Life With Jules, and other stuff

In my quest to be more active on this here blog, I let January slip by me, lol! Anyway, been keeping busy with my job. Not teaching this semester due to low enrollment, but hopeful for Fall term. Gives me a few months to maybe rework some of what I do in class. Went to a memorial service this morning for a dear old man from church. Gonna miss him a lot. It's like losing my dad all over again. The irony of today is it also happens to be my late grandma's 93rd birthday. I miss her all the time. After the service and visiting with the family, I stayed back (well got some lunch in between) for worship rehearsal. So invigorating! The more I listen, the more I have grown to love contemporary Christian music. I've been reading in Isaiah. It's interesting how while reading certain verses from Revolution pop into my head. Maybe not the exact verse, but what I remember from reading that very daunting book. The Women's group I go to on Wednesdays will be wrapping up Sweete...

This year will be a year of deepening my relationship with Jesus! This morning, we had a wonderful worship service at church with a guest sitting in on the drums. He is 9 years old - and man can he play drums! Unfortunately, the video file size is too big to include on this post. Anyway, this evening, my other half and I sat around the dining room table indulging in a little sparkly. I kept my limit to 2 glasses. While I was hesitant to try it because it's a red, Cold Duck is actually not that bad. Mind you, I don't really drink alcoholic beverages often and when I do it's typically just a glass or 2 of wine. Here's a couple snaps of of the flutes filled. I looked in several stores for flutes with New Year's designs already on them to no avail so I made my own. I used Puffy 3D Glitter Paint. It served it's purpose! Enough about the alcoholic beverage. On to more important things: Jesus! So after I finished my 2nd glass, we continued our discussion on Jesus but d...

This year has been a year to remember. Or a year to forget. I haven't decided which yet. I feel like we have been on a celebrity death watch since Sunday. George Michael dying, unexpectedly. Then Carrie Fisher on Tuesday. Her mom, Debbie Reynolds, the next day. It's been a hard last week of the year. I don't make resolutions, so you won't see a list of any here. But I do hope to get on here more frequently in the upcoming year. I also hope to get back into cross-stitch and actually finish some of my old WIPs (that can almost be called UFOs at this point, lol). So, what I will leave 2016 with is this: Thank you for being the year you were Please don't repeat yourself in 2017 Happy New Year!!

It's been a long time since I picked up needle, fabric and thread and while this is a kit I am looking forward to a new finish in the new year. This is Floral Cross. I actually started this a few weeks ago, but the colors weren't there that I needed. Go figure! It's a kit afterall. So last weekend I stopped at Michael's and picked up the 2 missing colors. Which also meant I had to frog some of what I had already stitched.

I miss what Christmas used to be. A time spent with family, gathered around the table eating a meal lovingly prepared by several members. This time of year just hasn't been the same for me since, well, the 1990s. I mean, yea when I was a kid it was about the presents. But let's face it, mom had to come up with some pretty interesting hiding places to keep me from snooping and finding them. I always found them. I always knew what we were getting before they were even wrapped and under the tree...until she started leaving them at her friends' homes, lol. But at some point it became about time with my family. Whether there was snow on the ground or not, I didn't care. I just wanted Christmas morning to arrive so we could pile in the car and head to grandma's! Grandma went to heaven in 1993. Christmas has never been the same. The family started doing their own things. Aunts and uncles became grandparents and turned their attention to their grandchildren (rightly so). An...

Recently, I decided to do Bible roulette. Not the typical way I read the Bible, but I felt the need to just let God guide me this time. Anyway, after saying a prayer I opened my Bible to see what I needed to read that morning. It opened to Proverbs 19:23. "The fear of the Lord leads to life, an he who has it will abide in satisfaction;  He will not be visited with evil." (NKJV) Of course, the version I read was the NIV: "The fear of the Lord leads to life; then one rests content, untouched by trouble." But after looking at a few translations, I found the NKJV was the one I preferred. I think because of the word "evil" being used. So, I then decided to do a quick word study and looked up the following words: fear, life, satisfaction, abide. Here's what I found: fear (Hebrew = yir'ah) - reverence life (Hebrew = chay) - alive satisfaction this word gave me some difficulty as the Strong's only showed  2 occurrences in the book of Numbers. So I we...

I began reading Exodus again yesterday. Yes, again! I lost my place so I started over. Is that silly or what? Nah!! Anyway, I didn't make it past verse 5 in the first chapter! D'oh!! I couldn't get past the names for some reason. So it made me think "Why are names so important in the Bible anyway?" I began to do a little research on each of the names of Jacob's sons. There was: "Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph and Benjamin; Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher." (Exodus 1:2-4, NKJV). I looked up the meanings of each name. Reuben = behold, a son Simeon = obedient; listening Levi = attached or pledged Judah = praised Issachar = reward; recompense Zebulun = to honour; to dwell (zaval) or gift; dowry (zeved) Benjamin (hebrew: Binyamin)= "son of the right hand" or "son of the south"           (this one is interesting because he was originally named Ben-oni, which means "son or my             pain") ...