Faith, Family, Food and Dogs

****Due to a website glich this got put in the wrong order. Sorry about that. Join me as we take a step back in time. Using the magic powers of the internet I am taking you back to the fall of 2014. The day before Micheal passed I told him that I was strong and I would be okay after he passed. Less than a month later I went on a canning binge, I thought it would prove my strength. To whom I am not sure. First off, I picked all the tomatoes that were in the garden. I came up just a few pounds short of enough tomatoes for a batch of roasted garlic pasta sauce. So, being the intelligent woman I am I went to the Farmers' Market and bought a 25-pound box of tomatoes. I had enough tomatoes to make a double batch of my pasta sauce. The next day was a trip to Costco for 2-pounds of garlic then home to get the sauce made. I ended up with 2 cases of pint jars of sauce. Three days later I harvested all the red cabbage in the garden and made a batch of pickled red cabbage. After the ...

Still continuing on our time journey we have now arrived at Thanksgiving week, 2014. This reminds me of Dickens' Christmas Carol. Way back in March of 2014, Micheal and I decided that we would spend Thanksgiving with Patricia and the crew. Micheal challenged to me to find a condo where we could bring all 3 dogs and it would cost less per night than our staying in a hotel and putting the dogs in the kennel. It didn't take me too long to find a really cute 2 bedroom, 1 bath unit. It was maybe 7-10 minutes from my daughter's house and only 1-1/2 blocks off the ocean. We booked it for a week with plans of hijacking Miss Savannah on Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Plans changed as they often do. Since Micheal had already paid for the condo I decided to go ahead and head down with the girls. But instead of taking Miss Savannah to the zoo or other places I made appointments and toured 9 apartment communities on Tuesday and Wednesday. What an undertaking, but at leas...

Before we continue this journey I need to point out that at some point on September 14th my camera went back a year in time. Its true! Look at the year on the photos. I fixed the date after my Thanksgiving trip. After Charleston the house felt too quiet. I hung around for a few days, put up all the Halloween decorations. Now what,,,nothing to do, no where to go. Wait, its October and soon Sugar Mountain will be decked out in her finest fall colors. Hey girls lets go visit Aunty Nan before she heads back to Florida for the winter. I must stop and interject that I have some simply awesome, incredible friends. Nan, for example, will let me stop in for a visit any time I want, for just about as long as I want, the girls included. I have other equally wonderful friends like Tammy and Angela. The night we arrived Kelekona put on her stern, don't mess with my mom, face. This is what 87 pounds of solid muscle looks like. Liliuokalani just chilled out. The leaves were starting to ...

A few years back, before cancer and grandchildren my daughter, Patricia, and I enjoyed several "Girl's Weekends". We went to Palm Springs to see my mother, Sedona, St. Augustine, Stone Mountain, just to name a few. During a visit in May of 2014 she and I got talking about a girl's weekend. At supper that night Micheal decided that she and I had to take a trip in September. After a lot of research we picked Charleston. When Micheal booked our hotel room he told the reservation clerk that "we would not cancel this trip for the world". It was decided that in accordance with Micheal's wishes we would go on our planned trip. On September 19th I met my daughter in Charleston. On Saturday morning the weather was a bit dicey so we opted to spend the morning at the aquarium. We had a great time. We grabbed some lunch and then headed out to Drayton Hall Plantation. Its the oldest unrestored plantation in the USA opened to the public. While waiting for our ho...

Strength comes from within, or so I have been told. Today I found the strength to start blogging again in the words a friend wrote on her blog. I had met her back in the winter of 2008-2009 while I was heading south to the Bahamas. We sailed and snorkeled together for many weeks. She made her last blog post in July of 2012. I had looked for newer posts with beautiful pictures of all the places she and her husband Don had been to. Instead, today, I read how she had lost her husband. The beautiful words she had written about Don brought me to tears. I figured if she had the strength to write after losing her husband of many years then I could find the strength to blog again also. My strength to carry on after the loss of Micheal came from my children, my granddaughter and my dogs. Their physical presence made a huge difference in my life. GOD was always there with me and as the Steven Curtis Chapman song says He is my hiding place when the storms of life come raging. Friends also came ...