A Fresh Start...

To a new week.  Sunday was calmer than Sundays have been in a while.  I like that.  I actually had time to finish a book, do some research for next Sunday's lesson and relax a bit with The Husband.

Pretty good sized hail.

Saturday was wild and crazy!  We had one of those jaw-dropping Utah storms come through. Dropped a fair amount of hail and lots of rain in a short period of time.  20 minutes later the only evidence of the storm was all the debris littering surfaces everywhere.  The Husband even used the snow shovel to move the piles of snow away from the garage door so we didn't have water inside. We were lucky.  There were a couple people in our neighborhood who had flooding in their basements. We were keeping a close eye on the amphitheater (our affectionate label for our stairwell), the water was deepening.  But all was well here.  There was so much hail, so fast, and it was so cold, that when we left for church the following morning (15 hours later), there were still piles of white hail down in the stairwell.

Melting quick.

Fortunately we'd already brought in the ripe tomatoes for the day, and harvested all of the carrots. The pepper plants given the grandson by our neighbor took quite a beating.  We'll see if our veggies recover any time soon.

Then while we were in church on Sunday, there were another couple storm-rounds - it was pretty noisy on the church roof.  Things are never ever dull.

Took every petal off the geraniums

Saturday night I embarrassed myself.  Serious embarrassment.  Our favorite local frozen custard business has opened a new location - much closer to us.  (I saw it in my travels the other day looking for the Social Security office.)  After dinner out with some friends we were looking for some dessert.  I had us driving up and down the street - certain it was just "right there!" only to discover after what seemed like hours on the road that I had us on the wrong road!  Once I figured that out we were there lickety-split, enjoying our frozen custard.  Hopefully our friends won't hold it against me too much (although I suspect at least one of them is going to go for a lot of teasing-mileage out of it).

Yummy carrots straight from the garden.

This morning found me up at the DMV getting the license renewed after last week's emission inspection.  Took a book, prepared to wait. It is, after all, Monday.  Sat down, read 1/2 a page and my number was called!  I love when things take so much less time than expected.

And the blood pressure machine at the grocery has been fixed.  Today's results:  117/76.  Made me smile.

So...another week.  With 6 more chances to start fresh each day to be kind, to do my best, to be tolerant of others, to dispense / receive hugs and to find at least a teensy bit of joy.

I'm so grateful for the chances that are mine, that Heavenly Father is so generous with me as I struggle to become the best me I can be.  I'm grateful that August won't last forever and the heat will soon diminish.  I'm grateful for a morning walk (though the days are shorter, it's much darker in the morning when I leave) that lets me breathe deeply, think deeply, and savor deeply the day's budding beauty.