Am Not!

That's directed at anyone who may think I've been neglecting my blog. The dial-up connection in Pennsylvania is wa-a-a-a-ay too slow to blog. And I was buried in Christmas cards and didn't have time. The night I was at my folks' house I couldn't blog because... well, because I'd rather stay up late talking to Mom than blog. :-) The night we got home we didn't get to bed until way past midnight and last night we stayed at the Monstrosity--where there is no Internet connection. But I'm mentally blogging all the time. ;-)

Okay, let's pick up where we left off last week...

After going to bed at 1:30am, being awakened by the dog at 2:00am, then getting up at 6:00am to load the luggage into the van, clean the house a bit, make a green bean casserole and pull together all of the loose ends, we actually left on time for church yesterday morning! Wa-Hoo! We had planned to leave 15 minutes early and that effectively maneuvered us into leaving at the regular time--which worked out fine. Got to play those mind games with yourself every now and then if you have any chance of succeeding.

I enjoyed teaching Zack and Devon in Sunday School. Sam is now eight. That's old enough to go to the other class, though Brother Washburn said he could stay in the younger class if he wanted to. He thought he'd give it a shot over with the older kids and I assume he did okay. I was astounded to hear that he actually read the key verse aloud (can that be true?!) and I never heard from Brother Will that he caused any problems, so I can only assume that all was well over there.

Brother Hopkins preached on "A Thankful Heart" and I felt great freedom and fervency in worship. Love services like that. :-) After service we all headed to the back to enjoy our Thanksgiving pot-luck. There was sooooooo much food and it was all sooooooo good. Great food and fellowship. We sat with Brother & Sister Dudley and had a wonderful time visiting with them.

We left earlier than we would have liked, but we really needed to get on the road. We arrived about 40 minutes late for service at Zion Hill. As soon as we walked in the door I could feel the presence of the Lord, there was such a beautiful spirit. We slipped in the door and took a seat near the back, hoping not to be too big of a distraction. They were having communion and feet washing and I was so, so, so blessed! Folks don't seem to do that as often out here as they do out west and I do miss it. I'm so thankful that Jesus set that "as oft as ye do it" thing in place so that all of these years later we can take part in such a beautiful and sacred service. It reminds us of the awful price He paid for us and of our responsibility to truly partake of Him--in suffering and self-sacrifice and service. I love being reminded of those things through communion service.

We went to Fazoli's afterward with Mom & Dad and the Pimentels and had a great time visiting--and trying out the fancy new Coke machine that will mix 100's of different flavors! Well, I WOULD have enjoyed it if Mom hadn't busted it just before my turn. ;-) We had a lot of fun with Brother Oscar and Sister Amanda. They are such great people and we loved being able to visit with them--and learn that Sister Amanda's nickname is "The Hammer." HA! Kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it? ;-)


We went back to the house and got the kids bedded down, then Mom and I stayed up talking until way, way too late. But it was great. :-)

The next morning we drove the hour and a half up to Knoxville to go to this place where they sell wallpaper really, really cheap. Did you know that a roll of wallpaper can retail for upwards of $30? Way upwards of that in some cases! CRAZY. I've always considered paint the cheap and easy fix--and we'll be using lots and lots and lots of it at the Monstrosity one of these days. But the wallpaper at this junkyard of wallpapers (it's a salvage store, full and random and filthy, that sells just about everything--trim, faucets, doors, mirrors, light fixtures, knick-knacks...) you pay a whoppin' .99 cents for a double roll of wallpaper! WHOA! I'd never heard of such a thing! Naturally, most of the papers there are dog ugly. But some are not quite as horrid, some are decent, some are actually really nice. It was a battle not for the faint of heart, but after about two hours of looking and thinking and looking and thinking and looking and thinking we finally took our booty to the check-out table. The kids were soooooo miserable. I know they were bored out of their minds, but we really needed to do this. They were troopers right up until the end. That's when the whining intensified considerably and you could find Joe banging his head on the shelf saying, "Mom... just... paint!!!" Ha! At the end of the venture, we walked out with 32 rolls of wallpaper... for $32!!! WOW! I still can't get over it. Do the math. If you were the kind of crazy person who would actually pay retail prices for wallpaper throughout your entire house (do people like that really exist? I'm not sure I know any of them), it would add up to over $1,000 worth of paper--for $32. I've thanked God for it many, many times today. We're really needing to cut some corners and save everywhere we can on the Monstrosity and this ended up being way, way, way cheaper than paint. Of course, after those two hours of racking my brain trying to make decisions on what to buy, I can't remember anything that we got! I'm hoping that when we get home we'll still be happy with the decisions and not look at it and say, "Who picked THAT out--that's horrible!" Ha! But even if it is... it was CHEAP. And NOTHING has peacocks on it. Or pheasants. :-)

When we FINALLY left that joint we drove on to Pigeon Forge to tour the Titanic museum that James has been dying to go see. It was really, really, really neat. Definitely worth visiting. It takes the information you know about the Titanic and changes it from a historical event into a heartbreaking tragedy that happened to real, live people. You learn so much about some of the individuals on board--you're even given the identity of one of them at the beginning and learn a little about them, then at the end you learn if "you" lived or died. My name was Alice Johnson, I was 26 years old from Illinois, and I was on board with my four year old son, Harold, and my 18 month old daughter. That's as far as I read on my card before the tears came to my eyes! Can you imagine being on that boat with your two children at that age? Joe was also from Illinois, James and Katie were from England, and Sam was from Poland or someplace. There were little platforms to climb on that resemble the deck and railing of the ship tilted at different angles--so you can try to hang on and keep from sliding off, as the passengers were trying to do as the ship tilted more and more before going down. To kids it's like a playground, but when you're thinking about the REALITY of it all it's scary to imagine. At another place you are in the dark surrounded by cold air and even a huge chunk of "iceberg" that you can touch. Then you can lean over the railing and put your hand into the icy water, the same temperature as the water was on the night the Titanic sank. I held my hand in for as long as I could stand it, which wasn't long--it is sooooo painful. I just cried as I thought about what a horrible death it was for all of those people. Everything was just so touching, as lame as that sounds. There were wonderful stories of heroism and it's difficult to imagine in our day and age that it was the common thing for men young and old to willingly and instinctively lay their lives down with the motto of "women and children first." The founder of Macy's department store was on board, along with his wife and her maid. Before the ship went down he tried to put his wife on one of the lifeboats. She took her coat off, put it on her maid and told her to get on the lifeboat, then went and rejoined her husband on the deck and said, "We've been together all these years. Where you go, I go." They were last seen sitting in chairs on the deck, holding hands. There was the story of Reverend Harper who was last seen leaning on the railing, pleading with a young man to give his heart to God. He finally took his life jacket off and tossed it to the young man before the ship went down. It just makes you think about all of those people and what they truly experienced. How many were saved and how many were not? How many perhaps gave their hearts to the Lord in those last moments as the band continued to play "Nearer My God, to Thee"? It's just so thought provoking and it led to lots of discussion with the kids. What if a man had been a hardened sinner all his life, but cried out to God and found His mercy in the last few minutes of his life before freezing to death in the sea? How blessed he would be to die such an awful death but then go to heaven--far better than surviving, then living to a ripe old age and dying and going to hell. Anyway, it's an amazing experience, though much more sobering and solemn then your usual museum! In fact, after experiencing everything there was to experience I was almost offended at the gift shop. After feeling just a tiny bit of what those poor people experienced, it seems so distasteful (to say the least!) to have a gift shop full of key chains and mugs and t-shirts that say "I got hit by an iceberg!" It was nearly disgusting to me. In any case, we thoroughly enjoyed the experience and are very glad that we went. For the record, James is the only one who didn't survive. The rest of us survived, which goes way against the percentages.

You're not allowed to take pictures inside the museum (something about copyright privileges), so here are a couple from the outside.





When we left the museum we went walked around some gigantic Christmas village place, then went to the Old Mill for dinner. Here's Sam with a giant nutcracker. He's always thought they were so cool.



Honestly, I was still feeling too solemn and reflective after the Titanic experience to feel very much like looking at gay and sparkly Christmas decor or eating at a beautiful restaurant! In the big scheme of things, eternity is all that matters. The "extras" that we enjoy are nice and I don't want to take them for granted, but they're not necessary.

We stopped at a Christian bookstore outlet and enjoyed looking around there for a little while before stopping at our motel for the night.

We spent the next day driving north to Pennsylvania and arrived at James' folks' house just after 7:00pm, I think. Can't remember much about that night, but I remember that I spent most of the next day working on Christmas cards! That was my job while we were there. I had to get that all taken care of while we were away and unable to work on the Monstrosity! It's amazing how FUN it used to be to send out Christmas cards... and how much WORK it is now! Ha! It's just become too overwhelming and not nearly as personal as I would like.

I did make a run to Peight's with James one the morning. I love that little Amish store. :-) Got stocked up on poppy seeds, Christmas sprinkles and a few other odds and ends. It was dreary and rainy in Pennsylvania, so the kids weren't able to play outside much like they usually do. They still had fun playing with all the stuff Grandma keeps for them. And watching way too much Bonanza.

We had a really nice Thanksgiving dinner. Everything turned out fantastic and James and I especially enjoyed his Mom’s homemade stuffing. I had her teach me how to make it so I can make it myself sometime. As if I’ll remember how. ;-) I didn’t really miss anything DURING dinner, but a few hours later when I strolled into the kitchen to grab something to eat I REALLY missed having hot rolls and pea salad—the two left-overs that I snack on for days after a holiday meal!

Most of us hadn’t finished eating Thanksgiving dinner before Katie and Sam cleared their plates, ran to the bedroom, then quickly reappeared wearing their Christmas shirts and singing "Jingle Bells." Ha! I keep trying to teach them to enjoy and appreciate Thanksgiving instead of jumping into Christmas mode ahead of time, but Thanksgiving is still just an interruption—a speed bump of sorts—to their Christmas celebration! Joe joined in after dinner (at least he waited until we were finished!) and played Christmas music on his guitar, then helped Katie and Sam make decorations out of construction paper to hang on the window. I love seeing them so excited and having so much fun.

James spent a lot of time down in the basement while we were in Pennsylvania. He gathered up some of his heathenistic Thundercats toys (can you believe our parents let us watch that stuff?!) because they are apparently quite the collector’s items and he’s found some buyers for them. Then he set up the Christmas village with tons of lighted houses. It looks great, but you have to go to the basement to see it because there’s no room upstairs! Ha! In the evening he hauled out the Christmas tree and all of his Mom’s decorations and got busy—with willing helpers in Katie and Sam. I spent most of my day working on Christmas cards and it did help me get a little more into the spirit when the kids cranked up the Christmas music. I do love Christmas music. :-)

Though I am an anti-Black Friday shopper who thinks people are out of their gourd to get up at ungodly hours to go stand in the cold in the middle of a maniacal mob of people who rush into stores to fight over STUFF... James did take me to town to do some shopping that day. We went to the Wallpaper Barn. Ha! We were, of course, the only ones there. :-) We finally found the perfect border for Joe's room--and it was on a 20% off Black Friday sale. Joe LOVED it.

When we got home I worked and worked and worked some more and finally finished up on the Christmas cards. Way, way, way too many Christmas cards.

We left the next morning at about 8:00am and drove to Cleveland. There were a few accidents just before Knoxville and it took FOREVER to get through there. It slowed us down by an hour and a half or more, so we didn't get to Mom & Dad's house until just after 8:00pm. But when we got there the house was all lit up with Christmas lights that were reflecting in the pond and it was sooooo pretty! I was shocked to walk in and find that Mom had the whole house all decorated and looking GREAT for Christmas. WOW! I wasn't surprised by the deer steaks that were waiting for us. I had requested that. ;-) They were soooooo good. And there was left-over pea salad and hot rolls from Thanksgiving! Wa-Hoo!!! And cherry pie! I was too full to have any pie that night, so I had a piece for breakfast the next morning. :-)

Mom and I stayed up way too late talking, but that's what we do. I love it. :-) James and I drove to Geraldine for service in the morning. Brother Grimes was there to do his CPMA boost and I was so blessed by it! It was wonderful. He preached about the rich young ruler who lacked "one thing." It wasn't anything sinful in his life, just something he was unwilling to give up when the Lord asked him to. Brother Grimes brought in the Advice to Members and how God--through His government--has asked us to give up some things through those advices. And it's not always a matter of whether or not something is a SIN. Are you willing to give it up just because Jesus asks you to, or not? And of course, there are reasons--solid, biblical reasons--for each piece of advice. Anyway, it was so good and thought provoking.

We enjoyed a dinner in the fellowship hall after service--that I think Sister Carr put on all by herself! It was great and we enjoyed the fellowship.

We drove back to Bessemer, stopped in at the Monstrosity for a few minutes, then went on to church. The Washburns' niece, Angie, who got saved a few weeks ago was baptized that night and it was such a blessing! It was a beautiful service.

We didn't home until very late that night. It was raining so we didn't unload everything from the van, just what we needed. We got to bed very late that night, then headed to the Monstrosity the next morning. That means...

The Monstrosity: Day Thirteen

It seems crazy to me that it's only been thirteen days of work. It feels like we've been there non-stop in the five weeks since we bought that house! Anyway, my day started like they all do. With scraping. That's who I am. That's what I do. I am a scraper. I scrape. I was working on the kitchen cabinets this time though, so it made it feel new and exciting. The impromptu decision was made as we were in the tool aisle at Wal-Mart mid-morning to buy an electric palm sander. It is my new best friend. :-) The painting in this house is horrendous. Just blobs and globs and streaks and runs and drips EVERYWHERE--and most of it is in gunky high gloss white. ~Bleagh~ I spent the rest of the afternoon working on the cabinets with the sander, first with some "paint stripping" sandpaper, then some "leveling" sand paper. It worked GREAT and the cabinets will paint up sooooo much nicer now!

Brother Hopkins came to do some more mud work, so that's exciting too. We're getting closer to paint every day! Although we have come to a sad realization. We're never going to have everything ready to paint in this house. It's just not humanly possible. There is always more and more and more and more to do. We're just going to have to QUIT one of these days, call it "good enough" and start painting. Maybe soon. Maybe not. Time will tell!

We had to quit working and clean up a bit to meet the Ridlespurges at the church at 6:00pm so we could spend a couple of hours searching through the state files for information that they'll be needing at the committee meetings in Moulton this weekend. It was a miserable job (!), but at least we had good company to make it bearable! Then we had good Mexican food with the good company. :-) Then we went back to the Monstrosity to sleep on the hard floor again. I doesn't make for a very good night's sleep, but it's doable every now and again.

The Monstrosity: Day Fourteen

I spent most of the morning CLEANING. The kitchen counters were covered in clutter and trash and supplies that all needed sorted out, as did the cabinet and drawers where we're keeping all the tools. We can't find ANYTHING and it's a royal pain to have to go searching for something in a house this large! Ha! So I thought it would help if we got it all cleaned up and sorted. It felt GREAT to get that done. We ended up at Sherwin Williams and then Lowe's--which took way too long. And in the end we spent nearly $300 and had forgotten the thing that was our REASON for going in the first place! ~sigh~ Remodeling is tough! Ha!

We got back to the house and I spent the rest of the afternoon sanding 24 cabinet doors and three drawers. Kody and Michael came over and ripped up the kitchen floor. Again. They already did that once, you know. The first time it was a layer of cushy, padded linolium. Today we had them bust up and remove the next two layers--another linolium that was glued down to a wood floor. There are two more layers of linolium (that's right--there were five layers of flooring in there), but we're not removing them. With the other layers gone it is now perfectly level with the dining room floor, meaning we can now have a continuous floor from one room into the next instead of having a divider and a higher and lower floor. Makes me very happy. :-)

Here's a picture of the "new" floor after the other was removed by hard working Kody and Michael. They have yet to wham the hundreds and hundreds of staples flat though. That's a job for another day. ;-)



And here's my new favorite toy. :-)



We came home tonight, unpacked (we pack and unpack every other day now, it seems), I took a hot shower, started a load of laundry, then sat down at my computer with some hot peppermint tea and a handfull of chocolate chips. Because it's what I needed. :-) Life is good and I'm still having fun working on this crazy house of ours. Most days. I sometimes think, "Who's the moron who prayed for this house?! This is insane!!!" And I regularly look forward to the day when we can downsize and get something smaller and more... us. But I believe that God opened the doors for us to have this house and I am so thankful for it. Someday... some glorious day... we'll be finished with it and it will be a GREAT house to live in. I really do love it, extra spaces and all. And it's fun to work hard on something and know that you're improving it and making a good investment. We're not just making it nice so we'll enjoy living in it, we're making improvements and increasing the value of the home. And it just feels good and "wise" or something like that. I get the same kind of feel-good rush that I used to get hauling firewood when I was a teenager. It just feels good and old fashioned and wholesome and invigorating. Love it.

Of course, next time I blog I will probably be back in "WHY DID WE BUY SUCH A HUGE HOUSE THAT NEEDS SO MUCH WORK?!" gear. ;-)

We are home tonight, but will be spending tomorrow and Thursday night back at the Monstrosity. So no blogging. It's not my fault.

By the way, did I fail to mention that my children are gone again?! We left them with Mom & Dad on Sunday. We'll pick them up this coming Sunday. Katie and Joe were thrilled. Sam was miserable. Ha! He doesn't much care for being away from his Mom and Dad, but it's good for him. They all seem to be having a great time--and I'm so thankful that they're able to spend time up there with their grandparents. It's wonderful. Of course, I have to fight off the waves of guilt over having left them for the second time in just a few weeks! We're trying to work, work, work at the Monstrosity this week while we know they're getting attention from Grandma. We've been too busy to really miss them, but I saw the picture of them on my screen earlier and thought, "Aw... those are my kids! Look how cute they are. I love 'em. When are they coming home?" :-)

One more thing... James got an e-mail from the collector dude and he's going to pay $150 for those Thundercats toys. Can you imagine?! James has a few more pieces and he's going to inquire as to how much the guy might pay for them, too. So with that little burst of extra $$$ and a few other agreements, I was able to sweettalk my husband into re-flooring the foyer area of the house where the hideous slate floor is! AND he found a flea market where he can buy trim super cheap so he has also agreed to buy chair rail and door trim for the kitchen. WA-HOO!!! Those were two HUGE accomplishments for Day Fourteen. :-)

A few random pictures of Charlie before I go. He "bites" at air. With his head out the window, at a blow dryer, standing over a heater vent--whatever. It's GREAT. :-)



Katie must have taken this picture. I just found it on my camera card tonight. Almost makes me miss the dog, too. Yes, my mom was crazy enough to DOG SIT again, too! Hahahahahaha!

HELP!

I've fallen behind and I can't get caught up!!!

But it's my duty to try.

The Monstrosity: Day Eight

According to my notes (which is the only reason I have ANYTHING to blog), Day Eight was much more productive than Day Seven. Day Seven was one of those days when I wandered from room to room, scraping my life away but only seeing more and more things that needed scraped. I didn’t conquer a single thing.

Somehow from the time we arrived on Day Eight things looked a little brighter. I went upstairs to begin scraping and sanding some more and as I walked from room to room taking inventory of what needed done I began to think, “Hey… there’s really not all that much left to do up here!” To be clear, there are TONS of things to do up there, but there’s not so much left to do to get us ready to PAINT, which is my #1 goal in life right now, right after serving God, being a good wife, and being a good mom. I guess that makes it my #4 goal in life right now. I’ll love it when we’re finished and I no longer have to have goals that involve silly, temporal things such as paint. :-)

Kody and Michael came back to work some more that day. I got them busy scraping peel and stick tiles out of the drawers and cabinets of the upstairs bathrooms. Ah, yes. Remember all of those people who should be shot for wallpapering a fourth layer on top of the others? They should only be shot AFTER all of the people who affix peel and stick tiles to the inside of drawers and cabinets have been shot. I’m all about proper priorities. ;-)

I’ve got minimal scraping left to do upstairs, a little bit of sanding, and then I just need to CLEAN everything. And we’ll be ready to paint!!! How exciting is that?! Of course, then there’s the downstairs… But really, we can’t be very far away from being ready to paint there either. I’m thinking just another few days of work and we’ll be all set to go. WOW. That would be amazing.

The boys had done all they could do with the drawers and cabinets, so James got them busy pulling up carpet. Two of the upstairs rooms were de-carpeted by the end of the day. Wa-Hoo! That nasty, smelly stuff is gone and it makes me sooooo happy! Someday we will install fresh, new, non-smelly carpet. Oh, happy day!

The Ridlespurges hadn't seen the house since Day Two, I think, so they stopped in that night to check out the progress. They insist they see some. They are too kind. HA! Anyway, we were able to convince them to stay and join us for dinner. Look!!! Our first dinner guests!!! How exciting is that?!

Ha! Okay, so maybe it's a little pitiful. But at least we've got a table there now and don't have to sit on the floor to eat anymore. And we fed them Little Caesar's pizza. Talk about pitiful! HA! It was fun anyway. :-)

The big news of Day Eight was the HUGE money we spent that we were really hoping to NOT have to spend. The furnace and AC units were very, very old. We knew that. We were just hoping that they would tough it out for another year or two or three. Nope. One unit HAD to be replaced and the others were going to need it in the very near future anyway, so we just thanked God that we had the money to take care of it all right now and had it done. And tried real hard not to think about the fact that we just spent about half of our remodeling budget in one swift move. Ha! I’ve been trying to mentally make the adjustment and see what we can live with that we didn’t used to think we could live with. ;-)

Anyway, though it was a huge chunk of money to dish out in one day (OUCH), it does feel good to know that we’ve got brand new units under warranty and no longer have to wonder (as we already have been), “Hhmmm… I wonder when these things are going to go out on us?” It’s almost relieving to just have that upgrade done with. So far the only time we actually SEE improvement at the house is when we pay other people large sums of money. The come, they rip out old stuff and slap shiny new stuff in it’s place, and they’re DONE. Boy, I wish I could do that!

The Monstrosity: Day Nine

That was last Wednesday. We got there to find Brother Hopkins and two Mexican guys slapping sheetrock up all over the house. Actually, the other guys slapped it up and Brother Hopkins followed behind them to do the finishing work. He is sooooo fun to watch. Before long the heat and air dude was back to finish hooking up the heat pumps and whatnot to the new systems. Then Kody and Michael showed up to start ripping out carpet with James again. With everybody zipping this way and that all through the house I felt like I was in the way wherever I went, so I just went to the bedroom and pulled out the kids’ computers. I sat there and graded and checked all of the schoolwork I’d not been staying on top of for the past two weeks or so. That took a while! But it felt good to have it done and get the kids’ work all sorted out again.

The most thrilling news of the day can be contained in one word (though you know it won’t be): FOXTAIL!!! I finally talked to Robert. He’s the mountain man who owns the True Value Hardware in the little town where we lived in New Mexico. I told him that I used to call once or twice a year (though not in the past two years at least!) to have him mix up paint for me, that I had tried everything I could think of to locate the colors (though I spared him all the gory details) and was wondering if perhaps he could help me—and that the main color I was concerned with was a dark red we called Foxtail. He remembered. :-) After a few minutes he called me back and said he had found my old code for Foxtail!!!! Wa-Hoo!!!! “Thank you sooooooooooo much! I can’t tell you how much this means to me! I LOVE YOU, ROBERT!!!” Red is the absolute scariest color to choose—it’s sooooo easy to pick a horrible one when you think you’ve found something beautiful—so I was THRILLED to have the code for a red that I already know I like instead of spending money on several shades that end up being hideous. If Robert would have been nearby I probably would have kissed him on his big white bushy beard. Ha! No... probably not.

So Day Nine was a good day. By the end of the day we had our new heat and air units fully functional, lots of nasty carpet removed (though we’ll be able to re-use some of the pad and save some money—thank the Lord!), we had ALL of the sheetrock installed in the necessary places all over the house (the peacocks or pheasants or WHATEVER they were are GONE!), and FOXTAIL—we have Foxtail! And all I did was sit with a computer or a phone all day long. I really think I’m seeing a pattern develop here. ;-)

When we got home that night I had lots of cleaning, baking, studying, and laundry to do. There was more of the same to be done Thursday morning. James and I drove to Cleveland that afternoon and arrived about dinner time. We were very happy to see our children and I think they were happy to see us, too. Charlie sure acted happy to see me anyway. :-) Dad was still away on his hunting trip to Colorado so we didn't get to see him, but Sister Bishop and Sister Fender were there. Sister Bishop, being the coolest old lady in the world, had acquired quite a shiner while playing with the kids. We'll just say she pulled a Matt Barnes.




We had a good time visiting that night and helping Mom with a few last minute details for the Ladies’ Retreat, though she had things pretty much under control by the time we arrived.

James and the kids spent the weekend at Mom & Dad's house--and Dad arrived sometime on Friday so the kids were thrilled to be able to see him at last after having been at his house for over a week! James and the kids went to Fields of the Wood on Friday and it sounds like they had a good and memorable trip. That makes me happy.

We ladies had a FANTASTIC Retreat. It was just so, so, so, so, so good! I LOVED being there and was so blessed by so many things. It's just incredible how God tailors each Retreat according to the ladies and specific needs that will be there. This one was sooooo different from the Retreat we had in Alabama a few weeks ago, but both were so beautiful. There seemed to be an unexpected theme of divine healing--physical healing, spiritual healing, mental healing--throughout the weekend and I was overwhelmed with how blessed we are to serve such a loving and powerful God. (I say unexpected simply because it was never taught or preached about--just experienced.) Sister Bishop was the guest speaker and was a wonderful blessing, as always. Melanie Hogan did the devotions and music and had baskets full of rotten, smelly, fly infested fruit (with the cutest little homemade flies you ever saw), then an empty basket finally rid of the nastiness, and at last a basket full of bright, shiny, ripe fruit--ALWAYS ABOUNDING being our theme for the weekend. Allene Cox taught a GREAT class on intercessory prayer and I taught a class on Jekyll and Hyde. Okay, so the class was actually on hypocrisy, but I LOVE Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and all of the fantastic spiritual parallels that are to be found in it, so it was the main illustration used. We had lots of good fun and fellowship, as any self respecting Ladies' Retreat does, and I was privileged to get to know some girls a little better than I did before. And I fell in love with Mary Shelton--she is the neatest lady ever! Ha! I've never really been around her before, but I think she is just fantastic. One in a million. :-) I found these pictures on my camera when we got home. It's that crazy game where everybody stands in a circle and then reaches into the middle and grabs hands with other people from the other side of the circle--then you're supposed to untangle yourselves without letting go. Riiiiiiiight.




I'm sure there are a whole bunch of things I'm forgetting, but that seems to be what I do of late--forget. More than usual. Scary.

We got back to Mom's house Sunday afternoon. It was nice to see Dad for a few minutes before we loaded up and headed back to Alabama. He had shot a real nice buck while in Colorado and insists that he's mounting the antlers. Mom insists they are not going in her house. I am definitely with Dad on this one! I wouldn't want to have dead creatures hanging all over my walls, but one set of antlers wouldn't hurt anything. And look how big and broad they are--she ought to let her man show off his trophy, don't you think??? :-)



When we got home late that night Sam was finally able to open his other birthday present: a remote controlled helicopter. He went through two of them last Christmas and though they both broke almost immediately upon revving them up (we were able to return them and get our money back), he just can't help but love them. He was soooooo excited.




This chopper is a lot better quality than the one he had last year (it was 70% off and cost the same amount as the cheaper one) and it has been a BLAST! Sam is getting the hang of flying it, though he crouches and ducks and sways the whole time. HA! James plays with it quite often, too. "It's my turn!!!" he keeps telling Sam. He flew it into the back of Katie's hair today. That was a royal mess! It got all tangled up there and it took me a while to dislodge it, then remove the loose hairs that were tightly woven around the blades. I really should have taken a picture while it was still stuck to the back of Kate's head. HA!

The Monstrosity: Day Ten

We stumbled upon a wallpaper store in Alabaser that we'd never noticed before, so we stopped there on our way to the Monstrosity Monday morning. We spent a very long time there thinking and pondering and re-pondering and doing some math--and finally left with two wallpapers and some fresh ideas. We worked at the house the rest of the day but at the end it was another one of those “What have we accomplished today?” days. At least we had wallpaper.

The Monstrosity: Day Ten and a Half

We only worked in the morning. I scraped and scrubbed in Sam’s room. An idea is growing in my mind of what I’d like to do in there, but it sounds NUTS and I’m not saying it out loud. Or maybe ever. If I get guts enough to try it I’ll just take pictures when it’s all over with. But only if it turns out well. ;-) Anyway, all of the trim and baseboards and walls have been wiped or scrubbed or scraped (or all of the above) and are now ready for whatever future awaits them.

We left at noon-ish, went to the church to clean up and change clothes, then headed east. We stopped at Bass Pro Shops and enjoyed all sorts of free stuff (duck shoot, toy train, remote controlled trucks, laser shooting gallery, etc.) that they have set up because it's Christmastime. It was GREAT.

We got to Sister Bishop's house and brought our things in, then went to the Revival with her that night. Brother Ammons was preaching in Anniston this past week and we enjoyed going to be with them for the service. Just after the dismissal prayer the Washburns arrived. Ha! They thought service started at 7:00 and they'd only be 30 minutes late. It started at 6:00. Sister Bishop invited them over to the house along with the Cogburns and Brother Ammons. We enjoyed some sandwiches and some DELICIOUS soup (was it delicious because I haven't been cooking because we're always at the Monstrosity and I'm starved for some home cooked food, or because Sister Bishop is just a fantastic cook??? Probably BOTH!), and then enjoyed lots of stories and singing--until after midnight. I was soooooo tired, but certainly enjoyed the fellowship.

I discovered that I didn't have my bathroom bag with me--the one with my shampoo and brush and all manner of necessary things. Sister Bishop had an extra toothbrush (a new one, to be clear!) and I soaked my contacts in a cup of water overnight, but everything else just had to wait. ~Bleagh~ I had left my bag at the church in Bessemer when we changed there. Dumb.

Sister Bishop cooked us a wonderful breakfast, after which we intended to leave. But we couldn’t leave because of a tornado (the week before Thanksgiving?!) in the area. We finally got back to the Monstrosity just after lunchtime--and Sam and I scraped his bedroom door entirely. I didn't know it was possible, but we got it done--and I feel so much better. People who don't care enough to paint RIGHT shouldn't paint at all.

We were only there for a few hours, so we’ll call that Day Eleven with the half a day left over from before. ;-) Brother Hopkins also came and slapped mud all over the walls again. It's lookin’ good!

I had proofread some of the Evening Light on our way home from Anniston, but my computer ran out of juice (I couldn't print it out and had to just do it on the screen) so I only made it to page six. I hate it that I failed to do my job this month! It is a joy and a privilege to be able to do anything for the Church and I usually try to set all else aside when Evening Light time comes, but I just couldn't get it done this time. We didn't get to bed until about midnight that night--and I was soooooo tired I knew I wouldn't be any good even if I did try to stay up and read the rest of the paper. After that it was too late to get the corrections in.

The plan was solid for the next morning: SLEEP IN. I could almost feel a crash coming on and felt like my body was warning me--"Get me some rest, or else." The bed felt so, so good. ~Aaahhhh~

When we finally got the day rolling we did devotions and school, just like what "normal" used to be for us. The kids were so happy to have a regular day. Even Charlie seemed happy to just be home and was so much more playful. Sam made tomato soup for lunch, the kids swept and mopped the floors, I ironed and packed again. We tried to go to Revival in Anniston again that night, but there was an accident and we weren't able to get through. I hate getting everybody looking and smelling pretty and all loaded up--for nothing! Ha!

The Monstrosity: Day Twelve

I got Sam’s room FINISHED and Katie’s room FINISHED. (That just means they're ready now for paint or wallpaper or whatever.) I found a surprise in Katie's room. More wallpaper! I had taken a border off of the top of the walls there already, but there was another border that had been painted over. At least it was just on one wall. And it wasn't nearly as disturbing as the surprise that we found in Sam's room: a floor vent full of Cap'n Crunch. GROSS.

After finishing those two rooms I cleaned the upstairs bath enough that we'll be able to use it to get ready for church and such (it's the only bathroom with a mirror at this point). We were able to make it to Anniston for revival and were blessed to be there. After service we went to Wendy’s for Frostys with Sister Bishop, then drove on home--after picking up the suit jacket James had left and the chorus book I had left the other night. We are soooooo not with it right now!

That brings us up to today. I had sooooo much to do, but it was sooooo nice to be home! So nice that it was hard to get motivated. James and Joe went to run errands and were gone for a few hours. Katie and Sam wondered over to the other side of the mountain and met neighbors (and were in HUGE trouble when we found out they’d actually gone into the people’s HOUSE. What were they thinking?! We don’t even know who these people are!!!), I made lots of deviled eggs that really didn’t turn out all that great, two pumpkin pies that look terrific (all for the Thanksgiving pot-luck tomorrow), spaghetti and Emilee’s cheese bread (James is addicted) for dinner, did laundry, ironing, prepared our family Christmas letter (so hard to get into the spirit of that!) and labels, gathered the cards and other supplies, cleaned, packed, got ready for Sunday School... and that's all I can remember.

Just to give you a heads up, I probably won't be able to do much blogging this next week either. We will be going to church in Bessemer in the morning, then after the pot-luck we'll head to Cleveland--maybe going to one of our Alabama churches on the way. We'll stay at my parents' house, then go to Knoxville and do some shopping, then on to Pigeon Forge so James can FINALLY go to the Titanic museum. We'll get to Pennsylvania late Tuesday night. We'll leave there Saturday morning and get home late, late that night. I'm REALLY looking forward to this trip, though I'm so tired I don't know that I'll be much help driving. I had to laugh when we were talking about the 13 hour drive earlier today. Sam said, "Finally!!! A real trip. It's been way too long, Mom!" Ha! You can tell he was raised out west, for sure!

The Monstrosity: Day Seven

Was a total bust. I completed nothing. I can't even tell you what I DID all day. I know I was busy working all day, but I can't think of a single thing that actually GOT DONE. I keep thinking one of these days we're going to make it over the hump and actually start SEEING some progress. As of now, it's still looking pretty bleak. And then I look at my blog title. This is only the seventh day we've worked on this giant house! It's unreasonable to actually think that we should be farther along. We just WANT to be farther along. Right now there are lots of door knobs to be removed, dried paint drips to be scraped and sanded, trim to be re-affixed, surfaces to be cleaned and scrubbed--all of the things that make up the pre-paint stage. It's a very unpleasant stage. Painting will be lots of work in a house this size, but at least it's rewarding to look behind you and see progress. I have yet to do that!

I really don't have time to blog but I thought I'd write for a few minutes while I wait for the dryer to finish so I can fold the clothes. I'm sooooo tired and my throat is scratchy and I just want to go to bed, but I need to finish up the laundry and work on my class for this weekend. I'm on my second cup of hot peppermint tea. Can't tell if it's helping my throat, but it tastes delightful. It feels weird to use that word (too sissy-ish for me?!) but it seems the most accurate.

More important than any of the goings on with the house...

We had a WONDERFUL Youth Retreat! :-) I loved it. It was just so, so, so good. I was so blessed by our guest speaker, Brandon Allen. He has an amazing testimony about what God has delivered him from--and it makes his ministry so affective. He knows firsthand the difference between darkness and light and he is so passionate about serving God and so repulsed by worldliness. It's beautiful and God used him mightily to speak to our young people about their music and clothing and entertainments, etc. The Sunday morning service was especially powerful and I know God was really speaking us and working in our hearts. I love to feel conviction and I love that God cares so much about us that He continues to send it so that we can take the next step and grow closer and closer to Him, more and more like Him. It's so exciting to see what God is doing in these young people and I am so thrilled and so blessed to be able to be here to watch them grow in the Lord!

We had lots of fun at Retreat, too. The campground was fantastic. I didn't get to stay with the girls (so sad) but the room James and I were in had a double bed, a twin bed, a couch, a closet, a lamp, and a ceiling fan. Wow! I was SO thankful for the ceiling fan. Brother Grimes stayed in the same building and he had the heat cranked up to 70-something (I know, I know--that's normal for most people; I'm the weird-o here) and I was about to die! I opened our window and turned the fan on high and it got nice and cool in our room. ~Aaaaahhhh~ I was happy, Brother Grimes was happy. :-)

The campground had lots of great stuff to do--a pool table, ping pong, air hockey, Foosball, horseshoes, volleyball, even an 18 hole putt-putt course! It was GREAT. We played mini-golf with the Washburns two or three times and learned that Sister Tammy is fantastic in the dark. She got a hole in one FOUR TIMES when we played after church one night. We're thinking her crooked putter helped her out, too. She didn't do nearly as well with a straight putter in the daylight. Ha! It was great fun.

My sport of choice ended up being ping pong, which surprised me. I thought I liked pool better. I was wrong--I definitely prefer ping pong. Faster is funner. :-) I loved playing with Brother Washburn and Brother Will because they seem to be about as competitive as I am. But I probably loved it most because I beat them both. :-) Poor Brother Washburn. My son de-throned him as the checkers king and now he's lost to a girl (four times ~ahem~) at ping pong. Tsk, tsk. What a shame. Hahahahaha! He was worried about me blogging about my wins and his losses and was all concerned that I would embellish the truth and or something. I told him that if he wants to tell it his way he'll have to get his own blog. Around here, I get to tell the stories. (And the honest truth is that he won two games, I won four. Which means I'm the WINNER and he's the LOSER. Don't you just love TRUTH??? I do. This time. Ha!) Anyway, I loved playing and if we ever finish this crazy house I am definitely going to be searching Craigslist for a ping pong table to put in our basement. :-)

Let's see, what else... We played Apples to Apples on Saturday night with about 15 people. That was a little crazy. By the time you finished reading through all of the red cards you'd forgotten what the green card was! It was fun anyway, though the only thing I can really remember about the game is how many times "dead fish" resurfaced!

We left Retreat and made it home at about 3:00 yesterday afternoon. We brought our suitcases in and unpacked/repacked, then went to Alabaster to dig through the storage units before church. We were in search of--what else--paint swatches. ~sigh~ Still no luck. We keep getting this nagging feeling that they are somewhere at the Powell's house, not in storage. Even James says he thinks he remembers us having them here. I try not to talk about it though because then I get the lecture. "Why didn't you just give them to me? I would have taken them and filed them and we'd HAVE them now that we need them..." And it just cracks me up. Who in the world (other than James, of course) would ever think of FILING paint swatches?! HA! Actually, he's been really good to not nag too much. He just gives me that look. The one that says, "I can't believe you lost the paint swatches, you ninny." That look. And I can live with the look better than if he actually speaks the words aloud, so we're good here. :-)

We had a good service last night in Bessemer, followed by a nice time of fellowship in honor of Sister Hopkin's 26th birthday... or something like that. Afterwards we drove 3 minutes instead of the usual 50 minutes (what a change!) and spent our very first night at the Monstrosity. We still had our pillows and sleeping bags from Retreat and we'd thrown in a memory foam mattress topper as well. I vacuumed the bedroom floor and we made our "bed" and slept... horribly. Ha! James didn't have any complaints, but I discovered that sleeping on the floor (even with a mattress topper) is not nearly as fun as it used to be. I woke up sore and rolled over dozens of times throughout the night. It was a relief to get up this morning! Ha!

Then we got to work but, as I said, I don't know what I did. Can't tell any change after today's labor at all. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

We left at 4:00 this afternoon so we could get home early. Riiiiiight. We went to the Post Office, then Sam's Club, then dinner at Carino's (Monday = half-priced appetizers, half-priced family platters, and half-priced beverages--which means I got three raspberry cream Italian sodas for the price of one and a half! HA!), then it was off to Home Depot, then Hobby Lobby, and finally home at nearly 9:00.

I picked up paint swatches at Home Depot. Dozens and dozens of them. It makes me sick to look at them. Some colors are so nice and I'm just sure that they'll work beautifully. Except that I've been through this before and I know that those little cards are liars. I hate them all.

I don't think I'll have time to blog again this week. We'll be working on the Monstrostity by day and I'll be working on my Ladies' Retreat class by night. I may be able to drop by sometime... but don't count on it. ;-)

The Monstrosity: Day Six

That would have been Wednesday. It was day three of stripping wallpaper in that same guest room. I finally started getting down to the wall itself, but the end product wasn't just real pretty. Brother Hopkins was there that day so I took him upstairs to show him what it looked like. He said he COULD just skim the whole wall once I finished stripping everything and it would look okay... but it would be a whole lot easier and look lots better if he were to just cover those walls with 1/4" sheetrock like he's doing to the peacocks--that AREN'T peacocks after all, they have been PHEASANTS all along! Hahahahahaha! Anyway, Brother Hopkins grabbed his pencil and scribbled some figures on the wall, then said how much it would cost us to just cover the walls instead of continuing to strip them. I don't mind continuing to strip them, but it would take another full day or two to finish--and then it's going to be more work for Brother Hopkins than putting up the fresh stuff and it won't look quite as good in the end. The number he gave us was pretty modest... so we're going with it! Wa-hoo! No more wallpaper stripping!!!

So... now what??? My one goal in life has been to rid ourselves of wallpaper and now I'm not real sure what the next step is. I guess we need to shift gears and go over every inch of the house (that'll take a while!) and make sure everything is scraped and scrubbed and clean and ready for paint or (can you believe this--) more wallpaper. That will be a lot more time consuming than what one would expect, believe me. I've already been scraping paint drips off of closet doors and ripping tile window seals out as I go along, but there is going to be a LOT of prep work before we can paint.

We also have to either find paint swatches or get gutsy and choose new colors before we can paint anything. The latter option scares the bejeebers out of me. I remember the leapfrog green door in Andrews. And the deceitful blue that looked so pretty on the card but was so horrid on the trim of our yellow brick house. Or the Barbie Doll PINK paint that we ended up with when we were trying to paint a RED Coca-Cola kitchen. At least that last one wasn't my fault. I had picked a good red, but the paint store couldn't mix it for some reason--they just kept giving us hot pink. I don't think so.

Kody and Michael came back to finish the yard job James had wanted done, along with Joe's help. In the end, I think there were 38 big black trash bags full of pine needles and debris that they removed from the driveway and edges!

James spent some time in the basement tearing out paneling to check on our mold situation. He is so relieved to find that the two places where the mold exists are very easy to access and should be pretty simple to remedy.

Still haven't looked into the termites. Got to get to that while the moldy areas are still torn open, since that's where there's a possibility of termites, too. Hey... how come mold doesn't kill termites? It's the least it could do, really.

And THIS is the most exciting thing that happened on Wednesday, Day Six at the Monstrosity. Brother Hopkins... My hero. :-)



When Mom came down yesterday she looked at the peacocks that are uncovered as yet (Brother Hopkins was only able to stay a few minutes--he'll be back to cover the rest as he has opportunity) and said, "Hey... those aren't peacocks! Those are Chinese Pheasants!" Mr. Ornithology (that's James) had somehow allowed us to call them peacocks all this time and never corrected us. Not that it matters. I don't like them any more as pheasants than I did as peacocks. In fact, I think I like pheasants less. Either way, they're on their way out now and it makes me very happy.

Back to yesterday. I got up and got busy packing the boys up for their week at Grandma's house. We left at about 10:00 and went to buy new tennis shoes for Katie. Her feet just won't stop growing. HA! --Get this! She can't wear blanket sleepers anymore because her feet are too big! Who ever heard of somebody's feet being too long to fit in the feet of a blanket sleeper?! Anyway, she has new tennis shoes now and she looks like a cartoon character--scrawny little chicken legs with GREAT BIG clown shoes. :-)

After that it was Chow Town and Krispy Kreme for Sam's birthday. Here he is with three of his favorite things: His new bug vacuum, fresh Krispy Kreme's, and his mother. :-)

I laughed HEARTILY when I read his birthday card from Auntie Em and family...

It's from Uncle Jon, Auntie Em, all those kids, "and many, many more." Got something you want to share, Emilee??? ;-) Hahahahahaha!!!

Katie has been complaining non-stop about being cold (she has no blubber, you know) so we finally made it to The Foundry yesterday, a big thrift store in Bessemer. She hit the jack-pot! We found lots and lots of nice, pretty, warm clothes for her to wear. She's so excited. Except that she was already packed for Grandma's house and I brought her new clothes home with me to launder. James also got a dehumidifier for super cheap there. He's hoping it works (!), but for the amount he would save not buying a new one he had to risk it. It powered up just fine and I'm sure it'll work great.

We met Mom at the house at about 2:00 and spent a couple of hours showing her everything, talking about our plans, and asking her for ideas. She didn't have nearly as much input as I would have liked. Ha! She does say we're crazy for removing the fluorescent lighting from the kitchen. It gives GREAT light and she does have me worried about how dark it's going to be in there--especially after I paint everything with those dark, rich colors that I love. But the fluorescents were so ugly! (Besides that, James already ripped down all of the drop ceiling rails and says it's too late to change our minds now!) So I'm coming up with other ways of still making the PRETTY ceiling that I want to make, but also allowing for plenty of light everywhere. But James doesn't sound real crazy about those ideas either. Brother Dustin--we need you here!!! Lights! We need lots and lots of lights in our kitchen but so far all we've done is rip a bunch out--and we can't agree on what to put in. This is your cue, dude--where are you??? We need you for the lights and for that great "buffer" thing that you do! ;-)

We all left the house and went to Lowe's to look around and try to get some ideas for some of the areas of the house that we're still stumped on. I think it was profitable, though everything runs together in my mind right now. Sometimes I feel like things are coming together (just in my mind--nothing at the actual house yet!) and other times I just feel like there are too many things to think about and decisions to make and I'm just on overload. It's EASIER (mentally) to do things one room at a time instead of a whole house in one sweep. But this way is much more convenient and I LOVE the idea of just getting it over with, then moving in and enjoying it instead of continually ripping up one room after another to remodel.

After Lowe's we drove all the way out to Schlotzky's on Highway 280 to eat together before saying our goodbyes. James had a real hankerin' for Schlotzky's and I'm so glad--it's been a long time and it was sooooo good.

We hugged Mom and the kids goodbye and the shoved off for Sister Bishop's house to spend the night before going back to Cleveland tomorrow. James and I came home all sad and lonely and feeling horrible about not having our kids with us. Or even our dog. Yeah, I roped Mom into dog sitting, too. At least Brady was here. Don't tell the Powells ;-) but I let him inside and he crawled into my lap (on the floor, Sister Powell, not the couch! Ha!) and let me love on him for a minute or two before sending him back out. That helped some. :-)

And I feel much better today. I'm aware that the kids and the Charles are gone, but I'm also aware that the house is still nice and clean from when I went on a mad cleaning spree when we got home last night. The cabinet doors and drawers are all closed instead of gaping, there aren't rubber bands laying all over the floor from the latest battle, the milk isn't sitting on the counter after breakfast and dirty dishes here and there, there aren't books scattered about the couches and floors or piles of shoes by the door. It's amazing how much MESS my kids carry around with them. Sorry, Mom--it's going to be an ugly week at your house. Ha! I don't know how I've tried so hard to train them to be decent little human beings and clean up after themselves but have still failed so miserably. In any case, I have a much cleaner house, but no children. Though I'm not missing them this morning like I was last night, it's so obvious that as a permanent situation it's much, much better to have children and big messes to cope with than to have a sparkly clean house and no children. How sad would that be?! But this week... I'm going to enjoy the clean. :-)

But right NOW I'm going to go pack for Youth Retreat! I'm so excited to be going to a Retreat and have nothing to do but sit back and soak it in. ~Aaaaahhhhhh~ I'm so excited! :-)

I Feel Lost

As of about two hours ago I am childless and poodleless. And it feels soooooo weird. I'm really not sure I like it at all.

Mom came and picked up the kids today so she can watch them while James and I are at Youth Retreat this weekend. She'll keep them at her house for a week, then James and I will go to Cleveland and he'll stay with the kids at Mom's house while I go with her to Tennessee Ladies' Retreat. We've been trying to work out the details of this plan for a couple of weeks now and it finally all came together yesterday. But it never sunk in until tonight. I know it sounds all weird and sappy, but...

I miss my kids!!!

Is that weird, or what?! I don't DO that. I've never been a misser. I just don't miss people. I don't miss my husband when we're apart, I never missed my parents when I was away from them as a child, I don't typically miss my friends, and I don't miss my kids when I'm away. I love all of those people dearly, I'm just not one of those emotional people who feels sad and lonely when I'm not with them every moment.

But tonight, I'm one of those people. It's miserable to be one of those people. If you are one of them, how do you live with yourself?! Get over it already--it's pitiful to go around feeling this way! I mean that way...

Don't get the wrong impression. I'm not devastated or anything, just strangely affected by being childless. I usually don't blink an eye when I leave the kids to go to Ladies' Retreat or something. All I can figure is that I just wasn't mentally prepared for this or something lame like that. It was part of the plan. We've had so many things to plan and prepare for and so many details to try to work out in the past weeks. This was just one of them: have to work out something to do with the kids while we go to Youth Retreat. So we found a solution for that one, but never actually thought through the part about not having children for a whole week! It's had the very same affect on James, too. When we said goodbye to them tonight we got in the car--all alone, just the two of us--and drove home in almost complete silence. As we pulled up to the house I mentioned how strange it was that the kids aren't here and James had this disturbed look on his face and said, "I know--I don't like this at all. I really don't. It just doesn't feel right!"

Of course it didn't help that we had listened to a CD of Katie, Joe and Sam from when they were 5, 4, and 2 years old on our way home. I had recorded them singing several different songs and burned them onto a CD to sent to Mom and Dad. She had it in her car tonight so I grabbed it and we listened to their adorable little kiddy voices sing and talk and giggle and say how much they loved and missed Granddad... oh, and Grandma, too. It was soooooo cute! ~sigh~ It made me cry.

I've tried so hard to not miss a moment with my kids. From the moment Katie was born I've tried to soak it all in. I have blog entries full of their crazy antics, thousands of pictures, hours of video clips, and memories galore of all of their different stages and quirks and favorite things. And yet it's still speeding by way too quickly.

We celebrated Sam's 8th birthday today. His birthday is on Saturday but we'll be at Retreat and he'll be in Tennessee. Mom will make a cake for him up there, but we won't be there. He chose Chow Town for his birthday lunch today (it's a giant Chinese Buffet), then Krispy Kreme for dessert instead of cake since he'll be getting one of those on Saturday. We sang to him and he opened his present (a bug vacuum--he's sooooo excited)... and for all practical purposes my "baby" is 8 years old now.

And I don't like it at all.

For whatever reason, I started taking birthdays really hard as of his 7th birthday! I remember crying then and crying the night before Katie and Joe's birthday in February. What's up with that?! I just DON'T LIKE the fact that they are growing up. It's all happening way, way, way too fast. When I heard their little voices in the CD tonight I just cried and missed them being that age. Part of me wishes so badly that I could hold on to that forever.

And then I realize how selfish that is. My children aren't just here for me to enjoy. They're not our little playthings for us to cuddle with or laugh at or enjoy for our own pleasure--though any good parent wouldn't miss out on those things for the world. They are souls. Eternal souls that God has created and placed in our home for a very short time. We are so blessed and so privileged to be able to love and enjoy them the way that we do. But they're not here just for my enjoyment and it's selfish of me to wish they could stay this age forever. There is a purpose for their lives far greater than just entertaining me and making my life full and fun. It is God's will for them to grow up and mature and find who God has created them to be, where He wants them to be and what He wants them to do for Him. It's my privilege to help them get started on their journey. But their purpose in life extends far beyond the few short years they will be here with us. When I think of them leaving some day I wonder what in the world I'll do without them. But I want to realize all along the way that my purpose in life is not to horde my children and try to stifle them and keep them little or young, but to allow them to grow into a beautiful young woman and handsome young men who will spend their strength and energies fulfilling God's calling in their lives.

But tonight... I miss them! ;-)

The Monstrosity: Day Five

Yeah, I know we were there yesterday so this would technically be Day Six. But we were there for so short a time period and accomplished so very little that I can't make myself count it as a day.

I didn't accomplish much today either, but after our day yesterday I knew what I would be dealing with and was mentally prepared to accomplish nothing today--so I feel much happier about it. :-) We had several things to do here at the house this morning so we didn't even get to the Monstrosity until about noon. I spent a-a-a-a-a-a-all afternoon scraping wallpaper in the guest room. Yep, just that one room. And I'm a long way from being done, but I was prepared for that so it's all good. :-) I was working on the upper layers that didn't require a steamer, just a scraper and a lot of commitment. That's all I did today. Tomorrow I'll crank up the steamer and spend all day trying to get down everything that is still there after the initial scraping. Yesterday was maddening because it simply should not take that kind of time to remove wallpaper from one room. Today I knew I had no chance of finishing. I'm hoping to finish tomorrow... so that sets me up for failure and frustration again. I should know better than to have silly hopes like that. Some people never learn. I mean after all, it will only have been THREE DAYS in that ONE ROOM trying to get rid of WALLPAPER. Hhmmm. It does make me feel a little insane when I think about it. I think I can feel my eye twitching a little bit... ;-)

James put up the new mailbox today. Yeah! We accomplished something!

AND...

The gutter guys came today! They ripped down all of the old gutters, replaced a few panels of wood that had rotten out, and installed the brand new super clean and spiffy looking "wicker white" gutters. Gutters aren't usually something that would excite me. But this was exciting because all we've done so far is rip stuff up and tear stuff out. We haven't actually starting the other side of the process--you know, where you make something look better or actually finish something. These guys came, they tore down, they improved, and they are finished. What a concept!!! It's also exciting because the color of gutters that we chose inspired me for how I want the trim and facings and pillars on the house painted someday. Inspiration! I haven't had much of that.

Though it's coming in waves now. I saw a guy at Pizza Hut today. I looked at his plaid shirt and thought "THAT'S the wallpaper I want in the larger bathroom upstairs!" That'll be a tricky one to pull off (ha!), but at least I have an idea for what I think we'll look really good there if I can find something similar. I wish inspiration would hit me in ways a little more practical than some dude's flannel shirt that I'll never be able to match in a wallpaper. I have heard of people using starched fabric as wall coverings, however. Hhmmm. No, that just seems wrong in a bathroom.

I dreamt last night that I found the paint swatches. With renewed hope, I got up and headed to the basement and dug through every single box that we've got down there--thoroughly. I also checked all through our closet, our dresser, under the bed, in the bathroom cabinets (?!), in the boys' closet, in books that are sitting next to the bed, under the kitchen sink with our cleaning supplies and some tools, in the drawer where we keep craft stuff, in the other cabinets where things sometimes get crammed, in the junk drawers, on top of the fridge, under the utility sink, in the bin on the shelf, in the top of the coat closet and in all the boxes down below.

They STILL weren't in any of those places. Just like when I looked all of those places last week. Bummer.

James asked if perhaps they may have been put in the van. That's a horrifying thought. We have a new van since we moved. If they were in the old van and never got transferred to the new one... ~ugh~ Let's not think that way. I did look in the new van, just to be sure. Nope.

They've GOT to be some place "smart" in storage. Maybe I'll get a chance to go look again there in the next day or two.

After not finding them anywhere again this morning I looked up the phone number for the little hardware store in the mountains where we lived in New Mexico. I was hoping to speak with Robert. I never went to the store, I would just call him on the phone and say, "This is Rebekah Horne--I call you once or twice a year about paint." He would immediately know who I was and mix up just what I wanted, then James would go pick it up for me. Robert wasn't there today, but the girl I talked to said she couldn't find us in the system. I wanted to see if they had record of the color codes that they've mixed up for us. Apparently they don't. Though I may call again in a few days and see if I can talk to Robert, just to be sure.

The next course of action--only after I can't find the paint swatches in storage again--will be to try to contact the people who bought our house in New Mexico. We left some paint in the shed there in case they needed to touch anything up. The cans should have the paint codes on them. I don't think they would have all of the colors we need, but anything would be helpful.

So my dream was not prophetic. ~sigh~ I can't even remember where I found the cards in the dream. I just remember how excited and relieved I was. I would love to feel those two emotions. HA!

In spite of my continued failure to locate the paint swatches OR to really accomplish anything at the house today, it's been a GREAT day. I feel blessed today and totally refocused and relaxed. Took time to enjoy the kids and the dog here at there throughout the day--and the kids were great to help out at the Monstrosity again, pulling nails and removing switch covers and stuff like that. Then tonight Kody and Michael came over to help rake and bag up TONS of pine needles and debris that the gutter guys had blown off the roof. Joe went out to help them and they had a great time working together. When it got dark and we had to quit, we called the Ridlespurges to ask if they wanted to join all of us at Wendy's since we were taking the boys out for dinner. You know what her answer was? "No, because I'm dirty." Hahahahahaha! Michael had called to ask her, then relayed the message. I picked up the phone and called her back to ask if she was really serious. Did she realize who she was speaking with and what we had been doing all day long and how dirty WE were??? HA! I didn't mind if they didn't feel like going out, but I wasn't about to settle for some lame excuse like that!

We had just gotten our food when they showed up. :-)

So now we're back home again, prepping for another full day of work tomorrow. We'll leave in the morning and take church clothes with us for tomorrow night. I call dibs on the one mirror in the house when it's time to get ready! :-)