Story of my Life

For the record, it’s really hard to discipline yourself to paint with plain ole white (and do non-rewarding touch-up work) after you’ve been painted big walls with bright and bold colors like red and blue. But it all has to be done. Friday started with an hour or two of painting ceilings (in the two upstairs bathrooms) and edging ceilings everywhere I had oopsed on them when painting other colors. After that I put two coats of burgundy on the accent wall in the boys’ bathroom.

Katie made hamburger pie for lunch and it was GREAT. None of our guys like it, but Katie and I think it’s terrific, so we decided to enjoy it while they were gone. Katie did a really good job and we both had several helpings—while playing Phase 10 Dice, of course. We do that at lunch time just about every day now. I love it. :-)

After lunch I headed back upstairs intending to start wallpapering Kate’s room, but I couldn’t find the bag of razor blades. The chapel room has become the new catch-all/tool room and it was getting thicker and thicker in there with piles of mess and STUFF stacked all over the place. I decided my only chance of finding the blades was the clean it all up. It really needed done anyway, so I spent the next hour or two cleaning and sorting and moving tools and collecting trash and finding a proper place for everything. Then I gathered all of the stuff that had been stacked on the stairs (“to be taken upstairs and put away next time somebody goes up”—riiiiiiight) and sorted it all out, too. It felt GREAT to get it all done, but I never did find the blades. THEN it occurred to me that perhaps they were in the junk drawer downstairs. Yep. But it was too late. It was close to 3:00 by that time and I was soooooo tired. I decided I was going to have to crash on the floor for a few minutes. I only slept about 15 minutes, but it worked wonders.

Then I went upstairs ready to hit it hard in Kate’s room and see how much wallpaper I could get hung before needing to stop at 4:30. Not much! When I put the very first strip in the water I could feel that something was way dreadfully wrong. There was no GLUE on the paper! I went and grabbed the packaging and sure enough it said nothing about being pre-pasted paper. I had heard that a lot of the more expensive wallpapers are not pre-pasted (how backwards is that--you pay more money and get no glue?!), but I’d never actually seen any before. We paid $5 for the whole room’s worth ($1 per roll), so how was I to know it was the expensive stuff?! It feels so 100 years ago to have to soak the paper for 5-10 minutes, then paint glue all over the back of it before you can slap it on the wall to start working with it. Ha! I’m pretty sure the peacocks or pheasants or whatever they are were probably manually glued, too. Anyway, I did happen to have some wallpaper glue mix on hand, so I gathered measuring cups and pitchers of water and spoons and whisks (can anybody else get all of the lumps out?! Mom, I’m talking to you—you’re the only other person I know who actually wallpapers! Ha!) and started mixing. I’m not sure I got the consistency right and nothing really feels very sticky. So far the strips haven't slid of the wall and into a heap on the floor, so I’m hoping they’re happy where they are. Truthfully though, I’ll feel a lot better once we get moved in up there and I nail things all over the wall. Having nails scattered about to help hold the paper in place will make me feel so much better about the likelihood that it’ll actually stay put!

Due to the unexpected No Glue hitch and needing to mix it up and then paint each piece of paper with it, I only got five strips up. And two of them were only a foot long—for above the window. Ha! Pitiful. Still, it’s exciting. That room sooooo does not match the rest of the house (country/primitive/rustic), but I am going to LOVE it. It’s just sooooo HAPPY!

While I was busy working upstairs all day, Katie was downstairs cleaning up the house for company and making goodies for the Band Meeting. She’s such a help! Though her baking efforts weren’t very rewarding this time. She started with chocolate chip cookies. I don’t know what she did wrong, but everything oozed into one super flat giant cookie mass all over the sheet and it was slightly overcooked. She scraped the first pan into a big pile and we got forks and munched on it throughout the afternoon. It tasted great, but was in no condition to be served to company—even just a bunch of kids. Ha!



I suggested she try a party cake next. It’s such a simple recipe—just dump everything into a bowl, mix it up, pour it into the pan, and bake it. ~Voila~ What could go wrong?! I don’t know WHAT went wrong, but something did! We didn’t know until we served it though. The cake looked beautiful. Nice and fluffy and moist. But it wasn’t very sweet at all (though Kate insists she put in the full amount of sugar) and had a funky, somewhat bitter taste to it. I don’t know if she forgot the sugar or didn’t put enough in (she could be wrong, you know) or if it had something to do with the coffee or the vinegar, but something was definitely not right. Still, the kids ate most of their cake and Kody insisted that he really liked it that way. What a guy. :-) Poor Katie. She tried so hard and nothing seemed to work out! Michael did have some of her left-over Hamburger Pie and said it was really good, so that helped her out a lot.

The Band Meeting went well, I thought. What a great group of kids we have here. I love having the privilege to work with them. We played a game about how well we know one another, then discussed how well we KNOW God. I talked about Tammy Kaufman and told the kids that I have known her for 20 years (did you know it’s been that long, Tammy?! Only OLD people can say things like that!) and that I could answer almost any question they could ask about her. I could tell you her favorite color (is it still green?), I could tell you about her personality and how she would act or react in certain situations, I could tell you about things in her past or what her goals are at this point in time, the things that make her happy or what irritates her, that she likes tuna fish and hates spaghetti, etc. Then I talked about another girl that I’ve known for almost as long, I think very highly of her and really, really LIKE her, but I couldn’t tell you any of the same things about her that I could with Tammy. I “know” her. But I don’t really KNOW her. The difference is in communication and in how much time is spent with one another. Some people only “know” God like I “know” the other girl. They might “know” Him for 20 or 30 years or more, but really not KNOW Him any better now than when they met him. How sad! We talked about getting to know God, read scriptures encouraging us to truly KNOW Him, and discussed the ways we can do it; namely getting into the habit of DAILY prayer and Bible reading. We wrote out prayer lists and talked about different options and methods to use for daily Bible readings. I asked the kids for permission to check up on them and make sure they’re being faithful to some personal time with God. Part of me felt bad about barging into their lives like that (ha!), but I know how I'm built and I do so much better with things like that when I’m accountable to someone. They all told me I could check up on them, some eagerly and others more reluctantly (ha!), so I’m glad for that. May God bless them all as they endeavor to KNOW Him. :-)

After our devotion we played Quelf, by unanimous agreement. They love that game. It’s especially fun when Kody decides to get involved. Most of the time he’d rather just take the penalty and move his marker backwards than do something that would make him look like an idiot. Some of the others are all too anxious to look like idiots, so I guess it all evens out. One of Kody's cards said that he had to construct a fort out of whatever was available and hide there until his next turn. If the fort collapsed he'd have to pay the penalty. Here he is trying to back in to his masterpiece.



And after somebody helped complete the fort with a blanket. This was taken about 3 seconds before he move and the cushions went tumbling--and he had to move his game piece back three spaces. :-)



When you land on a blue space you read a "Rools" card. It could be a personal rule that applies only to you, but if it's a global rule it applies to everyone and remains in place until the end of the game--or until another global rule is drawn to replace the first. Last night somebody drew a card that said we each had to draw a bullseye on a piece of paper and tape it anywhere on our person. Any time we caught somebody else looking at our bullseye they had to move back one space. Poor Katie Farr. She must've lost 15 spaces to that rule! Ha! Here is the crowd modeling their bullseyes while trying NOT to look at anybody else's.




We finished the game and started delivering kids back to their parents at about 10:30. It was a great night. I love having the young people to my house! And I LOVE having devotions with them. And I love playing games with them. How COOL that God laid it on our pastor’s heart to make me their Band/VLB leader so I get to do the very things that I LOVE to do with them. :-)

James and the boys traveled home from Pennsylvania today and got in at about 10:30 tonight. I had hoped to get some more work done upstairs today, but there was too much to be done down here today. It's okay though. I’m soooooo pleased with everything I’ve been able to get done upstairs this week. It has been a good and productive week, for sure. We’re well on our way up there! Wa-Hoo! It’s exciting. :-)

The Brother & Sister Ridlespurge dropped by for a few minutes tonight to visit and see the progress. It was great. It was even greater when the guys got home a few hours later. Joe was super tired and crashed on the couch. After a minute he looked up and said, "I smell Ridlespurge!" HA! Don't take that wrong--it's a good thing, not a bad thing. We all like Brother Ridlespurge's cologne or after shave or whatever it is. :-)

Katie and I had a great week together and so did James and the boys, but I think we're all happy to be back together again. :-) The guys were wiped out tonight, so we'll unload the van sometime tomorrow. That's when I'll find out about all the STUFF James brought back from his folks' house. The only thing I know of so far I am in FULL support of: a cooler full of deer meat. WA-HOOOOO!!! :-)