Loving this South Texas Life
One year ago today we said “I Do.” Happy First Anniversary to my best friend. I loved you then, I love you now and I’ll love you forever. It’s been an amazing year with many joys and some heartaches but I wouldn’t want to be on this ride with anyone else. You encourage and help me to be a better me and we are better together. One year down, 50+ to go!
I love you!
This is not a sponsored post but I found a great company for online printing and really wanted to share it with you! CatPrint is an online Digital Printing Service. I purchased digital printables quite a while ago from Liv Lou Designs. (Truth be told I didn’t realize they were digital, oops!) and they were beautiful but I needed to find a way to print them. I just kept them waiting and then last week I decided to do some searching and stumbled upon CatPrint. There are definitely a lot more but this is the one I decided to go with.
I do not remember when exactly I ordered them but sometime last week (end of April) and it is May 6th. So I did not wait too long. They came packaged beautifully with peanuts. The prints were absolutely perfect. I had no idea what I was doing when I chose paper weight etc. but I chose Heavy Matte and it is perfect. Heavier than most printables I purchase. I paid about $18 with shipping. If you have more to print at one time then I am sure you will save on the shipping. The prints were about $10 and the shipping $8.
I am pretty positive that I will be purchasing more digital printables as I now have a place I know I can purchase them and receive beautiful product back!
So I mentioned in my last post (I have been bad at posting! I am sorry) that we lost our beloved cat Willow last week. She was my companion and my buddy. It is horrible to loose pets at any time but last week was just not the time that it needed to happen. I hated that she was even an outside cat but there are tons in the neighborhood and we rescued her off a ranch. Prior to, she climbed the walls of the house. I lost my buddy and companion but I know we have to move on.
I work from home and so it really helps me to have a pet, especially one that I am so attached to. We have been talking about getting a new dog since we had to put down our elderly shih tzu named Pancake but were going to wait until our yard was completed. Because of the circumstances we ended up with a new family member a little sooner.
Introducing Piper.
Piper is a black labradoodle. She has brought some much needed joy and excitement to our house.
She loves running in the grass and yesterday we took her for her first visit to a state park. She had a ball. She fell into the water, got herself really dirty and then was exhausted on the way home. I put her at my feet but she still found enough energy to climb up onto my lap. Today she went to the vet and did great.
Hopefully we will have joy for a little while from here on out. We still recognize though that the Lord is good no matter what happens 🙂
When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider this: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, no one can discover anything about their future. – Ecclesiastes 7:14
We lost our beloved Willow yesterday. I never wanted an indoor/outdoor cat because of the risks but adopting a ranch cat, it was in her blood. She loved exploring and catching birds. She loved running outside. Yesterday, she got hit by a car. I don’t know why it had to happen yesterday, basically in the worst week of my entire life, but it did. And my beautiful, gray, perfect cat is now gone.
She loved her scratching pads. She got so excited when I brought a new one out jumping up to get it before the plastic was even off.
And she loved to snuggle with me. In the morning and evening after she had played outside she was mine. She would nudge my phone if I was on it for attention or bite my hand so she could be scratched. But never on the belly, that was off limits.
She loved looking out the window and watching what was going on. She had different spots throughout the house that were her perches. Willow, you are going to be greatly missed. I don’t think you were in pain as I think it happened in an instant and you were doing what you loved to do.
So I love when I am reading my devotionals and it is such a simple truth but one that I think we tend to forget so easily. We spend so much time viewing what we think are these perfect lives (thank you Facebook & instagram) and when we are having a sad day or a less than ideal time we think something is automatically wrong with us. But it isn’t. It is okay to have a not so good day. There isn’t anything wrong you. Now you don’t want to wallow in it and allow it to get you in a funk but for moments and periods it isokay to not be okay. Take heart with what Jesus did in Gethsemane in Matthew 26:36-39.
Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
In this passage we see that Jesus, who was without sin and perfect, was full of sorrow and trouble to the point that He asked his friends to stay with Him, He did not want to be alone. If Jesus can share His troubles with His friends, can’t we do the same thing? But a very important lesson to learn here is that even though Jesus shared it with His friends, vented a little, He still gave it to God in verse 39. “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
So when we have a less than perfect day, we can vent about it as needed, talk to God about it (most important!) and then move forward. But it is always okay to not be 100% okay. I don’t think not being okay should be the attitude you should be okay with having all the time and I do not think it should be used as an excuse but I do feel like we do not have to be 100% okay, 100% perfect all of the time. That would be incredibly exhausting.
originally posted on my previous blog Ladybug Blessings.