The Weekend

There's a thrilling title. About as thrilling as our weekend, probably. :-)

After we put the kids to bed on Friday night I met up with Mandie for a 9:00 game night. Of course, she's in Montana and I'm in New Mexico, so that makes it a bit tricky. ;-) We played Rummikub online and it was great!!! We met up with very little problem, but I forgot to "lock" the game and after a while Lam Lam from Hong Kong (seriously--I didn't make that up) joined us. Nothing against Lam Lam, but we were wanting to play with... well, just us, you know?! So then ensued a great deal of confusion and a serious game of hide and seek all through the Rummikub game rooms until we met up again. At which point Caleb joined us. He was away on business, I understand, and so had nothing better to do than crash his wife's online game night. Ha! It was fun playing with the two of them. Except that Caleb is a creep and keeps slobbing up the board. Mandie and I are both very particular about what belongs where (I LOVE playing with her!) and he would jumble it all up just for the fun of it. He's not invited next time. ;-)

I'm ashamed to admit that we were playing Rummikub (and searching for each other so we COULD play) way, way, way too late. It was great fun and a very rare occurrence so I don't feel guilty about it--but I sure was feeling the lack of sleep the next day! We got up and got the house all cleaned up and show worthy (~sigh~) and headed into town at about 9:00 Saturday morning. James was wanting to hit some of the sales he'd seen advertised. I really think it's just his excuse to hear Christmas music. I won't let him play it here at the house until after Thanksgiving, but he knows that all of the stores are playing it so... ;-)

We headed up to the Cottonwood mall at the far end of town. It's so much nicer and everything you could possibly dream of is in that mall and the surrounding shopping areas. Like Krispy Kreme. :-) We started our day with a scrumptious doughnut hot off the rack and just through the wondrous waterfall of icing. Mmmmmmmm. From there we headed to the mall. James found a few shirts and a pair of shoes at Penney's, enabling him to redeem the 20% off coupon he was determined to get good use out of. I think he found a shirt for Sam there, too. It's strange to me. It's been a very long time since I've shopped at any REAL stores. I mean, I've looked here and there, but not actually SHOPPED at places like that because the thrift store had been supplying nearly all of our clothing needs for so long. But now that they're charging crazy prices we're back at the real stores again and it feels weird! Anyway... Sam's tennis shoes were falling apart so we went into Payless to look for a replacement pair. We left with a pair for him and a pair for Joe. Total: $10.11. Gotta love that. :-) We also stocked up on hand soap from Bath & Body works. We were down to our last bottle and they were running a really good sale. Perfect.

When we left the mall I ran into Sam's club to grab new school books for Sam since he's on the brink of completing his current book. Afterwards we were driving down some road that we rarely drive down (I can't even remember which one) and James decided to stop by a dog shelter we'd never been to before. We'd all but given up looking at dogs a few months ago--figured it would just be best to wait until we get moved and settled before considering that sort of thing. But somehow yesterday turned into a thinking-about-getting-a-dog day! Crazy. They had a white poodle there named Luther or something like that. We talked with the people who ran the shelter for a while and really, really liked the way they do things. They are set up sooooo much better than the city shelter, take really good care of their dogs, and have extremely reasonable fees to adopt them. After a while they finally talked us into "visiting" Luther and locked us all into a little cubical with him. We knew ahead of time that we really weren't going to actually adopt him (it would have to be the PERFECT dog for us to actually take one home with us at this point in time), but the shelter people said it's good for the dogs anyway to have some time to interact with people that way. So we just hung out with him for a while to give him some people time... and to give me some dog time. :-) He was a sweet fellow and very lovable, but didn't have as much personality as what we're used to. I'm sure he won't have any trouble finding a good home though. That makes me happy.

From there we actually drove down to the south side of town where the main branch of this dog shelter was located. Looked through all of their dogs and almost asked to see a couple of little terriers. They were obviously brothers and they were the happiest, most hyper (a little too hyper) little fellows in the world--with the fastest tongues west of the Mississippi. But as we were petting them through the cage Joe started to cry and just couldn't stop. I finally got down to the root. He soooooo wants us to get a dog, but he couldn't bare the thought of us (or anyone) adopting one of those dogs and leaving the other one there all alone. The idea of separating the two of them was just killing him. "If Sam and I were in a slave camp and somebody came and bought Sam..." and then he just shakes his head and starts crying. Sweet, sensitive Joe. He thinks and feels a lot like his Mom, I'm afraid. I had already decided that if we did get one of those dogs we would simply have to take both. Ha! Not sure how that would go over with James. ;-) It didn't feel like the right day or the right dogs, so we came on home.

It was about 5:00 by the time we got home last night and I was sooooo tired. The late night games with Mandie and the long day in town had done me in! I made myself stay up until a reasonable hour for bed because I knew a nap at 5:00 or 6:00 would be bad news. I was so excited about the time change last night! Perfect timing. :-) We pulled out a video called The Pineapple Story and watched it as part of our devotions before putting the kids to bed. It's the testimony of a man who was a missionary to a bunch of thieving natives somewhere off the coast of Australia for many years. It's really the story of learning to give your rights and possessions to God. It's so, so good. I feel like God speaks to be about something different each time I see it--once every two or three years. :-)

This morning we had a good Sunday School class on covetousness, though nobody in our church can pronounce it. Ha! I think we had three or four different variations--it was great. :-) After church we all went over to the motel where the Clarksons are staying (they are still houseless--please pray for God to open doors for them to find a home!!!) and Brother Chris baptized Karen in the pool there. :-) Afterward, we went and had lunch at The Crusty Chili. It's a little burger joint that has really cheap food (burgers, hot dogs and--what we go for--tortilla burgers) and is known for it's chili, red and green. It's actually called Burgers & More, but Sister Shanda hates it and thinks it's nasty and has dubbed it The Crusty Chili. Ha! We all really like it. James loves the chili, though I'm not sure he should be allowed to have it. Their green chili is super, super hot. James ate way too much of it today and his mouth was on fire and his tongue was totally numb... That was his excuse, anyway, when he took a drink of soda and then drooled all over himself! Ha! He insists that it's worth it, but after seeing that little display I'm not so sure. ;-)

We came home this afternoon and I took a nap (the extra hour of sleep last night just wasn't enough, apparently!) and I think I've finally recovered from my late night games with Mandie. ;-) Went back into town for Sister Bailey's WMB service, then ran to Radio Shack to pick up a cable James needed. The kids thought it was terrific in there--so many cool remote controlled cars and other nifty toys. Another stop or two just for fun, then it was home at last.

The end. :-)