I know it’s been quite a while since I posted anything. Much has been happening and I finally feel
like maybe, just maybe I can slow down and take a deep breath again.
I was planning a big Birthday blow-out for my hubby’s 60th
Birthday. The invitations had been
mailed. The food bought and I had the
cake figured out and baked, the frosting made.
Then… we got a phone call saying my husband’s best friend in all the
world had passed away unexpectedly.
Although he lived nearby his family all lived out of state and decided
to have his funeral in North East Tennessee about 4 hours away. They also decided to have it on the same day
as the scheduled birthday party. Of
course we canceled the party and went to Tennessee to the funeral.
This was the 3rd death in our family – my husband’s
family (yes, I include our friend in our family) since the end of May. Hopefully we are done with this cycle for a
good while. It has been quite difficult
for our family however.
Many blessings have come our way though. We were able to do a little genealogy side
trip on the way home from the funeral and found the cemetery where the first
Knowles to America in my husband’s family tree was. Nearly every family name in the cemetery was
somehow related to our family. It was a
pretty neat thing to finally be able to do and I don’t know if circumstances
would have ever permitted such a trip otherwise.
Hubby & the headstone of John Wesley Knowles
The 1st Knowles in America in his family tree - he fought in the Revolutionary War
Another hour or so south of this pit stop is where my oldest
son Jack and his family live. We planned
on stopping in for a little while to see them.
We have a new grand-daughter we hadn’t seen in several months and she
was 5 months old already! Also there
was a hope of seeing our grandson play football.
We were able to make the stop and were pleasantly surprised
to find our middle son Robbie and his family at Jack’s. They live at Fort Campbell and it was great
to have all 3 grandchildren together at one time! Kellen screamed bloody murder every time I
tried to hold her. She was teething and ‘Granny Pat’ was someone she wasn’t
used to. Little Jack saw me and wanted
to go to my park. We have playthings in
our yard for the grandkids and he calls them a park. I love that kid! We were able to go to Cole’s
football game. He’s 9 and the smallest
kid in his league by at least 1 foot and 20 pounds. I’d never gotten to see Jack or Robbie play
football so this was a special treat.
Don’t let his size fool you. Cole’s
like a Mack truck on the football field and plows over anything in his path no
matter the size. He means business on
the field. He made the play of the game
too. He was able to make a tackle, nock
the player out of bounds and recover the fumble all in one play. Who knew?!
We had a great time being with them all.
I love them so much!
Colton just before his football game
The following weekend we had to go through my Mother-in-law’s
estate and the family divided up the things they wanted. We inherited a great deal of her things. There were 2 ½ pick-up loads of furniture and
things.
More blessing came by way of dear husband’s “garbage picking”. One day he had stopped to pick up a brass
chandelier and stumbled upon 2 boxes of goodies at the same time. One box held a bunch of outside solar lights
to go along the sidewalk and a whole box of baking pans – good quality baking
pans – Wilton, Kitchenaid and stainless steel pans! Just what I needed for doing cakes!
As if that wasn’t awesome in and of itself… a couple weeks
later hubby again was driving along and saw a pile of stuff by the roadside. He stopped and got a pick-up load of
things. I rolled my eyes and thought “great,
more crap to get rid of… why does he do this?” when he pulled into the
driveway. He pulled the truck up near
the back porch and said “Come see”. Of
course even with the prospect of a bunch of stuff for our own junk pile
curiosity gets the best of me so I scrambled down to see exactly what kind of junk he drug home this time.
SURPRISE!!!
This truckload had MY
name written all over it!!!
There were all sorts of craft items, storage containers –
the nice ones that are like drawers (to mention a few), and what do ya
know?! Wilton cake pans and all sorts of
cake decorating stuff! PAYDAY!!! It was like the person throwing this stuff
out KNEW ME and what I needed!!!
I can only attribute these finds to paying our tithing and
trying (failing miserably at times) to keep the commandments and do the right
things. Only God could pour out these
kinds of blessings.
Anyway, about 80% of this truckload of stuff was keepers for
me – the rest was good stuff but I didn’t need it so it went in the yard sale
stuff. At this point it was deemed
NECESSARY to have a yard sale… so we did.
We got rained on one day and the turn out wasn’t the best we’ve had by
far but… we got rid of some junk and made a couple bucks.
THEN…
After packing up the remainder of the yard sale hubby and I
decided to split the money 50/50 and he wanted to run down to a couple of yard
sales he knew about if they were still open (yard sales usually end around noon
on Saturdays). The phone rang and it was
Robbie. The first thing out of his mouth
was “Do you still got a sewing machine?”
I’ve had one for about 20 years but 4 years ago mine just sort of locked
up and I couldn’t do anything with it. I
intended to get it fixed and had put it off for a long time. I finally called a few weeks ago about
getting it fixed and it was only gonna cost $89.00!!! NOT. I
could buy a new one for that! Anyway,
for some reason I kept it. He went on
with the reason for his call and we visited a few minutes (he never did say why
he wanted to know about the sewing machine). It was about 2:30 but when we jumped in the
truck to see if these yard sales were still open.
The first one we looked for was closed but the second one
was still open even though they were packing it up. It was an estate sale. Everything was %50 off the marked prices. I scavenged through a bunch of stuff and
found a couple things. Then… 3 sewing machines! The one was the old pedal type and had a good
bit of rust. Another one was in a sewing
table and then a portable Singer machine.
It had a lot more features than mine did and was obviously a lot nicer
machine. It worked and had $50 on it but
I got it for $20! Now I could tell
Robbie I had a sewing machine… whatever it was he wanted to know for. But that’s not all! I got it home and started fiddling with
it. The light bulb was burned out so I
dug out my old one since it was the same brand.
I plugged it in and tried the old one out I don’t know why, but IT
WORKED! I called Robbie to find out why
he asked about my having a sewing machine.
He said Sarah was looking for one.
So for $20 Sarah and I both got a sewing machine.
So.. 2 garbage picking hauls, and sewing machines and all
the things from my Mother-in-law’s estate…
The Lord promised that he’d pour out a blessing you’d not
have room to receive in Malachi 10:10.
PAY YOUR TITHING!!!
With all of these blessings we’ve done a bit of ‘celebrating’…
well I’ve had new stuff to work with so I’ve made a couple of cakes. I need practice of course!
This is a 'practice' cake... We practiced eating it too!
Dear husband and I had talked about me taking some Wilton
cake decorating classes and I called to see about them. We decided I could go ahead and sign up but I
needed to pay for it ahead of time. So
yesterday on the way to Madison our car started to overheat. We turned around and headed back home stopping about every ½ mile to let
the car cool down. It took a bit of time
but we were able to get it home. Now we
are in limbo about getting it fixed.
First in finding someone to fix it because our mechanic was almost
finished with his Naturalization but his sponsor passed away before the process could be
completed and he was deported to start the process all over again. And… we are kind of on hold financially now
waiting to see about the repair costs.
For some reason however I’m not upset about it. We still have something to drive and we will
be okay. God is good ALL the time.
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