THREE FRENCH CHICKS, FRIENDS AND FAREWELLS

This has been a very busy time for me. It seems as though the faster I go, the behinder I get! I took some time out and did a little painting. I call this one "Three French Chicks".

They are painted on individual 6x6 canvases and then framed together in one frame. My grandson, Nicholas, is making frames for me He is very talented and does a great job. Speaking of Nicholas, I was on one of my all too frequent "scavenger hunts" last week (that's what we call it when we are looking for something we have carefully put away). This seems to be our favorite pastimes around our house now that we're in the twilight years of our lives. I ran across this photograph.

A friend of my Mother's painted this when Rachel and Nicholas were 2 and 4 years old. Here they are now, 28 years later. Same precious children but bigger and better, older and wiser.

It's such fun when you run across treasures such as these, especially when they're unexpected.

I have noticed that sometimes the verbiage in my posts will appear to be broken or some of the text has lines through it. If you are having this challenge, you can double right click on the right hand side of the text it will correct this error. I have no idea why this does this and I apologize for the inconvenience.

The last couple of weeks have been very full. I had the pleasure of attending a luncheon that my friend, Diane (I have several Diane friends ;-) gave for her sister-in law who was in town from Florida. Her husband George and I were Email friends for years but I had never met Ruthie.

It was a lovely luncheon and gave me the opportunity not only to meet Ruthie but also to visit with old friends.

The next day I went to lunch with an artist friend of mine, Claire. I had not seen her in several months and it was wonderful to be able to catch up on things.

We have painted together for several years but somehow in our busy lives, we don't see each other as often as we used to.

Then last weekend we celebrated a big birthday with our friend, Steve.

I won't say how many years he's been around but the number ends with a zero ;-)

I took a break from lunches for a day and did more bird watching. These lovely little Finches are back again and we just love to watch them as they feed in our back yard. The finch feeder was empty so they went to this one until Frank could fet theirs refilled.

I had no idea that these little beauties could be so mean. When they are on their own feeder, there are only 6 perches as you can see below, and they fight for their spots. There were 11 of them there this day and the battle was on. Between the birds and the squirrels we manage to keep ourselves amused when we're home.

The next day we went to Piccolo Mondo for lunch with our good friends, the Walkers. It's a great place for a nice meal and it's quiet so you can really visit.

It's also a real pleasure to not have the dishes to do once the meal is over!

I received an Email from my "other" Diane friend with a site to check out that has her Grandson as the star. He lives in Virginia and has a band.

It was so much fun listening to him and seeing what he was up to. She and her daughter were "Groupies" along with us when Franklin had his band when he was in college, so this brought back lots of memories. Franklin's band was called Temper Temper and EJ's group is Braves and Bullets.

I always wonder where and how they come up with these names!

Last Saturday we attended another party for the Minshew's daughter. It was a couples shower with dinner and the meal was catered by Babe's. In case you're not familiar with Babe's, they have the best fried chicken in the WORLD!

We don't have a Babe's here yet, but it is rumored that we will have one soon. we can't wait!

We had a farewell reception for Father Matkin at our parish on Sunday. He and his family will be moving to Comanche, Texas where he will be the Vicar of 2 parishes, one in Comanche and one in Dublin. It was a bittersweet time as we all love him to death and will miss him terribly. There is a slide show following this post with some of the photographs that I took at the reception. If you put the mouse over each photo as it comes by you can read the captions.

Then on Monday we had our final Book Club meeting with him as our leader and teacher.

This is the front of the card that I designed for him. We finally finished Henry VIII and I must admit, I'm a little thankful that I'm through with the book. It was one of the most difficult studies that I have undertaken ... HOWEVER ... thanks to Fr. Matkin's teaching and wisdom, we all agreed that we learned SO much about English history and the Church. We gave him this bookmark as a reminder that we, as his students, will always think of him when we study and learn.

The lone gentleman in this study (aside from Fr. Matkin) picked it out, and I must say that he has wonderful taste!

He seemed very pleased with the selection.

Father's wife, Melisa, is an artist and this is a sketch that she did of their darling daughter, Maddy. I copied it and put it on the front of a card to go with the gift we gave to this precious child.

We started our Monday morning as we always do, with the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. The altar in the chapel was given by us in memory of our son, Jim. That always makes going in there very special for us as it is a reminder to us that he is with Christ now. What a blessing!

Once the celebrating was over, we settled down and finished our book and our study.

We are going to miss all the wonderful wisdom and insight that we were given through his teachings. The churches where he is going have no idea what a blessing he is going to be for them. And now we, his students from the Monday Book Club, bid him a fond farewell and say we love you and will miss you. "Go in Peace to love and serve the Lord".

XOXO, Pcasso