Me, the Dancer

That's me on the far right with my foot out and my hands on my hips.

I took my dancing very seriously.

Look at that face!

Also in this picture from left to right, standing my cousin Becky Turner, my sister Carla in the yellow and black striped bee costume, Then Iris Valentine in the middle with the pretty white hat on, I'm proud of her for wearing the whole outfit. Next is Cindy Crabtree a Friend from church and then the serious me on the end.

Sitting: We are not sure who that girl is but how come she has flowers and the rest of us don't?? I think her parents loved her more than ours did :(

And very last, the littlest one is my adorable sister Lola Jill. Isn't she precious.

My cousin Iris, shared these pictures with me on facebook a few weeks ago. Nice squat, Iris.

She couldn't remember but she thought it was me that was holding that roll of toilet paper aka muff. So she had to dig the photo out and see for herself and funny thing was it was her holding the TP.

Fun good times!

Clay Balls

A man was exploring caves by the seashore. In one of the caves he found a canvas bag with a bunch of hardened clay balls. It was like someone had rolled clay balls and left them out in the sun to bake.They didn't look like much, but they intrigued the man, so he took the bag out of the cave with him. As he strolled along the beach, he would throw the clay balls one at a time out into the ocean as far as he could.

He thought little about it, until he dropped one of the clay balls and it cracked open on a rock. Inside was a beautiful, precious stone! Excited, the man started breaking open the remaining clay balls. Each contained a similar treasure. He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in the 20 or so clay balls he had left. Then it struck him.

He had been on the beach a long time. He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls with their hidden treasure into the ocean waves. Instead of thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of thousands, but he had just thrown it away!

It's like that with people. We look at someone, maybe even ourselves, and we see the external clay vessel It doesn't look like much from the outside. It isn't always beautiful or sparkling, so we discount it.

We see that person as less important than someone more beautiful or stylish or well known or wealthy. But we have not taken the time to find the treasure hidden inside that person.

There is a treasure in each one of us. If we take the time to get to know that person then the clay begins to peel away and the brilliant gem begins to shine forth.

May we not come to the end of our lives and find out that we have thrown away a fortune in friendships because the gems were hidden in bits of clay .

May we see the people in our world as God sees them.

I am so blessed by the gems of friendship I have with each of you.

Thank you for looking beyond my clay vessel.

My sister Jill sent this today and I had never seen it before. I loved it and wanted to share it with each of you!

More Birthdays

Happy Birthday sister "Lola Jill Crenshaw"

Happy Birthday "Andrew Cardon Ripley"

Also today is my friend Maggie Taylor's birthday.

My scanner isn't working or I would have

scanned in a picture I have of her from 10

years ago, sorry Maggie.

Three very special people share the same birthday!