Blessed Weekend

We had a pretty fun weekend starting with last Friday night. Our friends invited us to a "mystery dinner" at their home with their "Reach" group from church. While we were at their house, their kids were at ours being watched by Natalie. I'm not sure which group had more fun! So, the mystery dinner was interesting....you had to pick 4 numbers out of each "course", and then you were served the item that corresponded with the number for that course. For my first course, I received 2 mint oreos, 4 carrot sticks and a spoon. Steve received no silverware and a pile of spaghetti with no sauce. I then got my sauce in a bowl, a breadstick, and a pile of fruit dip. So, the idea was to see how creative we could be while using what we had to eat our dinner. I ate my spaghetti with "celery chopsticks", and Steve at his with his fingers! There were about 16 of us there, and we of course, knew only 2 people there! They were a really fun group and made us feel like they'd known us a long time. It was such a blessing!

On Saturday, the girls and I headed into town to help with the Thanksgiving baskets being distributed by our church. The girls got to help pack them and then we were asked to deliver them too. Nat went with her small group leader and I took Serena with me. After getting lost, I stopped and picked up my GPS...Steve. I can tell my girls about real "need", but sometimes they need to see it for themselves. We were very blessed by that day too!

On Sunday, Steve's sister came for a visit with the now 14 year old triplets! While she had a visit with her brother, I took the teens out for a photo shoot. It was cold and a bit windy, but we had such a fun time! They are such beautiful kids--one boy and two girls, and their personalities are so much the same as when they were born! They had brought a buddy with them to the house, and so I had 5 teens and a preteen and what a blessing it was to have so much fun and laughter in our home! And the pictures blessed their mom, who can't get them to go to a studio anymore. Lucky me, I will get to do it again!

While the weekend was full of blessings, it was also full of sadness in a couple of ways, and Monday brought even more sadness. It reminded me that we really need to hold onto and focus on those blessings, because if we focus on the bad stuff, we just might miss the good stuff. I have to believe that God is working in all of these situations that aren't so good, and I have to focus on being a positive influence wherever and whenever possible. Light shatters darkness, right?

Get out there and be a light and count your many blessings...one by one!!