Riverbend Ramblings

Labels: Daily Life, Favorite Things, Fun Stuff, Outdoor Life

Another week has flown right by, and I'm linking up with Susanne to share a few blessings.

1. The kids had a fabulous first week back at school. I haven't heard the first complaint about teachers or homework...yet. I think their favorite part, aside from being with their friends every day, was the fact that they didn't have any tests. That will change next week.

Labels: Favorite Things

Happy Friday! Our family is up early getting ready for a fun-filled day trip, but I'm going to make you wait to find out where we're going. Let's just say that we'll probably be standing in long lines a good part of the day.

Here are five of my faves from this week:

1. Bible preaching. Several great messages were preached during our church's fall Bible conference Sunday through Wednesday. I'm still pondering thoughts from a couple in particular. You know, we really waste so much time on the trivial things in life. It was good for me to sit in church four nights in a row and meditate on God's word.

2. Saving money. Thanks to pleasant temperatures so far this month, I think we've only had to run the a/c one day. That makes a HUGE difference in our electric bill.

3. Smart kiddos. All four of the kids made the 1st quarter Honor Roll at school. The girls all made straight A's, and Case made all A's & B's. They have all worked hard, and I haven't had to hound them.

4. Clean carpet. We've lived in our house for four years, and we've never had the carpets steam cleaned. The carpet is very light colored, so you can imagine what it looks like with six people and a dog tracking all over it. After doing a ton of research and waiting until I had a 30% off coupon, I purchased heavy duty carpet cleaner. After cleaning a couple of the worst areas, the carpet looks brand new. Seriously. The doggie stains are completely gone. Now I'm smiling when I look at the floor. The carpet cleaner was a big investment, but a small one compared to installing new carpet.

5. Early morning views. I took this picture when I walked outside to get the newspaper. I just stood there for a few minutes admiring the Creator's creation.


If you would like to share your favorites from the past week, you can link up here.

Labels: Favorite Things

I've had a good week, in spite of being a bit under the weather with a head cold. Some things I'm thankful for...

1. A girls' night out. The girls and I enjoyed watching the Imperial Symphony Orchestra perform. The guest pianist was a 19-year-old Julliard student and the son of a man who has judged some of the girls' piano competitions. This event has been on the calendar for a few months, but I didn't get advanced tickets because I wasn't sure whether or not we'd be able to go. Thankfully, the concert wasn't sold out. Students received free admission, so I was the only one who needed a ticket. I asked for the least expensive seat, which ended up being on the very front row in front of the stage. It wasn't the best view of the orchestra, but we were right up close to watch the pianist's hands as they flew across the keys playing Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16. We had so much fun! Check out our view from the "cheap seats".



2. Giving my voice on election day. It's good to know that my vote counted, even if the national election didn't turn out to my liking. Thankfully, no matter what, God is still in control.


3. Good friends who are good encouragers. I received some uplifting emails and texts this week from a couple of my friends just when I needed a little pick-me-up.

Labels: Favorite Things

The weather is beautiful today! It was 68 degrees early this morning, and now it's about 85 degrees with very little humidity. I enjoyed spending some time outside earlier; we don't get too many days like this!

I did a little bit of fall decorating this past weekend. I picked up a couple of signs for about $4 a piece. The first sign pictured below is hanging on the powder room door, and the second one is on the door leading from the kitchen to the pantry.

I also changed switched out the centerpiece on the kitchen table and added a few fall pieces to the table in the foyer. I've been using most of these decorations for years and never grow tired of them. Adding these little touches around the house helped get me in the mood for the arrival of my favorite season.

Labels: Favorite Things, Keeping the Home, Our Home

The last morning of our vacation we decided to go out to eat for breakfast, which happens to be one of my favorite things to do. I had seen an advertisement in a brochure for a local Amish restaurant, but I couldn't remember the name of it. When I looked up "Amish restaurant Sarasota" on Google, this famous restaurant that has been featured on The Travel Channel popped up instead of the one I was trying to find. My hubby had actually seen Yoder's on Man Vs. Food, and he got all excited when we realized that it was only about five minutes away from our location. We headed that way.

Curly Girl and Lil Nut ordered the kids' pancakes. They were shaped like a famous mouse, which they thought was funny.

Mickey chose the egg croissant sandwich, and he ate the entire thing. It was huge!

Bookworm, who inherited my sweet tooth, chose the apple fritter French toast. Yum!

Steven and I both ordered more traditional fare that included eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, and pancakes. My eggs were smothered in cheese. The blueberry bread was the best ever, so I purchased a loaf to take home.

You would think that we too stuffed to even play with the idea of having dessert with our breakfast, but Yoder's is famous because of its pies. We decided to order three pieces to share among the six of us. The slices of pie were so big, we couldn't even eat it all. From twenty-five pie varieties, we narrowed our choices down to these:
Peanut Butter Cream

Chocolate Cream

Fresh Strawberry

Yep, they tasted even better than they look!

The restaurant is part of a small Amish village designed to entertain tourists like us. We enjoyed browsing in the gift shop and market.

Looking at and talking about all this scrumptious food has made me hungry. Wish I had another piece of Chocolate Cream pie right now!

Labels: Family Life, Favorite Things, Fun Stuff

I love Saturday mornings.  I got up early and enjoyed the quietness of the house, spent some much-needed time with my Saviour, sipped some delicious coffee from my favorite mug while reading the paper, and now it's time to get moving.

Today I'm taking Bookworm and Curly Girl to a big piano event.  They will be judged in aural theory, written theory, and will also audition.  Curly Girl is finishing up her first year and hopes to pass the primer level today.  Bookworm will reach level 6 after today's evaluations.

The piano event is in a town about 30 miles away, so we plan on making it a "girls day out" with lunch and a little shopping later on.

For my friends who may still be wearing long sleeves today, take a look at our weather forecast and today's high.  Anyone want to trade places?

Labels: Daily Life, Favorite Things

~ laughter
~ a shiny sink
~ thunderstorms
~ snuggling with my baby
~ home cooked meals
~ finding bargains
~ sunshine
~ springtime decorations
~ day trips
~ silly kids
~ date nights
~ housecleaning
~ reflection
~ fun stuff
~ lots of reading

and above all else:

Labels: Blessings, Daily Life, Favorite Things, My Thoughts

~Went to a spring training game with my hubby and watched my favorite team win. "Let's go, Red Sox!" ~Spent a Saturday with my mom and three of the kids at a local art/antiques fair. ~I've been trying to spend more time in the kitchen. We don't eat much pork, but I found a roast on sale (don't get me started on the price of meat!). It was yummy! ~Spotted this pretty cake in the window of a bakery and thought it would be fun to take a cake decorating class. Decided that an eighth day of the week would have to be created first. ~I turned 29 last week...again...for the sixth time. Let me do the math for you--I'm 35. :)

Labels: Daily Life, Family Life, Favorite Things, Fun Stuff, In the Kitchen, Special Days, The Kiddos

Florida has some very unique characteristics, one being that you may need to run the air conditioner one day and build a fire in the fireplace the very next day. Tuesday it was in the 80's; today we needed three layers of clothing to keep from shivering. We're wimps. This morning when I came downstairs I beheld a rare, wonderful site. (Please ignore the soot; Dick Van Dyke hasn't been around to sweep the chimney.)

Labels: Church Family, Daily Life, Favorite Things

For all my VB-lovin' friends, here's something fun for you to play with: Vera Bradley's mobile and desktop backgrounds. Enjoy!

Labels: Favorite Things

Lengthening shadows... Bright pink sunsets... A slight breeze blowing through the trees... Windows open while we sleep... Autumn has arrived.

Labels: Daily Life, Favorite Things, Outdoor Life

Normally I start decorating for autumn on the 1st of September. This year I'm just now getting around to it. The girls helped me get started tonight, and hopefully we'll finish up tomorrow. Now if we could just get some cooler weather, it would actually feel like fall.

Labels: Daily Life, Favorite Things

Here's the view from our sun room this afternoon. No sun, just clouds and rain. I've been enjoying a rather wet day at home with Bookworm. We spent quite a while this morning working on geometry and took Toby to the groomer. Bookworm also had an extra piano lesson this morning as she is in the final days of preparation for a huge competition. She's playing away as I type, and I'm going to indulge in two of my favorite things while I enjoy a private concert.

Labels: Daily Life, Favorite Things

Despite fighting a lingering cold, I had a delightful weekend celebrating my birthday with my family. My wonderful mom treated our family to dinner Friday night. She gave me a couple of lovely gifts that I will share pictures of as soon as I get the camera batteries charged. Saturday my handsome hubby took me to my favorite restaurant for lunch. I splurged and ordered the fillet. Let me just say, it was delicious (and almost worth the $23). We spent some time shopping, and I picked out a new Vera Bradley tech case to carry my phone in. Those who know me know that I just have to coordinate! :)Sunday morning I felt lousy but still made it to church in time to teach my Sunday school class. Several girls who haven't attended in a while were there, which really encouraged me. I spent the afternoon resting and felt much better by the evening service. We enjoyed root beer floats at the ice cream social after the service. This afternoon the teachers surprised me with balloons and a birthday cake at our staff meeting. Chocolate cake makes an otherwise boring meeting quite bearable! I've eaten enough food the last few days to feed a small army, so now it's time to hit the treadmill! I hope your week is off to a great start!

Labels: Daily Life, Favorite Things, Special Days

I took Toby to a new groomer this morning. It only took her an hour to groom him. He's wearing a pumpkin bandana, and he's as soft and fluffy as can be. :)While I was taking an early morning walk I spotted a large box full of cookbooks that had been put out for the garbage man by one of my neighbors. The two on top just happened to be Gooseberry cookbooks. I couldn't resist rescuing them from the box and bringing them home with me.We received an unexpected gift card in a Thanksgiving card from a church family. What a blessing! It's just enough to cover all of the drinks I am supposed to supply for our Thanksgiving meal.My "secret encourager" at school gave me this lovely basket of goodies. My house is smelling very "pumpkin-y" right now. What things are making you smile today?

Labels: Favorite Things

It doesn't take a whole lot to put a smile on my face. Nighttime temperatures in the mid-60's make me feel almost as good as a good piece of chocolate does. Not quite, but almost. Yesterday morning a shiver went through me when I went outside to walk the dog. Sixty-five degrees, Friends, is big news here in Central Florida. The afternoon high of 87 doesn't bother us when the humidity has dropped. I could stand a few more days of this. I haven't had time for many updates lately, but hopefully I'll have another post up soon. I have some pictures of fall decorations around the house to share, as well as some of the kiddos. This morning I'm off to a school administrator/teacher convention. Hope you all have a wonderful day! :)

Labels: Daily Life, Favorite Things

I hope you enjoyed the long Memorial Day weekend. My weekend started out with a date with my handsome hubby. We went to my favorite Mexican restaurant. I ordered the usual fajita steak quesadilla. One of these days I’ll try something different, but I just love quesadillas! It started pouring like crazy while we were eating, so we sat for quite a while after our meal and just chatted while we waited for the rain to let up.

Saturday I finished a big project that I had managed to drag out all of last week: clearing out the laundry room. There is a very long counter in the laundry room that is perfect for folding clothes on; only about half of the counter is showing in the picture below. Unfortunately, I have a bad habit of not putting the clothes away as soon as they are folded. It doesn’t take long for the clothes to pile up and the room to become messy. Hopefully, with some assistance from my little helpers, I’ll keep that counter space cleared off. I also decided to put the upper cabinets to good use. We have so much closet/storage space in this house that these cabinets have remained empty since we moved in last summer. I finally unpacked a few boxes of my books and am using the cabinets as bookshelves for now. I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner!

Curly Girl and Lil’ Nut found a VeggieTales card game that they hadn’t played with in a long time. They sat at the learning room table for over an hour yelling “Go Fish!”. Such cutie-pies. :)

Saturday afternoon we went to the spring football game and cheered our team to a 58-0 win. Go, Patriots!

Sunday was a great day in the Lord’s house. Quite a few of the girls in my Sunday school class were missing, but unfortunately that is to be expected on a holiday weekend. We had quite a few visitors in the morning service, and two ladies joined our church family. One of our former college students, who now pastors a church in New York, was in the area on vacation and brought the evening message. It is so neat to see what the Lord does in the lives of people who go out into the ministry to serve Him! After church Mr. C and I played volleyball with some friends and didn’t finish until 11p.m. That was the first time I’d really played ball in about 15 years, and boy did I ever feel it when I woke up the next morning! We had a lot of fun, though, and hopefully we’ll get to join in again over the summer.

We didn’t do anything special yesterday for Memorial Day. One of the staff members at church is awaiting the sale of his former home in a town about 65 miles from here. My hubby and a few other men spent the day helping him move the rest of his things to our town. I stayed at home, watched a few shows on TLC and HGTV, and supervised Bookworm and one of her friends in the pool. Mickey spent the day furniture shopping with Grandma, and the little girls spent the day at Mimi’s house. It was a nice, relaxing day.

This week will be a busy one once again. This afternoon I have a consultation with Bookworm’s piano teacher to discuss the year’s progress and goals for the summer months. Tonight is the end-of-the-year program and Kindergarten graduation at school. Tomorrow night is high school graduation. Thursday morning we’ll attend the kids’ awards program, and school gets out at noon on Friday with a staff luncheon to follow. I am so ready for the summer!

Labels: Daily Life, Favorite Things, Keeping the Home, The Kiddos