It's Been Half a Week

But I thought I'd go ahead and post again anyway. :-)

Saturday was a great day. James came to me and asked if I'd like a little time alone. ?! Is there a reason he would need to ask??? ;-) He took the kids and headed to town--and they were gone for about 5 hours!!! WOW! I didn't know what to do with myself!!! So I dusted. What's up with that?! I don't know what came over me, but that was the first thing I did. I hadn't dusted our bedroom in who knows how long and it was pretty thick and nasty. After the dusting I decided to vacuum the whole house. Once I had the house looking and feeling nice and clean I headed to the bedroom to work on Ladies' Retreat stuff for a couple of hours. It was soooooooo nice!!! Even Charlie was good for me and slept the whole time I was doing the "spiritual" stuff. ~sigh~ What a grand and glorious day. I'm feeling like I'll probably do the devotions at Retreat myself and I was able to get some thoughts and scriptures put together--which sort of freaks me out. Retreat is two months away. I'm NEVER prepared early. I'm far from done, of course, but I usually don't even BEGIN until way closer--regardless of all my good intentions to plan ahead. Anyway, it feels good to know that I've BEGUN. And I just got confirmation tonight that Sister Bishop will indeed be our Special (even though she's not exactly a "guest") Speaker. I think that's how I'll put it on the applications. ;-) I know it's weird to have her do it because she's FROM Alabama, but she's really the only one that kept coming back to my mind that I kept feeling real good about. That means one of two things. 1) She's the one God has for us this year. 2) I need to meet more people. HA!

Sunday we only had a morning service. Since Brother Chris was away at Men's Retreat we had our Sunday School and morning worship, then Sister Yolanda did her VLB service (that had been scheduled for that night) immediately afterward. After service we went to the Whole Hog Cafe. James was not impressed. They have one of the best pulled pork sandwiches I've ever had, but after trying James' brisket I understood why he didn't think it was so great. Oh well.

We came home and had the rest of the day free, which always feels a little weird on a Sunday. I told James that my #1 priority was to FINISH THE PUZZLE!!! Before laundry or ironing or anything else, I was going to finish that crazy puzzle that I started, when?, the day after Christmas or something?! It's been sitting out in the den, then rolled up and put in the chuckwagon table, then sitting on that table, for at least two weeks, I'm sure. It is soooooo pretty, but a CRAZY difficult puzzle! So that's what I did with my Sunday evening. And I did succeed. Wa-Hoo!!! Don't know if I'll ever try that one again though--at least without Mom around to help out. :-)

Yesterday must have been a pretty regular day because I can't remember much about it. Brother Chris and Carlos worked on the replacing the pond liner. James made lunch for everybody--chicken enchiladas and homemade, super greasy tacos. Yum. :-) We weren't hungry at dinner time, so we let the kids scrounge. Left-overs or sandwiches--whichever. When James and I finally got hungry at about 9:00 I cooked up some scrambled eggs and we had scrambled egg sandwiches just like Dad used to make. :-) Then a bowl of cereal for dessert. HA! I almost felt like a real failure of a housewife over that one... ;-)

Today was a great day for the kid-o's. We had devotions, then spend the morning doing housework. We left late-morning and headed for the library--always the highlight of the week around here. From there we went to Pizza Hut to get the kids free pizzas for being such great readers (BookIt!), and then to Krispy Kreme with the report cards I had printed out a few days ago. Did you know that they give a free doughnut for ever "A" on a report card?! Katie has 6 subjects and the boys each have 5 -- and they have all been very successful in all -- so that means we came away with 16 free doughnuts today! Whoa!!! James says we ought to print out a report card for them every week. HA! That's so wrong. Anyway, it was GREAT.

When we got home today I got a call from Mom saying she'd just finished up on the E.L. and needed it proofread pronto. So I devoted the rest of my day to that, in between taking the VERY WELL TRAINED PUPPY outside (he's been perfect for... oh, I don't know--a week or two?) and helping kids with school stuff. Katie was kind enough to make dinner for us tonight so I wouldn't have to stop for that. She made tuna noodle casserole, peas, and brownies ALL by herself. I love that girl. :-) Her only mishap this time was accidentally grabbing the wrong measuring cup and putting twice as much Parmesan cheese in the topping (Parmesan, breadcrumbs, and melted butter) but, hey, it's hard to have too much Parmesan. :-) It was GREAT.

The other excitement around here is that James bought a typing program for the kids a few days ago. I've been wanting to get them one so they can work on using the proper fingers for the right keys and all that. They LOVE it and, truth be told, so do I. :-) My best score was 86 WPM last night, but it was a total fluke. I'm much more consistently about 65 WMB. And when they throw in a bunch of weird symbols (on the number keys) I go way down to about 45 WPM. Ha! But it's lots of fun. Even Sam has been doing it. I figure it will make things that much easier for him when he starts into computer school. He's doing GREAT with his reading, by the way. ~sigh~ All my kids are getting so grown up! Katie keeps saying she thinks I should join the Pregnant Overseer's Wives Club. Joe heard her the other day and said, "That's dumb, Katie--she can't join that! She's not pregnant!" HA! Nuthin' gets past that kid, I tell ya'. ;-)