A Whole Week???

It's crazy how fast a week passes when you're not blogging!

Of course we'll start with a picture of Charlie--since that's all I seem to take pictures of anymore. Here he is helping Katie with school...



Let's see... Last Wednesday I spent most of the day in preparation for Thanksgiving. I made a cherry pie (it was sooooo good--the first to be devoured) and a pumpkin pie, then realized I had made too much pastry and had enough for one more pie crust. I knew I didn't have anything for another fruit pie and we didn't need another pumpkin pie. I looked down and saw a bowl full of pecans. Ah, yes! We had made the kids fill up a 5 gallon bucket of pecans from Aunt Sue's yard when we were there a few weeks ago. :-) I'd never made a pecan pie before, but I had the stuff so why not?! Do you have any idea how long it takes a woman and three children to shell one cup of pecans? About four hours, give or take. HA! It was ridiculous. I think I only got three unbroken half nuts the whole time. And Katie--good grief. Every time she tried to crack one open it would shatter all over the room. After about three of those I told her to go find some other way to help out! In the end, it turned out pretty good. But I certainly need to allow more time for prep if I ever make another pecan pie!

We needed to go to the library that day (had books overdue and more ready to pick up) and decided to take The Charles with us. I want him to get used to riding in the car so he doesn't freak out over it. We need to have a dog who's able to travel and enjoy it, not shiver and whimper the whole time. He did well and we just went into the library in shifts, two of us playing with Charlie while the other two searched for books.

I mixed up the punch that night and made the cranberry sauce. It's soooooo much better when you make it yourself (and quick and easy,too) than the glop out of the can.

Thursday was a full day of cooking, like it was for everybody else out there. The turkey turned out really, really good--and everything else, too. The Clarksons and Sister Connie got here at about 2:30 and we finished up on the last few things (mashing the potatoes, making gravy--stuff like that) and enjoyed a great Thanksgiving dinner. I'm sooooo glad they came up to my house to join us! Sister Shanda and Sister Connie had made sweet potato casserole and green bean casserole, and also brought a pumpkin pie and some rolls and corn and... something else I'm forgetting. I had them make the gravy, too, since my gravy is unpredictable at best. ;-) Everything was so good and it was great to have dear friends to share it with. They stayed and visited until we were hungry enough (not really) to try some pie. The kids spent their time watching Garfield and The Lone Ranger, then just doing whatever it is that they all do when they get together.

By the time the crowd cleared out sometime after 8:00 I was super tired. Seems like we just vegged out the rest of the night.

Friday was the big decorating day. It was frigid here that day, so Sam and I bundled up in our heavy coats and gloves and went out to the shed to dig out all of the Christmas boxes and bins. We have way too much junk! It always takes me forever to decorate. You empty the boxes out all over the place, then try to figure out what should go where--and it's such a mess you don't even know where to start! In the end I finally had everything up and looking great except for the tree. It was still in the box. The Christmas tree is James' baby. He loves doing the tree and is extremely particular about it. (He got mini-trees for the kids' room that they can decorate themselves because they're not allowed to touch his tree! Ha!) But even without the tree everything else looked great.

That night we decided to have another movie night. We've vegged out a lot since James has been gone. Watched a lot more TV than usual and played a whole lot of games. We're sort of vacationing it, you know?! Anyway, I had checked out The Love Bug from the library to surprise the kids with, so I whipped it out that night. We all enjoyed it a whole lot more than I would have imagined! I know I saw it as a kid, but I remembered little to nothing about it. It's a good one--I wouldn't mind owning it, even. :-) I've always liked Dean Jones. Makes me want to see Snowball Express again--though I remember next to nothing about that one either, I was so young when I saw it.

I had wondered about just waiting until James gets home and letting him do it himself, but... When I got up Saturday morning and everything was done except the tree I decided I'd just go ahead and do that, too. Ha. Last time EVER. Back when my family did the Christmas tree thing (my folks stopped with the heathen tree ;-) when I was a teenager) we always went up and cut our own tree. We never had a fake one. I never knew the reason for that, but after spending two hours building and "fluffing" this stupid tree I've got a whole list of reasons why real trees are better! That's just ridiculous. And your hands and fingers are all sore and scraped up by the time you finish. Dumb. And after all of that it still looks... well, fake! It's a really nice one that James got 80% or 90% off several years ago, but still... I just like real trees. ANYWAY, on the bright side, with James away the kids were actually able to partake in the decorating of the Christmas tree this year! Ha! Joe played with his dart gun the whole time (Christmas bum), but Katie and Sam had a blast helping me decorate. It was such fun!

That night we played Sorry! again. I'm so glad the kids are enjoying it! I think it's already been worth the $10 I paid for it last week. :-)

We had another good service Sunday morning and had two visitors as well. :-) We enjoyed an amazing message by Brother Chris about Leah and Rachel symbolizing the Kingdom and the Church, then the idols that Rachel took with her, how they had to be gotten rid of, how Leah (the Kingdom) brought forth so many children while Rachel (the Church), the favored one, was unable to produce—but in time she did travail and she brought forth the favored sons, two of them (the early church and last days church, perhaps?) and on and on. You would have had to have been there for all of the pieces to fit together and make sense, but it was AMAZING. God either plops deep, inspired revelations from the Word of God right into Brother Chris' lap... or he's just really good at digging them out of the Word--one or the other, because he often preaches things that I've never heard before that just amaze me. Good, good stuff.

After church we came home to find a SLEEPING puppy for the very first time!!! Wa-Hoo!!!!!! We usually come home to a puppy screaming and crying from the bathroom--and we have to let him cry it out for an hour or two before he calms down so we can rescue him. Really, people--is it worth it??? Is this dog actually going to learn to not cry if we keep ignoring him and leaving him in there????? It sure seems to have been a futile effort up to this point, regardless of what the Internet says. And him being asleep when we got home from church Sunday morning was a total fluke. He proved it when we got home from church that night. Ha!

Sunday night was Sister Galaviz's CPMA service, so it was good, of course. She taught on spiritual perfection, individually and as a body. It was interesting to see how the things necessary to achieve individual perfection would naturally enact cooperate perfection. It's obvious that that would happen, yes, but still so striking when you see it spelled out in front of you.

After service that night we went with the Clarksons to the Crusty Chili. Without James!!! The lady who took our order even asked about him. Ha! That's pretty sad. ;-)

Back to Charlie. I have done a bad thing with that dog. James doesn’t allow a dog to sleep with us. Well, in theory anyway. Hershey had his ways. ;-) But when I was trying to make Charlie sleep in his box he would wake up several times a night and I’d take him outside to do his thing (and he would), but what he really wanted was to BE with people. He could only stay all alone in that box for so long, even if it was right next to the bed, you know?! Well, I love sleeping with a puppy... And James is gone right now, so... :-) I haven’t let him sleep with me in bed, but I’ve been crashing on the couch with him most nights. Since I started doing that he began sleeping pretty much through the whole night without needing to go outside. So a couple of nights ago (after he’d started sleeping through the night) I thought I’d try to get him to sleep with Katie—since that’s the goal eventually anyway. (He can’t sleep with her until he’s house trained or can at least wait it out through the night though because Katie sleeps like a rock and won’t wake up to let him out if he needs to go. I know because when I put him in bed with her he went and curled up ON HER HEAD and she never budged.) Anyway, he curled up with her for a couple of minutes, but then I heard his jingle bells. He was at the edge of the bed, preparing to leap to his death on the tile floor below. (He’s still too little to be able to dismount the furniture without sufficient padding down there.) He just wouldn’t stay with her. He wanted to sleep with me. It doesn’t help matters that it’s what I want, too. Ha! So Sunday night I came up with a new plan. Katie and I will sleep with him TOGETHER in the big bed. Smart, right?! Okay, so it’s one more insane thing we’re doing for the sake of a dog—whatever. I’m thinking that maybe if he gets used to sleeping with both of us there I can start sneaking out and he’ll stay with her. Right??? Either way, I’ve got to figure out something before James gets home. I think we’ve got about a week and a half to go. The three of us gave it a shot Sunday night, but most of the night he was cuddled up next to me or on me. I moved him over toward Katie several times, but it's tough to make him stay there. Hopefully we can make some sufficient progress in his desire to cuddle with Katie at night over the next few days! Ha!

Then there was Monday--yesterday. Laundry, ironing, house cleaning day, though I didn’t finish the laundry, I ironed nothing, and I didn’t get the floors cleaned. Hhmmm. I had no idea I’d been such a failure until I started writing it all down! I'll have to make up for some of that tomorrow, I guess. :-)

Last night all of the kids camped out in the living room by the fire again. I decided to join them in another attempt to get the dog to sleep with somebody other than myself. I claimed the couch and Charlie seemed perfectly content to stay on the floor with the kids. Okay, so he was only really and truly content when he was plopped smack dab in the middle of Katie's pillow, but still--this is progress, right?!



This morning we had devotions, cleaned up the house, then headed into town to drop Charlie off for his very first haircut. That meant we had several hours to blow in town, so I figured it would be the perfect day to shop for a Christmas present for James. HA. I hate shopping for that man!!! It's impossible. He already has everything he wants, you know?! The only thing in the world I can think of that he needs and doesn't already have is a house in Alabama. But what can I do about that? Give him a coupon promising that I'll pray over the situation an extra hour a day or something?! Ha! Anyway, we looked all over the place but found nothing--not even anything to spark an idea. ~sigh~ I'm open to suggestions. ;-)

Although I failed to find anything for James, I was able to replace the glass chimney (to a lantern) Sam had broken last week (and had been working all week at odd jobs to earn the money to pay us back for it!), so that's good. Bought two strings of Christmas lights to replace the ones that had burnt out. Now I can weave them through the greenery that is to frame the front door and the boys' bedroom door and I'll be totally DONE with the Christmas decorating. We also did a little grocery shopping. James seemed surprised when I told him tonight that I'd spent $50 on groceries--he shopped for us before he left town, why would we need to go again?! Ha! I explained to him that we were OUT of some things and just needed more. Things like milk, lunch meat, eggs, cereal, ramen... jell-o, cinnamon rolls, Totino's, Kool-Aid, Christmas candy--you know, necessities. Okay, so I probably only told James about the first part of the list. He'll read the rest of it here. :-)

We picked up Charlie and... well, it's just sad. I love him dearly, but he just looks absurd! I ALWAYS feel that way when I pick up my poodle from the groomers--it's just such a sad, sad thing to be a poodle! Ha! They gave him a normal puppy clip, except I asked that they go ahead and start letting him grow out a bit of a mustache. A puppy clip means that the only thing they clip super short is his face and his paws, only slightly trimming the rest of his body. Well, after being bathed and fluffed it looks like he has MORE hair now than when we took him! Ha! And he just looks sooooo different. The kids were heartbroken. We all agree he looked so much better before his haircut (!), but it had to be done. His hair was getting so long and mangy it was getting dirt and leaves and sap matted in it when he'd go outside. Anyway, here's what poor Charles looks like now.



Here's a clip of him playing last night, just for fun. :-)



Pizza! I forgot we had pizza again today! Not Totino's though, so it's okay. ;-) I used the kids' Book It! coupons and we ate at Pizza Hut. They each got a free personal pan, then I ordered a kids meal for myself (personal pan and a drink) and drinks for the three of them. When the lady brought the pizzas out she said they ran out of the regular personal pan crusts, so they gave us all the larger size. Crazy! We didn't even finish two of the four pizzas, meaning we had plenty for dinner (though I allowed the two weird children to have cereal for dinner instead)--all for $5.93! :-) I love spending money when it turns out like that!

And that's about all of our news. I'll try real hard to not let another whole week go by without blogging--it makes my already way too long posts even longer. ;-)