Goodness, what a February!

We have surely had a FULL February!!  Our friend, Stephanie, came to visit the first part of the month.  We so loved having her here again!  We enjoyed her company, her cooking, her talent, and Banjo and Tabbie Hoffman enjoyed having her here during the day and snuggling with her at night.  In fact, Banjo started sleeping in the guest bed after she left because he missed her.  Awww!  

We celebrated Ami's birthday at Olive Garden here in town on the 4th and it was so great to have everybody together.  We had a blast!  

My baby sister is 40.  So incredibly hard to believe.  Life is so short, getting shorter every day, so we need to make the most of every day.  Love on the ones you love today because tomorrow is not promised.

I took a couple of days off work to show Steph around a bit.  We went to the Museum of Aviation, Wilson's Bakery and thrifting one day.  I was checking out at the thrift store and all of a sudden, I heard this beautiful music playing!  I looked around and saw Steph sitting at a piano, just playing away.  Stephanie is a musician, after all, and has her own band, so naturally if there's a piano nearby, she's gonna play it!  It was such a treat.  She had the whole store in awe.  We went to a couple of really good estate sales on another day and there was a piano in one of the houses.  Sure enough, Stephanie played!  One of the estate sale employees did a video of her playing and she said she was going to show it to the lady of the house, who is now in a nursing home.  She told us she'd be happy to know that somebody was playing her piano.

I love this picture I took of Stephanie at an estate sale down in Perry that Friday.  I bought this plastic flamingo and when Stephanie left here, she flew to Cancun, Mexico to bird watch the flamingos!  We joked that this was her first flamingo sighting on her trip.  Ha! 

We took her back to Atlanta on the 12th, to a hotel, since her flight to Mexico was really, really early on the 13th.  We stopped in Juliette and had lunch at the Whistle Stop Cafe (fried green tomatoes, of course!).  Steph and I had the Bennett's BBQ sandwich and I declare, that doggone Frank Bennett is still delicious after all these years!

We walked McCrackin Street, browsing in the little gift shops and I swear, once, we caught a glimpse of the bee charmer.  I'm sure of it.  It may sound silly, but every time I'm there, I can feel the spirits of Idgie and Ruth.  I just love that story so much!

After we'd found some vintage goodies and sampled some fudge, we left Juliette and headed north to High Falls State Park.  It was a beautiful day to climb some rocks and put our feet in the freezing cold water.  Well, maybe it was just me doing the feet thing.  Larry and Stephanie climbed the rocks.  :)

Stephanie and I took this selfie in the car on the way to Atlanta.  It pretty much summed up how we were feeling.  It's never goodbye though, just see ya later! We're already looking forward to having her come see us again.

Larry's and my 18th wedding anniversary was the 13th and we'd already opened our presents to each other AND our Valentines.  We're awful.  We do that at birthdays and Christmas, too.  We just can't wait.

Larry got me (us) a Google Home and we have had the best time with that thing!

We play music and make shopping lists and play trivia and get her to tell us jokes and sing songs to us and we get the weather forecast every day before we go out.  It's awesome.  I'm trying to get "her" to say "I love you" and her responses to me telling her I love her (and I do it every day!) are getting more and more friendly.  She was saying things like "you're not so bad yourself" and now she says things like "I love helping you, even more than I love searching."  

She's playing hard to get.



Larry has always gotten me traditional anniversary gifts and for the 18th, you're supposed to give porcelain.  He found this beautiful girl for me at an estate sale.  Isn't she so elegant??
 

 

He also gave me this BLUE Fire-King relish dish!  The blue is kinda rare and I'd never seen one in the wild (only online, eBay and various Pyrex/Fire-King groups) and I was tickled to get it!!  I have a couple of the white ones and a couple of deviled eggs trays to match but I didn't have a bluuuuuue!

We've just celebrated all month.  Our anniversary, Valentine's Day and Larry's birthday, which was Friday.  I got a new piece of Pink Daisy Pyrex and a pretty blue Fenton hobnail vase, too, and I gave him a remote control drone with an HD camera so that he can take aerial photos!  I also got him the last two ghost division Army patches that he needed to complete that set and some new clothes to run in.  He gets up every morning now and runs for an hour and a half.  Bless it.  

We went to our favorite local Mexican restaurant on our anniversary and Larry had set it up for the waiter to bring me a rose and card during our dinner.  Soooooo dang sweet!!

Yesterday, we went to Massee Lane Gardens down in Fort Valley to continue our birthday celebration.  It was such a gorgeous day with even more gorgeous blooms!  We spent almost two hours walking and taking pictures and smelling the flowers.  Well, maybe that was just me smelling the flowers.

And when we got home, we found that one of the little tulip bulbs that I bought at Christmas and planted on MLK Day last month had bloomed while we were gone!  I've never grown tulips before and I am so happy to have this little one.

Kevin

Look at this little face!!  Just look at it.  This is Kevin and he's our sponsor child.  When we saw Big Daddy Weave in concert last week (it was fabulous, by the way!), Mike Weaver (lead vocals) talked to us a little bit about the World Vision ministry and he showed us a video of their time in other countries, just sharing Jesus with the folks and having fun.  As soon as he started talking about sponsoring a child, I felt the Lord was telling me to get one.  They started passing out packages with children's names, pictures and a little bit about their lives and I asked Larry to grab one.

Larry took one and handed it to me and I immediately started squalling when I saw this little face and that he is in Mexico.  He's only four.  

I am really, really struggling with this ridiculous Mexico border wall talk.  I don't want a wall.  We don't need a wall.  Not stereotyping them AT ALL but all the Mexican people I've ever known are the hardest working people.  They work much harder than us lazy Americans, that's for sure.  Personally, though, in the shape our country is in now, I don't understand why anybody would WANT to come here.  I think Trump is a careless idiot, an embarrassment and just generally a really bad person.  Our country will suffer if he's allowed to continue his "reign".   

Anyway, as soon as I saw Kevin's little face, I just fell in love with him.  We signed up and now he's ours!  We got a little packet in the mail today that has all of his information about his family and how he's growing up.  I have this dream to follow him all of his life and meet him someday!  I'm going to send him gifts and letters along the way and make a difference in his little life.  

And if that stupid wall goes up, Kevin and I are going to tear it down!