While doing my garden walk through today, I saw a dark something or other in the sweet potatoes, so I stopped to look. There was this beautiful butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, so I ran to get my camera to capture it before it flew away. When I first saw it, it was still damp. By the time I got my camera, it had dried off quite a bit, so I'm sure it was going to ready to fly off soon. Isn't it beautiful? Just another blessing from doing my daily "chores". I'm sure better authors than I have done some brilliant parables regarding the butterfly as he emerges from the chrysalis, but I can't help but see this wonderful phenomenon as a type of our lives. I won't bore you with the analogy. I just hope you will spend some time today thinking about it!
I had a great weekend with my family. I celebrated my birthday, and Dorian and his family as well as Darius and Alicia joined me in Daytona. We spent some time at the beach, shopping, playing games, and watching baseball. It was great. A big thank you goes out to those who joined me for making it special for me.
It has been an issue for our family, this food thing. In the past, when we have had family activities, they have been very food centered. In fact, when we rented houses for everyone to stay together for a couple of days, our main activity has been preparing various dishes to show off our culinary skills. Since we have made some dietary changes, we have had a hard time finding other activties to replace our previous ones, and it has been a real challenge.
When the children were little, we used to play games. Granted, many of them were sedentary as we were too fat to do many physical games with them. Once Dorian became a teenager, we didn't have as many family activities as he spent a lot of time with his friends. The younger boys and I spent a lot of time doing 4-H projects and running the store. Roger worked his regular job and worked at the store after he got off work, so there wasn't a lot of leisure time although we did spend a lot of time together.
The point being, we lost a lot of the game playing we used to do. I had the bright idea to play some games at my birthday party, and it seemed that everyone had a good time. It didn't take up the time having a feast would have, and I'm sure some didn't enjoy it as much as they would have enjoyed the traditional Bar-B-Q, but I did the best I could coming up with family unifying things. When I am with the grandchildren, they enjoy playing card games and doing crafts, going to movies, and such, so that is working out ok. It is the big kids that are hard to amuse!
I am going to start a file of games that we can pull out at a moment's notice. I'm not good at remembering this kind of stuff, so I have to write it down. I used to have some great books when the children were young, so I'll have to dig some of that up. I'll bet it would help if I started a prize box too!
Yesterday at church, I had to give a talk in Spanish. I didn't do very well for the talk part, but I guess my testimony part was ok. I wish I knew more verbs and nouns. I still struggle with conjugating in the past and present tense as well. We had a nice treat as well as Darius was the 2nd speaker, and he did a great job. He used Alma 37 as the basis for his talk with the Anti-Nephi-Lehis and their committment to not pick up weapons of war once they were converted to the gospel. When we are committed to something, amazing things can happen. The Spanish members love hearing a gringo give talks in Spanish, especially when they can actually understand him!
3 of the Spanish sisters gave me gifts. It is very humbling when they do that as I know that their means are very slim. They always remember me on my birthday and at Christmas. They are truly a blessing in my life. I consider them my friends as well as my sisters even though the language barrier prevents us from sharing as many things from our hearts as we would if we could communicate better. It truly speaks to the fact that we communicate more from our heart. I love the card from Graciela. The card was Spanish, and of course, she signed it in Spanish "para mi amiga y hermana".
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