{Friday Foto Friends} Mardi Gras to Ash Wednesday

I actually remembered to take some pictures this week!

CH & I at the Mardi Gras celebration hosted by the Knights of Columbus at Church last Friday. We left just as things started hopping...literally...just after the Second Line finished. 

 I went to Mass Saturday morning in this beautiful nearby church.

 This is looking towards the back of the church, into the choir loft.

Just above the altar, the dome has a dove right in the middle of it. I couldn't get it to show up with the light. I had to look up several times during Mass and just take it in.

Sunday morning breakfast was french toast with a secret ingredient. It doesn't matter what kind of creamer you splash in, it gives the toast an extra "umph"!

Sunday afternoon, CH & I brought up this bookcase that my daddy made, along with some dressers for YS. There's still a lot to be done at the house; luckily we aren't really on a time schedule!

I played at Ash Wednesday Mass and received the best ash cross I ever remember having! Thanks, Father Bill!!!
I got my camera out the other day and took a few pictures of a cardinal that was singing loudly in the back yard. It's rare when I can actually see them; I mostly hear them. I just didn't have the time to get the picture off my camera. 
Have a fantastic Friday and a wonderful weekend!
I'm linking up with Deb at Breathing in Grace today!

Long Time No Write

I'm amazed that it's been over a month since I last posted! March was busy, busy, busy! I kept meaning to write several posts, but it never happened (obviously!). I was super focused on Lent and spending more time writing on my Catholic Blog that I just didn't have the drive to write anything here. I'm afraid to even open up my Bloglovin'; I shudder to think about just how many posts I have to read!
So, what happened last month? Well, at the end of Feb., CH & I took a long weekend trip to see this one for Family Weekend:

It was a really good weekend. We got to see MS, meet his friends/classmates, sit in on a class, go to the casino and a baseball game, and just get a taste of what his life is like. We managed to get in some good food & drink, too!

(Gator...we discovered that it's acceptable to eat gator on a Friday during Lent!)

 (Oh, yes I did! I also found out that Community Coffee has a King Cake Coffee, so I made sure to pick up a bag from Winn Dixie before we left!)

The live oaks on campus are just beautiful.

As an added bonus, I got to meet another Speech/Language Pathologist who invited me to be a part of an online group. We're called The Frenzied SLPs. It's an awesome group...most of us have at least 10 years experience in the field, and we "talk" frequently through FB Messenger. Anyway, this lady is just a fantastic person. We met in a coffee shop with our husbands for beignets & coffee. It was like we've known each other forever!

A couple of weeks after our visit with MS, I had Spring Break. CH took a week off, and we headed to Edisto Beach State Park to camp for the week. We left on Sat. & spent the night with some friends we met on our trips to The Keys. They live on Lake Murray, so they took us out on the boat to see the sites from the lake. We had Laika with us, and we were concerned about how she would do in a boat...with the noise. She was quite the champ; she acted like she had "been there, done that"!

They have a beautiful house. This is what we woke up to on  Sunday morning:

Edisto was absolutely wonderful. Before break, when someone asked if I was going anywhere & I would tell them Edisto, I was immediately asked where it was. When we got there, I think half of East Tennessee was there! Most of the campers were from East Tennessee. After some boyscouts left, a family who lives a couple of streets over from us moved in! Spring Break deserves a post of its own, so I'll save that for another post. This pretty much sums it up:

I guess that's enough for this post! Next up...Edisto Beach, SC!

Thankful Thursday

Once again, I'm linking up with Knit by God's Hand to look over the past week and be thankful for the little things.

This week, I’m thankful for…

...surprise snowstorms after we get to school.

…teachers who take their students out to play in the snow before settling down to work.

… Stations of the Cross. It’s a beautiful thing. If you don’t know what it is, this link should help you out.

…spending the day baking cookies.

…yucky days off from school (too bad it was already a holiday1)

…British series that keep you busy during yucky days off from school. If you haven’t heard of “Broadchurch”, check it out on Netflix.

 

…2 days of 2 hour delays for school. It gave me the chance to go to daily mass both days.

…quick activities to keep my students busy that also double as homework.

…coming home after Saturday evening mass to a cooked dinner. YS had a chicken breast over spaghetti squash & marinara sauce waiting for me. I had been wanting to try spaghetti squash instead of pasta; I was very much surprised at how good it was!

What are you thankful for?

Long Weekend Wrap-up

Thank goodness for long weekends! Friday was a weird day. I got to school before 7:00 because I had a meeting at 7:15. It was snowing when I left the house, but the roads were just wet. The buses were already on their way, so they had to continue on to school. We weren't supposed to get anything, so we were a bit surprised.

The view from my window.

Once school was let out, the roads were all clear, so there wasn't any reason for early dismissal. Some of the classes had their Valentine's Day parties early, which meant they were all hyped up on sugar all day, so it was pretty much a bust of a day for them.

Friday night was the first Stations of the Cross for Lent. There were only about 50 people there, if that many. My parish switches between Spanish & English for every other Station. It is a bit difficult to concentrate during the Spanish ones.

I had to run some bread over to church Saturday morning for a funeral, so I popped into the Adoration Chapel for a while. The light coming in and reflecting the stained glass onto the tabernacle was just beautiful.

The rest of Saturday was laundry. And then some friends on Facebook started talking about Broadchurch, which is a British tv show. I don't know why the British shows are so much better than ours, but they are. This one is excellent. I started off the show bawling my eyes out (it has to do with the murder of a 12 year old boy), and ended the first season the same way. 

Sunday, CH & I had a couple of movie passes from last year that we hadn't used, so we saw Zoolander 2. Call us weird, but we think movies like that are hilarious. I was glad we didn't pay to see it, but CH said he would have paid to have seen it. 

I've never been a big fan of Valentine's Day, so I fixed supper at home and we just laid low. I just don't see the need in buying stuff and fighting the crowds in a restaurant.

Yesterday we woke up to the roads being a bit of a mess. Thankfully, it was a holiday and we didn't have to get out.

We have a 2-hour delay this morning (unless they end up calling the rest of the day off). It's better than nothing, I guess!