I Have Just Begun

a lovely little book called "Firstlight" by Sue Monk Kidd.  Coincidentally, I also just received 'Secret Life of Bees' from Netflix and can't wait to watch it.

Firstlight is a collection of her early writings about spiritual things.  I'm still in the introduction, and she talks about the work of Thomas Merton, and how his most famous work, Seven Storey Mountain, was written when he was  a young man.  He later felt somewhat conflicted and contained by the fact that he was in many ways defined by that work of his youth, though his thinking had evolved greatly after that time.  She  experienced similar hesitation when asked to compile works from her past, which may or may not still align with her present thinking.

She talks a bit about the impact his book had on her, and I was struck by this line:

"The book revealed to me the startling reality of the inner life, cracking open a raw longing for the Divine, and exposing an irrepressible hunger for that deepest thing in myself."

Love books that do that........

Ava and her Papa went out to breakfast

 Ava loved her 'mash browns' !

Zoo Day

Turns out 4 1/2 is the PERFECT age to visit the zoo!  We had such a fun day.  Picnic on the grass outside, then on into the zoo, where Ava was interested in everything and loved it all.  We were there for about 4 hours, and still didn't get to everything, so we'll be making more trips down.  She's concerned that we didn't make it to the meerkats......

Grad time

Our baby graduates!  How can that be?
First we celebrated at church with all the graduates--an open house for all.

And then there was graduation!

But where did the time go? How did we get from here

to here?

Early summer salad

Spinach and green onions from our CSA garden share, and an abundance of strawberries in the garden.  Add some sliced almonds and bleu cheese, and you have a beautiful and delicious June salad!

Ron and I were out for the evening, and Nicole and Ava came by while we were gone.  This is what we arrived home to:

Such a sweet and clever girl!!

It Can Be Hard to Let Go...

My sweet grandma (Baba) has been gone for 23 years now, but I still miss her and think of her often.  Some of my most precious possessions are things that I have (and use) that belonged to her.  One of those is my canning bath.  I'm not sure how old it is, but many of Baba's things were first her mother's, so it could easily be 100 years or more if that is the case.  But one of my goals is never to kill anyone off with my home canning, and the kettle is somewhat rusty, and sentiment shouldn't take precedence over safety in a situation like this.  So I bought a new one (not a significant investment at $20).  But the real issue became what to do with the old one, since throwing it away didn't feel good at all. 



I think it will be very happy in its new role in life......