Nice Weekend, Happy Birthday

I've always believed birthdays are one of the best reasons to be on Facebook, and this year was no exception. In a pretense of humility, I will not count up how many birthday wishes I received. It wouldn't be easy, anyway, because some commented in response to my last blog post, some commented in response to a quote about aging I posted, and some commented in response to a shameless self-promotion plug I posted the day after my birthday--all in addition to Facebook's birthday notification at the top of friends' home pages.
It IS nice to hear from folks I might not communicate with any other time, though. I'm not planning on signing off of Facebook!
Actually, this year, I got my birthday cake as a result of one of those posts (not sure which one). My big day was Sunday, and it was a busy day at church. Evelyn and I had Welcome Center duty, and I filled-in as teacher of the Seekers class at 9:00. Then I had been asked to emcee a fundraising lunch that happened in the church parlor after the last service. When the event organizers, Dave and Valerie Reed, saw it was my birthday, they stopped by Kroger on the way to church and bought me a cake so everyone could sing "Happy Birthday" during the luncheon. I loved it!
The lunch was very nice, designed to raise funds to name a room in CCU's remodeled Rine Hall after

I opened my eyes and snapped this picture during the
closing prayer at the end of our lunch Sunday.

Vic and June Hunter. June was a graduate of the school and an active supporter. Her "adopted" daughter, Marilyn Pitzer, gave a fine tribute to Vic and June and presented Dave Faust (he was there and made a nice presentation, too) with a check for $25,000 from the Hunter estate plus a personal gift from her family. It was a moving, enjoyable day. We sat with Dale and Judy McCann and Cliff and Becky Leighty, plus one of the students who accompanied the Fausts to church for the event.
I attended the 10:30 worship in the gym (I'm usually in the auditorium or the chapel) and was especially blessed by Trevor's sermon about Solomon. I plan to discuss again with our men's Bible study Thursday four words Trevor chose to characterize Solomon's life:

• Compromise
• Exception
• Meaningless
• Duty

A couple of quotes I jotted in my bulletin:

"The road to folly starts with the word except."

"When a good thing becomes a god thing, that's a bad thing."

"Do something big with your one and only life."

We stopped at Kohl's on the way home and used a coupon to buy my birthday gift, a new pair of Skechers I can wear to work on jeans Friday.
Anticipating rain on Monday, Evelyn and I mowed grass after we got home. (For the record, that's lawn mowing no. 4 this year.) Shirley Wuske wanted to come dig some hydrangea sprouts from the bushes in the front yard, so we invited them to come share my birthday cake. After grass, before the Wuskes, both of the kids called, and we enjoyed nice catch-up visits with them. We had a great time digging and eating and visiting with Terry and Shirley (they brought ice cream to go with the cake!), and by the time they left, we were ready to get ready for the week.
It was a busy day, which is why I didn't have time to write about it then.
The birthday continued Monday; Evelyn got up in the morning and baked two coffee cakes for me to take to work. And then today the Magazines people took me to lunch. I chose Jason's Deli, the restaurant Sev and Paul Friskney had introduced us to earlier this year.
So I feel fully entered into my year as a 64-year-old. It was a happy birthday!