It all started with a wonderfully worthless day

... and has progressed into three days of non-productivity. The first day it felt great. We woke up Monday morning to big, beautiful snow falling out of the sky again. I felt lazy and had no motivation whatsoever. It FELT like a snow day and I was just so happy and so relaxed and so... lazy! Aside from school with the kids, I can't think of a thing I accomplished that day. I let the kids veg out, too. Literally. We watched several of the older Veggie Tales that we hadn't seen in years. And I finished a book I'd gotten from the library a couple of weeks ago. It was a GREAT day!

By the end of it I was feeling a little itchy to DO something and ended up sorting some papers and trash and getting a few things cleaned up. But just a few. :-)

Yesterday I had every intention of making up for my motivation deficiency the day before. Unfortunately I got off to a slow start and then we ended up going to the library, disrupting my house cleaning agenda. Came home and just didn't have any steam. I read several library books to Sam and spent the rest of the evening dinking around on the computer and watching the Olympics.

This morning I woke up feeling the double necessity of getting something ACCOMPLISHED around here. But alas, it was not to be. Today I have tried so hard to do something, but I am soooooooo tired. Why in the world is a person who has done NOTHING for two days TIRED?! It doesn't make any sense at all, but I've been yawning and stretching all day long, meandering slowly around the house seeing all of the things I wish I could make myself do. I managed to vacuum a couple of rooms and I made last nights roast (at least I cooked yesterday) into a pretty good stew for tonight. I did get the laundry done between yesterday and today... That's about it, I think. Can't make myself clean the bathrooms or floors or the things I should have had done two days ago. Just... ~yawn~... too tired.

The other thing we haven't accomplished this week is retrieving our new van. But that's not due to my laziness, thank goodness! :-) The "part" (I have no clue what it is--don't ask; all I know is it's not anything major) was supposed to be in yesterday and they expected to be able to get the work done by 3:00 or 4:00. Ha. I know mechanics. None personally at this point in time, but that's just as well with me. My feelings about them are comparable to my feelings about weathermen. Liars. ;-) They called yesterday to say the parts truck didn't get there due to the snow, so they expected to get the part this morning and have everything up and running by this afternoon. I, of course, didn't expect that. James called to check on things this afternoon, but couldn't talk to anybody who actually knew anything--and they never called back. So now we've been the proud owners of a new van for five whole days... that we have yet to go pick up. :-) No big deal since the dealership loaned us another van until they get ours to us. If they don't get our van fixed tomorrow we'll have to call and let them know that the van they loaned us is going to come back with a whole bunch of extra miles. We've got District Convention in Alamogordo this weekend and we've got to get their somehow! That would be fine with James. He'd love to put the miles on their van instead of ours! Ha!

That's about it. Nothing exciting, no pictures, and no accomplishments to report. Hopefully next time will be a little better! :-)

The Past 10 Days

Not a chance. I do well to remember one day at a time, much less the past ten. But I'll see how much I can recall. Besides, when Emilee is the one to point out my infrequent blogging you know it must be time! ;-)

I remember that I was home alone last weekend. I also remember that I am DONE with this being left behind stuff! I took it much harder this time. I'm not sure if it's because this time I was missing the Colorado crowd (AGAIN), or because of the Convention itself, or because this was the third trip in a row (in about 5 weeks) that I've missed. Probably a combination of all of them! It was rough and I shed a few tears this time. Pitiful, hu? ~sigh~ Oh well, we've got the New Mexico & West Texas Convention coming up this weekend and I'm GOIN', so it's all good. :-)

We took James to the airport on Friday, the 12th, and had yet another pizza party that night. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm getting sort of tired of Totinos! Too many pizza parties in too short a time.

Saturday was the kids' birthday. We had had their party (such as it was) on Thursday after church, but we had a small gift for each of them to open on their birthday. They weren't expecting anything and were so excited to wake up on their REAL birthday and find the table covered in balloons and a present for each of them.

I don't remember anything else about the day until 4:00 that afternoon, which is when Cainan's birthday party started. His birthday had been on Friday, but the party was that Saturday. So my kids ended up with a real birthday party on their birthday after all... even though it wasn't for them! Ha! Everybody had fun, so it worked out great. I realized that I haven't taken ANY pictures since then, so I thought I'd add a bunch of pictures of the party. :-)

Doesn't look too exciting...

Still not just real thrilling...
Ah-ha! It's suddenly fun! (We'd gotten to the gifts by this time, you know!) By the way, you should have seen all of the black lips and teeth after eating that cake. I STILL had black lips the next morning--just couldn't get it all scrubbed off! Ha!
We had some fun with those Ballooney things again. I just love that smell. :-)
Sam did a big one!
The it was time for pin the tank on the target instead of the typical donkey game. Brother Chris decided that he would hold and spin the kids this time instead of just twirling them in a circle...
Sam was only the second kid, but Brother Chris had already discovered it was NOT a good idea to spin the kids that way! He was in worse shape than Sam, and Sam was pret-ty dizzy. :-)
Ha! Not sure what was going on here (still recovering from the big spin?), but I couldn't not post it. :-)


And here's the whole crowd. The kids all had a blast together, as always. And I was able to enjoy a nice visit with Brother Chris and Sister Shanda. It was great.

Sunday was Valentine's Day. I hate Valentine's Day. It is the dumbest holiday ever. I tried to study up on it once in an effort to discover a reason not to hate it so. I failed. It is a DUMB holiday. It has nothing whatsoever to do with St. Valentine and he would no doubt be appalled at what it has turned into. It's nothing but a marketing ploy! A day when you HAVE to do something to show your husband/wife/etc. your love, otherwise you're in big trouble. How genuine is that?! Like it's a school assignment or something. "Kind and loving gesture is due next Sunday, the 14th--don't forget." It makes me feel anything but mushy and gushy. Mad and disgusted is more like it. Ha! Of course, that's what I feel in the days leading up to the 14th. I did happen to enjoy the nice box of chocolates my thoughtful husband had purchased and given me before he left on his trip. ;-) The kids enjoyed theirs, too. I always go into Valentine's Day hating the whole thing, then I read Emilee's blog about the really cool and fun things she does for her family to make it a special day and I feel like such a heel!!! Ha!

Had a REALLY good service that morning. Have I mentioned what a great pastor we have??? We are soooooooooo blessed here. There are lots of wonderful pastors throughout The Church of God, but I just feel certain that ours has to be in the top 5 anywhere. His messages are just sooooo good and deep and anointed and challenging. Love 'em. He preached on the Holy Ghost last week and compared it to being baptized in water. He brought out some really amazing similarities I'd never thought of before, but will hopefully remember from now on.

We came home and got the house cleaned up, went back to Sister Shanda's VLB service that night (it was a lo-o-o-o-o-ove service for Valentine's Day, but it was good anyway... Ha!) and then to the airport to pick up James.

Don't remember Monday. Or Tuesday. Or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday... Ha! I know I spent some of my evenings reading and trying to prep for my ABM service on Thursday. I had some things really heavy on my heart and was just hoping that what God was showing me would be a blessing to the rest of the church like it had been to me!

I know that we spent a day or two in town this last week, searching for vehicles. We've been praying about a new one for quite a while, knowing that our van with 130,000 miles was on its last leg. Tire. Whatever. ;-) It's been making some mighty strange noises lately and we really felt like we ought to get something else before it was too late. I think Friday was the day we finally ended up finding "the one." I think we were at the dealership for 6 hours. Good thing we'd thought to bring library books! Ha! I also folded up a piece of paper and taught the kids how to play table football. We played the dot game in Katie's notebook, Joe worked on one of his stories, Sam drew pictures... And then we discovered there was a TV in the other part of the building so we watched some of the Olympics, though it was nothing very exciting. Cross-country skiing. Those people aren't very bright. They try to climb UP mountains half the time, as if they don't know skis were meant for gliding DOWN mountains. ;-) Anyway, we're getting another Dodge Grand Caravan. I say "getting" because we don't actually have it yet. There were a couple of little things the dealership wanted to have worked on before giving it to us, so we waited around all those hours expecting them to finish so we could drive it home. It was finally decided that they would need to order one part and we could come pick up the new van on Tuesday. So they have our old van AND the new one and we're driving a loaner for the weekend. Crazy. I'm thankful that God has provided for us so well--and He has worked such miracles to provide for us--and I know we'll feel better about making some of the upcoming trips now. And James. He kills me. He haggles like you wouldn't believe and paid way less than wholesale for this new van. He just keeps talking the guy down lower and lower and lower, asking for a little more here and a little more there. He'll haggle down to the very penny he wants to pay and you wonder how in the world the poor salesman dude can be making ANY money on the deal at all. After it was all settled James nearly up and walked out on the deal because there was only one remote key instead of two. Ha! Never fear--the dealership is ordering a new one for us. It'll be there when we pick the van up on Tuesday. I always feel like crawling under the table and hiding until it's over with when James is working on the guys. I'm THANKFUL that he's so good at it, but I'm always a little embarrassed and afraid that he's going to offend the guy he's working with with his super low offers. And I wonder if before it's all over with the guy will be paying US to take the van! Ha! Anyway, our new van is blue '08. That means we've had a teal van, a burgundy one, a silver one, and now blue. I'd like a bright yellow one next. You know, a happy van. :-)

That's really our big news of the week. I've forgotten all of the other things, so that will have to do. We had more good services today and a pot luck this afternoon with good food and good fellowship. Now we're looking forward to another week. :-) I'll TRY to not be so INFREQUENT around here, Mom & Em. ;-)

Going International

Or so it seems.

Quite some time ago I set up a tracker on my blog to see how many visits I was getting and from where. It was fun in the beginning to see the "hits" from all over the place, but anymore I very seldom check it. I would usually have a whole slew of hits from across the U.S. and then a few random hits from other countries--maybe as many as six or seven, but usually just three or four. Well, a few days ago I went to check the tracker because it had been ages since I'd looked at it and I was bored. I don't know what's going on all of a sudden, but these are the out of country hits from the past 30 days:

7 visits from Canada (four different cities)

7 visits from the United Kingdom

4 visits from Russia (all Moscow)

3 visits from each of the following: Malaysia and France

2 visits from each of the following: Singapore, Philippines, Mexico, Germany, India, Spain, Brazil, Argentina

1 visit from each of the following: Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Chili, Poland, Egypt, South Korea, Australia, Greece, Honduras, Saudi Arabia, Bulgaria, Finland, Iran

Is that crazy, or what?! A tiny part of me thinks it's really neat. A really big part of me thinks it's really creepy! The strangest thing is just trying to figure out WHY I suddenly have hits from 28 countries. I've thought several times about doing the dreaded "private blog" thing, for various reasons... and this sort of rekindles the idea! It's just too weird.

Let's see, what did we do on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday... School, school, and more school! :-) Tuesday House Cleaning Day didn't turn out very good. I decided that it only works on Monday so we'd just have to wait until next week. Ha! It's hard to get much done around here on Tuesday because that happens to be library day. I can't remember why, but we also had to go into town afterwards, so that made for a much later day. It's hard to get much done in the afternoons when school doesn't start until then.

The kids are doing very well in school. Katie is about to finish up her 3rd Grade Switched on Schoolhouse, so that makes her very happy. Joe has been working hard on his multiplication and some division and is doing great, though he's not very excited about learning his multiplication table entirely. It amazes me how well he does, even NOT knowing it. He's got a good brain for figuring. Sometimes. ;-) And Sam just finished up another Kindergarten book. He's been through several books and we just keep going over the same thing because it's tough to move him into 1st Grade until he's really reading well. He's working so hard on his letters and sounds though and I feel like he's READY to move on. He can sound out and spell words easier than he can read them (leave it to Sam to do it backwards! Ha!) and I told him that I think he is finally READY for 1st Grade! Wa-Hoo!!! He is quite proud of himself and I'm hoping the pride and excitement will affect his efforts at school. He's the kind of kid who will probably be able to accomplish just about anything by sheer determination. :-)

James is going to be gone on the Katie & Joe's birthday this weekend, so we decided to do our celebrating today. We went into town early for church and ran a few errands, then went to Hometown Buffet for the kids' big, special birthday meal. Only they were closed. Closed DOWN, I think! We had coupons for free birthday meals and everything. What a gyp. So we went to Furr's instead and the kids were thrilled. I don't get it. When I was a kid I associated Furr's with two things: Clifford Thompson and old people. Which is really like a category and a subcategory, I guess. Ha! But our kids think it's great. (Just for clarification, I've ALWAYS dearly loved Cliff Thompson and old people. :-) But Furr's wasn't my first choice for dinner as a kid!)

We went to pick up a birthday cake at Sam's Club before church, but there was nobody working in the bakery. Long story short, we asked three different employees for help and they kept trying to page somebody but nobody ever showed up to help. All we needed was for somebody to write Happy Birthday Katie & Joe for us, you know? I could see the tubes of icing and kept thinking that if only somebody could find a tip for me I could just write it myself! Anyway, we finally found somebody important and she radioed for somebody to come help us a few times, but still got no response. We were planning on sharing the cake with the church folks after service and church was going to start in about 15 minutes and we were beginning to panic! I told James to just buy the cake and skip the writing so we could get to church, but he didn't want to pay good money for a big blank cake! Ha! I finally found the important lady again and apologized for seeming pushy, but explained our situation a little better. She said, "Don't you dare apologize!" Then she grabbed her radio and said, "I want somebody back here NOW to write on this cake--these people are going to be late to their own party! And when they get to the front, the cake that says Katie & Joe will be NO CHARGE, you all got that?!" Ha! Who knew?! I'm so glad we found the lady with all the power. :-) Somebody did show up pretty directly, we got our cake, got checked out (NOT paying for the cake, just the 1st Grade school books for Sam--which he is sooooo excited about!), and made it to church with about 5 minutes to spare. Wa-Hoo!!! Good thing the church is practically across the street from Sam's Club! :-)

We had a really good Bible study tonight from the Body of Christ course. It was the lesson about the four wells of Abraham that Isaac digged again, symbolizing salvation, sanctification, the Holy Ghost, and The Church of God. Brother Chris did a good job teaching it and we really felt the Lord with us from the opening prayer. Good service.

Afterwards we invited everybody to join us for cake. The Clarksons had bought gifts for Katie and Joe and we were so surprised that Sister Connie had, too. We intentionally didn't tell anybody about the mini-party ahead of time because we didn't want anybody to feel obligated to bring a gift, but the kids made out pretty well! A gift from us, one from the Clarksons, one from Sister Connie, and before the night was out they each had $5 from Brother Hugo!

Here are the birthday kids (they looked rough--it had been a long afternoon, remember?!) with their FREE birthday cake.

A little pet shop thingy from the Clarksons

Joe was so funny to watch--he was soooooo excited about ALL of his gifts. This was the air gun from us.

Another pet shop thingy from Sister Connie!

Ha! Joe had really been hoping for this particular item, so when he ripped the paper and saw it he started squealing, "It's the watch! I got the spy gear watch! YES!!!!" Sister Connie got a GREAT BIG "Thank You" for that one!

And the "real men's handcuffs" from the Clarksons--another thing Joe had been hoping for.

I failed to get a picture of Katie with her gift from us (some more Sculpey clay that she so enjoys), but I did have to take one more picture of Joe with all of his loot--he was just soooooo excited about everything! Ha! Oh, the Toy Story Frisbee was a gift from his kind and generous sister. :-)

That's about it. The kids are fast asleep, I took care of some stuff for James and got a few shirts ironed for him to take with him when he leaves me AGAIN tomorrow for yet ANOTHER Convention without me. Jerk. Ha! Lucky for him this is the last one I'm staying home for--I seem to be getting a little less gracious about being left behind and my hostility has increased to the point of possible violence... Okay, so maybe it's not quite that bad. Or maybe it is! Ha! I just know I'm going to be SO READY to go to our own District Convention this month and Youth Convention next month! I'm not saying it's been a good thing that I've been unable to make the past three trips with James, but I have no doubt that I will appreciate the next few a lot more because of it and probably be extra blessed by them! :-)

Somehow I managed to take NO pictures this past weekend. That's bad. The pictures help me remember what's been going on around here!

James left for the Arizona District Convention on Friday and came home today, so that meant another party weekend for the kids and me. Strange... they're not as fun when they become common rather than rare. Ha! We still had a good time, of course, but it's not very fun to make a habit of being left behind! This next weekend will be #3 in the past 4 or 5 weeks. James will be going to the Colorado Convention solo, too. (I'm dying here!!!) It's just the way things worked out this time. I've actually been coping much better than I would have thought (we'll see how I do this next week!), but I'm going to be SOOOOO ready for our New Mexico Convention--the one I actually get to GO to! :-) The kids, too. Though I must say, it's been really nice to be able to have some normalcy around here. When we're on the go all the time it's so hard to get anything accomplished and I end up saying, "I just want to say HOME for a little while." And when I'm stuck at home for a couple of months I find myself saying, "I just want to GO somewhere." Just can't make some people happy, I guess. ;-)

We had a nice, relaxing weekend. Played some games, had some pizza parties... and that's about all I can remember! I spent a lot of the day on Saturday working on Sunday School stuff and practicing on the piano for song service. I really ought to make a time each day to sit down at the piano and improve my playing a little bit and perhaps get more comfortable playing more songs--especially if James is going to be gone on occasion and leave that job to me! I'm so limited with the number and types of songs I can play; I always wonder if it's more of a hindrance than a help, you know?! I'm thankful that Joe is doing so well on the guitar and Katie can sing on key good and loud--it really helps carry us through when James is away!

I had strict orders from my husband to NOT push it and try to get to town if it was snowy and I thought I might not be able to make it back up the mountain. Sunday morning was no problem, but it started snowing good and strong that afternoon and covered over the tire tracks on the driveway. Had me a little bit nervous and I was in a bit of a turmoil trying to figure out what to do. I want to do what my husband says to do, of course, but how can you just NOT go to church because it MIGHT get bad??? I called my pastor to ask what I should do and he told me to do what James would want me to do, but if I did decide to come into town he would be sure I made it home safely even if they had to follow me all the way up the mountain. What a guy! Not that I would have expected any less from him, but it's so nice to hear the offer. :-) The roads were very wet, slushy in some places, and a little bit slick at first, but not too bad. By the time I came home, however, they were actually in better shape; no slush and practically dry at places. It had actually warmed up and melted a bit after it got dark--how weird is that?! I was so glad to have been able to make it to both services. And not get stuck and be in trouble with my husband. :-)

Last night we had one final pizza party. The kids had done a pretty good job of wrecking the house during the afternoon and I didn't make them clean it up first. That was dumb. We watched some old Looney Toons (those are so great) and by the time it was over it was getting pretty late, so I just sent the kids to bed. I was too tired to get up and clean anything myself, so I just read the Dilbert comic book we got at the library last week (laughed a LOT) and went to bed. When I woke up this morning I couldn't believe how bad the house really was! You would have thought there'd been a bachelor party here or something! Ha! Pizza boxes and trash and dishes and clothes and toys and junk everywhere. So we did devotions and spent the morning in a mad rush trying to get things put in order before heading to town to get James. Not a nice, relaxing way to start the week, I assure you! Ha! But we got it done and all of the mess and clutter taken care of just in time to drive to the airport.

We picked up James, he treated us to IHOP for lunch, then we came home and did school. It went quite well today, so that was good. By the time we were finished I was sooooo tired and laid down on the couch. I fell alseep and didn't wake up until after 5:00! I HATE late afternoon naps--they just screw everything up. I had some pork chops thawed, so I cut them into thin strips and cooked them with some potato diced up real small and some seasonings, then James fried some corn tortillas and we made pork and potato tacos for dinner. Sounds strange, I know, but they were actually quite tasty. Then James decided we were going to watch Anne of Green Gables. (Is that weird, or what?! My Dad and brother would sooner die than watch Anne of Green Gables! Ha!) Katie loved it. She, emotionally, is sooooo much like Anne--it really scares me a little bit! Ha! Joe... well, he did okay with some of the movie. He enjoyed the articulate way people spoke and found humor in a lot of it, but thought Anne was utterly ridiculous and was extremely frustrated every time she'd burst into tears or say anything dramatic... which was pretty much the whole show. Sam didn't last very long before declaring, "This is a TERRIBLE show!" Ha! Definitely not his idea of a worthwhile movie (he's not much of a TV guy anyway, so he's certainly not going to waste his time with a silly girly movie), so I let him play a computer game for a little while. He did, however, thoroughly enjoy the part where they were at the White Sands Concert and that lady was reciting The Wreck of the Hesperus. He laughed so hard he couldn't sit up--thought the lady was hysterical! Ha! It was great. :-)

Now they've been sent to bed and I'm blogging with a stack of folded jeans on one side and the last pile of dirty laundry on the other. Monday Cleaning Day didn't work out so well today with our trip to town and my late afternoon nap. We got the house put back together this morning, but didn't get the floors mopped or bathrooms cleaned or anything like that. So this week we'll try out Tuesday Cleaning Day. :-)

A Decade After "I Do"

I'm all about cheesy titles. ;-)

That's right, today marks ten full years of marriage around here. That's so wild!!! This is what I woke up to this morning...

Okay, so that's not really true. When I got up this morning there were still sewing machines and equipment strewn all over the table. I had hemmed the pants for James' new suit last night and still had some sleeves to shorten on another dress for Katie. So when I got up this morning, I fixed her sleeves so I could get the house cleaned up again and the beautiful flowers displayed on the table instead of the stove. ;-)

This is the inside of the card from the kids.



Got a few other things done around the house this morning, then had devotions and headed into town for our anniversary lunch (with the kids, of course) at the Olive Garden. It was soooooo good. :-) Since it was a special occasion we decided to splurge and get an appetizer. Don't try the smoked mozzarella fonduta. It was so "smokey" you couldn't even taste the cheese. Or the bread. Ha! Oh, well. The waiter was kind enough to take it off our ticket, so we learned what not to order and it didn't even cost us. Aside from that venture, the meal was fantastic. :-)

We left the restaurant and headed to the airport to drop James off. That's right, we decided to celebrate our 10th Anniversary by putting James on a plane and sending him away. Ha! Okay, so that wasn't exactly the plan. This just happens to be the big month for District Conventions around here--three of them this month. We knew they would be during our Anniversary (and the kids' birthday next week), but when we made the schedule we were really hoping that we'd ALL be going on these trips and would be able to be together. Unfortunately it didn't work out that way this year! That's okay--God knows best. James flew to Arizona for the Convention over there this weekend (praying they have a GREAT one!) and will be back on Monday.

The kids and I came home and got busy on school. And, as is customary when James is away (which we seem to be experiencing a lot more than usual of late! Ha!), we have a pizza party. We played a game earlier, then put the soda fountain in use for the first time in ages. An orange-cherry soda for Sam, a cherry-vanilla coke for Kate, and a raspberry-cherry coke (?!) for Joe. I went with a cherry coke this time. :-)

Anyway, since I can't BE with my husband for our anniversary, I thought I'd at least post some pictures of the big day. :-) The quality is quite poor, of course (we don't have a scanner so these are actually pictures of my pictures!), but it's the best I can do. :-)

I LOVED that bouquet. And the way it smelled. :-)

The girls...
The guys trying to keep James OUT of the church before the ceremony...
And the girls trying to keep me IN.
James getting the big brother look from Jon...
Ummm... The photographer (or somebody???) said to swoon. I've never been a very good swooner. Ha!
Not sure how this happened. I'm pretty sure James wouldn't do this sort of thing now. Of course, the girls would scatter quickly if he tried! He and I have both put on a few pounds since then, you know. ;-)
With Mom & Dad


The whole party!

You know... looking back, I wonder about a lot of the traditional things people do at weddings. Why in the world do we do them?! Feeding each other cake (much less the rather bad start to marriage by cramming it down one another's throats)--where did that come from?! Probably some Pagan thing. Ha! If Katie gets to marrying age before the rapture I hope we can just do what she wants to do instead of what everybody else has done for the past century! Still... I think I won the cake cramming thing.

Here we are standing in line waiting to talk to all of the people. I love that part. :-)
And here we are at an auto place in Canon City, after driving all the way down that winding mountain road with the horn blaring every time James tapped on the breaks. The car trasher guys had tried to achieve that at the past several weddings, but finally pulled it off this time.
I remember we were stuck behind a little old couple coming down the canyon road. We couldn't pass them but they were driving pretty slow, so we kept HONKING at them (to keep from crashing into them) for miles and miles. Ha! "What jerks!!!," I'm sure they were thinking.

I had Katie take a picture of James and I together at the airport today, but apparently the sun was shining pretty directly into the camera lens. Besides, looking at the picture seems to indicate that the years haven't been very kind to us. Ha! I think we can do better than that on another day. ;-)

And one last picture. My goal was to hold the flowers so you could see how huge the arrangement actually is. Unfortunately, my ape arms make it appear as if it's no big deal to hold them down low enough to see over... Ha! Oh, well. :-)

What... Again?!

How has it already been 5 days since I blogged???

I remember Saturday well because it was such a grand and glorious day. :-) The snow from Thursday and Friday was just soooooooo pretty! We spent most of the morning trying to dig our way out of the yard so we’d be able to make it to church the next morning. It felt great to do some shoveling! I’m sure I would tire of it quickly if I had to do it all the time, but it had been years and I thoroughly enjoyed it—the work, the feel and smell of the snow-air, the memories of doing it as a kid… It was great! And we were able to get the van out. :-)

The weather that day was GORGEOUS. Bright blue skies and lots of sunshine. It was cool, but comfortable--the perfect day for playing in the snow. :-)

I was loving all the icicles, especially the ones hanging from the trees.

James went to run some errands and when he got home he had an inner tube with him! WA-HOO!!! I went out with the kids for a couple of hours and worked on getting a good tubing hill going in the yard. The first route was great, except I couldn’t get the track to curve away from the big wooden leg of the play fort at the bottom. It was only a matter of time before somebody was going to plow into it head first at full speed, so I started another track. This one was better anyway… but it ended directly into one of the metal legs to the trampoline! Ha! We have enough yard to make a good kiddy slope, but there always seems to be a stationary blunt object awaiting them at the bottom. And it always amazes me how kids have no concept of bailing out. I don’t remember having to be told to bail out before running into a post, fence, building, etc. when I was a kid. After some coaching the kids finally started working on it, but were usually too late. Oh well. We had some serious fun and no serious injuries (Katie might argue that), so it was all good! Anyway, here are lots and lots of pictures of all the fun!!!

This was one of Joe's first runs--Katie giving him a push.

Didn't turn out so well. Joe is a lot better at biffing it than he is staying on the tube! Ha!



Katie's first run. Ha! Looks more like the tube stole her hat and gloves and went down solo. Maybe she was going on faith, not wanting to see what she might crash into at the bottom?!
She got the hang of it after a while...


...but had real problems going down straight--she couldn't seem to keep from spinning. :-)


You can tell by Joe's clothes that he had already crashed several times--and was obviously about to do it again.

But look! He actually did stay on a few times!

We talked James into joining us for a couple of runs, too. :-)

Sam wasn't all that interested in getting in on the action, so I had him get on my back and hold on for dear life while I jumped on the tube...

That was all it took--he was hooked. (I love this picture!!!)


After watching Sam go down with me the kids decided maybe it would be fun to ride double. Of course, the first time they sat down together, then wondered how to get started. Ha!


Finally figured it out

The boys cruising down the hill


And after having rammed into the leg of the trampoline. It's directly behind Joe... wrapped in an old, cushy comforter by that time since it had become apparent that if anybody actually made it to the bottom of the hill they were going to hit the metal post. Ha!


As you can see, Saturday was one of the best days of our lives. :-) LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT! I must say, however... I was sooooooooooo sore on Sunday after helping shovel and all of the playing. It was worth it, of course, but my back and legs sure let me know about. How sad. Oh, well. "It is fun to get old!"

We had good services on Sunday. I cried throughout the whole Sunday School lesson on the rich man and Lazarus and the torments of hell, thinking about a certain backslidden friend who I’d just come back into contact with. Shed lots of tears and prayed lots of prayers for him throughout the day.

I wasn’t tired on Sunday afternoon, so I opted out of my usual nap. By service time that night I was really regretting that decision! Due to some last minute rescheduling it ended up being just a business conference instead of a regular service and, boy, did I have a hard time keep my eyes open. ~whew~

Monday was the big house cleaning day. This is week three of my “clean the house up on Monday” attempt and I have yet to actually get it all done on Monday. That’s okay—it’s still a good goal and I feel like I’m staying on top of things so much better this way. The only “chore” left now is the ironing. I’m sitting here looking at it… and deciding to blog instead. Ha!

Yesterday was library day. The kids were THRILLED to get their own library cards for the very first time. I’ve always just checked everything out on my own card, but due to some confusion with the account last week we decided (at the urging of the library guy) it was time to use separate cards. It gets confusing when you have 40 or 50 books on one card and something goes wrong, you know?! The kids got their usual piles of books and I picked up a few for myself. So far I’ve set aside two of the books I’d checked out. The first one had a bad word in it (“Christian” fiction—can you believe that?! I was furious!), so it got set aside after about 10 pages. I’m about three chapters into the second book and it’s okay, but I’m having a hard time really getting interested in it. I really like the super suspenseful stuff and this doesn’t have the edge-of-your-seat inducing quality about it. Not sure if I’m going to try to stick with it or just move on to the next book. Maybe I’ll give it another chapter or two to capture my attention.

After the library we went into town to the thrift store. We haven’t been there in a long, long time—probably because we haven’t really needed anything. I wanted to go look for suits for the boys though. They grow out of them so fast and I LOVE being able to buy them for $3 to $10 at this place. They didn’t have anything that would work this time, but we did get a nice, long black skirt for Miss Rue. :-)

We made another stop or two before heading back to the mountains, so we didn’t get home until about 3:30, I think. That meant late afternoon school for the kids, but they didn’t have any problem with it and finished up with enough time to do some more reading before bed.

Today it started snowing again!!! Wa-Hoo!!! We’re having WINTER this year and I couldn’t be happier. :-) Katie and Sam spent several hours outside today. Joe goes out to play, but is always back in before too awful long. The inner tube has been a big hit and they’re having a blast out there. Of course, most of their time today was spent making snow bricks in Tupperware and building forts with them. Oh, the glories of being a kid in the wintertime!


I finally took it upon myself to do some mending today. I’ve had a few things sitting there for MONTHS and I finally decided today was the day. A dress somebody had given us for Katie years ago (when it was way too big) just needed the buttons replaced (it had big, gaudy pearl looking ones, originally), so I dumped out my button jars and found four buttons that actually matched one other and the dress. I did the first button, showing Katie what to do, then let her do the other three. It felt great to finally have that done… only for her to try it on and discover the dress is too small now! Ha! That’s just sad. I told her she could wear it Sunday anyway after all her hard work, then we’ll pass the dress on to Abbie. (Em, you may want to straighten the buttons a little bit when you get it—it was Katie’s first time! Ha!)

Katie has been doing some cooking lately; beef strognoff one night and tuna casserole another night. Tonight I cooked oven fried chicken and company chicken (it was a huge pack—cooked half one way, half the other) with mashed potatoes and some FANTASTIC gravy (big accomplishment for me!), corn, and biscuits. Katie made dump cake for dessert and it was sooooo good hot from the oven, but I was too full to do any more than just sample the it. Maybe in a little while. :-)

Right now I’m listening to Katie’s music coming from one end of the house and Sam’s snoring from the other. That kid is a GREAT snorer. I can’t imagine what he’ll sound like when he’s a grown man! Got some things to do tonight (the ironing??? Nah, probably not!), so that’s it from here. But first, another few pictures of today's snow. :-) I love snow best of all when it lays heavy on the pine trees like this...