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. ;-)