Remembering Anew God's Presence in Every Moment

Isn't it wonderful when God brings you back to a truth you've known for years and then adds new dimension and depth to it? He reveals a new way to look at the words that then minister to you afresh right where you are in your current place.

("For the Word of God is living and powerful,..." Heb. 4:12)

With that in mind, I thought I'd post these beginning sentences from a chapter in a book I am currently reading.

The primary wonder of our Christian faith is that God comes to the place where we are and says our name. This is the nature of our God, who begins the biblical story by walking with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And even after there is separation between them, God pursues them with the poignant question, "Where are you?" It is a question that echoes throughout the Old Testament and then reverberates again and again in the New Testament. Surely God knows where we are, even when we are lost or unaccounted for in some other way. So the question is not some sort of celestial attempt to determine our location. Instead it seems to arise out of the longing of God's own heart that we would be aware and awake both to where we are and to God's presence in the place where we are.

~excerpt from Journaling as a Spiritual Practice by Helen Cepero

(Psalm 139:8-12)

Fun Weekend with Friends!

We had such a great time last weekend with visits from two special family friends. Friday morning Pam and Kyle from Arroyo Grande arrived to spend the day with us. They came up to our Sacramento area for some training at Sutter's Fort. Their whole family, along with a group of families from AG, are going to be the docents at the Fort in June. Anyway, they came a day early and spent it with us! Pam and I had fun shopping at the Home Goods store---finding several cute items for our houses. We also had fun walking around at the new Whole Foods store in The Fountains shopping center. Kyle and Natalie were good sports and had fun visiting as they accompanied us to the stores.

In the early evening on Friday Tom, Becky, and Cara arrived from Visalia.....well, actually from their trip to Quincey north of us. It was fun to introduce Becky and Tom to Sydney and she enjoyed all the extra activity of visitors! Saturday morning the guys embarked on a special house project (I will post pictures on it later....we want to surprise Eric and Chelsea when they get here next week). We girls set off for the Galleria primarily to search for a "Mother of the Bride" dress for Becky, but the girls wanted to look for clothes too! We had a great time covering all of the Galleria and were pretty tired at the end of the afternoon. We weren't successful finding a dress, but the house project turned out great! Then Becky, Tom, and Cara went to the Saturday evening church service with us. It was great to share our new fellowship with them. They headed back to Visalia on Sunday morning. Now we are looking forward to our visit with Eric and Chelsea in a week and then hopefully a visit from my mom from Connecticut in April. The picture at the top of the blog is of the birdhouse and decorative plaques I found while shopping with Pam. I need to remember to get people pictures when we have visitors!!

My Next Quilting Project

This is a picture of the Noah's Ark panel that will be in the next quilt that I have started. The fabrics are colorful and the prints are really cute. This will be the first of my "Baby Quilt Stash"---quilts ready for grandbaby arrivals!

Posting multiple pictures!

As you can see....

I haven't figured out how to nicely insert multiple pictures in a post. I will at some point, so until then, please bear with me!

Pictures of the completed quilt

Graduation Day!

The culmination of 8 weeks of puppy training classes was yesterday and we had a graduation! Chris and Natalie have been taking Sydney to the Petsmart for classes the past 8 Saturdays. The classes were very instructive for us as we embarked on training Sydney. Australian Shepherds are known to be very smart and Sydney lived up to her breed and was the Valedictorian of her class--not only because she was the only classmember to show up for graduation (ahem) but because she really did learn alot!