Lily Grace Celebrates Autumn and a Special Party!

Hello my special Blogland Friends!  I was SO happy to wake up this morning and see so many pretty new decorations in our house!! I asked Mommie what it could all mean?  She said we are celebrating the season of Autumn, or "Fall", when the air starts getting cooler and the leaves turn pretty colors begin to "fall" from the trees outside!  She said we will be watching for those changes when we take our walks in the coming days and weeks, because here in Florida, where we live, it takes a bit longer to really feel and look like Autumn.  We don't have as many pretty trees that get colored leaves like they do up north, and the weather tends to stay pretty warm until later next month.

But Mommie said we don't have to wait for the leaves to change and the air to get cooler outside to get ready for autumn inside!  And so, when I must have been sleeping, Mommie asked my big brother Scotty to bring in the boxes of fall decorations from the shed so she could start decorating. I was so excited to see all these pretty things! You see, I wasn't living here last year when autumn came here, so I never saw any of this before! It really is quite exciting!  

I asked Mommie what all those things meant on that sign:

"Hay Rides, Apple Picking, Bonfires, Raking Leaves, Corn Maze, and Pumpkin Patch".

She said those are kinds of fun things that people love to do during the fall season. Sadly, we don't have any apple orchards here in Florida, so we can't do that. But if we look hard enough, we might be able to find some of the other places to do those things.  We can make a bonfire right here in our own back yard too. And we will have some leaves to rake eventually!

Mommie said that autumn is also the season when we have Thanksgiving, and we will have a big gathering of family and friends to celebrate and eat turkey and give thanks to God for all our many blessings.  Of course, we give thanks to God everyday for all our blessings. We don't have to wait for Thanksgiving to do that! But Thanksgiving is very very special. I can't wait to eat my first Thanksgiving dinner with all our family!

Mommie said most all we want to be "grateful" for all that God has done for us.

I noticed something else.  This pretty teacup as pretty purple flowers on it, and inside the cup it says "September".  

Mommie really likes that cup because September is her birth month! She said later this month we will celebrate her birthday! Oh goodie! I can't wait!!! I love birthday parties...as you will see in a few minutes...

But first, we had to visit the "Scarecrow Crossing".  I asked Mommie, "what's a scarecrow?"  And she said it was a funny man made of straw and old clothes on a post in the garden to scare away the crows from the garden!  She said the crows would think it was a real person standing there, so they wouldn't want to come near that garden.  

I think he's cute, don't you?  He wouldn't scare me!  I would just like to make friends with him!

I found a funny owl! Mommie said this owl is really like a little candle, to add some light to our darker nights in the fall. The sun goes down earlier in the autumn, so Mommie likes to burn candles and lanterns and stuff to make pretty lights. Maybe we will have to take some more pictures later when the candles are lit.

And I jumped when I saw  this thing!  What is this, Mommie?  She said this is called a "Jack-o-Lantern", and even though this pumpkin is made out of ceramic, usually in the fall Mommie likes to get a real pumpkin and take all the seeds and stuff out of the inside, and cut a funny face in it like this, and put a candle inside and put it outside on a special day called "Halloween".  Mommie said we will talk more about that later, but that Halloween comes in October, and it is also lots of fun. She said some people try to make it really scary, but we just like to have fun on Halloween. But she said we'll talk about that more next month!

But NOW to the SPECIAL PARTY!  Last night we celebrated my big brother Benton's 50th birthday!! Can you imagine  that????  

He must be OLD!

Oops, when I said that, he did this to me!  Mommie said that wasn't nice. Even my sweet big sister "Auntie Rose" didn't think that was nice, can you tell?  

Anyway, we had a really special meal of lasagne and salad and garlic toast and the birthday cake for dessert!  Wow! I was sure stuffed after that meal!

Here's the rest of the family enjoying that dinner!!!

And then we celebrated Benton's birthday with cake and ice cream!

Here we are all singing Happy Birthday to him!  It was such a happy time.

Especially happy because my big brother Benton and my sweet Sister Auntie Rose were both SO sick on his real birthday a few weeks ago, and so we had to postpone his party.  We are SO happy that they are all better now. Mommie said Jesus really worked a miracle to help them get well, and we are very very thankful.

So when we get to that special Thanksgiving day later in the fall, we will definitely add THAT blessing to the list of things to be thankful for!

So, that's all my latest news! How about YOU?

Do you decorate your house for autumn too?  Do you celebrate birthdays and do special things with your family when you can?  Mommie said that life is short and we need to celebrate whenever we can!

Okay, friends, I have to go now.

So bye bye and remember, Jesus Loves You, and I do too!

Love,

Lily Grace

xoxoxoxxo

 

Friday Foto Friends with Lily Grace

Yesterday was a very special day.  Mommie has already written about it over at Closed Doors, Open Windows today, so you can go over there and read all about it after you enjoy looking at my pictures...or you can go look at Mommie's pictures first if you want.  Just be sure to come back and visit me too, 'cause I love to have visitors too!

This picture ought to make you wonder what I was doing, but I will 'splain later.  I just thought this picture would be a good one to get your attention! 

So, Mommie already explained that yesterday was my brother Matthew's birthday, but he's up in heaven and we couldn't celebrate with him, but we wanted to still "celebrate" his birthday and remember him in a special way.  So Mommie and Daddy

 and my big brother Benton and Auntie Rose (who is really my sweet sister in love, but it's easier to say Auntie Rose) 

decided to take a nice ride and go out to lunch at an interesting place called the Florida Cracker Kitchen.

After they finished their lunch Mommie showed me this fun miniature golf place next door that has all kinds of fun animals that represent the early Florida Cracker cattle ranchers in some way.

So Mommie took my pictures while I was sitting on these fun animals:

This was a "wild pony"

And a BIG BLACK BEAR!   I was a little nervous, but he was very friendly and didn't mind me sitting on his bear paws at all:

These two monkeys were funny, and I guess monkeys used to be wild in the forests of Florida too:

This wasn't a "wild pig", but just a nice farm piggie.  

But this one was a Wild Boar, and they still run wild in the woods here in Florida today. They can be quite mean, so you don't want to get in their way. Thankfully, this one was pretty tame:

After I got to see and sit on all the animals, we took a ride to another special place.  Mommie said she has shared more pictures of this place for you before:  HERE and then again Here .  If you read those two posts, you will know why this place is so special.  Yesterday, because we had my big brother Benton and Auntie Rose with us, Mommie and Daddy especially wanted them to see it.  You see, my big brother Benton attended church camp here at Lake Swan Camp many many years ago when he was a young boy, and so did my big brother Matthew and my big brother Scotty.  Mommie tells the story all about that in the link above. 

Knowing that my big brother Matthew attended camp at this special place really made us all feel a little closer to him as we saw all the places that he saw, and heard about some of the stories of that week as my brother Benton recalled it.

I was wishing I could go jump in that pretty lake and go swimming, but Mommie said maybe on another day.

Then I wanted to go up on this giant slide and slide down into the water:

So now you know where THAT picture came from!

But I didn't slide. It was a LONG way down there and there was no one to catch me at the bottom. But I bet it would have been a lot of fun!!

So then I decided I wanted to be a lifeguard, and help save people's lives if they had trouble swimming!

Did you know that my Daddy used to be a lifeguard at the ocean?  I didn't know it either, until he told me about it!! He worked at one of the beaches one summer as a lifeguard, and had a lot of interesting stories to tell about the people whose lives he did save who were in deep water and struggling to swim. It was very scary, but he knew God was with him and helped him to do his job. 

It sure was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and it was warm! I wondered what it was like in heaven where my big brother Matthew is.  Mommie said it is always beautiful and perfect in heaven. There is no need for the sun or the moon there, because Jesus is the Light of heaven.

"The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light."

Revelation 21:23

Back at home Mommie wanted to see if anything was happening in the "Secret Garden", which is also a kind of memorial garden for my big brother Matthew.  Mommie said that oftentimes the climbing Don Juan Rose bush will bloom on or near special dates. This rose bush was originally planted in the memorial garden at our old house, and Mommie brought it with them when they moved here. It needs to be planted because it is still in a pot, but that is a spring project. The bush is getting new growth, which Mommie said it will be blooming again soon. Yay!!

Mommie said that also that plant that looks like it is dead in front of this sign was also from the Memorial Garden, and it is a "Rose of Sharon" bush. It is actually getting new leaves on it, so it is coming back to life again! Yay again!

We are having fun watching the bluebirds...another sign of new life, Mommie says...

And these Carolina Jessamine flowers are really blooming a lot now...

So I picked some along with some more fairy flowers, and we made a bigger bouquet in memory of my brother Matthew for his birthday.

I think he will like that, don't you?

Thank you for joining us for this special time of celebration in memory of my brother Matthew.

Mommie said this was one of her favorite pictures of him. I wish I could have met him. 

Happy Heavenly Birthday Matthew!!

Bye bye everyone,

Love,

Lily Grace

xoxoxoxo