July 7 Shari comes to town

Friday:  The much anticipated 3-day visit from my niece, Shari, finally arrived! She came to see Ruthanne and Terry's new location and house. It's been years and years since I have seen her--it was lovely to be included in so much of her visit here to see her folks.

We all ate dinner together out in Rockford at "The Toasted Pickle", in view of the dam. It's a super nice location. Shari and Terry ate the fish dinner, Ruthanne ordered a chicken sandwich (1/2), and I got their version of a reuben (I forget what they call it), also a 1/2 sandwich. SO yummy. We had a nice time visiting around our meal and then we walked around the dam a little bit to enjoy how beautiful the night was.

It was much hotter than we figured--probably because the SUN finally made it's appearance sometime after 4:00 and it just heated everything up really quickly. We crossed to the other side of the dam and walked the pretty boardwalk across the way for awhile. 

I LOVE swans--and there are ALWAYS swans out here. 

I love this place! We had such a nice time walking and talking ...

When we crossed back over to the other side of the dam, there was a family feeding a bunch of ducks--however, this swan was capturing most of the food being thrown.

Saturday, Mark treated us ALL to dinner ... and he wasn't even here! He's just a super nice person and extended his kindness across the miles to us. We decided to eat at Black Rock (located at Woodland Mall). I'd never eaten there before. Ruthanne and Terry have eaten at one in the Detroit area--but not this one. WOW. What a treat. I don't eat beef very much. It was such a treat to eat good quality COW and be able to cook it exactly like I like it. They bring each customer their own ROCK that is heated to 750 degrees, with a handy guide as to how many seconds to cook each bite to get the desired "done-ness". I like cow medium rare--so it was just a few seconds for each bite. It was beyond words ....

Sunday, Shari worshiped with us at Calvary. It was such an uplifting service. Pastor Jim was back from his study break and taught the last Beatitude (Matthew 5.10-12): "Blessed are the persecuted ..." which I am going to have to listen to a few times (via Youtube) because it was packed with so much good teaching. The music was wonderful too. We ate lunch at Buddy's (naturally), and then got together again Sunday night--this time over at my place--to play "Apples to Apples" a truly stress free and fun game. 

Shari and her entire family had taken a 2-week trip to Israel at the end of May--so we compared our trips and enjoyed talking about interesting things we had learned just by having been in the Holy Lane--even though my last trip there was almost 20 years ago! It was a joy to look back and talk about such amazing and life-changing lessons we learned while there.

It was a joy to have Shari come to visit!