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...