Peace

I've been having bad dreams/nightmares over the past couple of weeks. Not every night but often enough. Mostly they have been somewhat comical, but last night was just plain disturbing and I woke up feeling the weight of it hanging over me. Then Julie and I sat down to do our reading (we're half way through the New Testament now, yipee!) and we were in Romans. It's a heavy book even when you are fully alert and not feeling disturbed already, but today it was even harder to focus than normal. On the other hand, listening to Julie read her chapters gave me a new insight into Paul's letters. I've always thought of them as books, but they are more like speeches. We ended in chapter eight. It talks about the evilness of sin that is in the world, but then it ends with those famous verses which just cleanse my soul of horror of my dreams:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or
persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ... No, in all these
things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced
that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor
the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all
creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ
Jesus our Lord.

Those verses just speak peace. God's love conquers all. And it is always there no matter what we are going through.

Pretty and Fun

We celebrated my birthday this weekend. One of my gifts was a new camera which several of my family got together to give me! :) So, I've been trying to put it to good use and hopefully will have more opportunities to do so over the next week.
Here are just a few pictures to start. I'm still learning all the ins and outs of my new fancy schmanzzy camera, so please bear with me.

First up we have a couple of coconut cakes that I made for my office and ladies prayer group for my birthday/Easter. And down below are the roses that my dad gave me for my birthday! :)

Consumed

My mind is all consumed with my brother's wedding recently. I think I am coming alive again after my winter hibernation and realizing that there are only two months left and I have two flower girl dresses to make and a wedding cake!
This last weekend I did manage to pretty much finish my dress. Still a little hand sewing that needs to be done, but pretty well done. Now on to smaller and better things. I am sewing the dresses for my nieces to wear. So looking forward to seeing them in this wedding! They are three and five and are the same size and a lot of people mistake them for each other in pictures. I think they'll be adorable little girls in their cream-colored princess dresses.
The material is laying out all over my sewing machine at the moment, just waiting to be cut. I just wish that I could make a dress for each of my nieces for this wedding. It is so much fun to make them feel like little princesses! And of course, those are fun clothes to sew too. ;)