Sooooo Far Behind

I look at these pictures and have only faint memories of them, so long it's been since I took them. ;-)

We had a great time at Sister Bishop's house. As always, the kids had to have a seed spitting contest with her. (She insists that it is "shooting" not "spitting" but as a witness to the event I have to disagree. It's spitting if ever I've seen it! Ha!) She made me promise not to post any pictures of her in her nightgown, so I'll just post a picture of her front porch at the tail end of the contest. This is after they'd already spit three times as many seeds the other direction and finally turned around and started spitting this way. I really can't tell who has more fun, the kids or Sister Bishop!



The next morning we went on a little sight seeing expedition with Sister Bishop. First, she took us to this beautiful stone Episcopal church. The workmanship is truly amazing. I was surprised at how few pictures I had taken, but here are just a few.



People who know me well know how I feel about organs (if anyone plays one at my funeral I'm coming back to hurt you. HA!), but I would have loved to have heard this one played. Look at those pipes! Amazing.



James and Katie behind the pulpit. Is it called a pulpit in places like that?



James checking out the strange castle sort of thing up front. There were hints of Catholicism of course and although it was really weird I didn't feel creeped out like I have in Catholic churches. Mostly it just felt empty and hollow. So formal and... well, just empty. Like the ceremony is so important and there's nothing alive and REAL about it. It just feels cold and dead there. So sad.



I did think this window was beautiful.



When we left the church we drove to... somewhere. (I never know where I am down here!) It wasn't rainy. Despite the dark cloud in the picture, it was hot and sunshiny--the umbrella was used as a parasol to give some relief.



I can't remember the name of it (though I remember it starts with a J... Jeanies? Jannes?), but this is a furnace that was used to make cannon balls during the war. Way cool.



Uh-oh, looks like somebody got caught trying to make a quick escape! (Read the sign.) ;-)



The kids enjoyed climbing the rock walls surrounding the furnace, but Katie got high enough that she could go no farther and had to climb back down to where her Dad could help her to the ground.



Rescued! (Look at her skirt--it's the one Mom made for her a few weeks ago. I love it!)



There was also a neat little museum there with all sorts of war-era artifacts. The boys loved seeing the old guns and musket balls and tomahawks. There was lots of neat stuff there--we enjoyed it.

Sister Bishop is one of the best and most natural teachers I've ever known. She is so knowledgeable about so many things and it's just built into her character to share what she knows with others. The whole time you're with her you feel like you're in school. Except it's fun. :-)

Not that this is the best example of the praise I just bestowed upon her (ha!), but here she's trying to teach Sam how to snap the tops off of some weed and make them "shoot."



Next stop was a nice little creek that she insisted had cold, cold water. I think it was called Coldwater Creek. We all went wading (except for James) and I had to laugh. It was a very, very hot day and the water did feel cool and wonderfully refreshing, but I dare say Sister Bishop has never waded in any truly COLD water. :-) I remember trying to wade in the little drainage creek that ran in front of the Cabin (my grandparents' house near Gunnison, Colorado). The first step would take your breath away and within 5 seconds your feet were throbbing with pain. If you made it 10 seconds they were completely numb, but a very painful sort of numb--and there was just no lasting beyond that or you'd end up with frostbite or something! Ha!

In any case, we had a great time wading and the water was so cool and just felt so, so good.



Next we drove to a dam (that I failed to take any pictures of) and heard all sorts of great stories along the way--fishing stories, baptismal stories, historic stories. We loved it. We finally headed back to Sister Bishop's house, loaded up our things, had a light lunch, then headed for home.

We stopped in Hoover and met with the Washburns and their son-in-law, Chris, for one of Sister Tammy's famous home cooked meals: Olive Garden! :-) It had been many months since we'd eaten there, so it was especially enjoyable--and the great company made it better yet. We were able to treat the Washburns this time. When we had a contract on a house a few months ago they took us out, as a celebration dinner. It fell through of course and then the offer we put on a different house wasn't accepted and we didn't have anything in the works, so we decided it was our turn to pay and we'd call it our de-celebration dinner. ;-)

We drove to McCalla and picked up Charlie from his new boarders (he seemed very well cared for and even smelled like he'd just had a bath--nice improvement from the last place!) and made it home at about 9:00. That was Thursday night.

Friday and Saturday were filled with laundry, laundry and more laundry. I finally got our huge pounding from State Convention put away, too. (We left the morning after Convention for this trip and there had just been no time.) That was quite a chore! It did make me clean out the pantry and reorganize, so that's a good thing. It is fairly BURSTING now. In fact, I'm still worried about the Powell's shelves in there! It's been two weeks now and nothing has come crashing down yet, so I'm hoping all is well. I tried to distribute the weight evenly and I stacked lots of cans on the floor. I still feel so overwhelmed and so blessed and so thankful every time I open the door. It's amazing. Aside from milk and eggs and lunch meat, I don't know if we've bought anything since Convention--we've got such an amazing selection of stuff in the pantry right now!

Along with the laundry and pounding-putting-away, I was determined to get the house CLEAN. I felt like I was just working in circles and those darling little imps of mine (ha!) were making messes faster than I could clean them. It drives me batty when I get something totally clean then walk through 10 minutes later and it's trashed again. Of course it's a testament to my failure to properly train my children, but I still would rather put the blame on them. ;-) The kitchen is the worst. Those crazy kids NEVER close cabinets or drawers. I can have everything sparkly clean... then a child will walk through the kitchen and when they come out the other end there will be 5 cabinet doors open, 2 drawers, the trash can pulled out, a loaf of bread laying open, an open jar of peanut butter, a dirty knife, a jug of milk on the counter and 8 dirty dishes scattered about. HOW DO THEY DO THAT?! More importantly, WHY do they do it??? There are times when things seem reasonably under control and then there are times (like lately) when they act like they have had no upbringing whatsoever and like they're in some pigly who-can-make-the-biggest-mess-the-fastest competition. By Saturday night I was near meltdown stage. I don't reach it very often, but it's a horrible condition that leaves a mother in a heap, crying tears of frustration about what a failure you are to be able to train your kids or care for your house, much less both. The kids (and James--ha!) could sense it and before long all of them were scurrying around picking things up all throughout the house and whispering little things like, "Quick--she's coming!" HA! I never actually had the meltdown, but judging by the reactions I got--and how quickly the house came together with 5 people working on it instead of 1 (while the others busy themselves making messes in other areas)--I'm thinking maybe I should come to near meltdown a little more often. ;-)

On Sunday I was the impromptu Sunday School teacher for the little guys. (Who ever thinks of appointing a 5th Sunday teacher? Brother Washburn will probably think of it now. Ha!) We went to the Chinese Buffet with a big crowd for lunch, then spent the rest of the afternoon driving about 70 miles to go check out about 10 more houses for sale--just to drive by and see if we liked the area and whatnot before we trouble Laura with taking us inside. We found two or three that we thought we might go look in sometime. By the next morning we had decided, Nah, we really weren't interested in any of them.

Monday was a clean, clean, clean day. Everything had been put away during the Saturday night almost-meltdown ;-) but there were things that needed some good scrubbing. I didn't get as far as I would have liked, but it felt GREAT to get all of the downstairs floors nice and shiny.

Tuesday was a total bust. I had intentions of finishing the house, upstairs floors and bathrooms and all. I had barely begun when James came into the room announcing that he thinks he has found THE house. It was a cedar-sided For Sale by Owner, pretty cheap, 3 bedroom, 2 bath, rock fireplace, boasted a large kitchen, on two acres with an x-rail fence around it, less than 5 miles from the church. So there went our day. ;-) He called and made arrangements with the lady to look at it at 5:00 that night.

Hhmmm. Seems like this blog is plenty long enough. I'll start a new one to finish the story. :-)