Favorite Things Lately

They're beginning to fade away, but I've fully enjoyed the daffodils again this year.  Ella and I were reading her first William Wordsworth, that poem I know I memorized in junior high, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.  I told her it was a poem I really didn't understand until moving here:  

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils...

I remember seeing daffodils growing up, but I've never seen such a host as can be seen here.

I always think of trumpets declaring the arrival of spring when I see them.

For one glorious hour or so the thermometer hit 70 degrees, and James and I spent the afternoon reading outside in the swing because this dreamy day fell on a Sunday, and a sabbath rest never felt so good.  (I got an actual tan line on my foot from wearing flip-flops!)  

Receiving e-mail installments of my children's creative writing has been the best thing.  They make me laugh out loud and bring me so much joy.

I was finally persuaded to join the adult coloring book train with these two beauties.  As Barney Fife would say, "It's therapetic!"

I'm so excited about this one.  I left all my study Bibles in Alabama, and I got so excited that this one released in the UK on the same day as in in the U.S.  It's my Mother's Day present, and it's a picture to represent a really sweet moment I witnessed at our Easter Holiday Bible Club last week.  I was reading the She Reads Truth devotional for Friday from Isaiah 66 and had just read, "For this is what the LORD says, 'I will extend peace to her like a river... As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you..."  At that moment a little girl came running out of the hall crying and calling for her mother.  Her mother came right away to comfort her and ask what was wrong.  She was thirsty and needed a drink of water.  I teared up watching God's analogy of His love and care for us acted out so soon after reading those verses.  This mother was there immediately meeting a simple need, satisfying the thirst of her daughter with love and tenderness.  She didn't laugh even though to an adult it would seem silly to cry over being thirsty when water was so easily available.  God comforts us like this when we call out to Him.