Home Alone, Day Three

~whew~ It's so nice to not have to THINK to come up with a blog title for a change. I don't know if I'll blog every day, but at least I'll have titles if I do. :-)

Today has been a different kind of Sunday. I woke up sooooo tired today. You know, where your whole body just feels so HEAVY and you don't have the strength to even roll over, much less get out of bed--it takes real effort to even keep your eyes open. Sleep just feels sooooooo good and you can't pull out of it. I hate waking up like that! I'm thankful it doesn't happen very often. I finally managed to crawl out of bed, but only because we had church to get ready for.

Sundays are going to be a little different around here for a while. The Clarksons will be in Colorado for about a month so Brother Chris can fix his Mom's roof and so they can visit all the churches up there. While they're away, we're only going to be having one service each Sunday. We'll have Sunday School, morning worship, then in lieu of our usual sermon we'll have whichever auxiliary leader would have been on for the evening service go ahead and give their lesson. But today was BTI and Brother Chris is our BTI leader, so all we had was Sunday School and morning worship. It was good, of course, but felt very strange! Sister Connie taught Sunday School today and did a great job. I'd never heard her teach before (was it her first time ever?), but I thought she did very well gathering additional thoughts and scriptures to add to the lesson. She didn't ask for comments, however, so class ended earlier than scheduled. Of course, with Brother Chris and James both gone she might not have had any comments anyway! Ha! Then Katie led us in three or four songs and Joe played the guitar. I tell ya', we'd be in big trouble without that guitar when James is gone. It's going to be really tough for this church when we finally go to Alabama. I pray God will send them some musicians to help out!

I think we left the church just after 11:00 this morning. Crazy. We stopped by Sonic on our way home since we all had a real hankerin' for a slush. :-)

We got home and Joe was a good little man and built us a nice, cozy fire. ~Aaaaahhhh~ I love that. The fire AND that I have a son who built it all by himself. :-)

We tried to figure out what in the world we were going to do with the rest of our Sunday and somehow ended up sitting around the Monopoly board again. This time we were able to play the game out to the very end, hopefully prolonging the misery for everybody sufficiently so that they won't be asking to play that particular game again in the near future. :-) I was the first one to go bankrupt and the three kids were pretty much neck and neck. And neck, I guess. ;-) Joe started to falter and you could see the end was imminent. I finally told him to STOP PRAYING about MONOPOLY. Ha! I'd see him over there covering his eyes and hear him whispering every time before he was about to head down "death alley," where all Kate and Sam's hotels were. Ha! He was out before too long, leaving Katie and Sam to duke it out. Sam finally lost interest and I took over for him. In the end, I/Sam won, owning everything on the board and almost all of the money in the bank. Katie had a terrible time and simply couldn't refrain from griping, though she'd promised me ahead of time that she would only complain to herself, in her head. (Riiiiiight.) At one point she burst into tears and started ranting. I wanted so desperately to give her a motherly lecture along with "the look" to make her straighten up, but I simply could not retain my composure. I tried to tell her to pull herself together, but it wasn't very affective through my laughter and while I was wiping the tears away. It was so funny to me both because of how utterly absurd it is to CARE so much about a stupid game along with how truly pitiful it was to see someone in such a condition AND because I so clearly recall the misery she was enduring. I've felt the very same thing over the very same game when I was the very same age--though I was more prone to sharp sarcasm and slamming my piece on the board as I moved rather than tears. Too tom-boyish to let people see me cry if I could help it. I saw a bit of myself in Kate today, though I never had a chance to explain that that's why it was so funny. Poor kid. It's terrible to pour four hours of your life into a game and to be on top and truly expect to win only to watch it all slip away slowly and painfully over the final hour. I think it was a 4+ hour game. Like I said, I'm hoping it was enough that they don't think it's fun anymore. :-)

We were still at a loss as for what to do with the rest of the day, so I let them watch Homeward Bound. They thought it was terrific and, for the most part, it is. I just HATE anything and everything crude and for some reason they feel it necessary to add stupid tasteless stuff like that into kid movies. It's not funny, it's just rude and childish. Anyway, I cried several times through the movie (?!) and then at the very end of the show, when the animals fi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-inally made it back home, the DVD froze up. Aaaaaaaaauuuuuuuggggghhhh! The kids were outside and thought they heard a dog bark, they looked out over the horizon, not daring to believe that it could actually be... THE END. Ha! It didn't even show the first dog come over the hill! It was horrible!!! Sooooo frustrating.

I looked at the clock and realized it was church time in Denver, so I logged on to Jon's site and gathered the kids around so we could "attend" church tonight there. We sang along, Joe played his guitar, Kate played the tambourine, Charlie chewed on Sam (shouldn't be allowed in church, but you know)... I was so blessed to see Brother John Garcia moderating the service and leading songs. I love it that he's so involved and seems to be doing so well! Brother Daryl Clark preached tonight about the still, small voice that spoke to Elijah. He had some good thoughts, and he made a statement or two that CRACKED ME UP. Specifically the one about watching his money go down the drain... but you would've had to have "been there." ;-) We enjoyed the altar call, too, and prayed with them for a while. It was good to see our missing pastor on the video feed, knowing that he was able to join the folks in Denver for service. :-)

Charlie was DYING to play by the time service was over, so the kids drug him through the house on a blanket (one of his favorite games) and chased him and ran from him and all manner of chaos for 30 or 40 minutes. Then they settled down and read books to each other (I love it when they do that!) on the couch until I sent them to bed. Katie read Arnie the Doughnut to Sam tonight. Makes me happy. :-)

I talked with Mom for a minute tonight and then Sister Bishop, but I haven't heard from James. I'm wondering how the Men's Retreat was, but I'll never know because Chris Clarkson wasn't there. Ha! When I ask James he'll say what he always says: "It was good." That's it. If I really dig I might get three or four sentences worth, but that's about it. All I can figure is that Men's Retreats aren't nearly as good or exciting or memorable as Ladies' Retreats are. ;-)