Gatherings……

All that we experience is subjective.
There is no sensation without interpretation.
We create the world and ourselves;
Only when we stop do we see the truth.
Deng Ming~Dao

This past weekend was spent gathering with both friends and family.  The picture above is a picture of 4 of my most very favorite people.  There is a long story that goes along with how I ended up calling these girls my closest friends, but the short version is I came to know and love each one of them thru blogging….and while we all do not live close to each other we are always neighbors in our hearts!

The sad part of life becoming as busy as it has, is less time for reading and writing blogs.  No matter how much I try there just never seems to be enough hours.  It's funny, when I was spending time healing on the sofa, I actually managed to get caught up with all my blogs and thought I would be able to do so from that point forward.  Ummm….that lasted about 2 weeks and now I am in the weeds again.  Oh well…busy is ok too….beats the alternative. 🙂

The rest of the weekend was spent with family.  I was so fortunate to have 4 of my 5 children and their significant others home for Easter as well as my 2 grandchildren and new grandpuppy. :-)  Terry was kind enough to give me the recipe for her absolutely scrumptious lemon martini's, so you may see a few martini glasses here and there…thanks Terry!

It's no secret that I really enjoy having my kids home and Courtney is my late night companion.  She is a college student now and of course dorm living is not conducive for early night sleeping.  Frequently when she is here we will watch some late night series of House Hunters and catch up on life a bit.  She is a chatty soul much like I used to be in my younger days….ok…so…maybe I still am.

We also had the opportunity to get to know Hannah's boyfriend, Shawn.  It's no easy feat for a new guy to be introduced during a holiday dinner, but Shawn did great.  We all enjoyed having him here.

And then there was the puppy who is going to be one huge girl, just sayin….she is 5 months old and is the same size as my setter…yikes!  Ashley's new puppy, Makoda, is such a sweetheartl!  She is a Great Pyrenees/Black Lab mix and is as mellow as they come and we were so happy to get to know her as well.  Aidan really enjoyed snuggling up with her which is amazing as generally he is pretty nervous of dogs, even though I have a houseful of them.  (see empty martini glass…yum!)

Not to be outdone by her brother, McKayla managed to spend some quality time loving up on Makoda too.

I am so blessed to have such wonderful friends and an amazing family!!  I hope that you all had enjoyable gatherings this weekend as well.

(Oh….and you got a sneak peek of what the living room is going to look like minus a lot of things.)