Well, here it is, Valentine’s Day 2017.  This has never been a particularly favorite day for me; for no reason other than I just sort of passed right over it.

But this year I thought I’d stop and say a lovely thank you to those who love us, those who make us smile, those who enrich and sweeten our lives.  We tend to think of romance on Valentine’s day, but I will reach out further and send big hugs to all who make my life a happy place to live!  Especially my immediate family, extended family, of course the Skunk Hollow girls and the cabin family.  My kids, grandkids, parents –  my dear friends, co-workers, church family –  so many people who touch my life with ‘the good things’.

Wishing everyone a lovely day, and a celebration of love and friendship and God’s blessings:  the best gift of all. 

These first flowers were to my co-worker April from her devoted husband;  The second flowers were hand-delivered to me this morning from Ron.  Happy Valentine’s Day!!! Love to you!  (Notice the SNOOPY CARD!!!)

I have been looking at my off-white toilet, scratched up bathroom vanity, and cracked sick bowl since I bought this house — not to mention the less than stellar faucet — for the downstairs powder room. 

I did change the paint color a few times, and about a year ago put down new floor tile blocks.  But other than that, not so spiffy.

Until last week.

My handy-dandy, talented son and his business partner (B&B Window Cleaning) had a few unscheduled days due to the nasty weather.  So I coaxed them into taking on the project for me.  I went over to Lowe’s and Home Depot and checked out all the options (Warning:  It’s very easy to get distracted and want to replace every appliance, all the flooring, and even closet doors once you start roaming these big box stores!).

I made my choices, then called in the boys.  They met me at the store and hauled my purchases home in their truck.  I went to work, and so did they.

By the end of the day, I had a beautiful new powder room!  The paint was a fresh choice, as were the floors, so they stayed the same.  But I was very excited and pleased with their excellent work and efficiency, even making some behind-the-scenes improvements, like shut-off valves under the sink! 

My favorite thing is the faucet – it is ‘black’ and has a little trough-like spigot for the water to just sort of slip out and spill into the sink basin.  I love it!  I few other updates and it’s perfect.

A big thanks to my ‘boys’, along with a warning not to get too comfortable.  I have a few more updates I’m thinking about doing.   Love you guys!  Thanks a bunch; great job! 🙂

I knew it was going to snow.  I was just hoping that it was light enough to push off the driveway easily and quickly.

Not so.

I woke up several times during the night, each time looking out the window to check the progress of the fast-falling flakes.  Indeed, everything was covered.  I considered bundling up and going outside when I woke up at 3:08am, but I knew that for as fast as it was coming down, I’d just have to do it again, anyway, to get the car up the driveway.  So I rolled over and tried to sleep.

Finally, at 5:20am, I pulled myself from the covers, went to the garage, and suited up.  I certainly had enough practice over the years to be familiar with the drill.  I left on my PJ’s; then slipped into heavy black sweat pants and a gray PINNACLE AUTO SALES sweatshirt with black letters. Next I pulled on the red snowmobile suite that had belonged to my step-daughter Nancy when she was 14 years old.  She was now 52.  Next came the wool hat with balled ties, which sat under the hood of the sweatshirt.  I wrapped a scarf twice around my neck, coming up over my chin.

I had heavy wool socks with reindeer on them; after the socks, the thermal packed snow boots (also Nancy’s). To these boots I secured rubber ice-grips that slip over the boot treads.  Two pair of gloves (one thermal) and I was out the door.

I snapped the radio on to my favorite country station (Pittsburgh Y-108), grabbed the blue Walmart shovel, and set to. It was cold; in the 20’s.  But the wind wasn’t blowing so I was ok.  After a few minutes I got into the swing of things, and had a pattern going.  I cleaned the steepest part first, in case I wore out.  I shoveled and pushed and threw snow for two hours.  I knew that if I didn’t stop and get ready for work, I would be seriously late.

I hadn’t had time for the extra parking space at the top of the drive, nor the sidewalks or decks/porches.  But as I stopped to snap a photo of my ‘job well done’, I knew that it was indeed a good job.  I would finish it up when I got home later that night, about 7:30pm or so (which I did).  The snow plow had, of course, threw about 5 feet of salted sludge onto my cleared driveway, which ultimately froze, but after about an hour all was clear again.

It felt good to be outside, engaged in a worthwhile project, getting fresh air and watching the sun come up.  I always dread those early morning shovelings, but once I’m fully engaged, I find myself singing with the radio and not really minding it so much at all.

That’s not to say that I’m looking forward to the next middle-of-the-night snowstorm.  Because I’m not….

This past Friday night was our monthly meeting of the Care Club, a His Place ministry outreach for elementary school-age girls.  We always have a good time with the girls, with lessons, crafts, snacks, activities, ‘camp fire’ songs, and snacks.  Did I mention snacks???  We love our snacks!

February’s lesson was heart-themed, in keeping with Valentine’s day.  Kathy taught about Samuel going to Jesse’s house to anoint the new king that God had chosen to lead His people.  So many of Jesse’s sons paraded in front of Samuel, all strong and handsome and capable.  But God said no.  When all the sons had been passed over, Jesse admitted that his youngest son David was out in the fields with the sheep.  David was young and humble and inexperienced, but as soon as Samuel saw David, God spoke to him.  ‘People look on the outside appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart’.  David was anointed to be the next king. The Bible says that David was a man after God’s own heart.

The girls did a great job finding the characteristics that God would look at in our hearts, as opposed to our outside appearance.  Kindness, love, joy, patience, goodness, humility, sharing, honesty….  They wrote the words on hearts and added them to the huge heart with the above memory verse.

After our snack 🙂 we took a little time with the girls one on one, and painted their fingernails.  God may look at our hearts and care about who we are, but that doesn’t mean we cannot be neat and caring about our appearance. We all had a good time, and the girls were very excited about their bright, shiny nails!  That, and their little fun packs of M&M’s!

I know that God is using the girls to bless us and touch our hearts and spirits, and we can see a difference in these young girls as we study and share with them each month.  I am thankful for the opportunity, and the doors He has opened for all of us!

For the 4th time, I was privileged to attend the Action for Animals fundraiser at the Latrobe Country Club.  Smail Auto is an underwriting sponsor, and several of us represented the dealership.  Jen, her mom Shirley, and I had a great time being part of the event.

This year the guest speaker was Lou Battistella, the Greensburg Volunteer Fire Department’s Bloodhound Team Captain.  Lou has served the fire department since 1992, and has been part of the bloodhound team since 1996 with his first dog, Dixie.  Saturday night he had his two dogs with him – Delphie and Darcy, and his daughter Elysia had her dog Sophy there. 

The dogs were very fun to meet – all 100 pounds each! – and Lou gave a great presentation about the history, the training, and the effectiveness of the bloodhound team.  Lou is also County Deputy Sheriff and head of the Sheriff’s Special Assist Team K9 Unit.

After the presentation, which was both informative and entertaining, the winners for the basket raffle were announced (For the first time in four years we had a winner from Smail Auto!!!), and several people took photos of and with the dogs.  Although they were very laid back, we were assured that they could be rowdy and energetic with very little encouragement!

The country club presented a nice offering of Hors d’oeuvres and cookies, and plenty of time to ask questions of the speaker and his companions (although the dogs basically had very little to say!).  A huge thank you to Smail Company for the opportunity to attend, and to Lou and his team for giving so much of their time to serve Greensburg and Westmoreland County. 

I was opening the mail at work (part of my job) and came across a newsletter from a local printing company.  It’s by far my favorite printed newsletter.  There are always bits of unique information, trivia, quotes, current events, and history facts.  I always try (and fail!) to identify the year that a significant event had taken place.  It’s harder than it sounds!

So in the last newsletter there were several quotes from Ben Franklin (another thing that’s in it every month) and I really enjoy them.  One was ‘when things don’t seem to be going right, go left.’  Ha!  Good advice!  But the one I liked best was ‘Don’t every let anyone dull your sparkle.’

Hmmmm.  Well, that’s really easy to do.  Something doesn’t go the way you expect, or you don’t meet someone else’s expectations, or what you had hoped for falls short.  Every day there is something that can disappointment us.

But every day there are dozens of other things that are good, and happy, and normal, and perfect, and exciting, and rewarding, and make us smile.  There are people we enjoy being around, and people we are glad are NOT around, and tasks that we complete satisfactorily, and tasks that we didn’t have to do after all!  So many little, ordinary seconds in our day that are really extraordinary!  If only we stopped to recognize them!

Sometimes, when I look at something or talk to someone and the expectation falls short, I feel deflated.  Like it’s my fault, or even that I should eliminate the situation from my everyday activities, or that I need to accept the responsibility of someone else’s choices or personality (good or bad!). 

But I’m letting these things dull my sparkle.  I CAN sparkle!  I can move above whatever is pulling me down.  I can smile and look for the blessings, and I can fill my mind with happy thoughts.  Even in the worst situation, there are still thousands of happy thoughts to reach out for! 

I’m going to go now, because I’m going to practice sparkling.  I’ll start with my Wednesday night cleaning routine, because getting it done makes me happy, and then I can eat some yummy meatloaf, which makes me happy, and then I can watch the sappy Hallmark movie, which makes me happy.  So many blessings; so many ways to sparkle!  See ya — go sparkle!!!

According to all reports, Jaxon should make an appearance on March 2nd.  Morgen and Levi (his parents) are excited and as ready as they will ever be.

Especially after today’s baby shower!

Dozens of their family and friends and co-workers got together to shower the baby with clothes and diapers and blankets and every little thing you could think of.  The theme was ‘elephants’, and a lot of the gifts kept with the theme.  Our favorites were the little stuffed elephant chair and the tiny bathrobe with an elephant on the bottom corner.  So cute!

As at any shower, food was in abundance, including the elephant cupcake-cake.  Very clever.  A huge stuffed elephant kept Morgen company as she opened what seemed like an endless array of presents.

This baby, parents, and grandparents will not be lacking the necessities – and a lot of the finer things! – needed to start life when he arrives.  And if the love surrounding them all that was evidenced in that room today is any indication, the new little family will have the best start that anyone could want.

Best of health, happiness, and blessings to you all – and I can’t wait to meet Jaxon.  Hugs!!!

On Friday January 27th my daughter turns…..  Wait.  I better not actually say how old.  Someone may start calculating ages and I think that is best left unsaid.  But she IS celebrating a birthday, and it’s my job as her mother to wish her the most wonderful and happiest day of days!

Kelly has always been bigger than life – with an exuberance for life that has never dulled.  She puts every bit of herself into any project that interests her, and gives her all whenever asked to be a part of anything. 

For her first Christmas she got Baby Sister (the little yellow Fisher-Price doll) and it went everywhere with her.  It was aptly named as that was the only baby sister she ever had.  She loved that doll and I know it’s still tucked away somewhere in her Happy Days (memory) box.

She loved swimming, and in those days didn’t mind sporting a bikini.  Oooo La La!

She has grown from that laughing, happy little girl into a lovely woman; a wife, mother, teacher, daughter … whatever she sets her mind to.  Kelly is a Proverbs 31 woman (look it up!), and I am proud of her life and the love she shows to others, and to her devotion to serve and love God. 

Maybe someday, if I ever decide to actually grow up, I can be just like her!  Love you, my daughter!  Happy Birthday! 

How many people does it take to successfully organize, register, and transport four Smails and assorted employees to the NADA convention?  

The answer is:  Don’t know.  It’s never been done! At least not easily and successfully, not the first try, anyway.

Every July, NADA (National Automobile Dealers’ Association) opens up its annual registration for their January convention in either San Francisco, New Orleans, or Las Vegas.  And every July, the very moment that I get to my desk on that all-important day, I start the registration process.  There’s plenty of time to register for the convention, but the choice hotels go lightening fast.  In order to get the hotel of choice (and that is an absolute requirement!) you must ACT fast!  We have yet to get all of our people the hotel of choice on the first try.

If that was the end of it, the whole thing wouldn’t be so bad.  But about September I start getting calls about adding spouses and guests to existing registrations.  About Thanksgiving I start getting requests for registering additional employees.  Then in January, people start changing their minds and need to cancel out or substitute another manager for their spot.  This year they added a person THREE DAYS before the actual event.  No one thought to mention to me that they told him we could go, back in December!

Then there are the workshops, manufacturer receptions, brunches, luncheons, and after-hours parties. Each event has separate registration processes and are by invitation only.  Take 10 events times 14 attendees and that equals chaos!  The one redeeming aspect of this whole thing is that I am not involved in the flight arrangements.

There are 14 packets of information to prepare, which include convention and hotel registrations, event verifications and information, local weather, hotel assignments, a list of cell phone numbers, and meeting schedules.  Last year I included M&M’s but they got lost in the shuffle so this year, I ate them.

Once these 14 people are on the plane(s) tomorrow morning, I will have four glorious days of peace and quiet to get back to my regularly scheduled duties.  However, for some reason, I anticipate getting at least one phone call from someone who forgot something they needed to know or should have handled before they left.

Somehow, July doesn’t seem so very far away, after all….

Sometimes it seems to me that when I am not feeling well, I have the weirdest dreams.  And there is no rhyme or reason to them. Such was the case last night.

I woke up somewhere after midnight with the words to several songs floating around in my head, songs that Stoney used to sing with the band in the late 60’s and early 70’s.  I haven’t thought about those songs in decades.  The dream stuck to me to the point that I had to look them up on line to read the words and sing along in my head.  Even though that part of my life is tucked far back in my memory’s file cabinets, it was nice for just a little while to think about those times.  I pictured setting on the steps in the house where I grew up, listening to him play his shiny red Gretsch guitar and singing songs like ‘Spanish Eyes’, ‘Twilight Time’, ‘No, Not Much’, and ‘Crazy’.  Ahhh, those were the days.

But after I had cleared away that little journey back half a century, I fell back to sleep.  This is were the dream got a little crazy.  I dreamed about my friend, Roger – (I haven’t talked to him in about a year) but he was wearing a pink gingham dress with ruffles! Talk about crazy! But after a quick dream hug, I found myself sitting on the floor at his house, leaning back against the couch, watching the Karaoke screen scroll past with the words to some of our favorite songs.  He would sing – and he was good! – and when I knew the song, I would join in.  We laughed a lot, because Karaoke is not my best venture.  We did the 60’s music mostly (‘Unchained Melody’ or ‘Last Kiss’), and then songs like ‘Why me, Lord?’ and ‘One Day at a Time, Sweet Jesus.’ What great memories!

I realized when I thought about both of those dreamy visits that it was the music that made it so fun and it was so much a part of what we did.  What a joy it was to share together, listening to ourselves and to each other.  I really miss that.

I can’t go back there, even if it was an option, but I have come to the realization that it’s ok to look back on your life and to get great pleasure from the memories I find there.  Even if those people stepped away from my life – and maybe not too gently! – I can recall and relive those moments with smiles and fondness, and realize that those times have helped bring me to who I am today.  So I’m going to hum ‘Twilight Time’ and maybe ‘It’s my Party’ as I go through my week, and take comfort in happy days gone by.  So grab your dream song, and start singing; I recommend it!