Ten Things of Thankful

This week has sped by rapidly as August has come to an end. With all the traffic on the freeway earlier this evening, it would seem that there are many people trying to squeeze in one more long weekend of summer activities before school begins and the weather begins to turn. Cars speed, time travels faster and faster, but yet people still seek for that place to relax and just to be, sometimes not realizing that place is closer than they ever dreamed. With this little bit of musing, now I ready to share some things that bring me joy, things for which I give thanks.

I am linking my post to Kristi Brierley's Ten Things of Thankful blog hop. She is not the first to host this blog hop, but she is following in the footsteps of several other wonderful hosts. Each Friday the link is open and stays open until Tuesday, so if you have a blog and would like to join in with this effort, click the link here and it will take you to her site which gives some easy guidelines for participating.

1. We had some rain during one night at the beginning of the week, but the only indication of that were some drops still on the vehicles in the morning. Still, it is a refreshing sign, along with a few cooler mornings and evenings, that fall isn't far off.

2. Fresh garden produce shared by neighbors. In years past we had a huge garden and were able to share produce with others, but now we are on the receiving end, and I am thankful.

3. The missionaries from church were able to join us for dinner one evening and I used some of that garden produce to prepare a meal for them. For quite a few years our family enjoyed eating stir fried vegetables served over rice. The vegetables varied, as did the sauces. We haven't eaten as much "over rice" since there are only two of us at home now. We still enjoy stir fried vegetables, but only occasionally have it with rice. My husband's idea of serving "over rice" for the meal with the missionaries seemed the perfect idea, especially since we had some beef steak pieces to add to it the vegetables.

4. Learning about customs of other places.  One of the missionaries who joined us for dinner was originally from Tonga.

5. Finishing some pinwheel quilt blocks. I finished some other quilt blocks recently, but I still had a few pinwheel quilt blocks to edge. A friend gave me some of her pieces of fabric to use to edge one of the pinwheel blocks, and I was able to finish the task. If you quilt, what is your favorite quilt block to make?

The pieces surrounding the pinwheel square
was what my friend provided. It was the
perfect color I needed.

Here is another of some of the pinwheel
squares that I sewed.

6. Laughter. Sometimes it just feels good to laugh. I don't mean just a little chuckle, but a hearty laugh out loud! I just by chance saw a movie on TV this week that was produced in 1993. We weren't going to many movies back then, so I hadn't seen it. Normally I don't watch much TV even now, and if it is on, I can usually do other things while sorta watching the program. I realized quite quickly that if I tried to double task, I was going to miss something in this film. It really felt good to laugh, and I could easily enjoy watching it again sometime.

7. Restful times. Even animals take time in the afternoon to rest, and sometimes a little catnap in the afternoon is just what I need to give me energy to carry on for the rest of the day.

A doe just taking a rest in the shade of
some of our shrubs one afternoon

8. Evening strolls. Now that it is a little cooler in the evening, strolling around with camera in hand is a pick me up. 

These turkey hens seemed to enjoy strolling
together early one evening. (Sorry for
the not quite in focus photo.)

9. Trying a different flavor of ice cream. William Cowper, a famous English poet and hymnodist, is said to have been the first one to say that Variety is the very spice of life. Why is it then that when it comes to ice cream some people often resort to buying the same flavors? This week I not only bought a different brand, but two different flavors. One was black walnut and the other was black cherry vanilla and both were delicious!

10. Things to look forward to in this new month of September!