ahh, yes. morning. and tea in the afternoon.

6:26pm

(For some reason the garage lamp looks green here. It's really not.:)

Yes, the slightly grid-looking ones are shot through a screen.
They were taken around . . . well, the time of dawn. 6:30ish, I'd say? I'm not a pro on dawn, y'know. Excuse my . . . un-educatedness on the matter.
But oh well. You can't do everything in life perfectly.
;)
I seem to have had lovely Grammy moments the past few times I've blogged.
Well. What do we have here. :}

I set my tea down on the Easy Elegance book by Atlanta Bartlett.

“Is that lid on tight?” Grammy asks, sipping from her water.
“Yep.”
“Okay. I just don’t want you swimming,” she says with raised eyebrows.
Seriously, have you ever heard of a more considerate person?
Oh, the moments we have. Plenty of bad and/or grumpy ones, but hey. Here's a good one. ;)

You know what to do on an afternoon like this? First, you wash the dishes while the kettle heats up some water.
Then you make yourself some green tea and drizzle in your newly filled honey bear. ;)
That's what you do on a day like this.
Well.
Back to cleaning the kitchen, I go.
Sorry I wasn't more clever today... Maybe another time. Ha.

grammy's prayer.

11:13am
Rain outside, coffee, and Grammy and I enjoying the silence. Boys airsofting at the farm, girls coloring eggs with Grandma T, and Mom and Anna being doulas at a birth since 5am. Youch. :) Washing dishes while coffee brews. Tis a beautiful dreary day. :]

[If you can't tell, she's tired. :) She woke up earlier than me. Haha. But goodness, she loves eggs and salsa. and my coffee.;)]

I woke her up from her snooze; an early lunch ready for her and me. :)

She loves food. My food especially. (haha! just kidding. she says all the food here is good. :))

I set the plate on her lap board, then stepped back. She immediately began talking; head down, eyes still drooping from just awakening.

"Dear heavenly Father, I thank You for this good food, and for friends…” she trails off, fingers not quite gripping the fork; still waking up. “being so nice…” a mumbled part that might’ve been in Your name we pray, “Amen.”

[Yep, she likes my coffee. :) Imake some pretty good coffee. Today it was bolivian blend (with a wee bit of milk.) Thank you once again, Sarah and Justin! :D]

She takes a bite.
“Well, that hen sure worked. This is good.”
A minute later, as I’m snapping a picture of her, she sips her coffee.
“Mmmm. I like your coffee.”
I smile.
That’s one of the best (food/drink) compliments someone can give me.

[My coffee in the monster mug; me; the sky yesterday in the middle of braiding lyd's hair and raindrops; my eggs and salsa, waiting for me:)]

p.s. Look at this link about that Babies movie coming out on Mother's Day! Love that trailer, my goodness. :)

mosquitos are from HELLLLL!

11pm
Dear God,
I don't think I'll never understand why on this beautiful blooming earth You made mosquitoes. Couldn't You have forgone them? What importance are they in Your creation? I think, in my humble opinion, of course, that it would've been a much better place without them.
And if they had to exist, then why do I have to react to their bites so horribly? Why does my blood have to be so sweet they not only take one bite, but five, on each ankle?
Please, someday I really need to know this.
Send me a letter or something.
And it's not even summer yet. Most people I've talked to lately say that mosquitoes aren't even out yet, but I beg to differ. These seem exactly like mosquito bites I've had in the past, ya know? I just hope there isn't some weird sort of freakish spider wandering our house, because I got these bites while sitting in one place and then I oddly started to itch. And itch. And itch. But thank You so much for lavender, and the clever people who make essential oil out of it. It's helping the itches to . . . hopefully not scab. a
But wait . . . If there is a weird sort of freakish spider in our house, God, could You please kill it? Just...y'know...zap it or something?
Extreme itching is on about the same level as pain right now, for me, and I'd really like to not be bitten again, ever, like this.
Sorry. I know I seem really picky. I'm sorry. Really.

I'll stop writing now, finish off this letter now. I need to go to sleep before I whine to You more . . .
Anyways. Thank You for all the really good things You made. :) They make up for the icky ones most of the time. :) Oh, and the sky today? Beautiful. Loved it. :)
Love,
      Beka

[this is sooc. loading it last-minute:) by the way, for those of you of lesser education, sooc means straight-out-of-camera;)]

Alright. Letter done, you know now that I'm reacting slightly negative to the mosquito bites or whatever you might call them.
Five on each ankle? --And one high up near the knee? Who would react well to that?
I was even wearing pants when these things suddenly afflicted me. Grrr.

Anna says it's a good thing vampires don't exist, because I must have really sweet blood and they would have hunted me down long ago, etc......but anyways. I really need some rest. I finally finished reading Talking to the Dead, and tomorrow will start Shaiton's Fire by Jake Thoene. Should be good. Ben's finishing off the 3rd book in the series. Woo-hoo. ;)

But, since I'm making Mom a disc of pictures from her camera at the moment, this might take a while... :]

But hey--it did rain; more like sprinkles, though. I did...um...not exactly dance in the rain, but I enjoyed the first few minutes of the mist. :) Then I braided Lyd's hair before we left for the fish dinner thing; we stood outside, in the raindrops and breeze.
There's nothing like the wind in your face, the smell of rain.
Anna and I went for a walk on our street after dinner, and it was dark, breezy, the streetlights glowed golden, and once in a while it started to mist.
The breeze pushed everything out of my face as I breathed in.
I swear I almost heard Him whisper.

[yes, these perty pictures are from my lovely morning the other day...:) again, all sooc. no time to contemplate fidgeting with them. haha. and yeah....laundry hanging on the line because the dryer was broken for a few days. :)]

Once in a while, I'm scared of the dark. Randomly.
Tonight? Me, scared? No. I savored the silence, the cadence of the small-city sounds, the look of wet roads. And the breeze that carries His whisper.

rain notions.

Looks like rain.
And that’s not all I popped on here to say, in the middle of a somewhat not-post-inspiring day. ;)
Oh, yeah.
This is the monster of a cup that I drank coffee with today.

It’s Dad’s. He got it for Christmas.
And it’s around as big as my hand…depending on how you look at it.
Now, for those of you who know me, you know my hands are big. They’re smaller, feminine versions of Daddy’s.
The shape of the nails, including.
So anyways, it's a great coffee mug. :)

Today has been one of those days . . . beautiful, (cooler than yesterday’s 80ish degrees, praise God) and in the early afternoon it got really breezy; hence the clouds that have moved in and the not-too-dark threat of rain.

It’s not a threat, really.
But we’re going out tonight for fish for a late celebration of Anna’s birthday. (I was counting on Panera Bread being her choice, but since that’s 5-1- minutes away and Dad wants to go local, this fish place is 5…darn, I was looking forward to some good PB coffee. :)
And if it starts raining, well…what will I do? get up in the middle of dinner and run outside to witness the first raindrops of this spring’s first rainfall?
This is the view out my window. :)

Simply romantic notions, I tell you.
Er, rain notions.
So . . . I best get ready. It definitely looks like it’s going to rain.

Christ says, ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you. 
I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. 
No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down . . . 
Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. 
I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.’
[C.S. Lewis]

colors, colors. i'm fascinated. :)

A montage of wonderfee pictures I found the other day . . . quite randomly. :]

I have nothing to say today.
And usually when I say that, I go on to say a whole bucket of stuff.
But today? No. I have pajamas to sort. Fold, arrange. Fun, fun. I need to quite being so random...
Later, lovelies.

Justice, as said before, includes the keeping of promises. If love is the whole thing, then the promise can add nothing; and if it adds nothing, then it should not be made. And of course the promise…commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. [C.S. Lewis]

p.s. On a material note, since when did bed frames seem so appealing? Since when was I interested in them? If I don't look at the price, sometimes I can dream . . . :)

How cute and variable can cups and kitchen stuff get??

And there's a bit too much white/too little color in this stuff, but how whimsically lovely is Shabby Chic?? 

I know. Y'all hate links. I'll stop now and get to my laundry... ;)
But golly. How adorable are all these colors?

For those of you worried, I've been on an interior design streak lately. :D Have a lovely day.