It's NOT like riding a bike

Blogging, that is. They say once you learn to ride a bike you never forget. Apparently if you take too long of a break from blogging you have to start all over again learning to be faithful to it. I just can't get back into the groove!

This has been our first "normal" week in many moons. HA. What is normal??? We kept telling the kids we'd be getting "back to normal" this week, but each day so far they've said, "Mom, I thought you said today was going to be a NORMAL day." Monday we headed to town to do some house hunting for the Clarksons. We love looking at houses and it's been nearly two years since we had to do it for ourselves (ha!), so we've enjoyed it. I love discovering the different neighborhoods and styles of houses and whatnot. There are actually some really nice areas of town that we never knew existed. We stopped at Bath & Body Works so I could take advantage of their big hand soap sale. We are now well stocked with all manner of wonderful smelling stuff. :-)

Yesterday I got all of the laundry caught up and actually unpacked from our Friday-Saturday trip from last week. (Sad, hu?!) Last night James had to go into town to try to get some supplies so he could fix the printer and run off the Western Skies (to no avail--had to order parts), so he took Katie and Sam with him. They enjoyed Happy Meals and apple pies with Dad while I had a nice mother-son night with Joe. We worked real hard cleaning the house for about 45 minutes, then I mixed up a strawberry coke for him and a raspberry cream soda for myself, we sat down and ate a whole Totino's pizza each (!!!) and watched Loony Toons. It was GREAT! We were way too full for it, but I had already promised him that we'd have Mint Oreo milkshakes, too. ~whew!~ It was all GREAT though and so fun to have a night with just Joe.

Today we got up early to head into town and check out a couple more houses. We stopped at Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, making three very happy children. :-) First house was WAY north, probably too far to travel on a regular basis. Did some more running around town and checked out the second house. A real possibility, I think. Time will tell! We went to the thrift store and I found a FANTASTIC denim skirt for $4 (Wa-Hoo), some jeans for Joe, some pj's and other miscellaneous things including some winter snowman dishes (6 plates, 4 bowls, 6 dessert plates, and 4 mugs) for $6. Fun! :-) After all that fun we decided to run out to the thrift store in Moriarty, just for kicks. They are SO cheap out there. We found a jumper for Kate and some shoes for Sam. We had to stop by Wal-Mart on our way home and got back by about 2:30, I think, at which point I laid down and took a nap. ~aaaaaahhhh~ It was GREAT. :-) We did late afternoon school today and it actually worked out okay. Had tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. Can't beat that. ;-)

Well, the last of my children just got out of the shower, so I'd best get off of here and head to devotions so we can get them to bed on time. I'm HOPING to have the oomph to stay up and do all of the ironing tonight. We'll see! Until next time... whenever that may be! :-S

Hhmmm.

I haven't gotten back into blogging very well, have I? I've missed blogging and really thought I would dive in head first once I got started up again. So I'm just as surprised as you are! ;-) Things have been crazy, but that excuse only holds up for so long.

I really don't have much to say and shouldn't take the time to blog right now anyway. My life is "normal" today for the first time in several weeks, but now I've got a Regional Paper to put together! We'll be going on a mini-trip tomorrow and will be back Saturday night. That all means that I have no business blogging. But here I am!

Camp has been so long ago now and life since then has been such a blur that I'm not sure how many details I will be able to recall. So I'll post pictures instead. :-) I'm hoping to put together a Camp paper like we did last year, but I've waited so long now... We'll see. Maybe I'll start working on it next week and see if it will come together. I do know that we had one of the most glorious Camps ever! God just did sooooo much for us there and we're still rejoicing over it. It was just amazing. We had 106 campers this year (our largest camp ever), 20 saved, 17 sanctified, 15 filled with the Holy Ghost, 6 healings, 1 joined church, and 2 called into the ministry. WOWZERS! It was just sooooo good. (By the way, I didn't actually remember those numbers... I stole them from something James had written up! Ha!)

I don't have time for much, but I'll post some pictures from the first full day of Camp. First of all, here are our tireless directors: Dustin and Jamey Hays. They did a FANTASTIC job with this Camp. Which, of course, means that we know who did all of the actual work ahead of time. ;-) Ha!

We included a Camp t-shirt in the tuition prices this year and I'm so glad we did--made for a terrific Camp picture!

And here are just a few other shots from Camp shirt day. Haley didn't go for the "expedition hats" that several of the others had. For some reason (???) she preferred this one.

Little Miss Sadie, all ready for the great expedition...

Uummm... I'm at a loss. Come up with your own caption! HA!

Again, you're on your own! ;-)


And finally, here is a video clip of the one night that we were able to have Fun Time. (Most nights the services lasted so long that we just didn't have time for anything afterward.) The guys had stocking caps on their heads, wrapped in duct tape (sticky side out) and had to pick up as many plastic forks and spoons as possible. :-)



Okay, that's it! More later... though it will no doubt be a few days. :-)

My Blog Sabbatical

...has come to an end. :-) It lasted over a MONTH, if that's not the craziest thing. There has just been soooooooo much going on and so many reasons not to blog that I'm just now feeling that it might be time to jump back into it. I've missed it. :-)

I just have to start by saying how very much I love the Lord and how very, very blessed I am. His love and His mercy and His power and His grace and His sovereignty... seem so much greater to me than they ever have before. I feel like my faith has been strengthened these past weeks and like I have a "bigger" picture of who God is. And He is just so BIG. I love Him so much and am soooooo blessed to be one of His own!

SO! Where do I start? It's tough to back up a whole month to play catch-up, but it's been SUCH a month that I can't exactly skip over it and act like there's nothing noteworthy. Besides, this is my "diary" and I can't bear the thought of forgetting all about the craziness of it all.

It all started on a Thursday in mid-June... (Great start, hu?) Jon & Em and the kids, plus Persephanie and Kristen, came and stayed the night with us. It was such great fun, just way too short of a visit! They were on their way to Arizona to visit Grandma Bunny and we got to play motel for the night. :-) The most memorable thing (as seems to be the case when company comes nowadays) was the soda making! Unfortunately, all of the pictures I took were taken with Emilee's camera so you'll have to go to her blog to see them. It will be worth the trip over there. Ha! I love the pictures of Em making her soda! :-)

The Smith crew headed out Friday and the next crop of company arrived: the Hays, the Wantuloks, and Sister Clarkson. If I remember correctly (it has been a few days!) we stayed up until 3 something in the morning playing games. Sma-a-a-a-a-a-art. I wouldn't miss it for the world. James' soda keg holds 5 gallons of carbonated water and he was sure to have it filled and pressurized and ready for the crowd. Good thing, because I think Mr. Hays downed about 3 gallons himself. Ha! Okay, okay, so it wasn't quite that much. I think it was just 6 sodas that first night and another one or two for breakfast. Right, Brother Dustin??? ;-)

He sort of became the unofficial soda jerk and actually handled the machine about as well as James does. (The rest of us make a terrible mess--there's so much pressure that it's difficult to get it to not spray full blast and splatter all over the place!)

The next morning James needed help moving a boulder and actually asked Brother Dustin to help him. Can you imagine?! Dustin Hays... on our property... with a BOULDER??? Some people are slow learners, I guess. I immediately sent all of the children inside (especially Joe) and grabbed my camera.


They were making little to no headway with the rock until I finally felt so sorry for them I put the camera down. With the three of us it slid easily into place. I love it when they can't do things themselves and NEED me like that. Ha!

Back inside the house, Daniel was helping himself to some cereal... in a glass. I'd never seen such a thing and had to take a picture.


I really, really like Brother Daniel. I'm not sure I "get" him all the time... but I really, really like him! Ha!

That was the big shop-for-Camp day, so we all loaded up (minus our three kids and Sister Clarkson, who was so gracious as to stay behind and watch them for us!) and went to town to buy groceries. It involved 5 or 6 different stores in all, but it saved us a whole bunch of money doing it that way and we were able to get a whole bunch of candy bars donated for the snack shack at the last minute. Wa-Hoo!

We went to the campground and discovered people. Hordes of them. We were aware that a group would be using some of the facilities that night, but weren't prepared for the number of them! It was obvious right off the bat that the Hays & Wantuloks wouldn't be able to stay the night there, as was originally planned. So we unloaded all of our groceries and the whole crowd came back to our house. :-) Mom & Dad flew in that night, so I think it was a total of 17 people here... and somehow we managed to have only children sleeping on the floor--everybody else had a bed or at least a couch. So it worked out great! We were wise enough to not stay up until 3:00 again that night... though I can't recall a single detail of that night! Who knows what we did?! I'm sure it was fun, whatever it was. :-)

Hhmmm... The next day starts the story of Camp and I'm not up to jumping into that one tonight, so it'll just have to wait until next time. Probably won't be tomorrow. Maybe Monday? In any case (or "at any rate," as my new pastor prefers to say :-) Ha!), I'll leave you with a few more pictures, just for fun.

Here's a picture of a recent sunset...

There have been numerous snake catches this summer. Sammy had me measure this one... 24 1/2" -- a new record for the boys.

And here's a picture of some of our church folks after service the other night...

It was my VLB service and I spoke about how we are aliens here on this earth--we're only here temporarily and we don't really belong here. We don't fit in and we will be rejected and thought of as weird-o's and freaks by the "earthlings." I made antennas and some people were gracious enough to wear them through the entire service! Ha! I don't know if anybody got anything out of it or not, but it was certainly enjoyable to see everybody in their alien antennas. :-)