You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them. -- Desmond Tutu

When you live with another person for 50 years, all of your memories are invested in that person, like a bank account of shared memories. It’s not that you refer to them constantly. In fact, for people who do not live in the past, you almost never say, “Do you remember that night we...?” But you don’t have to. That is the best of all. You know that the other person does remember. Thus, the past is part of the present as long as the other person lives. It is better than any scrapbook, because you are both living scrapbooks. - Federico Fellini

Repeat - hope you understand

Life has become a little less sweet, death a little less bitter, heaven a little more real. — Puritan Proverb (variation)

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. -- Mark Twain

My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it. -- Clarence B. Kelland

PRAY FOR MY MOM!

PRAY FOR MY FAMILY!!

My parents were in a car wreck today. My dad didn't make it. My mom's being lifelined to a major hospital.

PRAY!!

thank you

If suffering brought wisdom, the dentist’s office would be full of luminous ideas. — Mason Cooley

Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past. — Henry Ward Beecher

God gave us memories that we might have roses in December. — J.M. Barrie

At every party there are two kinds of people -- those who want to go home and those who don't. The trouble is, they are usually married to each other. — Ann Landers

It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start. — Mother Teresa

Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of to-day...it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul. — Francis Thompson

Anxiety is the rust of life, destroying its brightness and weakening its power. A childlike and abiding trust in Providence is its best preventive and remedy. — Unknown

I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. — Abraham Lincoln

Christmas is the day that holds all time together. — Alexander Smith

I am not alone at all, I thought. I was never alone at all. And that, of course, is the message of Christmas. We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest, the wind coldest, the world seemingly most indifferent. For this is still the time God chooses. — Taylor Caldwell

Despair is most often the offspring of ill-preparedness. — Don Williams, Jr

People need trouble -- a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy. — William Faulkner

There cannot be a crisis today; my schedule is already full. — Henry Kissinger

Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart. — Henry Clay

When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself. — Isak Dinesen (Baroness Karen Blixen)

There are times when a battle decides everything, and there are times when the most insignificant thing can decide the outcome of a battle. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Some businessmen are saying this could be the greatest Christmas ever. I always thought that the first one was. — Art Fettig

Shopping is a woman thing. It's a contact sport like football. Women enjoy the scrimmage, the noisy crowds, the danger of being trampled to death, and the ecstasy of the purchase. — Erma Bombeck

One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it's worth watching. — Unknown

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. — Herm Albright

It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent. — Dave Barry

In the opinion of the world, marriage ends all, as it does in a comedy. The truth is precisely the opposite: it begins all. — Anne Sophie Swetchine

Probably the reason we all go so haywire at Christmas time with the endless unrestrained and often silly buying of gifts is that we don't quite know how to put our love into words. — Harlan Miller

Poisons and medicine are oftentimes the same substance given with different intents. — Peter Mere Latham

When we walk to the edge of all the light we have, and take that step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen—there will be something solid for us to stand on, or God will teach us to fly. — Leiden ‘94 (?)

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge we make promise only; pain we obey. — Marcel Proust

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.
You're on your own.
And you know what you know.
You are the guy who'll decide where to go.
— Dr. Seuss

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. — Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist. — St Francis of Assisi

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. — Charles Dickens

When I walk by the wayside, He is along with me. When I enter into company amid all my forgetfulness of Him, He never forgets me. In the silent watches of the night, when my eyelids are closed and my spirit has sunk into unconsciousness, the observant eye of Him who never slumbers is upon me. — Thomas Chalmers

Most grandmas have a touch of the scallywag. — Helen Thomson

The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels. — Faith Whittlesey

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul. — Michel de Montaigne

The whole value of solitude depends upon one's self; it may be a sanctuary or a prison, a haven of repose or a place of punishment, a heaven or a hell, as we ourselves make it. -- John Lubbock

The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease. — William Osler

It is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men. — C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

Life without thankfulness is devoid of love and passion. Hope without thankfulness is lacking in fine perception. Faith without thankfulness lacks strength and fortitude. Every virtue divorced from thankfulness is maimed and limps along the spiritual road. — John Henry Jowett

God is a hedonist at heart. All those fasts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a facade, or only like foam on the sea shore. Out at sea, out in His sea, there is pleasure, and more pleasure. — C.S. Lewis: "Screwtape"

One of life's gifts is that each of us, no matter how tired and downtrodden, finds reasons for thankfulness: for the crops carried in from the fields and the grapes from the vineyard — J. Robert Moskin

Except ye become as little children, except you can wake on your fiftieth birthday with the same forward-looking excitement and interest in life that you enjoyed when you were five, "ye cannot enter the kingdom of God." One must not only die daily, but every day we must be born again. — Dorothy L. Sayers

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sometimes the most urgent thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest. — Ashleigh Brilliant

If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. — Moses (to God), Bible - Exodus 33:15

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it. I think that I see something deeper, more infinite, more eternal than the ocean in the expression of the eyes of a little baby when it wakes in the morning and coos or laughs because it sees the sun shining on its cradle. — Vincent van Gogh

By virtue of being born to humanity, every human being has a right to the development and fulfillment of his potentialities as a human being. — Ashley Montagu

The excitement of learning separates youth from old age. As long as you're learning you're not old. — Rosalyn S. Yalow

Always make your presence felt, in such a way that somebody misses you, but let not your absence be so long that somebody starts learning to live without you. — Pope Benedict XVI

Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. If I study hard, will I become a bad person? — Author Unknown

Yet, if he would, man cannot live all to this world. If not religious, he will be superstitious. IF he worship not the true God, he will have his idols. — Theodore Parker

Setting a good example for children takes all the fun out of middle age. — William Feather

Kissing is like drinking salted water. You drink, and your thirst increases. — Chinese Proverb

That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger. — George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking. — Jessamyn West

Our current obsession with creativity is the result of our continued striving for immortality in an era when most people no longer believe in an after-life. — Arianna Stassinopoulos

Almost no one is foolish enough to imagine that he automatically deserves great success in any field of activity; yet almost everyone believes that he automatically deserves success in marriage. — Sydney J. Harris

We may pass violets looking for roses. We may pass contentment looking for victory. — Unknown

If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work. — William Shakespeare

You may think it's easier to de-ice your windshield with a flamethrower, but there are repercussions. Serious repercussions. — Homer Simpson

History as a discipline can be characterized as having a collective forgetfulness about women. — Clarice Stasz Stoll

When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality. — Muriel Spark

For fast acting relief, try slowing down — Lily Tomlin

The only routine with me is no routine at all. — Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Sacrificing your happiness for the happiness of the one you love, is by far, the truest type of love. — Author Unknown

Sorry about the delay—it was my Anniversary!!!

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese

Sorry about the delay—it was my Anniversary!!!

Sometimes it's important to work for that pot of gold. But other times it's essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color to slide down on the rainbow. —Douglas Pagels, These Are the Gifts I'd Like to Give to You

Sorry about the delay—it was my Anniversary!!!

More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse. — Doug Larson

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO US!!! (26)

Chains do not hold a marriage together.  It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. — Simone Signoret

In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce.  The trick is to find, and continue to find, grounds for marriage. — Robert Anderson, Solitaire & Double Solitaire

Nobody succeeds beyond his or her wildest expectations unless he or she begins with some wild expectations. — Ralph Charell

Oh, the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on earth! — Jim Elliot

Letting go is one of the most bittersweet, God-given challenges a parent will ever face. — Elisa Morgan

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. — Confucius

The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts. — Henry Moore

An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality; our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing. — Samuel Smiles

Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times. — Anonymous

Grandchildren don't make a man feel old; it's the knowledge that he's married to a grandmother. — G. Norman Collie

History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.— Winston Churchill

It's amazing how grandparents seem so young once you become one. — Author Unknown

Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation. — Charlotte Bronte

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning "Good morning" at total strangers. — Maya Angelou

For there was never yet philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently.
— William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire. — William Butler Yeats

It is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men.— C.S. Lewis

We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will. — Author Unknown

Passion is the quickest to develop, and the quickest to fade. Intimacy develops more slowly, and commitment more gradually still. — Robert Sternberg

I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by. — Douglas Adams

Every time you date someone with an issue that you have to work to ignore, you're settling. — Author Unknown

Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while. — Kin Hubbard

Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end. — Author Unknown

Whatever we worship, short of God, is sure to be our undoing. — Mignon McLaughlin