New York City?!?!?

This is soooooo weird! Some time ago I had Jenna set up this thing for my blog so I could know how many visits I get each day and from where. It just seemed like fun. I look at it every so often and am always amused to see all of the various locations where the "hits" come from. Most of them I recognize as the homes of friends or family, or at least where I know the Church is established. I can always count on a whole slew of hits from Cleveland, Tennessee (Hi, Mom!), several from Aurora, Colorado (Hey, Em!), and a decent amount from El Mirage, Arizona (Howdy, Shulers!), Odessa, Texas (Tammy and Stacey), Anchorage, Alaska (at least one Nowling), Lynchburg, Virginia (this J.C. Penny model I know--ha!); I get one steady hit a day from Portales, New Mexico (Hi, Sister Doris!!!), and I get a landslide of hits from Portland, Tennessee. I don't know who lives there, but they've been to my blog more than my own mother! Ha! I'm pretty sure we have a church there, so I'm okay with that. ;-) There are several other locations that are steady visitors and then there are sporadic hits from all over the place. I've had people from Hong Kong, Paris, and Katmandu bumble into my blog. (I can tell it's a bumble because they only came once and the average time on my site was about 4 seconds! Ha!) But since I set my new blog address to start keeping track of things about two weeks ago, I have had 42 hits from New York City and 12 from Brooklyn. IS THAT COOL OR WHAT?! I don't know anybody in New York, so all I can figure is that I must have a fan!!! Okay, perhaps that's a little presumptuous. ;-) Either way, it's pretty cool! I've always had this thing for New York and although it's a little disarming to know that somebody is out there watching you and you don't know who they are (!), it's still pretty exciting that it's somebody from New York! So, to whoever it is who's watching from New York... Are you a native??? Do you have a great accent??? Do you live within sight of the Statue of Liberty or the Brooklyn Bridge??? Where's the best place to get pizza??? :-)

Okay, enough of that. I realize that I'm way overdue on a whole slew of posts and pictures from the past couple of weeks, but tonight is not the night. It's been a really strange day here today. We awoke to blizzard-like conditions this morning and had to cancel our church services. That feels so weird!!! We spent a little extra time in our devotions this morning because of it, then I got busy unpacking and doing laundry from our little family vacation while the kids played games and tried to play in the snow for a little while. (It was sooooo windy today! We got a huge, long gust of wind that felt like it was going to blow the house down and I ran to the window to look for Joe, the only kid still braving it out there. He was hanging on to a post with all his might and just grinning from ear to ear! Ha! Goofy kid!) James, the mighty chef, made some make-shift Chicken Cordon Bleu and spaghetti for lunch. Very tasty!

At 2:00 we went to church in Denver. :-) My brother has always been a geek, but sometimes it's a real blessing that he's of the computer geek variety. He's set up so that people who can't be in church (his own members, or perhaps people who don't have a church nearby) can call in and listen to the service live as it goes on. I've known that he's been doing this for a while and thought it was a wonderful ministry, but after having taken part in it myself today all I can say is, IT IS SOOOOO COOL!!! Ha! I loved it!!! The songs were a little choppy, but otherwise it was great. I felt so... connected! (No pun intended--really!) It was so neat to hear Brother Chris moderate and to have Brother VanDeventer for my Sunday School teacher and be able to listen to my brother preach... It was so great. It made the churchless day here much, much better. :-)

The plan after that was to get busy on Christmas cards. As is my nature, I got distracted and never ended up touching a card. I had bought a new address book last week and spent all evening looking up current addresses and figuring out who was going to make the book and who wasn't, then alphabetizing them and penciling them into the new book. I had people in my old book (at least 10 years old) who's addresses I've never used a single time. No matter how much I like the folks, if I haven't written to them or visited them in the past 3 years they got the axe. ;-) Anyway, now I'm all set and ready to get busy on Christmas cards. Except that I've completely exhausted my writing hand working on the address book. Dumb, D-U-M, dumb. ~sigh~ I guess I'll be sending out sloppy cards this year. I hate that!

Okay, enough. Got to go to sleep. Mom and I were up 'til after 2:00 last night and I skipped my nap opportunity today. I'm feeling it! I'll be back soon though.

Goodnight, New York!!! ;-)