Sneakers and Bougainvillea

Went to my first Silver Sneakers exercise session this morning. I was able to go through the routine better than I thought I would since I'm so out of shape. I'm excited about going back and also about going back and using the exercise equipment and work out in the pool. I'm happy to say that Hubby will be joining me.  I joined a gym when I was a teenager and just went a few times and lost interest. I'm determined this time to carry through with it. I am a little older and a little wiser now. LOL Make that a LOT older and wiser.

Just went out in the back yard and snapped these pictures. The bougainvillea is taking over out there again. I guess if we didn't keep cutting it back it would take over the whole yard, pool and all.

You can barely see the bird bath. It's covered by the bougainvillea. I hope the birdies can find it.

PACIFIC ELECTRIC

Okay, I'm on another nostalgia trip. 

The year - 1946 and/or 47. 

Pacific Electric - sounds like a utility company. Nope, I'm talking about Pacific Electric trains. So, I got to thinking, after posting about my Girl Scout days in Artesia, CA, about how I loved to ride the PE that came by very close to our house. So, I "googled" it to see if I could find a picture. There were tons of pictures of these trains. The one in the picture looks just like I remember them. This one was headed to Long Beach. I remember my mother saying "Some day we should ride the PE all the way to Long Beach." But we never did. We did ride it to Bellflower a few times, and that was a real fun trip for a 10 year old. We rode it many times from downtown Artesia out to our neighborhood. 

I mentioned in a previous post about riding the church bus on Sundays to church. Most of the time we didn't go home on the bus. Most of the time we walked down the street a ways (the church met in the Women's Club house right in town), and catch the PE and ride that home. Many times we would stop by the drug store before going home and I would get to buy a comic book or two. Boy, don't I wish I still had those comic books.

Besides the fun of riding on these PEs, there was something else that I and other children in the neighborhood enjoyed doing. Many times we would go over to the tracks and lay pennies on them. Then after one of them went by, we would go back and find the pennies smashed flat.

Thanks for joining me on this trip down memory lane.

P.S. My Spiritual Sundays post is on my other blog this week. Charlotte's Weblog.

SILVER SNEAKERS

No, these are not my silver sneakers. Love the style though. I would like to have some like these.

I'm just using this picture to illustrate a program HealthNet has for seniors. They've been offering it for several years and I always say I should take advantage of it but then I never do. This time I'm gonna do it. They have a closer location now. I got a card in the mail advertising it. So, this old Senior lady is going to get fit, at last a little more fit than I am which is not very fit at all.

The card reads "Come in for refreshments and enroll in SilverSneakers to take advantage of basic membership including fitness classes, use of equipment and other amenities and more." So, next week at the appointed time, I plan to be there with my sneakers on even though they won't be silver ones. I'll let you know how it goes.

GIRL SCOUTS ❘ CAMP FIRE GIRLS

I'm not sure what got me to thinking about Camp Fire Girls and Girl Scouts. Oh, wait, yes I do remember now. I was thinking back over my life and how different things that seemingly "happened" to me have affected my life. More and more I'm believing things don't just "happen."

Now, back to the subject. When I was in the 5th grade at Pioneer Elementary School in Artesia, CA, someone recruiting for the Camp Fire Girls came to our classroom to sign up girls who wanted to join. I wanted to join, but I was not quite old enough at the time. I thought that was silly, but that was the way it was. Later in the year someone came around from the Girl Scouts to sign up girls. Guess what? I was old enough, so I signed up. I wasn't entirely happy about it though. I really wanted to be in Camp Fire. Why? Pretty silly reason I guess, but I liked their uniforms better - navy blue skirts, white blouses and red scarves. I wasn't attracted at all to the green girl scout uniforms. I had been a Brownie a few years before so you would think I would want to be a Girl Scout.

Now, why do I think I was meant to be in Girl Scouts? I have no idea where the other group met, but our Girl Scout troop met in the Methodist Church building across the street from our school. Up until this time I knew nothing about churches and had never attended any church although my mother told me she took me to Sunday School when I was very young - too young to remember anything at all about it. The church building the Girl Scouts met in got me interested in church and when I found out they had a church bus and I could ride it and go to church there I asked my mother if I could do that. She told me that if I wanted to go to church, she would take me to the Church of Christ. She was a member of that church and although she hadn't gone in years, that's where she wanted to take me, so we found out the C of C had a bus also and we both, my mother and I plus a neighbor friend, started riding the bus to the C of C. Now, to make a long story short, I became a believer in that little church in Artesia, and when we moved to Norwalk, just a few miles away, we started going to the church there. That was back in the 1940s. I have missed very few Sundays attending church from that time till this.

How about you? Were you a Girl Scout or a Camp Fire Girl? I would like to hear your story.

ANGEL TAG

I want to take this means to publicly thank Cindy Adkins for the lovely angel tag she made for Clif and me. It arrived in today's mail. Cindy is an artist and a writer. She has a beautiful blog. If you are not familiar with it, I hope you will go there and pay her a visit. She is a lovely lady. I Owe It All To Him is the name of her blog. You can click on that name to go there.

THANK YOU KELEE

I posted about the beautiful gift I received yesterday from Kelee Katillac on my other blog ~ Charlotte's Weblog. 

So if you have not read the post on my other blog, here is what that beautiful package contained. Wow, it's a Waterford crystal angel.

Now to find the perfect place to display her.

For right now she is sitting on a shelf on the hutch in our dinette/kitchen/family room (maybe it would be called a great room. I'm not sure what to call it.) I kind of like the effect of the glass cubes behind her. I'm always changing things though so I may find a more perfect place for my beautiful angel.

This was a thank you gift from Kelee for my participation as co-host of Spiritual Sundays for her Miracle Makeover for Colette. If you don't know about this event, and I'd be surprised if you don't, please go visit the Katillac Shack and read all about it and see the beautiful pictures of the makeover room.

MEMORIES OF 9/11

I found this on the Guidepost website and wanted to share it. I think I would like to read the book. You will need to scroll down and turn off the music on my sidebar before viewing the video.

AMERICA WILL NEVER FORGET

KIDS IN CHURCH

3-year-old Reese:
'Our Father who does art in heaven,

Harold is his name..
Amen'

~~~~~

A little boy was overheard praying:

'Lord, if you can't make me a better boy, don't worry about it,

I'm having a real good time like I am.'

~~~~~~

After the christening of his baby brother in church,

Jason sobbed all the way home in the back seat of the car.

His father asked him three times what was wrong.

Finally, the boy replied,

'That preacher said he wanted us brought up in a Christian home

and I wanted to stay with you guys.'

~~~~~

One particular four-year-old prayed,

'And forgive us our trash baskets

as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets.'

~~~~~

A Sunday school teacher asked her children as they

were on the way to church service,

'And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?'

One bright little girl replied,

'Because people are sleeping.'

~~~~~

A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin 5, and Ryan 3,

The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake.

Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson.

'If Jesus were sitting here, He would say,

'Let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait.'

Kevin turned to his younger brother and said,

'Ryan, you be Jesus!'

~~~~~

A father was at the beach with his children

when the four-year-old son ran up to him,

grabbed his hand, and led him to the shore

where a seagull lay dead in the sand.

'Daddy, what happened to him?' the son asked.

'He died and went to Heaven,' the Dad replied.

The boy thought a moment and then said,

'Did God throw him back down?'

~~~~~

A wife invited some people to dinner.

At the table, she turned to their six-year-old daughter and said,

'Would you like to say the blessing?'

'I wouldn't know what to say,' the girl replied.

'Just say what you hear Mommy say,' the wife answered.

The daughter bowed her head and said,

'Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people to dinner?'

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A little light-heartedness in the middle of the week. LOL

TWEETIE

OH, TWEETIE - YOU'RE AN ANGEL!

JUST SING LOUDER

James Robison writes good stuff. When I read the e-mail I got from him today I thought "That is what I should share for Spiritual Sundays." Somehow I get the feeling that God is providing what I should share each week. Just when I don't have a clue as to what I'm going to post, something like this comes to me many times in an e-mail.
Here is the message from James.

Will The Church Just Sing Louder?

by James Robison

"I lived in Germany during the Nazi Holocaust. I considered

myself a Christian. We heard stories of what was happening to Jews,

but we tried to distance ourselves from it because what could we do to

stop it. A railroad track ran behind our small church and each Sunday

morning we could hear the whistle in the distance, and then the wheels

coming over the tracks. We became disturbed when we heard the cries

coming from the train as it passed by. We realized that it was

carrying Jews like cattle in the cars.

"Week after week the whistle would blow. We dreaded to hear the sound

of those wheels because we knew that we would hear the cries of the

Jews in route to a death camp. Their screams tormented us. We knew the

time the train was coming, and when we heard the whistle blow, we

began singing hymns. By the time the train came past our church, we

were singing at the top of our voices. If we heard the screams, we

sang more loudly and soon we heard them no more."

Find out the background of this true story, plus James' related

message at www.jamesrobison.net

I think this is something we need to think about. We don't believe something like this could ever happen in America, but I'll bet the people in Germany thought the same thing at one time. We need to pay attention to what is going on with our government. A lot of it is not good (in my opinion.)

Exciting things are happening over at Spiritual Sundays. We were so blessed to be allowed to be a part of Kelee Katillac's big Miracle Makeover Party last weekend. Thank you again, Kelee for this privilege. Also, Ginger has designed a new blog called Prayer Request. It is linked to Spiritual Sundays. Ginger also created a really neat tool bar that we can put on our computers. I have already put mine on my computer and I love it. You can find out more about both of these new features at the Spiritual Sundays site. Thank you, Ginger, for a job well done.