God is Good

I don't have a title for my post, so I just put the first thing that came to my mind. It's true all the time, of course, but I must say that I've been blessed to FEEL it a lot in the past week or so. God has been helping me in so many ways--in my prayer life, in my relationships, WITH MY MOUTH (I've been praying every morning, "God, set a watch before my mouth and keep the door of my lips!"--and He is miracle working God!!! Ha!) and even with my face, I hope. I've gotten better over the years about holding my tongue, but have still had little to no control over my facial expressions. (Another one of those gene things. Thanks, Mom--HA!) And the Lord has really been helping me be more diligent and make better use of my time. Nevermind the fact that I'm blogging and that I have a new template... Ha! Really, He's been helping me and I'm so, so, soooooo thankful.

I've been able to scratch several things off of my "to do" list this week and it feels sooooo good. It's the best idea in the world to get all of the house cleaning, laundry and ironing done on Monday (and in my case Tuesday and sometimes on into Wednesday--ha!) and then you have the rest of the week to ACCOMPLISH things and simply "maintain" the house. I finally sat down and wrote in our Christmas Memories book... for 2009 and 2010! I'm SUCH a slacker! Ha! I had to go to my blog entries from December 2009 to refresh my memory so I'd know what to write about. It was nice to remember what a fantastic Christmas we had with Mom and Dad last year--"wrapping" them in that giant box for the kids to open, watching movies, doing puzzles and playing games with Mom, fixing broken bows and restringing guitars with Dad... I love memories like that. :-) So now I'm actually CAUGHT UP on that book and I can't possibly fall behind again for almost another year. Wa-Hoo! That feels GREAT. :-)

I also sat down and wrote out thank you cards for the Christmas gifts and offerings we received. Well... most of them. Hopefully all of them, but I just don't know. I had been recording everything in my "Christmas 2010" file (the list of who we sent cards to, who we received cards from, what gifts we got and who to thank for what...), but when I pulled it up today it was incomplete. It was THERE, but not the finished version of it. I had gone through the stack of cards after Christmas and made note of who we received from as well as the gifts we got, but the finished list is GONE. All I have is the list I had begun in early December--with about 8 names on it. Oopsie. I have no idea how that happened. Anyway, I really THINK that I got thank you cards to everybody I was supposed to... but now there's no way to be certain. If you did anything wonderful for me or my family and don't get a card, THANK YOU!!! Ha! Can I blame the computer for it???

I also made up Ladies' Retreat applications today. :-) It seems like it's been ages since I've done anything like that. I just love jobs of that nature. I like to dink around on the computer and it makes me feel good to be able to do it for a Church reason. Is that selfish? That I like to do it because it makes me feel good?! Ha! Anyway, I'm waiting on one little bit of information. I'm hoping to get the apps and fliers finished up, printed, and in the mail tomorrow. We're less than two months away now!

Let's see... what else? Last week sometime we discovered that we had an "extra" stereo up in the attic. It's one I used in my office in Texas, but we didn't have a place for it here. I pulled it down and put it in the boys' room because they're always wanting music in there. I got it all cleaned up and super glued (long story), set up just right, speakers plugged in... and then we discovered that the CD player doesn't work. It won't even open. (No, I wasn't using any super glue around that area.) So I pulled out a stack of my old Cathedrals tapes. Joe was soooooo excited. He loves the Cathedrals. He was thrilled to suddenly have access to a bunch of songs he'd never heard before and I've really enjoyed hearing some that I hadn't heard in many years. Tapes. My kids love tapes and records.

One other thing. I told Mom about it the other day, but I really wasn't sure how well it would blog, you know?! We were in town last week and Sam saw a VW Bug painted yellow with giant round "ears" strapped on top and a "tail" coming out of the back of it. He asked why it was "dressed" like a mouse and I explained to him that those cars belong to an extermination service. If you have mice or rats or bugs or snakes, you can call that company and they'll come to your house and get rid of them for you. There was a long silence before he finally ventured, "So... if the mice see that giant car dressed like a mouse, does it scare them away?" HA! HA! HA! Apparently I hadn't been clear in my explanation that the car was dressed like a mouse for the sake of advertising--to get your attention and make you remember their company so you'd know who to call when you needed an exterminator. He was trying real hard, in my failure to explain the necessary aspect of it, to come up with a reason why the car would look like a mouse. Once I explained further he started laughing, finding great humor in his own question. "Maybe it would scare them away! Ha! Ha! Ha! That's so great!" I love that kid so much!!!

Okay, that's it. All the news around here. Not very exciting, but it's what I've got. :-)