Sister Susie Sittin' on a Thistle

Ah, yes! I forgot when I wrote up that post below (which you simply MUST go look at, if only to see pictures of the SNOW!!!!!) to post a picture of Joe and his new DOUBLE gap.


Yep, he yanked the other tooth out last night. I don't know what's come over him (it wasn't very loose, but he just works and works and works until he can yank it out!), I just know we're going to have to put a stop to it or he's only going to be able to eat mush by next week! Hey, that reminds me...

He made up a joke yesterday and it was actually good.

"Hey, Mom... What do cannibals eat if they don't have a fire? Give up? Ramen. RAW MEN? Ramen? Get it???" Ha! James and I actually laughed (a first?!) and Joe didn't end up on another joke ban (also a first?), so he was quite pleased. I even let him call the General Overseer at HQ to tell him his joke. ;-) Of course, I got on the phone afterwards and asked Dad if he knew what Ramen is. "Uh... not really..." Ha! Oh, well--it was a good joke anyway!

Today we've been tormenting Joe and trying to get him to say as many words and phrases with "s" and "th" in them as we can think up. It's quite entertaining, especially considering the head start he already had with his previous lisp. :-) His new teeth are already coming in and it shouldn't take too awful long for them to fill that big gap, but for now I'm really enjoying this!

SNOW! SNOW! SNOW! SNOW! SNOW!

This is THE BEST snowfall I've been in many years (excluding, of course, Ladies' Retreat in Colorado... and being stranding on the WAY to Ladies' Retreat in Colorado a few years ago--that was a good snow, hu, Tammy?!) and I'M SO HAPPY!!!!! Oh, the wonder of it all! ~sigh~ I can't imagine a day much more BEAUTIFUL than this one. :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

Believe it or not, I actually gave the kids the day off from school. We'll make up for it on Saturday, but it just seemed wrong to not take full advantage of the miraculous SNOW! The kids spent quite a while out playing in it today, giving me some wonderful all alone time. :-) Then I made a chocolate cake and it was about time for lunch. Left-over spaghetti from last night and some elk stew from the other day.

The snow was still coming down and looking oh-so pretty.

After lunch I decided it was time to whip up something that might go really great with our chocolate cake. Here are the makings of a truly delectable dessert...
That's right--SNOW CREAM!!! Wa-Hoo!!! (Sam's has a chocolate syrup smiley face with a cinnamon mustache, in case you were wondering...)
I went out and played with the kids for a while this afternoon. Oh, what I wouldn't give for an inner tube!!! It would have been sooooo perfect. The snow was too powdery for snowballs or building anything, but it would have been just right for tubing. We'll have to be better prepared next time! Still, it was SO gorgeous.

Out the front window...
The back window...
And the boys' window, down toward the gate...
It's really tough to get a good picture of our house because of how it sits on the hill... But doesn't it just look like the best little place in the whole wide world a person could be on a snowy day???

At about 4:00 this afternoon I went out to measure just how glorious it really was...
DO YOU SEE THAT?!?!? Nine and 3/4 inches!!!! WA-HOOOOOOOOO! I can't even remember last time I've had a snow like that in a place I actually lived. IT'S SO AMAZING!!!! And as far as I know, it never has quit snowing. Maybe we'll have a full foot by morning!!!! ~gasp!~ Can you imagine how fantastical that would be?! Oh, be still my heart!!! :-)

I took Sam with me and we walked down to get the mail. We already knew it, but that little trip confirmed that there was NO WAY our van was going anywhere tonight. We MIGHT be able to make it down the mountain, but there would be NO chance of making it back up. I hated the idea of missing church tonight, but what could we do? And besides, why would I go into town where there was no snow to get stuck away from my house where there IS all of this glorious snow?! So much better to be stranded here than there.

James made some tasty pork chop strip thingies for dinner and I made some fried potatoes and corn to go with it. Yum!

I played Whoonu with the kids, then a couple of games of Candyland before tuning in to the CPMA service going on in Aurora tonight. Sometimes I think my brother is about the coolest guy alive. Like tonight when I was able to be there "live" and be so blessed by Brother Van's service about Fields of the Wood. As it turned out, our church ended up cancelling tonight anyway so it was great to be able to take part in that one. And I was so happy to see that Kristin was there! I've been praying for that girl. :-)

I just pulled my third dessert of the day out of the oven a minute ago: White Chocolate Blondies. I haven't tasted them yet, but they smell sooooooooooo good!!! :-) I'm letting the kids watch a show before bed (it's a snow day thing, I guess!), then I may start into my next book. ~sigh~ What a great day!

I'M SO HAPPY!!!

That's about it. Oh, wait! When we took the kids to the library on Tuesday I discovered that they DO have some Christian books there! I had looked when we first moved here and I couldn't find anything at all, but apparently they've had some good donations or something. :-) I picked up two Dee Henderson books and started the first one that night (I was good and went to bed at midnight--I'm so much more responsible than I used to be! Ha!) and finished it last night. Now I've got another sitting next to my chair calling my name. ~sigh~ Can life get any better??? :-)

Can't remember Saturday. At all. Weird!

Had a really great Sunday. I so thoroughly enjoyed being in the Big People's class! (Doesn't sound very flattering, now that I see it typed out...) It was nice. James had me play piano for song service again and it went MUCH better than last time. No Christmas songs. ;-) Then our pastor preached a really good message--as he always does. He preached on a passage and line of thought that I'd already sort of been on throughout the past week, so it seemed to speak to me extra. God is so good. I want to TRUST in God, regardless of my circumstances, and ever draw nearer to Him. I don't want to just live passively until something big and bad and hairy and scary comes along and then cry out to Him. I want to live and walk in the Spirit and near to the heart of God all the time, trusting and serving wholeheartedly every day.

We had a nice, leisurely Sunday afternoon, complete with a good nap. :-) I spent 30 or 40 minutes trying to figure out how to make the laptop play a DVD through the projector and after working and reading all sorts of online helps I finally got the "wallpaper" to show up on the projector, but never could get the movie to DVD to play on it. ~sigh~ So frustrating. My only other option would have been to call Jon and ask him AGAIN how to do this. I know he's walked me through it before, but I just can't remember how to do it again after so long! I didn't want to pester him, so I just gave up and decided we'd use the DVD player instead. (We wanted to use the laptop so we could hook up some speakers to it--the speaker on the projector is pretty poor.)

As you may have guessed, we watched a video at church last night! :-) It was James' CPMA service. He had several CPMA-ish readings and things like that, then we watched Brother Luis' message from the Assembly this last year about being baptized into the body. Good stuff. :-)

After service last night the Clarksons graciously agreed to stay and help us fold the Western Skies and get 'em all ready to mail. Then, of course, we just sat and visited for quite a while. Had a great time, of course. :-) After that James was starving so we talked the Clarkson clan into going to Taco Bell with us for some more visiting. What a great night!

Today has been the big house cleaning day. Wa-Hoo! I got nearly everything done that I had hoped for. Just a few loads of laundry that I'm still working on (don't know if I'll get to the ironing tonight or if it'll wait until tomorrow) and then in the morning I'll Swiffer the wood floor and vacuum the back half of the house. Then I'll be satisfied with a perfectly clean house! Clean enough to make me real happy, anyway. :-)

School took a little longer for the kids today--Joe's math is getting a little more intense and demanding. He's not happy about it, but he's doing really good. Katie... that girl is such a flibbertigibbet. Doesn't shut up and CONCENTRATE on what she's reading and has to re-do lots of her work. She has a great lack of control over the wanderings of her mind--not to mention her emotions! If she makes up her mind to learn something, it's a breeze. Otherwise she ends up seeing the same work over and over and over and over... Crazy kid! Sam is working hard on reading, as has been the case for the past year. Ha! Sometimes he does so good, other times he gets stumped on letters that he knew well just a few minutes before. It's strange. I'm trying not to push him, but to just keep working with him, assuming that if he keeps on seeing and hearing the letters eventually they'll STICK, you know?! I've started having him try to sound out words and write them down for me instead of just trying to read. It actually seems a lot easier for him. We'll keep working on it. :-)

The big event of our evening was Joe losing a tooth. Actually, he didn't LOSE a tooth. He wrenched and twisted and fought and struggled and pried until he finally wrestled a tooth out of his head. His two upper front teeth have been a little loose, but just barely. But for some reason he decided today that one of them was going to go. Must need some money for something. Ha! Anyway, his fingers were all bloody and I could see that he was fighting to hold back the tears, but he just kept working on it until he finally got it out. Crazy kid. At least the tooth fairy is in town this time. Last time--when Sam lost his--I had gone to bed and woke up about an hour later and somehow before I dozed off again it popped into my head that I had forgotten to do the tooth fairy thing! So I got up and took care of it. We'll see if James can remember any better than I did. Strange, how teeth seem to just be falling out of everybody's heads here the past month or two! Anyway, here's a picture of the new gap...



That's it. Nothing real exciting, but God is good and life is grand. It's nice and cold here, so we're still enjoying a crackling fire throughout most of our day. That makes me happy. :-) And... that's about it!

A Wonderful Winter Day

That's what we've had around here. :-) First of all...

I had an epiphany last week after getting the whole house cleaned up and ready for company. After they were gone and the house was still all nice and clean and perfect, I felt so much more FUN. I felt relaxed and like I had all the time in the world to spend with my kids or do the things I usually don't find time for. It made me realize that I miss out on doing a lot of the things I always WISH I did because there's always some household chore around here that isn't done yet. Even if I don't get to the chore, I don't "feel" like I can do the other stuff because the chores aren't done. Does that make sense? Even if it does, it's DUMB! Still, it seems to be the way I function. So I developed this new plan: do ALL of the housework on Mondays, then I'll be able to do all of the OTHER things (that are really so much more important) for the rest of the week. So...

I started in early Monday and, of course, didn't finish. I didn't finish on Tuesday either. But by mid-Wednesday I had all the floors vacuumed, both bathrooms scrubbed, the tile and wood floors swept and mopped, and all of the ironing done. It was a day and a half later than scheduled (but really, how realistic is it to expect ME to do all of that in one day?!), but it felt GREAT! It meant I had the next four and a half days chore free except for upkeep. Wa-Hoo! I've had more time for reading and praying and playing games with the kids and puzzles... ~sigh~ It's a great plan. So much better than having certain chores for each day of the week. Why not knock 'em all out as soon as possible, then LIVE the rest of the week?! I love it! Let's see if I can do it again next week... :-)

SO. With all of the housework all caught up I feel more lighthearted and energetic and all manner of wonderful things. It's GREAT! And I'm sure had a great affect on our snow day today.

That's right--we woke up to SNOW today!!! And it snowed ALL... DAY... LONG. :-) Oh, happy day! Of course, as is common to this area, no matter how long or heavy it snows, it never actually piles up very much. Maybe 3 or 4 inches today... or less?! Oh, well--it was beautiful anyway!

I had a second epiphany today. As I was humming away in the kitchen while making cinnamon rolls and a tasty taco soup and smelling the hot hearthside cider I'd already mixed up, it occurred to me that SNOW makes me want to cook and bake. I've known that for years, but for the first time I wondered why. I mean, my day is the same whether it's 12 degrees outside and a total blizzard or if it's 75 degrees and sunny: I STAY IN MY HOUSE AND RARELY STEP OUT THE DOOR. So why would the weather affect my desire to cook??? It's kind of crazy, really. But something about SEEING the snow out the window puts me in the mood. James says he may buy a snow making machine so we can eat as well in the summer as we do in the winter. Ha!

Boy, I'm taking a long time getting to our day, hu?! Here we go... I started off with a shower and by the time I got out all of the kids were bundled up and out playing in the snow. I learned later that they had rushed to get out there so I wouldn't start calling them for devotions and school right away. Ha! They've learned that I usually just wait until they come walking through the room before rounded them up. :-) The weather was GREAT and they were having such fun I just let 'em make the best of it throughout the morning.

I started some cinnamon rolls, then looked up a recipe for taco soup. We are still trying to finish off the taco meat from Family Camp last year (one more meal should do it!) and we had a little bit of the pinto beans from last week that we needed to use, so it was perfect. I kind of went by the recipe, then added a few other spices and such and it turned out FANTASTIC! It was soooooooooo good. That never happens around here. Whenever I try something new it's a total flop and we all hate it. Must've been the snow that affected my cooking skills. (Okay, that's the 3rd time I've used the word "affect" and I NEVER know if it should be Affect or Effect... help?!) Anyway...

The kids came in for lunch: chicken noodle soup and grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. Then we had devotions afterward (weird!) and started into school. I was able to finish up on the puzzle I'd started the other day in between helping them. :-) I spent all day stoking the fire and sipping on the cider that was especially delicious this time.

After school I went out to play in the snow with the kids. Katie and Sam, really. Joe came out for a minute, but I hit him in the back of the head with a snowball and it then plopped right down the back of his shirt. Ha! He didn't last long. :-) The snow was PERFECT for snowballs, but not so great for snowmen. It packed GREAT, but you couldn't roll it--which is the only way to get a well rounded snowmen. Oh, well. We did our best!

The kids had to show me how they "sled." Here's Sam doing the impressive backwards trick.
And this is what they call "belly whopping." So sad. These poor kids need a sled! They've never had one, so they don't know how pitiful this really is. Don't tell 'em. ;-
This is what Joe was doing when we came in. He reads for hours each day, usually in some strange, contorted position. This one looks more comfortable than most of 'em do. A lot of times he's hanging upside down off the couch. Weird.
We enjoyed our oh-so-tasty taco soup with chips underneath and cheese on top (yum!), then enjoyed some warm cinnamon rolls straight from the oven for dessert. :-) And more cider afterwards, of course.

We had a nice, relaxing evening and James even let the kids watch another Gunsmoke 'cuz it seemed to be that sort of a night. ~Aaaaahhh~ So relaxing. :-)

I'm getting real close to being done with the Regional paper, so I'm going to work on it a bit more and see if I can't finish it up tonight.

WHAT A GREAT DAY. :-)

All Out of Titles Since "A Party is a Party" Has Already Been Used Twice

Okay, let's see...

Sunday was a good day. Because our pastor had run off to Colorado with the only set of keys to the church (ha!), we had service up at the Clarksons' home. Since we had no preacher we had Sunday School and worship, then Sister Shanda went ahead with her VLB service. Sunday School was excellent and worship was... a struggle! Ha! It's tough when you don't have a piano and you don't have any real strong singers, you know?! James serves as both of those around here usually, so it's really hard when he's gone. I tried to pick songs that most everybody knew well and I made sure to find what key we needed ahead of time. Joe was our lone musician and we would have been in big, big trouble without him and his guitar--that's all I can say! He did very well and Katie was a huge help getting us started. (I have my Dad's knack for music, unfortunatly. ;-) I usually can't "hear" where to start a song, even when somebody gives me the chord. But Katie can, thank goodness!) Anyway, after we made it through song service (!) I really enjoyed Sister Shanda's lesson--as always. It was on faith this time. Good stuff.

Since we had decided to do Sister Shanda's service in the morning along with everything else (it was originally scheduled as our evening service), we had the rest of the day until the guys arrived home from Men's Retreat. Shanda said we could just stay at her house until then, but it ended up being a lot longer visit than we had anticipated. Due to what sounds like an amazing, Spirit-filled service up there, the guys didn't get out of Retreat until about 3 hours later than usual... and they didn't get back to the Clarkson's house until about 10:30 that night! The kids had a blast playing with the Clarkson kids and I really enjoyed my time with Shanda. We mostly just talked and hung out and tried to contain the chaos. I love when the kids have a chance to play together (it doesn't happen very often), but 10 hours is just too much! They get sooooo wound up when they're together and I am NOT the kind of person who handles noise and chaos well. But I was prepared for it this time and endured it far better than I usually do. :-) It really wasn't that bad and I'm really glad we had a chance to spend some time with all of them. It was fun. :-)

It was great to hear some of what went on at Men's Retreat. Brother Chris said, "I know I always say this, but... this was the best one ever!" Ha! The guys said it really did seem like God took it to a brand new level this year with several outpourings of the Spirit and several of the gifts of the spirit at work there. I'm anxious to hear more! I never get a whole lot of information out of James... and Sister Shanda probably gets way too much information out of her husband! Ha!

Monday was a good day. Did school, scrubbed the bathrooms, changed the sheets--stuff like that. Tostada casserole for dinner that night. Made Joe very happy.

That night James and I had a really good talk about some things concerning the kids and our family and stuff like that. It seems like since then I have felt new clarity of direction or something. Like things are just running alot more smoothly around here and I feel more focused on what our goals really are as we try to teach and train and raise our kids. There's been a special nearness to the kids and to the Lord. I'm so thankful! We should have talks like that more often. :-)

Yesterday I got all of the laundry and ironing done, vacuumed most of the house and wet Swiffered the floors. The kids were excited to see that it was snowing again in the morning, but were especially thrilled when it turned to hail. It really wasn't as bad as the head gear would indicate... Ha!



We headed to the library a little late yesterday afternoon, then went on into town to run some errands. We ended up at Dion's for dinner, then went to visit Sister Grimes and Pat for a little while. That was nice, but we were sooooo tired! Sam nearly fell asleep there and I wasn't too far behind him! Ha! Got home and got the kids to bed and I got my second wind (wa-hoo) and was able to stay up and finish the last of the ironing. :-)

Today I got the other end of the house vacuumed and some more things organized and straightened up around here. James took Joe with him to town and was gone for a few hours. Joe had only gotten four library books yesterday due to our late visit--just before closing time--and he had already finished them, so James took him back to the library today to take his time and get some more. He came home with a bag full of 'em and a big smile. That kid LOVES to read. While he was gone I did school with Kate and Sam and got the kitchen cleaned up and looking good. Joe had to do late school due to his trip to town, but he actually whipped through it pretty quick so it wasn't too bad. We all made some thank you cards today (I wrote some out, that is; the kids made some) for Christmas gifts received. Had soup and sandwiches for dinner, then enjoyed an episode of Gunsmoke and a bowl of ice cream before devotions. Now the kids are in bed, I'm blogging because I nagged my Mom about it today (and therefore have to do it myself so as to not be a hypocrite), and then I'm going to get started on the next issue of the Western Skies. The deadline is tonight and I actually have a decent amount of material to work with already. Wa-Hoo! So I'm going to get busy on that now. G'night, all!

A Party is a Party--PART 2, that is!

...but a Christmas party, hhmmmm!

Well, day two of the Mom/Kids party has been nice and relaxing. That's a problem. Parties aren't supposed to be relaxing! Oh, well. It's been a good, enjoyable day around here.

I started a fire this morning while Katie made breakfast for everybody, then we had a good devotion time together. The boys were chompin' at the bit to get outside and dig up their treasure, so they disappeared for quite a little while. They finally discovered that we didn't actually have a buried treasure in our yard, but I can't remember what they determined it was. It kept them happily occupied for a few hours anyway!

I got one phone call last night and two today from some of the Colorado ladies; one at the Girl Party and two wishing they were there just like me! Ha! The Craig ladies were going to have a little get-together this evening so that will help them have some fun, I'm sure. Let's see, what else... I took Toy Story back today and got my $25 deposit back (terminated the membership I created the night before) AND a full refund on the rental due to the faulty disc. :-) Uummm... OH! I have very grown-up feeling children today. The three of them talked me into letting them go get the mail this afternoon. Alone. Alone together, that is. Sounds pitiful, hu??? Ha! We don't live on a city block, you know, so it's not like there's a mailbox out in front of our house. There is a lock box for the mail down the road quite a ways, definitely not visible from the house. We usually just stop as we're driving by and pick up our mail but on occasion we do gather the kids and walk down to get it. But today the three kids begged and pleaded for me to pleeeeeeeease let them go get the mail all by themselves. Sure, why not?! They were back in about 10 minutes, but I must say it felt pretty eerie those 10 minutes! Not because I was worried about them, but because I was all ALONE. I was trying to think if I've EVER been all alone in this house... I don't think so! It wasn't eerie like SCARY, just eerie like, "Whoa! This is WEIRD!!! Where IS everybody?!" The kids came in a few minutes later just beaming, feeling oh-so grown up and proud of themselves. "And we didn't even fight, Ma!" Ha!

We got out the Balloonies today. Aunt Sue had them at her house last time we visited, but we never got a chance to get to them so she sent them home with us. Today seemed like a good day! I love watching the kids' faces while they try to blow them up. :-)

They can't ever make 'em real big like Mom can...
Especially Joe. Ha!

They have fun anyway--and I love the smell of that stuff. Talk about fumes! WHOA! People are always worried about lead paint from China... how come nobody has looked into that stuff--it's probably toxic! Ha! Crazy stuff, I tell ya'.

After the Balloonies I let the kids watch a Veggie Tales and I cleaned out my stamping stuff and took pictures of everything I'm going to sell. That's right, I QUIT stamping, scrapbook making, and card making--I'm DONE. Truth be known, I never actually started... I just collected a whole lot of stuff! Ha! No, I've done some over the years and I really, really enjoyed it. But I don't do it often enough to get really and truly good at it, so it's just not as fun as it used to be. I decided I'd be happier if I just sold all of my stamps and papers and tools and ink and all that junk. Maybe I'll be able to get a little something for them on eBay. And if I get rid of all of it maybe I'll stop feeling that magnetic pull to the stamping section every time I'm at Hobby Lobby and I'll be able to stop picking up more stuff that I won't use! Ha! We'll see how it goes.

The kids and I played a couple of games of Whoonu today, but that was all. I expected to play more with them, but the day just sort of slipped lazily away before we knew it. Pretty soon it was time for everybody to take their Saturday night showers and get ready for the second and final pizza party! But first...

Sam came to me this afternoon complaining that his tooth hurt. I got to looking at it and discovered that it was a little bit loose. He was thrilled! He's never had a loose tooth before and was determined to get it out of there. He must have worked on it a LOT because when he came to me again a little while later it was really loose. I made him let me take a picture of him right away with all of his pretty little baby teeth. He's the only one of our kids who has had pretty little teeth, so straight and white...

Good thing I took the picture because a little later he came back and the tooth was really, REALLY loose. I told him he could probably just grab it and pull it out, but he's seen the string method used on Katie so many times he wanted to try it that way. So I tied a string to his tooth and he pulled, slow and easy, until it eased out of his gums. Weird! I've always done the yank-and-get-it-over-with thing! But Sam has a much higher tolerance for pain than the others. Anyway, here he is in the bathroom, checking out his first ever tooth hole!
And showing it off...
He is soooooo happy. Immediately put the tooth in a plastic bag and under his pillow. He's probably in big trouble because the Tooth Fairy is at Men's Retreat and his assistant is pretty forgetful! Ha! I'm going to TRY to remember to take care of that as soon as I finish blogging. Anyway, Sam was soooooooo excited about losing his first tooth and really wanted to call his Dad. There's no phone reception up there and it's against the rules anyway (!), so I let him call his bud Isaac up at the Girl Party. Sister Jamey answered the phone and I was amazed at how long Sam talked to her--he's usually so shy and doesn't have much to say to people. But he was quite talkative and seemed to enjoy talking to her as much as he did talking to Isaac! I'm happy for him, but I felt this strange sort of sadness for myself. My baby boy just lost his first tooth! It's another one of those reminders that I don't have any little kids anymore--they're all growing up! And as fun and exciting as that is, I can't help but miss the "little" days, you know?! They go so quickly... Only old people say things like that, so I guess I'm officially there now! Ha!

We enjoyed our pizza party tonight and had a good devotion. The kids are really enjoying A. J. Tomlinson so far. I think we're about 40 pages into it right now. That's about, what, one-twentieth of the way through?! :-)

Since our pastor ran off with the only set of church keys (ha!), our service plans have been changed for tomorrow. We don't have a preacher, so we were going to have Sunday School and worship in the morning, then Sister Shanda's VLB service tomorrow night. But with the locked-out-of-the-church thing thrown into the mix we've decided to have church at the Clarksons' house in the morning. We'll combine Sunday School, worship, and VLB service into one service instead of coming back in the evening. I enjoy having service in homes on occasion, so I'm looking forward to it! The kids have already got their play clothes packed to take with us since we'll be staying the rest of the day with the Clarkson crowd, waiting for the guys to get home from Men's Retreat. The kids are thrilled to have a whole afternoon to play with the little Clarkson people!

I hope everybody has great Sunday services and a wonderful week. :-)

A Party is a Party

... but a party on a summer's eve, hhmmm!

A girl party is a girl party. And a kid party is a kid party. So far I'm really enjoying my weekend home alone with the kids. But only when I can keep myself from thinking about the girls gathered up north and all of the games and laughter that I'm missing out on with my dear friends! Ha! How spoiled I am!!! It really has been a great blessing that I've been able to be with them the past several years. It would be pretty selfish and childish to mope around that I'm missing it this year instead of being thankful for all the years I have been able to be there. So I'm trying hard to be thankful for the "extra" blessing I've had of being with them those times, and the blessing of having some special time with just my kids this weekend. I just really hope they're watching Nicholas Nickleby up there right now... Ha!

Backing up a bit... We had a good time with our company a few days ago. Scott Bambrough is attending the Men's Retreat in Colorado, so he and Angie stopped and stayed with us on their way through on Tuesday night. They didn't get in until about 11:30, I think, but we still stayed up and visited until about 2:00. At least that's when Angie and I called it a night. The guys were still going strong out in the office at that time, although they were both looking pretty ragged. Ha! We managed to be up at a decent our on Wednesday and--believe it or not--I pulled off a nice breakfast of bacon, eggs, biscuits and waffles. I am NOT a breakfast cook (my kids are lucky to have something other than cereal two or three times a month!) and usually struggle to get everything done at the same time (the eggs are always cold!), but this time everything fell right into place. Scott played baseball with the kids for a little while (with a tennis ball and a rifle... they don't have a bat! Ha!), then we all gathered for "church." Katie had prepared a "Sunday School" class, then Joe played his guitar for our songs. Afterward the kids went outside to play and the adults gathered for a nice game of I Buy before the Bambroughs took off. It was a great game. You can guess who won... :-) By the time we finished it was already past noon, so we talked them into staying for lunch before pulling out. Sandwiches and Frito pie. We had a really nice time and I'm so glad they were able to visit.

After they left we got busy on school... The rest of the day has been forgotten.

Yesterday... hhmmm. Lost, too. I just know we've been real faithful to school lately. It's the longest we've stayed HOME in quite a while now, so we're working hard to not miss any opportunities for school. Christmas cards--I finally took the Christmas cards down yesterday. I know it's a random thought, but it just hit me. :-)

We had a good BTI Bible Study last night. We're going through The Body of Christ and everybody really seems to be enjoying it. It's so important to go through those things--and the Teachings and the Advice--and keep them ever before our people so we can be firmly rooted and grounded in them.

After service I stayed up and proof read the Evening Light... though it was one of those nights when I kept reading the same thing over and over again because I'd get half way through and realize I didn't have a clue what I'd been reading. That's no condition to be in when you're supposed to be looking for mistakes! Oh, well. I tried!

This morning was Day One of "The Party." We got up early and took James to town to meet up with his chauffeur to Men's Retreat, Brother Chris. Got him "dumped off," as the kids kept saying, then headed back up the mountain. We stopped at the grocery store to get doughnuts for breakfast and a box of popcorn for our pizza parties. That's a good way to start out! :-)

Everybody enjoyed their doughnuts, then we had devotions and got right into school with hopes of finishing it quickly so the fun could begin. Ha. Bad plan. Katie was so bent on finishing quickly she was FLUNKING her lessons! B's, a D and an F!!! I was stunned and none too happy about it. It was obvious that she was just racing through trying to get it DONE without actually taking the time to try to learn or remember anything. I was flabbergasted and re-assigned several things, but as I was looking through her work I realized it would take her a couple of hours to re-do everything. She was already in tears and with the "Party Weekend" slipping away with each passing moment I knew it would be fruitless to try to make her do the work properly--she would have been a wreck and she CANNOT function like that, so it would have taken even longer than usual. I could have made her do it, but it would have made for a truly miserable day for both of us--on a day we'd both been so looking forward to. So I told her she was DONE with school for the day (in essence, "Katie, you win--you did so poorly today because you wanted to get into the 'party' and I'm going to let you just get away with it." I HATE THAT!!! But what else could I do?!), but to be prepared because Monday was going to be a killer school day!

These were taken before I discovered Katie's sloppy work. Sam decided he was going to copy a whole book today. He loves to copy stuff and I figure it's good practice for him and might help him out with his letters. We've been working on vowels this week and the sounds they make, as he tends to get them confused quite often! Causes real problems when trying to read, you know! :-)

Joe was gracious enough to sort of smile for me, even in the midst of dreaded schoolwork.
Katie and her little poodle, Kung Fu, NOT hard at work, as I discovered later.

We had lunch, then a Katie helped me bake some chocolate chip cookies. We all gathered around the table and got out some of the kids' Christmas crafts they hadn't had a chance to get to yet--some molds of Sam's and some clay of Katie's--the kind you're supposed to bake when you've finished your creation. Joe got bored pretty quick (not much of a crafter, that Joe fella') and ended up looking through the phone book for funny names. Talk about boring...

Here are some of our creations. Katie made the dog and I made the butterfly and the sheep. The dog is by far my favorite! I told Katie that if she keeps practicing maybe she could make some things out of clay for the Mission Table at the Assembly or something--I think her little pooch is adorable! :-)
She thinks so too, of course. :-)


After the crafts were put away the boys went outside to play. They came rushing in after a while a-a-a-a-all wound up about something. Sam finally found me and said, "Mom!!!! We found GOLD!!! In the yard!!!!!" They were digging with the shovel and kept hitting something hard that "clanked" each time. They are convinced it is an enormous treasure chest and all they have to do is unearth it. They're so convinced they've been fighting over who gets the gold crown that is surely in it, who's getting the jewels and the gold coins and who knows what else. I started to tell them they were probably just hitting a rock (I hate for them to get their hopes up like that, you know?!), but they would have none of it. So I'm letting them enjoy the thrill of feeling like millionaires. I made them come inside though because the area where they're digging is very muddy right now. I told them they'd have to wait until things dried out before they could continue. That ought to make the treasure hunt last a few more days, at least in their minds.

This evening I thought I'd surprise them and do something we've never done: rent a movie. We loaded up and headed to the little video store down the road. James had been in there once to look for something and said it was very nice and didn't have any nasty posters hanging anywhere. I can't even remember how long it's been since I've been in a video rental place! I walked in and asked the guy to help me find Toy Story. I remembered seeing it when I was a teenager and thinking it was great. My kids have never seen it. I had to pay a $25 deposit (can you believe that?!) that will be returned when I decide to terminate my "membership." That will be when I return the DVD next week! Ha! We came hope, threw the pizzas in the oven and put the movie on. The kids were so excited, but it ended up being more frustrating than entertaining. The DVD kept getting stuck. You know, where the picture will just freeze and you can't fast-forward or rewind or even skip to the next scene. It was crazy! I finally took it out and tried it in the other DVD player, but it did the same thing. So we watched parts of the movie, but missed several parts... including the ending! Can you believe that?! It got stuck about 10 minutes from the end of the show and we couldn't get it to work. I even took it out, cleaned the DVD, and tried it in my computer so the kids could see how it ended. Nope, no good. I ended up looking it up on YouTube and showing them the ending on there. Is that pitiful, or what?! What a gyp. I intend to get my $25 deposit back as well as the rental fee when I take the thing back, that's for sure! Even with the kinks, the kids enjoyed it just because it was something new. It has some really great parts, but really wasn't quite as good as I remembered it being. The kid next door is really creepy! Bleagh.

After the movie (with which we enjoyed our Totino's, root beer, and popcorn) I let the kids stay up for a while. Katie and Sam played with Lego's and Joe did some more reading in Harry the Poisonous Centipede's Big Adventure. He's loving it, of course, but so far still things the first Harry book was better.

We read several pages of A. J. Tomlinson (I was about 175 pages into it before it occurred to me that the kids would probably really enjoy it in devotions, so that's what we're doing now--from the beginning), sang a song or two, and now they're all snoozing away. I'm going to try to get some decent sleep tonight myself. I'd love to get on a better schedule than I've been on, but it's sooooo hard to get readjusted! Anyway, that's the story up until this point. I've been praying that the guys are having a WONDERFUL Men's Retreat and that the girls are having a FANTASTIC girl party (okay, I didn't actually pray for it--but I've thought it several times!)--I'll be anxious to hear about all of it. Not sure what our plan is around here tomorrow, except we'll probably play some games. That'll be nice. :-)

It's been a good few days around here. Sunday was nice. I enjoyed teaching the kids' Sunday School class again, but I'm REALLY excited about being in the big people's class this coming week. Seems like ages since I've been able to be in there! I split kid duty with Sister Shanda, but it seems like anytime it's not my week to teach we're gone somewhere. Unfortunately that won't be the case this week. ~sniffle~sniffle~ But more about that later.

We had good services Sunday and good fellowship. After our morning service Brother Hugo (not a member, but a faithful attendee) offered to take everybody out for lunch. Wow! We felt terrible taking him up on it, but he was pretty insistent. Some folks had to go home instead, but the Clarksons and Sister Connie and our family had a great time visiting with him and one another over a great lunch. How kind of him! After service that night we stayed at the church and talked with Brother Chris and Sister Shanda for a lo-o-o-o-ong time. It was great! I so love fellowship and it seems like we do too little of it at our church sometimes. We've been staying and visiting with the other young family more lately and I've been loving it.

Yesterday was a regular old Monday around here: house cleaning, laundry and school. That's about it. James let the kids watch an episode of Gunsmoke before bed--made 'em very happy. It's probably been years since we've watched that show. I still have a whole slew of tapes that I filled up with Gunsmoke episodes when I was a teenager. Brings back memories of sitting down to lunch at 11:00 (when it came on TV Land) in Dad's Lay-z-Boy, then working the rest of the hour on my quilt... That took me 9 years to complete! (Maybe I would have finished sooner if I would have kept my dedicated Gunsmoke/quilt hour ever day! Ha!) Anyway, I still love Matt Dillon, highly dislike Miss Kitty, think Doc is a cute, gruff little old guy, and Festus surely must've been a Smith. I think it's cool that my kids enjoy a show that my Dad used to watch when he was little. :-)

This morning we got a call from Tammy saying that her sister and her husband (Scott & Angie) were planning on staying in Albuquerque tonight on their way to Colorado. I don't think so! Thanks to Tammy knowing me so well and taking the liberty to tell her sister that was nuts, we're expecting company any minute now! Wa-Hoo!!! So after devotions and school, my day was spent in house cleaning. I love having company because it motivates you to get the whole house nice and squeaky clean. I usually only accomplish one room at a time, so it's great when I actually have to do it ALL. I guess I don't have to do it all for company (they won't even see half of it, probably!), but I don't want to miss the opportunity since I have the motivation. :-)

That's the good news. The bad news... No, the sad news... No, that's not right either. The tragic and heartbreaking news is that I will be missing the Girl Party this year. ~SIGH~ I don't want to talk about it, really. I might cry. While the usual crowd of wives and children will be piling up for the weekend after sending the guys of to Men's Retreat... my kids and I will be all alone here at home. Oh, the agony!!! It's just SO WRONG. So, so wrong. ~sigh~ But what can you do? It's just the way life is sometimes I guess. Cruel. Just plain cruel. I do hope they have fun up there and I've told the kids we're going to have our own party here... but it's just not going to be the same! I don't know how this happened. It's just not supposed to happen like this! Okay, I'm done. No more pouting. At least publicly on the blog. I'll go sulk all alone somewhere...

That's it for tonight. I've successfully depressed myself right out of anything else to say. No, wait... there is one more thing I want to say...

Oh, woe is me!!!!!

;-)

Posting to the Weekend Crowd

Hi, Mom!

(Nobody does the blog thing on weekends!)

It's been a good week around here. James and I are feeling lots better this week, so that helps! We had a good church service on Thursday night to kick off our ABM Outreach Week. Our Regional ABM Coordinator, Brother VanDeventer, has asked all of our churches to spend January 9-15 in prayer and fasting and reaching out to people who used to be members of the Church but are now backslidden or unfaithful. So in our service on Thursday we made a list of all those in our area we'd like to reach out to and had a good season of prayer for them, and for ourselves as we attempt to contact them and invite them back to church and to the Lord. I'm excited to see what the results will be from around the Region through this effort. It's so much in harmony with the General theme, "Making a Difference Through Prayer & Fasting" and it sounds like there's been great excitement over it. Fasting is never fun, but it's one of God's WAYS and He's sure to bless us when we're willing to make sacrifices for the sake of lost souls.

Yesterday was a long--but really great--day. Ah, yes. First of all, let me PRAISE GOD for how very good He is to us. We had a need and didn't know how it was going to be supplied. But God miraculously took care of it WAY beyond what was actually needed. We had been praying and weren't surprised that He answered, but were shocked at how far above and beyond He answered! He is just so good to us. :-)

Anyway, we headed to town at about 2:30 yesterday to hit all of the amazing sales. There were a whole bunch of good ones at different grocery stores, but only if you bought whole cases. Because of God's goodness and blessings, we were able to do just that! It seems a little crazy to do such a thing until you add up the hundreds of dollars that you're saving to buy those quantities at these prices. Our grocery bill should go WAY down for the next several months now and that makes me very happy. :-)

We also went to Sam's Club to pick up my contacts that we FINALLY ordered. I've been wearing the free trial ones since October. I intend to wear this set a while longer before opening up the new ones. Why move on when these ones are still doing the trick?!

After all of our running around it was finally time to head up north to the Clarksons' house for Sadie's birthday party. Her birthday was actually about a week ago, but they were out of town and unable to do the party then. Our kids were soooooooo excited! They haven't been to a PARTY in years other than their own. And to be quite honest, their "parties" usually consist of cake, ice cream, and a few gifts, often with just the 5 of us! So they were THRILLED at the thought of going to a true blue birthday party and they all worked for days ahead of time to make gifts for Sadie. :-)

Here are the girls in their party dresses with their party tiaras, boas, and glow-stick sceptres.

And the boys looking very boyish.
Sadie blowing out the candles
I had to post this picture because it's the only one I had of Sadie actually smiling instead of cheesing out for the camera! Ha!
I won't post pictures of all of her gifts, but I'll post pictures of the ones my kids made her because... well, because it's my blog! :-)

Here's the trio of gifts from Katie

A pot holder and a little parrot from Joe
And a super cool butterfly from Sam
After cake, ice cream, and presents, it was time to play Pin the Tail on the Donkey. First time my kids had ever played. (Sad, hu?!) It's an okay game for the kids, but a BLAST for the parents who get to watch! HA! So funny. Here's the birthday girl, a little off course... Ha!
And Cainan a little turned around as well...
Naomi having trouble
And more trouble when James decided to get involved. (I love Brother Chris' face in this picture!)
Katie had a plan going into the game. She had studied the picture and knew just about how far away the donkey's tail was from that particular crease in the paper. Pretty clever! She won the Cube of Rubic as a prize and was THRILLED... but has been super frustrated ever since. Those things are a lot harder to master than kids (and most adults) realize!
Then they played this Tic-Tac-Toe game. We went through several rounds, but it was clear that nobody was actually going to get three in a row, so they just gave the prize to the kid who got the most balls on the mat regardless of their position. Joe happened to pull it off and won a Wall-E puzzle that he enjoyed putting together this afternoon.
Katie played a game of Battleship with Brother Chris, the girls played princess stuff upstairs, the adults hung out and talked, and Joe & Cainan set up action figures and tried to shoot all of the other kid's guys down first.

We stayed for a long time and had a great time. The kids had so much fun, Sadie seemed to be pleased with her party, and I enjoyed the fellowship. We didn't make it home until about 10:30 and I was soooooo tired. But there was chicken and pork chops to be separated and frozen (we're going to get 6 meals out of a giant pack of chops that we paid $10.98 for--I can't tell you how happy that makes me!) and cases of corn, green beans, four different flavors of soup, Ramen, chili, fruit... Maybe some other stuff, I can't remember. Our pantry is bursting at the seams and I'm a little concerned about the shelves holding up, but so far so good. As I was adding up what we paid for all of this stuff and figuring out what we might have for meals, I was sooooo excited to realize that most meals that we'll be eating will cost less than $3 (some less than $2 or maybe even less) to feed our whole family. WA-HOO!!! I feel so THRIFTY. :-)

Today has been a strange day. Regular schooling and all of that, but this morning we got some news that sort of threw us for a loop and I ended up spending a lot of time on the phone and in prayer. While I was praying the Scripture came to me about the disciples being on the boat with Jesus, in a panic over the storm. When they woke him up in a frenzy He said to them, "Why are ye so fearful, oh, ye of little faith?" I felt like that's what He said to me today. After all of the things He's done, why let fear grip your heart now?! Being human is such a pain sometimes! ;-) I really felt Him give me peace and have felt better and better throughout the day, though still praying lots for this particular situation. I don't know how people cope with life when they don't have God to lean on and bear their burdens. We don't realize how blessed we are.

James took Sam with him to run errands today, so I let Katie & Joe watch the Veggie version of Gideon this afternoon. We'd been reading about Gideon in the Bible the past few days and wanted to watch it in vegetable form. :-) I LOVE the "marching band" style music in that show--very emotionally charged. And, of course, who wouldn't enjoy Lance the Turtle?!

Since I seemed caught up on all of the big things, I sat down and finished my book. I've been reading Mistaken Identity this week. It's the true story about some kids from a Christian collage who were in a terrible accident; five died and three survived. But the paramedics got two of the girls' identities mixed up and, due to the nature of the accident and the injuries--and the girls' similarities (same hair type and color, same color eyes, same body form, etc.)--it wasn't discovered for 5 weeks. So while one family had a funeral and were grieving and trying to cope with losing the daughter they THOUGHT was dead, another family was spending 24/7 at the bedside of the girl they thought was their own... Only to learn after 5 weeks that their daughter had died the night of the accident and they'd been caring for someone else. And the family who thought their daughter had died received a phone call a month after they'd buried "her" saying that she's still alive. AMAZING. I cried a lot, but must say that I was blessed. You could tell by the way these families responded to a-a-a-a-all of the things that they went through that they really were Christians. Their faith and hope in God seemed like the real thing. It makes you think about life and how fragile it is; how quickly things can change and how important it is to have your priorities right your treasures in heaven, not on earth.

Katie has weird teeth. They don't just get loose and then fall out like normal kids. When one of her teeth is beginning its departure, it starts sticking farther and farther straight out--even if it's still tightly secured to her gums! It will get crazier and crazier for months before finally getting loose. She's had one that has been so bad she could barely close her mouth (ha!) and it's finally started loosening up a little bit, so James has been having her work on it as much as possible to get it ready to go. (It really needed to go so her big front tooth would have room to move into place a little better.) Tonight was her lucky night! She doesn't have the guts to pull out her own teeth, no matter how loose they are--and she PANICS at the thought of her Dad doing it (I don't blame her!!!)--so that leaves me to do the dirty work. We've done the string method a few times before and it's always worked like a charm. James caught the whole procedure on film this time. Ha!

A strange thing happened, though. When Kate said she was ready and I gave a yank, there was more resistance than usual (it actually hurt her a little bit this time--I felt so bad!) and we heard a small "clank" in the opposite direction of what I was pulling... and we never did find the tooth! Ha! We crawled all over the floor and looked and looked, but to no avail.

Since she had nothing to hide under her pillow, the "Tooth Fairy" decided to just go ahead and take her her money right then. :-)
And here's the happy girl showing off her new hole.

That's about it from around here. Oh, except for this. I filmed it during devotions tonight. I figured some day it would make me smile to look back on Joe's early days learning to play guitar. :-)