Once again, thank you so much for your prayers and precious comments.  What an encouragement!  Here's another Todd update:  We think the pneumonia is doing better but the heart issue is of concern.  Tomorrow (Wed.) he is having an echocardiogram (someone from Portland comes here weekly to do this).  There is more to this but that's all I feel like writing.  Todd has reassured me that he'll get better and that everything will be o.k.   I'm scared again.  Hard not to be.  I know God is in control and I need to trust Him.  Todd is very tired, tires easily and the meds he's taking are giving him a bad headache.  But his spirit is good and he kids around with me and the children.  I guess this is going to be a long haul but we'll have to wait and see.  I need to focus my thoughts on other things. 

Like decluttering my house and my life.  And teaching my kids how to manage their money.  Having a garage sale this Friday and Saturday.  Getting our office room in order (where I am now sitting).  Planting the tomato plants.  Deciding what day we will stop school for this year.  Sitting down with Carmen for our annual "get ready for summer" pedicures!  We love to have painted toe nails!  There are so many things I should be thinking about.  I feel myself sinking into that "pit of despair" when I think about my dh.  I know it's a "pit" because I've been there before and have sunken deep into it.  The days are long.  I want him well!

O.k., enough, right?  Connie at wardsward has made a list of things she wants to do this summer.  And that got me thinking about some of the things I listed above.  I don't want this summer to just slip by and not have anything to show for it.  I tend to be a thinker more than a doer.  I think of a lot of great things to do but actually doing them?  Well ... it's not that I'm lazy, I just don't know how to get started sometimes.  Can anyone relate?

Hey, my mother told me today, through tears, of her becoming a Christian when she was 8 years old.  This was new information to me.  Her parents pretty much ran a Baptist church in Arkansas when she was small and her father preached when there was no visiting preacher.  Her mother ran the social activities.  One Sunday when a visiting preacher asked for people to come forward to receive Jesus, my mom answered the call.  Now, I was under the impression that she had prayed to receive Christ with me shortly after my Dad became a Christian.  But maybe she had just forgotten.  It doesn't matter.  I didn't say anything when she told me, other than I was happy to know.  I think that she is in that time period of her life where she's recalling memories of her youth.  She's a widow now and has a lot of time to think (too much time).  But I'm so glad she told me.  And it made me think that we need to tell our children of our own experiences of when we became Christians.  Talk about it often.  Make sure they know it was a particular time and tell of how you've grown since then.  Our kids need to know their family's spiritual history. 

I know this post is fragmented tonight but there's something else I need to work on - commas!  I over-comma, meaning I put too many commas in my writing.  I need to study up on what is correct in the area of commas.  I write like I talk and I want to emphasize just where I pause - like who cares?  You read things like YOU speak - not like I speak!  And I think I've spoken enough for now ...