Birthday Blessings

I can hardly believe that it is the birthday season again here in our home.  I start things off in November.  It was a wonderful birthday week with many special moments.

My husband purchased a new camera for me! :)  I am so excited!  

I wanted a really nice camera this time.  We purchased it on sale and I am thrilled with it so far.  I look forward to blogging here more now that I have some decent pictures to post.  

My darling husband also took me to a wonderful dinner at Outback for my birthday.  In the backseat he had placed a ridiculously large box of Whitman's chocolate for dessert.  It lasted nearly a week in this house of 7 chocoholics so that may give you an idea of how large this box was! Here we are getting ready to go out on our date.

Alpheus is reminding everyone that I just turned 41! :)

That is okay, because his birthday is coming up soon. LOL

The day after my birthday I enjoyed lunch with my mom and sister which was a special treat.  I am so thankful to be living close to my family.

I took off all week long from substitute teaching and just worked with my girls on their last home school week before vacation.  We are half way through our year and will be enjoying a five week vacation through the month of December and part of January!  They are thrilled.  I will try to post about our December activities.

On Friday night we played for the Bluegrass Gospel hour at Floyd Country store followed by dinner at the Pine Tavern.  That was a great night and we are so thrilled to have two new members in the band.  Though I have to admit I was a little more nervous than usual because we were being video taped by the Crooked Road.  Meanwhile, back at home Aunt Leah was spoiling the girls with a movie and games pajama party!  

Today I finished off this wonderful week visiting a dear friend. She is such an inspiration to all that know her as she battles cancer.  I would ask anyone who reads this to please pray for my friend, Dedra.  We had a wonderful visit and it was so good to spend time with her. 

I will never have a birthday where I don't think about one very special person, my twin brother, Ed.  He lives in Kentucky and was in for a visit this summer which was super fun, but I sure wish we could have shared a birthday cake!  Ed and I used to wish that we had been born on opposites sides of midnight so we would have our own birthday separately.  We didn't realize that all too soon we would have spent more birthdays apart than we did together as kids!  I love you Ed, and hope you had a very special birthday!

Ed with his children and our parents in July 2012.