Monday Message

"I have on occasion cited the need for many reservoirs in our lives to provide for our needs. I have said, 'Some reservoirs are to store water. Some are to store food, as we do in our family welfare program and as Joseph did in the land of Egypt during the seven years of plenty. There should also be reservoirs of knowledge to meet the future needs; reservoirs of courage to overcome the floods of fear that put uncertainty in our lives; reservoirs of physical strength to help us meet the frequent burdens of work and illness; reservoirs of goodness; reservoirs of stamina; reservoirs of faith.

“Yes, especially reservoirs of faith, so that when the world presses in upon us, we stand firm and strong; when the temptations of a decaying world about us draw on our energies, sap our spiritual vitality, and seek to pull us down, we need a storage of faith that can carry youth, and later adults, over the dull, the difficult, the terrifying moments; disappointments; disillusionments; and years of adversity, want, confusion, and frustration.

. . .Parents. .are expected to lay foundations for their children and to build the barns and tanks and bins and reservoirs." (President Spencer W. Kimball)

Times sure feel like they are hard and they where for our ancestors as well. They pressed on. They did without when necessary. They grew and preserved food and stored what they could ahead. It isn't enough to just have enough for now, some are tempted to live a little better come what may but sometime 'come what may' can be hard.

So every time you go in a store for something, add one item to put up for later. It will add up.

Things are happening now with more frequency and causing so many to have hardships. We need to have stores for us and for others. Disasters don't come in convenient times.

Keep working on those skills too. You never know just how necessary they will be.

This is a sweater I have started. The yarn was gotten at a Hobby Lobby on clearance and the white Llama needle stoppers were a gift from our daughter, her set is the pink ones.

I am almost done with this needle case. I just need to add a button and cord.

It is now raspberry picking time. I have already started. I will be picking every other day now till the first few days in July. I wash and freeze them and make jam like I showed you in one of the last blogs.

I also made three batches of strawberry-rhubarb jam, one of our favorites for sure.

I have also froze rhubarb to be used in the winter.

At the time I am writing, our 50th anniversary is tomorrow. We have just come back from seeing our children and going to our grandson's graduation, it was a long trip.

And since you will see us in the hard hats during tornado weather we had before we left, I will add that after the first leg of the journey we had just got to our motel (a kind of rickety thing because it was a holiday weekend). It was on the second floor. We were there five minutes when our daughter texted us asking how was our weather... Well, it was overcast. She is a newscast producer and she told her weather person that we were about halfway there. The weather person anxiously asked where. Upon hearing, she told our daughter to tell us to take cover. As soon as we got off with her, the phone notification went off and tornado sirens sounded. And just that fast we were hit with bad weather. I could not believe it, it was the third tornado warning in one week! 

We took pillows and went to the bathroom. We were fine but we saw damage on the way from there. I felt not at ease not knowing what county we were in and not even sure of the town, it was a suburb of St. Louis but what was it called? We turned on the TV but couldn't find weather or local news so we were googling fast to find out. At home, I know the look and feel and have lots of warning ahead. We would be told by weather days in advance that bad weather was coming and the day of we would be put in thunderstorm warnings, tornado watches, then finally a tornado warning and we can go to the basement and put on our pretty hard hats....this wasn't the case but we made it through okay.

We had a nice time with everyone and no more bad weather was had. I had packed food ahead for supper to save money, here is where I say - poverty has its perks, we were not out in the weather.

This cat in the basket is what I picked up while visiting a yarn shop. The lines on it show different widths of yarn and tells what weight it is, very very useful because of that coned yarn I have, it will help me when trying to figure yarn for a project.

Tippy says, oh no another cat! But since she doesn't have to interact with it decided it was okay.

These are the Easter Lilies this year, pretty as always. 

The kittens are teaching each other the skill of resting, they say keep building skills.

Missy says keep learning to build your skills.

Tippy says to remember to get a little something each trip to the store to set aside for a rainy day.