IN THE DESERT

It is beautiful in our desert this time of year. There was a time when I wondered why in the world would anyone want to live in the desert. Now I get it. We've lived in the desert for over 22 years now and we love it. Growing up in southern California I always loved the ocean and the beach. I also like the mountains and trees. I still do but I have come to appreciate the desert now.

Do you know how many times the desert is referred to in the Bible? Neither do I but I know it is many many times. The Israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years immediately comes to my mind and Jesus spending 40 days in the desert being tempted by Satan also comes to mind.

I hadn't thought about the word desert as in "desertion" meaning being deserted. It is pronounced a little differently but spelled the same. Actually it is pronounced like dessert, a word I love. My favorite part of the meal is the dessert. Many people have been deserted by those they have loved and depended on. There are a lot of people in this world who may leave you and may desert you but how comforting it is to know that God never will.

There are many scriptures indicating that God will never leave us nor forsake us. I chose the following one in Hebrews as an example. With so many people out of work and the economy getting weaker, I think this is a good one to think about. We may not have as much money or things as we would like to have, but God says to be content with what we have. If we have the peace of God and the love of Christ in our lives, we are rich. How much better can it get than to be a child of the King of the universe? Wow!

Hebrews 13:5
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”
Hebrews 13:4-6 (in Context) 

Be sure to check out our Spiritual Sundays blog. You will be blessed by reading the wonderful posts that are shared there by many different bloggers. Just click HERE to go there.

Picturesque

So I was just playing around with a program called Picturesque. I think it is interesting how you can rotate the photo, put color around it and reflection below. You can just about turn a picture every way but loose and get an interesting perspective. Just thought someone might find it interesting. I do.

I took this picture this morning of our "Home in Arizona". 

GRAND CANYON

I remember the first time saw the Grand Canyon. I couldn't believe it was so huge. I didn't know at that time that someday I would be living in the Grand Canyon state. Now I'm here and so glad to be living in this beautiful state. There was a time when I couldn't imagine anyone wanting to live in the desert. Now I understand. I hope you enjoy this short video. You will need to scroll down to the bottom of the page and turn the music off before viewing the video.

CAMELS IN AZ

When we were in Egypt in 1978, someone there asked me if we had camels in America. He seemed surprised that we had no camels in our deserts. I didn't live in the desert then. I lived in California. Now I live in the desert, and found out that at one time there were camels in our deserts. There was an article about it in our newspaper a few days ago.

After I started writing this post, I remembered posting about camels about a year ago. In that post I had a lot of pictures and info about these interesting creatures. Should you be so inclined, you can click HERE to go to that post and find out more about camels.

Now, back to the article in our newspaper. It starts out by saying if it wasn't for the civil war there might be herds of wild camels roaming our deserts. Thirty-three camels were bought from the middle east and shipped to America. They eventually ended up in Texas. Then they imported 44 more camels. When they discovered the camels didn't understand English, they hired two camel drivers from the middle east to teach them how to handle the animals. The camels were used by the army for awhile transporting supplies. The camels impressed them so much that they decided to order 1000 more but that was about the time the civil war broke out. This spelled the end of the Camel Military Corps as soldiers were sent to the east to fight the battle. Eventually some of the camels were sold and some escaped into the wild. The camels thrived for awhile but eventually died out. The last one was shot in Arizona in 1893 by a farmer who found him grazing in his garden. For a full reading of that newspaper article, you can click HERE. I am just posting a recap of the article.

I've posted this picture of me on a camel in Egypt before, but decided to share it again here. It was an interesting experience to say the least. It really scared me when the camel driver made the camel take off in a run toward the pyramids. Seeing all those pictures of Cairo on the news for the past two weeks brought back memories of when we were there. We were there before Mubarak took over. It was over 30 years ago. Wouldn't want to be there right now. We all need to be praying about the future of that country. Nobody knows for sure how it will all end.

From a Hot Tub to a Pool

After I posted the photos of our hot tub in CA a few days ago and mentioned that now we don't have a hot tub but we have a pool, I decided to post a picture of that pool. Do I look young in this picture? It was taken about 5 years after the hot tub picture - about 20 years ago. No, I thought about posting a more recent picture, but decided "no". lol.  Notice the sea gull at the back of the pool? It was also in the hot tub picture. It is still out there by the pool looking a little weather worn by now. Oh, and the blue and white umbrella came with us when we moved as well. It lasted a long time. I just noticed the bird bath and cement bunny. They came with us too. Bet they wonder what happened to that nice cool shady back yard. Actually this back yard is pretty shady now, and it's cool (in the winter time). We planted a small tree in the corner behind the grass. Now it has gotten so large and the palm trees have grown so that the whole pool is in the shade in the mornings (for awhile).

Thanks for humoring me and reading this post. My Spiritual Sundays post is on the Charlotte's Weblog blog this week. If you have not seen it I invite you to go there. http://char72.wordpress.com/

USING PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS

In my last post I recommended a program I have on my computer called Lineform. I mentioned that I have Photoshop but hardly ever use it because it is so complicated. Well, I got to thinking that it was kind of silly to have a good program like Photoshop and not know how to use it so I started experimenting a little with it and came up with this header. There is soooo much to learn about Photoshop, but I am determined to at least be able to use it some.

I had some sheet music photos that I downloaded from the internet and it just occurred to me that I have some sheet music in my piano bench, so I found the one I used in the background today and scanned it. I did use my Lineform program to make it pink. Also used the Lineform program to add the title to the header. Just can't get away from that little Lineform program. LOL

Hope you are having a great week.

P.S. In case you're interested, I took the photo in the header right after we moved in AZ about 20 years ago.

AIRPORT BREAKFAST

We hadn't been to the Deer Valley Airport restaurant in quite awhile and had heard that it had recently been remodeled, so we decided to drive out there this morning for breakfast. For those not acquainted with Deer Valley, it's in far north Phoenix, a small airport where you can sit in the restaurant, eat and watch the planes, mostly very small ones, take off and land. It's really quite interesting and the food is pretty good. One of the new things in the remodeled restaurant was this beautiful mural. Of course I had my camera with me and couldn't resist taking a picture and sharing it here.

Notice the small model airplanes hanging from the ceiling? Someone donated their collection of model airplanes to the airport several years ago. There are hundreds of them hanging everywhere in the airport -- very interesting.

Hope everyone is having a good summer. I can't believe the 4th of July is almost here. It won't be long till Christmas. LOL

HOW SAD

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

I didn't know so many strange, beautiful, ugly, weird, large, small, instruments existed in the world until I went to the new Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix a couple of days ago.

They advertise they have over 10,000 instruments. We spent several hours there but plan to go back soon to see the rest of them. I took a lot of pictures and just finished posting several of them on Sharing My Photos. You can click HERE to go to that blog.

The museum opened on Saturday which happened to be my mother's birthday. That fact makes it even more special to me.

If you live in the Phoenix area, you will want to visit it I'm sure. It is close to Desert Ridge at Tatum and Mayo Blvd.

HIGHWAY TO SEDONA

I snapped this picture as we were driving up to Sedona a few days ago. Isn't it beautiful? I also took a new picture for the header of the Spiritual Sundays blog. It's the same chapel on the side of the hill but this one I took standing outside the car. The other one I shot through the side window as we were driving by it.

ARIZONA

I Love You Arizona is the way the song starts. Arizona is the name of the beautiful song on a video that was e-mailed to me recently. It couldn't be posted on this blog, but you can click HERE to see the video. It includes beautiful photos of Arizona. You may fall in love with Arizona too.