Thankful Thursday - Purim Pics, Blessings, & My New Book

Greetings to you all, dear Gail-Friends.  I'm so excited today because my new book will be published very soon.  Hopefully, it will be the first or second week of April.  I'll keep you posted.

The book is titled Golden Moments and is a compilation of inspirational stories about my answers to prayer and "aha" moments in my life.  Some are funny and some are deadly serious.  All are true.  I'm publishing them with the hope of inspiring the reader to pray about everything, no matter how small.

I promised you some Purim pics and to tell you about our special guest at our celebration.  Here you go:

We had fun with these photo cut-outs, made by a very talented synagogue member, Lisbet.  I loved how she added lace and jewels to the paintings.  Everybody had their picture made with them, and it was great fun.

Rabbi Jem doesn't look happy, but he really was.

Here he is with his puppet.  He loves to be dramatic and act silly.  This is his "oldest rabbi in Israel" get-up.

These are the members of the play.  During intermission, we had a Purim parade with singing, dancing, and lots of groggers, of course.

The show was put on by some of our teenagers.  The director, Taylor, is barely 13 years old.  She was really good at directing.

Taylor and Naomi with their puppets (made by them)

 Matthew made a great looking puppet.  This was the court jester, who told funny jokes.  (Not in the script, but we loved it.)  There was lots of ab-libbing, too, by everybody.  Hilarious!

I told you we had a special guest.  Well, here he is!

It was President Donald J. Trump!  So exciting to have him with us for Purim.  Matthew made this one, too.

Another of our talented ladies, LaVonne, made a pinata of Haman's head!.  It was so much fun watching the kids beat him with a stick till all the candy fell out.  We love to hate Haman!

He was ugly...even had hair coming out of his nose and ears!  Booo....Hisss....!

After the celebration, we ate!  You know the old saying,

"They tried to kill us.  

We survived.  

Let's eat!  

And of course, we had hamentaschen - a traditional sweet cookie shaped like Haman's hat.

I think it was the best Purim celebration we've ever had.  You can a few more photos of this year's celebration HERE. You can learn more about Purim by clicking on the link under subjects on the right-hand side of this blog.  Just scroll down - there are lots of posts.  You might even like to try my hamentaschen recipe.

I'm counting my blessings that we have such a loving congregation.  We are a family, really.  All loving and supportive of each other.

This is my beautiful amaryllis that always blossoms  this time of year.  I counted a dozen blooms that day.

And I'm thankful that the painted buntings are still here.  We've had the coldest winter I can remember in years.  Cold for us is 40's at night at mid to upper 70's during the day.  It's not bad, of course, but it's too cold to sit on the porch in the early mornings.  I've been using my fireplace dvd a lot.  I'm ready for spring, aren't you?  Still I'm so blessed to live in the place where people vacation.  We call it paradise.  Thank you, Father, for putting us here.

What are you thankful for this week?

Have a blessed week ahead, dear Gail-Friends.

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 OVER THE MOON LINKY PARTY!
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