday morning…I love starting the day this way!

I made each of the kids a bunny bucket years ago.  When they all went off to college, I sent it to them full of candy and then they returned it to me in the summer.  When Andrea and Kenny got married, the bunny went with them.  But Wesley keeps returning his.  So when I gave Wes his bunny yesterday I had to tell him, “no refills!”