A Party is a Party

... but a party on a summer's eve, hhmmm!

A girl party is a girl party. And a kid party is a kid party. So far I'm really enjoying my weekend home alone with the kids. But only when I can keep myself from thinking about the girls gathered up north and all of the games and laughter that I'm missing out on with my dear friends! Ha! How spoiled I am!!! It really has been a great blessing that I've been able to be with them the past several years. It would be pretty selfish and childish to mope around that I'm missing it this year instead of being thankful for all the years I have been able to be there. So I'm trying hard to be thankful for the "extra" blessing I've had of being with them those times, and the blessing of having some special time with just my kids this weekend. I just really hope they're watching Nicholas Nickleby up there right now... Ha!

Backing up a bit... We had a good time with our company a few days ago. Scott Bambrough is attending the Men's Retreat in Colorado, so he and Angie stopped and stayed with us on their way through on Tuesday night. They didn't get in until about 11:30, I think, but we still stayed up and visited until about 2:00. At least that's when Angie and I called it a night. The guys were still going strong out in the office at that time, although they were both looking pretty ragged. Ha! We managed to be up at a decent our on Wednesday and--believe it or not--I pulled off a nice breakfast of bacon, eggs, biscuits and waffles. I am NOT a breakfast cook (my kids are lucky to have something other than cereal two or three times a month!) and usually struggle to get everything done at the same time (the eggs are always cold!), but this time everything fell right into place. Scott played baseball with the kids for a little while (with a tennis ball and a rifle... they don't have a bat! Ha!), then we all gathered for "church." Katie had prepared a "Sunday School" class, then Joe played his guitar for our songs. Afterward the kids went outside to play and the adults gathered for a nice game of I Buy before the Bambroughs took off. It was a great game. You can guess who won... :-) By the time we finished it was already past noon, so we talked them into staying for lunch before pulling out. Sandwiches and Frito pie. We had a really nice time and I'm so glad they were able to visit.

After they left we got busy on school... The rest of the day has been forgotten.

Yesterday... hhmmm. Lost, too. I just know we've been real faithful to school lately. It's the longest we've stayed HOME in quite a while now, so we're working hard to not miss any opportunities for school. Christmas cards--I finally took the Christmas cards down yesterday. I know it's a random thought, but it just hit me. :-)

We had a good BTI Bible Study last night. We're going through The Body of Christ and everybody really seems to be enjoying it. It's so important to go through those things--and the Teachings and the Advice--and keep them ever before our people so we can be firmly rooted and grounded in them.

After service I stayed up and proof read the Evening Light... though it was one of those nights when I kept reading the same thing over and over again because I'd get half way through and realize I didn't have a clue what I'd been reading. That's no condition to be in when you're supposed to be looking for mistakes! Oh, well. I tried!

This morning was Day One of "The Party." We got up early and took James to town to meet up with his chauffeur to Men's Retreat, Brother Chris. Got him "dumped off," as the kids kept saying, then headed back up the mountain. We stopped at the grocery store to get doughnuts for breakfast and a box of popcorn for our pizza parties. That's a good way to start out! :-)

Everybody enjoyed their doughnuts, then we had devotions and got right into school with hopes of finishing it quickly so the fun could begin. Ha. Bad plan. Katie was so bent on finishing quickly she was FLUNKING her lessons! B's, a D and an F!!! I was stunned and none too happy about it. It was obvious that she was just racing through trying to get it DONE without actually taking the time to try to learn or remember anything. I was flabbergasted and re-assigned several things, but as I was looking through her work I realized it would take her a couple of hours to re-do everything. She was already in tears and with the "Party Weekend" slipping away with each passing moment I knew it would be fruitless to try to make her do the work properly--she would have been a wreck and she CANNOT function like that, so it would have taken even longer than usual. I could have made her do it, but it would have made for a truly miserable day for both of us--on a day we'd both been so looking forward to. So I told her she was DONE with school for the day (in essence, "Katie, you win--you did so poorly today because you wanted to get into the 'party' and I'm going to let you just get away with it." I HATE THAT!!! But what else could I do?!), but to be prepared because Monday was going to be a killer school day!

These were taken before I discovered Katie's sloppy work. Sam decided he was going to copy a whole book today. He loves to copy stuff and I figure it's good practice for him and might help him out with his letters. We've been working on vowels this week and the sounds they make, as he tends to get them confused quite often! Causes real problems when trying to read, you know! :-)

Joe was gracious enough to sort of smile for me, even in the midst of dreaded schoolwork.
Katie and her little poodle, Kung Fu, NOT hard at work, as I discovered later.

We had lunch, then a Katie helped me bake some chocolate chip cookies. We all gathered around the table and got out some of the kids' Christmas crafts they hadn't had a chance to get to yet--some molds of Sam's and some clay of Katie's--the kind you're supposed to bake when you've finished your creation. Joe got bored pretty quick (not much of a crafter, that Joe fella') and ended up looking through the phone book for funny names. Talk about boring...

Here are some of our creations. Katie made the dog and I made the butterfly and the sheep. The dog is by far my favorite! I told Katie that if she keeps practicing maybe she could make some things out of clay for the Mission Table at the Assembly or something--I think her little pooch is adorable! :-)
She thinks so too, of course. :-)


After the crafts were put away the boys went outside to play. They came rushing in after a while a-a-a-a-all wound up about something. Sam finally found me and said, "Mom!!!! We found GOLD!!! In the yard!!!!!" They were digging with the shovel and kept hitting something hard that "clanked" each time. They are convinced it is an enormous treasure chest and all they have to do is unearth it. They're so convinced they've been fighting over who gets the gold crown that is surely in it, who's getting the jewels and the gold coins and who knows what else. I started to tell them they were probably just hitting a rock (I hate for them to get their hopes up like that, you know?!), but they would have none of it. So I'm letting them enjoy the thrill of feeling like millionaires. I made them come inside though because the area where they're digging is very muddy right now. I told them they'd have to wait until things dried out before they could continue. That ought to make the treasure hunt last a few more days, at least in their minds.

This evening I thought I'd surprise them and do something we've never done: rent a movie. We loaded up and headed to the little video store down the road. James had been in there once to look for something and said it was very nice and didn't have any nasty posters hanging anywhere. I can't even remember how long it's been since I've been in a video rental place! I walked in and asked the guy to help me find Toy Story. I remembered seeing it when I was a teenager and thinking it was great. My kids have never seen it. I had to pay a $25 deposit (can you believe that?!) that will be returned when I decide to terminate my "membership." That will be when I return the DVD next week! Ha! We came hope, threw the pizzas in the oven and put the movie on. The kids were so excited, but it ended up being more frustrating than entertaining. The DVD kept getting stuck. You know, where the picture will just freeze and you can't fast-forward or rewind or even skip to the next scene. It was crazy! I finally took it out and tried it in the other DVD player, but it did the same thing. So we watched parts of the movie, but missed several parts... including the ending! Can you believe that?! It got stuck about 10 minutes from the end of the show and we couldn't get it to work. I even took it out, cleaned the DVD, and tried it in my computer so the kids could see how it ended. Nope, no good. I ended up looking it up on YouTube and showing them the ending on there. Is that pitiful, or what?! What a gyp. I intend to get my $25 deposit back as well as the rental fee when I take the thing back, that's for sure! Even with the kinks, the kids enjoyed it just because it was something new. It has some really great parts, but really wasn't quite as good as I remembered it being. The kid next door is really creepy! Bleagh.

After the movie (with which we enjoyed our Totino's, root beer, and popcorn) I let the kids stay up for a while. Katie and Sam played with Lego's and Joe did some more reading in Harry the Poisonous Centipede's Big Adventure. He's loving it, of course, but so far still things the first Harry book was better.

We read several pages of A. J. Tomlinson (I was about 175 pages into it before it occurred to me that the kids would probably really enjoy it in devotions, so that's what we're doing now--from the beginning), sang a song or two, and now they're all snoozing away. I'm going to try to get some decent sleep tonight myself. I'd love to get on a better schedule than I've been on, but it's sooooo hard to get readjusted! Anyway, that's the story up until this point. I've been praying that the guys are having a WONDERFUL Men's Retreat and that the girls are having a FANTASTIC girl party (okay, I didn't actually pray for it--but I've thought it several times!)--I'll be anxious to hear about all of it. Not sure what our plan is around here tomorrow, except we'll probably play some games. That'll be nice. :-)