My Head Is Full of Books: Sunday Salon: Thankfulness edition 2023

"Outside a dog a book is man's best friend, inside a dog it is too dark to read!" -Groucho Marx========="The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." -Jane Austen========="I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book."-JK Rowling========"I spend a lot of time reading." -Bill Gates=========“Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.” -Jacqueline Kelly=========

Saturday, November 18, 2023

Sunday Salon: Thankfulness edition 2023

Everglades National Park. Photo credit: Don Bennett, Oct. 2023.

Weather: Variety. I am grateful for all weather. Right now I am grateful for rain. The earth needs it!

Thankful: Today I dedicate this post to thankfulness. In the midst of pain and strife we all still have a lot to be thankful for. Today and this week I celebrate those things.

Family:

Taken this last summer, this is most of my family.

Don and me with our daughters after seeing the Broadway touring production of SIX in Seattle.

Our grandsons and their parents. June 2023, Whistler, BC.

My siblings and I with Mom on her 94th birthday

Getting ready for a football game with our cousins. All of us in the photo attended the University of Oregon. Missing Dad and Brad, also Duck fans, who live on inside us!.

Friends: I don't often take photos when I am with people but sometimes I snag them when others do.

My college roommate joined us for a football game a few weeks ago. We win the prize for the most colorful fans, don't you think?

Best friends. Crescent Lake. Mar. 2023.

Pets:

Carly's cats: Fred and George

Rita's cats: Skimble and Sasha, all scrunched together in a box.

Bingley

Books:

The books I completed this past week and those I am currently reading.

Our church: Don and I don't live very close to extended family. Our church has become our nearby family and our beloved community.

Our little church: Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church

This new food discovery: Of course I love food. We all do. But I am wondering what took me 66+ years to discover caramelized spiced pears. They are delicious by themselves, as an ice cream topping, even as a hot cereal topping. I bet they would also work as a pie filling. If you come to my house for a meal, this is what I will be serving for dessert. (Link to recipe.)

Caramelized spiced pears. Photo credit

Living in the Pacific Northwest: Where we have beautiful scenery, mountains and the ocean just an hour or two apart.

Mount Rainier National Park, Paradise. Jan. 2021. Just a little over an hour from our home.

National Parks: While I'm thinking about nature. Here's a shout out to our National Parks. We've visited seven of them this year. All were gorgeous and amazing. Such beauty.

A view of the giant sequoias from inside a dead tree. Kings Canyon National Park, California. May 2023.

Magnificent giants. The biggest (not quite tallest) trees on earth.

Sunrise from Dante's Point. Death Valley National Park, California. May 2023.

Double Vision. Crescent Lake, Olympic National Park, Washington State. March 2023.

Haleakala National Park. View of the volcano's crater. Feb. 2023. Maui, Hawaii.

Petroglyphs at Hospital Rock, Sequoia National Park, California. May 2023.

Out in Biscayne Bay National Park with Miami in the background. Oct, 2023.

Everglades. Great Egret. Oct. 2023

Trip of a lifetime: to retrace the steps of our paternal grandfather who traveled from Panama to Ecuador and all the way down the Amazon River in 1923. (See my post about the trip here.)