Peaceful Garden

I went to the garden to read today. 

The sounds of birds, wind in the trees, and the fountain

were incredibly peaceful.

I sat in a gazebo in the rose garden. 

I wanted to sit on a bench outside the rose garden

that had a view of some gorgeous plants and flowers,

but those plants and flowers had been removed.

That was disappointing, but...

my view from the gazebo was also beautiful.

 

A Scooby Chair

Seth loves to participate in errands.  His favorites are Walmart and Publix, but he'll go pretty much anywhere.  Today, he went to Goodwill with Jason and found this Scooby Doo chair.  He's pretty excited!  It's probably too small for his 16-year-old body to sit comfortably, but he refuses to admit that.

Flower and Garden Festival

a butterfly garden

Disney characters in flowers

There were so many beautiful flowers at Epcot for the Flower and Garden Festival!  It was also below 80 degrees today, so it was pretty much a perfect day to walk for miles admiring all the beauty.

 

Girls Day at the Garden

Today was FREE DAY at the garden, so Sandy and I took the girls.  The weather was beautiful, warm, breezy, sunny; and there were lots of new blooms, especially in the rose garden.

Reading in the Jungle

 The garden is in its winter phase with many of the flowers dead, dying, or pruned.  It's still beautiful, though, especially in the parts with lots of trees and non-flowering plants.  It seems very tropical.  I love hearing the running stream instead of the traffic!

Alone Time

 I hear birds and water running over the fountain.

I see trees, flowers, blue sky, and water.

I smell roses and fresh air.

I feel sunshine and an occasional breeze.

I know I'm unbelievably blessed!!!

Chicken and Carrots

 Seth is a VERY picky eater.  He really prefers to eat the same exact thing every single day:  chicken nuggets for breakfast, corn dog and cheese balls for lunch, and then dinner can vary, but not much.  The list of tolerable foods consists of chicken nuggets, rice, pizza, sausage, spaghetti, or meatballs.  Seth has celiac disease, so I'm glad that there are gluten-free versions of all those foods.  Tonight, though, I thought I should at least try to start getting him to eat whatever dinner I make.  I made chicken in French onion soup, stuffed onions, and carrots for dinner.  I knew that there was no way Seth would eat the stuffed onions, so I put six tiny bites of chicken and six extra tiny bites of carrot on Seth's plate.  After he ate that, he could have chicken nuggets, cheese balls, and Oreos.  He did it!  He had just finished the cheese balls, and I had just set the chicken nuggets and Oreos on the table for him when Luke noticed something on the floor.  It was a chewed up and spit out bite of chicken.  GROSS!  When he leaned down to pick that up, he saw five other mounds of chewed chicken.  I don't even know when Seth could've spit that food out since Jason and I were sitting at the table with him the whole time.  To help Seth realize that spitting food on the floor is disgusting and unacceptable, Jason took away the Oreos.  Seth was NOT happy, but I'm pretty sure he understood that I wasn't happy about having chewed food on the floor either.  While we were brushing teeth to get ready to go to sleep, I told Seth that we could have pizza tomorrow night.

Seth: "YES!  And YOU can eat chicken and carrots!"

Me: "We're out of chicken and carrots."

Seth: "OH, THANK YOU, GOD!!"

The more I laughed, the more he said it and even elaborated:  "Praise God we out of chicken and carrots.  I love pizza and sausage and sauce and meatballs.  Thank you, God!"

As funny as the whole conversation was, I'm really happy that Seth has picked up on the fact that blessings come from God and that we should be grateful for all our blessings.