Lily Grace Meets Famous Blogging Friends!

 Lily Grace got to meet some very special blogging friends today!  CLICK HERE to get the scoop!

Rather than re-telling the whole story here, Lily said she would like for you to read all about it over at her Mommie's post, which has been linked above.  We had a LOT of fun, and Lily was the star of the show for sure!! Next time we may just have to hand out autographed photos!

Lily Grace with Terri from Your Friend From Florida, and Barbara from Sweet Tea and Sandals.

Hope you are having a wonderful day wherever you are and whatever you are doing!  Thank you for visiting, and maybe someday Lily Grace and her Mommie can come meet YOU too!!

Bye bye for now. 

Love, 

Lily Grace

Let's Go On a Scavenger Hunt! - UPDATED

Scavenger Hunt UPDATE

 UPDATE 7-28-2021   So far as I know only one person has accepted this challenge, Cathy at Tales of the TCKK Family HERE.  It's not too late to try it for yourself.  Check out Cathy's post and see what she found.   If you do the scavenger hunt challenge, please let us know and we will share your post here too. I don't have a "linky" thing to connect, but I can always post a link here for others' to see! 

Original Post:

Well, it's about time I was having another adventure, don't you think?  Things have been kind of busy around here, and Mommie hasn't felt much like going on adventures lately, but something special happened and she said we were going to have a fun adventure!  Something called a "Scavenger Hunt".  The special thing was this article came inside a magazine that came in the mail, Better Homes and Gardens, (the August issue).  Here is a link to the Scavenger hunt "Bingo" card:

https://static.onecms.io/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/sites/37/2021/07/09/BHG-Budget-Adventures-bingo-card.pdf   If you click on that, it will take you to something that looks like this:

You could pull it up on your phone and take it with you while you go looking for the things on this list! So Mommie thought this would be a great adventure for us to do together, and she talked Daddy into taking us around looking for these things in our town.  I thought it would be fun if all my friends wanted to do this too, and post your pictures of what you can find in YOUR town!   So, are you ready for an adventure?  Let's Go!! 

These pictures are not necessarily in the order on the "Bingo Card", but they are in the order in which we found them mostly:

Here's the Fire Hydrant! Isn't is a pretty shiny red one?

This tree is supposed to be cone-shaped. But here in Florida it is hard to find a perfectly cone-shaped tree except at Christmas time. So this little pine tree will have to do, Mommie said.

But here's a BIG Pine Cone! It's almost as big as I am!!

And there's a leaf that is bigger than my hand!!

Here's the STOP sign! Mommie said we must always stop and look both ways and listen before going out in the road. 

We don't have any "Little Free Library" boxes in our town, but we do have a big free library!

Mommie has this collection of feathers at our house. Some belong to hawks and some belong to Barred Owls. She has found them in various places over the years and likes to keep them because they are so special.

I found these fun shaped windows right here on Pamela's Victorian Cottage!!

Mommie has lots of different bird houses...here's a few that are in our house, but no real birdies can live in these:

But of course we have a real bird house out in our yard, and here's Mr. Bluebird right now, feeding his children inside!

I remembered that we have this little gnome fellow right here in our very own kitchen:

Isn't he sweet?

And here's a flower pot with a Jerusalem Thorn plant in it on our front porch. Don't touch that prickly, thorny stem! That might really hurt!! But it's still pretty, don't you agree?

Mommie saw these pretty "fun-shaped windows" this morning at our church: 

Aren't they beautiful?

And also here is the American Flag, at our Sunday School Building, with the morning sun shining behind it: 

We had to drive around a bit to find a yellow door, and then here is this one on this cute little chicken coop:   It's for sale if you want to buy it.

And would you believe there was another yellow door, right there at the same place?  The office building where you can go buy that chicken coop also has a yellow door! Who would think you could find two yellow doors in one place??? 

And that same place also had a two-car garage for sale!  So we found three things at one place! That was easy!

Since we were driving around this afternoon, on a Sunday, we couldn't find too many delivery trucks out on the road. But then we passed the Domino's Pizza place and saw this delivery car going out to deliver someone's pizza!

Next we went to a little park that we found while looking for a swing.  Well, first I found this see-saw and wanted to try that out:

"See Saw Margery Daw,

Jacky shall have a new master;

Jacky shall earn but a penny a day,

Because he can't work any faster."

Mommie said she used to say that when she was a little girl on the see-saw. Did you say that too?

Here's Mommie and me on the swing!  

(Mommie wanted you to know that she is feeling better today, good enough to sit on this swing!

And she thanks you for your prayers for her neck.  She believes Jesus is answering your prayers.) She also said to excuse her old clothes. She didn't get dressed up for the occasion because she didn't know she was going to have her picture taken.

And we don't know who's shoe that is in the background.  Actually, there were two of them. Someone must have run home barefooted.

It was fun to swing!!

This was fun too!!  A cute little red car, just my size!

And here is a "merry-go-round".  Mommie said she used to get sick on these on the playground when she was little, so she didn't spin it for me because she didn't want me to get sick.

Oh, we had to find a mailbox, and here was a nice one!! 

And we looked and looked for a basketball hoop, and finally saw this old one behind some trees in someone's back yard:

Here's someone's pretty kitty cat, laying out in the road...but this was a quiet back street with no traffic (except for us).  Mommie said she thinks the kitty is a neighborhood stray. There are a lot of them around town.

We had to find a wooden fence, so this one was pretty! Mommie said it is called a "picket fence".

Oh, there's a garden hose:

And there's another wooden fence! This one is at my big brother's house!!

And guess what?  I found this beautiful baby blue bicycle in their little storage shed! It belongs to my big sister "Auntie Rose".  I wish she would take me for a ride on it sometime!  Maybe she will if I ask her really nicely.  She had to work  today, so she couldn't go for a ride. Maybe next time.

Auntie Rose had a pretty flower pot with some lantana flowers blooming in it.

And here's a heart shape on a book shelf in Auntie Rose's house.

And guess who else I found at Auntie Rose and Big Brother Ben's house?  Not just one dog, but two!!

My little cousin doggies, Sugar and Spice!!

They sure were happy to see me!!

So then we came back home and here I am, saluting our American Flag on our front porch, before we took it inside for the night:

And so, we are checking off all the little pictures on the Scavenger Hunt Bingo Card, to make sure we found them all:

I think we did it!! Now it's YOUR turn!! How many of these can YOU find in your town or neighborhood?  I do hope you will play along and take pictures as you find them! This could be a LOT of fun!! Maybe something you can do with your grandchildren when they come to visit you!

Be sure to share them when you find them!!

7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened."

Matthew 7:7 -8

Baby Bluebirds and Roses

Wow! It sure has been an exciting couple of days here on Still Waters Pond!  

I've been spending most of my time sitting in front of our window that looks out toward the Bluebird House, watching the comings and goings of Mr. and Mrs. Bluebird, as they have been coaxing their baby birds to get out of the nest and fly!  There's one now! He was getting pretty brave and almost out of the house...

This has been my perch, on the table inside the window, where I had a front row seat to watch for the baby birdies to come out.

I was getting dizzy watching them so much as the babies would take turns sticking their heads out of the house and Mama and Daddy would come by with interesting looking berries and bugs, teasing them with them so they would want to come out and fly on their own.

Hey! You come back here with that! I'm starving!!

We weren't too sure how many birdies were inside the house, but we knew there were at least two, as you can see another little beak sticking up in the window here below:

Hey! Who are YOU looking at?  I'm stuck in there with my siblings, and it is very HOT in here!! Somebody please come and get us out of here!!

Wow, he's getting braver and coming out further and further, but this went on all day yesterday and into the early evening last night:

Then suddenly the first brave birdie flew out of the nest and onto our porch, right in front of me!!!!

He sat there looking around and chirping, as if to say, "Now what do I do? It's getting dark, and I don't know where to go or what to do!"

I was getting kind of scared for him, because it was getting darker and we hadn't seen Mama or Daddy fly by in a little while. Could they have already flown away and not known that the baby had come out of the nest?

Would they come and get him, or would he have to sit there all night by himself, wishing he was safe back inside the birdhouse with his siblings, who were still poking their heads out and calling to him?

Mommie said we should say a little prayer for him to be able to fly to safety with his parents before it got any darker.

And so we did.  Mommie said that God watches over the birdies and we shouldn't worry. He will take care of this little one.

He just kept hopping around and looking lost and alone.

He even looked back toward me, and I was telling him to "Fly, fly, be free! Your Mama and Daddy are up there waiting for you! You'll be safe with them!"

He seemed so uncertain of what to do that we were all getting a bit concerned for him.

But then, before we could blink our eyes, he took off and flew up to the nearest tree, and we could hear his Mama and Daddy chattering away at him to help him find them before it got dark.  But the other babies were still in the nest, and it was too dark for them to come out last night.  

This morning when we woke up we kept watching the bird house to see what would happen to the other babies.  One by one they kept peeking outside and looking around, and Mama and Daddy came to encourage them to come on out and join the rest of the family.

And, praise God! We were excited to see not one, not two, but three more birdies fly out of the nest, one by one, and off and up into the trees with the rest of the family!!

Mommie did get a few more pictures of the last one leaving the nest, but she discovered that she had forgotten to put the memory card back inside the camera, and so those pictures are trapped inside the internal memory of her camera and she does not have a cord to attach that will transfer them to the computer...(it's an older camera). She has ordered one from Amazon...that big place that seems to have everything somewhere out there in cyberspace, and it will get here sometime next week, so we will have to wait to see those other pictures then.  Bummer! 

But it was a very exciting morning, and we got to see all of them leave the nest before Mommie and Daddy had to leave home to go to church this morning! Yay!!!

Daddy said it reminded him of how it will be one day when we leave this earth for heaven. All of our loved ones and Jesus will be waiting for us up there, calling to us and welcoming us home from our earthly journey.  We will finally be free of this old earth and all of the darkness and worries and fears, and we will be safe on the other side!

What a glorious day that will be!

Speaking of loved ones, yesterday Mommie and I found this rose blooming in the Secret Memorial Garden. Mommie said this is the rosebush that was planted in memory of my big brother Matthew, who is up in heaven waiting for us someday.  

Mommie said this rosebush always seems to bloom on or around special days.

It started to bloom on Friday, July 23rd, which was our Nanny Steiner's birthday. Nanny is in heaven too, and she would have been 98 years old on that day.  

So we picked the rose yesterday and brought it inside and put it in a special vase so we could watch it open up even prettier and enjoy it in memory of Nanny.

Mommie said you probably already read all about Nanny Steiner's birthday over on Mommie's other blog: Closed Doors, Open Windows.  I wish I could have met her. Mommie said she is sure she would have loved me because I have pretty green eyes just like hers.

Well, I guess that's about it.  Oh, I helped Mommie fold the laundry yesterday too.

Here I am sitting in the laundry basket after I got to take a ride in it from the dryer to the living room! Whee! That was so much fun! Have YOU ever ridden in a laundry basket full of clothes before? Maybe when you were really really little?

Mommie told me the story about the Baby Moses in the Bible, who was put in a special basket in the river, to save him from the mean king. But the mean king's daughter found him and kept him for her own baby and the mean king couldn't do anything to hurt him then. Moses grew up to be a very strong leader, and he led the people of Israel out of Egypt across the Red Sea, and a lot of other amazing stuff. Mommie said you can read more about Moses in the book of Exodus in the Bible. He was one of God's special people that God used to do many wonderful things that changed the world! 

I wonder what kind of things I could do to help change the world? What about you?

God's Word says to 

"Commit your actions to the Lord,

and your plans will succeed."

Proverbs 16:3

That sounds like a good plan to me!!

Meanwhile, let's stop and smell the roses and enjoy the beautiful things God has given us:

Bye bye for now dear friends!

Love,

Lily Grace

xoxoxoxo