Mary, Did You Know?

This has been one of my favorite Christmas songs since the first time I heard it.
You will need to turn off my music on the left sidebar before viewing the video.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We went to our daughter's home. She is a very good cook and we had a wonderful meal. However, she doesn't make pies, so I made pumpkin and pecan pies and took them to her house.

I know. Thanksgiving is barely over but I'm already looking forward to Christmas. I was not one, however, who got up in the wee hours of the morning to hit the stores for bargains. We've found that shopping online is the way to go. Although - I do like to go to the malls during Christmas time. It's just nice not to have to do a lot of actual shopping there. It takes the stress out of it.

BEING THANKFUL

For Spiritual Sundays this week I want to share a poem I found online written by Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer. It's entitled "Thanksgiving". I have no idea when it was written but I suspect it was not written recently. 

THANKSGIVING

Let us give thanks to God above,
Thanks for expressions of His love,
Seen in the book of nature, grand
Taught by His love on every hand.

Let us be thankful in our hearts,
Thankful for all the truth imparts,
For the religion of our Lord,
All that is taught us in His word.

Let us be thankful for a land,
That will for such religion stand;
One that protects it by the law,
One that before it stands in awe.

Thankful for all things let us be,
Though there be woes and misery;
Lessons they bring us for our good-
Later 'twill all be understood.

Thankful for peace o'er land and sea,
Thankful for signs of liberty,
Thankful for homes, for life and health,
Pleasure and plenty, fame and wealth.

Thankful for friends and loved ones, too,
Thankful for all things, good and true,
Thankful for harvest in the fall,

Thankful to Him who gave it all.

I'm so thankful for all you wonderful people who share with us each week on Spiritual Sundays. Click here for links to posts that will inspire you and bless your life.

OUR LITTLE WORLD

I don't often recommend a post on another blog but I am today. Hubby's post today is entitled "My Little World." Of course his little world is also my little world and I wish I had written it. So, I want to share it with you if you click HERE you can read what he wrote today.

ANOTHER BLUE BIRTHDAY

Last month was our daughter's birthday and I did a Blue Monday post featuring her and the blue elephant cake I made for her birthday when she was a little girl. Click HERE if you missed it or if you would like to see it. Today (I'm posting this on Sunday evening) is our son's birthday and I decided to share his blue elephant cake this week. After I made the elephant cake for Carol, Allen wanted one for his birthday every year for many years after that. These pictures were taken a long time ago because he is 47 years old now. Doesn't seem possible. Those years sure flew by.

He also had a blue shirt and was wearing a blue shirt in an earlier birthday. Here's a picture of that birthday (pre-elephant cake birthday). LOL Also, there was some blue in the wallpaper in the above picture.

Here's a more recent picture of him at his favorite restaurant, Taco Bell, still wearing a blue shirt.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALLEN

Click on the Blue Bird to go to Sally's blog for links to lots more BLUE.

SPIRITUAL SUNDAYS

Psalm 107, 23-24
I was so pleased to see this scripture on the Fisherman's Memorial at Gloucester, Massachusetts. This memorial has been there for many years. I wonder if they were just now making it if they would include the scripture. I hope so. This is what Psalm 107, 23-24 says: "They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep."
Here are photos we took of the memorial. It's hard to see in this photo, but it appears at the bottom of the plaque. I think this is a wonderful scripture that needs no explanation.

Carol & Charlotte at Fisherman's Memorial - October 2009

Be sure to go to our Spiritual Sundays blog to find links to other posts. Of course we would love to have you participate by posting something spiritual or inspirational on your own blog and linking it there. You will find instructions on how to do that on the Spiritual Sundays blog.

WOBURN

Where in the world is Woburn you ask? If you are familiar with the northeast you probably know. This "western" woman had no idea until we started looking online for someplace to stay when we went to Boston. After considering many many options, we decided the Residence Inn in Woburn would be the place for us. We certainly were not disappointed. Besides being a nice place to stay they served free full breakfast every morning and dinner Monday through Thursday nights. We were 12 miles from Boston and a shuttle from the hotel took us to the train station in Woburn where we enjoyed the ride into Boston. We made about 3 stops at small towns on the way and enjoyed the scenery. Here's a photo I took of the Residence Inn.

I've mentioned in a previous post that we did the trolley tour thing and walked and walked and walked. As we started out walking in Boston, we went through this beautiful garden.

This park reminded me of the parks in London.

Statue of George Washington

We saw plenty of beautiful fall foilage, but a lot of it was on the ground as pictured here. We enjoyed that too. We don't see too many leaves that have fallen in our neighborhood. LOL

After that, we walked by Cheers. It was early and wasn't open yet so we didn't go inside. We were told it doesn't look anything like the Cheers place on TV.

CHEERS & CHEERIO!

Charlotte

Now That's a Cannoli

We spent a whole day touring Boston, walking and riding a trolley. We rode awhile and walked awhile, rode awhile, and walked again. We were on and off the trolley all day. At the end of the day we were very tired, but finished off the day at a neat little pastry shop called Mike's. We ate our first cannolis there. We didn't actually even know exactly what a cannoli was, but we were eager to find out, and we were not disappointed. They were delicious. Clif's was covered in chocolate.

I thought the reflection in the mirror was interesting. My, Charlotte, what a big mouth you have. LOL
My Blue Monday post featuring blue buildings in Rockport, MA is on Charlotte's Weblog.

SPIRITUAL SUNDAYS

Give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back.

-- Luke 6:38 (RSV)

Heart Gifts

It's not the things that can be bought

that are life's richest treasure,

It's just the little "heart gifts"

that money cannot measure...

A cheerful smile, a friendly word,

a sympathetic nod

Are priceless little treasures

from the storehouse of our God . . . 

They are the things that can't be bought

with silver or with gold,

For thoughtfulness and kindness

and love are never sold . . . 

They are the priceless things in life

for which no one can pay.

And the giver finds rich recompense

in GIVING THEM AWAY.

                    - Helen Steiner Rice
Here's something you probably didn't know about Mrs. Rice. I just read it in one of her books.

Mrs Rice married a wealthy Dayton, Ohio, banker in 1929, but their marriage ended in tragedy. Distraught by losses that resulted from the stock market collapse, her husband took his own life. In 1931 Mrs. Rice joined Gibson Greeting Cards in Cincinnati. A short time later, she was named editor of the company's card line and for the next 50 years she wrote literally millions of verses for greeting cards. She was also a great motivator of the company's sales force. When speaking to the salesmen, she told them a legend entitled, "The Windows of Gold." It was so well received that she later put the little story into verse.

Be sure to visit our Spiritual Sundays blog for links to more posts. We hope you will want to be one of the participants.

OUR FIRST HARVARD EXPERIENCE

We rented a car last Friday morning and drove to the Harvard campus. We arrived at the parking lot where we were to meet Carol but we were an hour early. It was lunch time, so we walked over to a beautiful cafeteria that was just a few yards away and ate lunch. Here's a picture of Clif walking to the cafeteria.

Here are more pictures of that area.

And here's a shot I took inside the cafeteria.

After we picked Carol up she drove us to the J.F.K. Presidential Library. It was interesting, but not nearly as nice as the Reagan Library. Of course Kennedy was so young when he died he didn't have time to collect as much stuff.  I'll share pictures in a future post.

OUR DAUGHTER AT HARVARD

I just did a post on my Charlotte's Weblog blog on this same subject, but went into more detail and posted more pictures there. You can click HERE to see that post.

ANOTHER OLD CHURCH IN BOSTON

One of the main attractions in Boston was the Old North Church. We heard a lot of interesting tales about Paul Revere from our tour guides. If you would like to see inside the Old North Church, I posted photos on my other blog. Click HERE to go there. It really is worth the "trip". Here is another historical church with a statue of Paul Revere.

TO MAINE AND BACK

I just did a short post on my Charlotte's Weblog blog about our trip to New England. Since I hadn't posted anything on this blog since our daughter's birthday, I thought I'd do a short post here also. As I said on my other blog, we took tons of pictures and will be doing posts using some of them in the future, but for now, this will be "it." Oh, Sally, you'll be pleased to know we saw blue, blue, blue in New England and I'll be joining Blue Monday again next week. LOL

We spent most of Saturday in Massachusetts and New Hampshire but did drive on up to Maine.

The main attraction in Kittery, Maine seemed to be the Outlets. We stopped here but only went into one store. We can visit outlets anywhere anytime, but, of course, not in Kittery.

We're always on the lookout for beautiful churches, and found this one in New Hampshire.

We didn't spend much time in Maine, we hit the freeway again and headed back down to NH and MA.

Bye for now. More New England travel adventures coming up in the next few days.