Friday Favorites 3.19.21

Happy Friday! I'm linking up with Andrea from Momfessionals for this blog post.

I have a long list of favorites from this week, so buckle up! 

It's no secret that cold/cool weather is my favorite, but I've also enjoyed sitting outside on warm nights and watching a show or two. Todd was out there watching this game Saturday night and I went out there Tuesday night to do the same. This deck and sitting out there is my favorite. 

I hope to see the boys and their friends sitting out there in days to come. It's such a great hangout spot! There's tons of seating and cushions, and who doesn't love magical twinkling lights?

Oh, Timehop. Sometimes you're my favorite and sometimes you make me cry. Surely these boys should still be this little. These days when they were so young were truly the best days of my life. Everyday was an adventure and we were ALWAYS up for one. 

We loved going on picnics, we loved long rides with the dog(s), we loved being outside, we loved finding new places they could run around and play hide and seek, we loved being on the town square every Friday night as we listened to bluegrass music while they ran around with friends, we loved Fridays with Pappaw, going to the zoo/children's museum/anywhere downtown, we loved having friends over, we loved cooking together and a million other little magical moments. We didn't have very much in terms of money, but we were abundantly and richly blessed with time and adventures. These guys have always been full of joy, just like you see in these pictures and they still are. One thing I always hear is how they're all always smiling. 

If you're a mom with littles at home, DON'T BLINK. Babies don't keep. Before you know it, they'll all be grown and you'll have more time on your hands than you care to admit.

New journals are my favorite. My friend Rhonda sent me this beautiful, personalized journal before Christmas. The cover is navy blue with a cross made out of flowers and I just started using it this week, when I finished the one I started around December the first. Even more than this journal, I love a thoughtful gift. I had been out the day I got this in the mail and I was shocked to receive such a sweet and unexpected gift. She wrote me the sweetest note to go along with it, which you know I saved. 

Look at the bottom of the page—I love how each page has a verse with my name inserted into it! It's by Paper Sunday, for anyone who is wondering.

I stayed home all of Wednesday and Thursday, which was glorious, and cleaned out three areas inside the house—our closet, the tornado closet under the stairs and the bookshelf in the living room. Look at all these Bible study books! I've spent the last fifteen years of my life raising boys and being a student of the Word of  God. My very first Bible study was on the book of Daniel and looking back over it yesterday, it was only by the guidance of the Holy Spirit that I as able to complete that study. The first part was easy, but the second part on prophecy was a doozy! Prophecy books intimidate me, needless to say. 

A lot of these are old Beth Moore studies, along with some by Lysa TurKeurst, Priscilla Shirer, Kay Arthur, Jen Wilkin, Anne Graham Lotz, Stasi Eldridge and maybe a couple of others. These are not all the ones I have that I've completed, it was only what was in the tornado closet. My others are on bookshelves throughout the house. I posted this picture on social media and asked people what they did with old studies like this and the overwhelming answer was to keep them. I did toss some of them, but I kept all of the workbooks and a lot of the Precept studies I've done. 

Like I always say, Bible study is my favorite. I can never get enough and I don't ever see that changing, Lord willing. These days I enjoy helping to write the studies for women in our church and I still love doing some of them by the ladies I mentioned above. One of my favorites that I have ever done is The Armor of God by Priscilla Shirer. 

I love looking out the windows and seeing color and buds on the trees. Springtime color is one of my favorite things to behold and it gives me such a vivid spiritual picture of Jesus giving us new life when we put our faith in Him. 

These words with the box around them in my Bible are some of my favorite. 

I saw this on social media early in the week and it is one of my favorite things from the whole week. These words are so true! I always tried to be that mom who swam with her kids, even though I hated what I looked like in a bathing suit. Life is short! Embrace the moments the Lord gives you in life with your loved ones, like I said earlier—you'll blink someday and they'll be over. 

I am reminded of what one of my favorite bloggers and authors Sophie Hudson said one time—how she wished that someone had told her that one summer that it was the last summer her son would ask her to swim with him, that she'd known that she was living in the golden days of his childhood and that she would have lingered there just a bit longer. 

Whew. I can't hardly write that without getting a lump in my throat and teary eyed, as I write this in my quiet house. 

According to some blog statistics I looked at a bit ago, my posts from Thursday and Wednesday were your favorites. Scroll down a bit and read them for yourself, if you're interested! 

That's about all I've got, my friends. Thanks for reading along! I hope you have a great weekend, I'll see you back here on Monday.