End of February Faves

 

It's the end of February and that is a HUGE thing to be thankful for. Besides that, I'm here to share FIVE of my FAVE blessings from this past week. Join in with us by linking up at Susanne's site. 

FIVE FAVES

• SURPRISE NEWS! After church on Sunday, the young woman whom we think of as a third daughter, and who is our church choir director, approached me and said my oldest daughter (Courtney) and I along with 3 other women, have been chosen to be a vocal ensemble for the Good Friday service this year!  We will be backing the worship team! There will be me and another alto (Melissa) and Courtney, Emily (Melissa's twin!) and another soprano.  I'm so thankful for this opportunity to glorify God with our singing.

Hope and Donny's driveway
central NYS 
Saturday 21 Feb

Courtney's cursive writing
a letter she wrote her Aunt Hope
when she was in 3rd grade and just learning cursive!

• GAME DAY!  Saturday was a day to head out to the central part of NYS where there is a lot more snow and spend the afternoon with my sister Hope and her husband Donny. They live in the woods. Literally. She made a delicious tortellini soup and cheddar muffins.  The soup was meatless and had veggies from their garden.  I had brought some peanut butter chocolate chip brownies to share and she had made peanut butter cookies!  We play Splurt (Hope won),  Shut the Box (I won) and Apples to Apples (Dave won). Before we played the games though, Hope showed me a letter Courtney had written to her in third grade! She was going through a box of old things and came across it.  How precious it is!  In our school district, you begin learning cursive in 3rd grade along with proper letter writing as a precursor to beginning to learn to do research and essays in 4th grade. Courtney had written to Hope about a dog she made out of paper and that she included in the letter. Courtney was in 3rd grade during the 2001-2002 school year. She was 8.  I texted Courtney the pic I took (shown above) and she couldn't believe her Aunt Hope kept it all these years! I'm thankful we had a fun day and the walk down memory lane.  

Salmon salad dinner
with basil-herb cous-cous
and steamed beets

chicken chili and cheddar biscuits

• PORTION CONTROL:  My husband needs to lose about 25 lbs for his optimal weight. My doc says I'm fine with a normal BMI but I want to lose about 5-8 lbs anyways. We've realized this winter that we were taking seconds at most dinners. We eat dinner around 6:15-6:45 depending on the day and realized we need to do better at portion control like the meals we had in Europe. So this past week I made meatless meals twice and meals with meat twice. The meat meals are shown above. We did really well with the amounts you see.  The salmon was a piece I had bought at the fish market we like and it was already seasoned. We split it in half and each had a half.  That's more than enough meat for a meal!  I'm thankful we are on the right track for Dave to lose some weight. I'm also thankful he's joining his work gym.

• SUNSHINE!!  I'm so very thankful that we had a couple of days of full sunshine for outdoor brisk walking. One day, after I had done my treadmill cardio workout for 1.4 miles, I then went and walked another 1.7 miles outdoors, later in the day.  I'm thankful for the late winter sunshine and it's helping to melt the snow off the deck and driveway! 

• NYCB TICKETS!  The amphitheatre tickets at this place opened up to the public on Wednesday so I went on the website first thing in the morning. I managed to get Claire and I tickets for the middle section balcony row D!!  If I was a higher tier member, I could have ordered the tickets a couple weeks ago and gotten seats in rows A, B or C.   ( for those of you who are new here, Claire is our youngest daughter who studied classical ballet from age 3 to 22 and was in the UNH Ballet Company for 4 years during her college years. We've been attending the NYCBallet at SPAC since she was 8 years old) We've always splurged on the balcony tickets, mid-section.   We chose to go the night that they are featuring their Innovators and Icons ballet. I'm so thankful I have the money to buy these tickets AND that this is a mother-daughter event she still wants to participate in. One of our fave ballerinas will feature one of her choreographed pieces and it's her premiere! 

That wraps up my faves for the week. 

Have a wonderful weekend and only 3 more weeks until SPRING!!!