Three for Four!

This is the third day out of the past four that I have blogged. If nothing else, I know my mother is happy. :-)

There's really not much to report from today. I can't really remember much about this morning, but I know that James and I finished the floor up in the work room today. It's hard to explain, but we had to shift the entire floor over 1/4" or 1/2" so the trim would be able to cover on each side--because there wasn't room for another piece. That will only make sense (maybe) to people who have laid a floating floor. Anyway, we accomplished this by removing all weight from the floor (the table saw, other tools, wood scraps), then--James and I, picture this--did some synchronized jumping and landing in an attempt to shove the floor in the necessary direction. I'm not sure it did much for the floor, but I thought it was terrific and laughed a whole lot. :-) When that didn't produce the desired results we both stood and placed our hands on the wall in front of us, leaned into the wall and "walked" as hard as we could. Amazingly enough, we were able to push the floor behind us just a titch--just like we needed to! I was so relieved that we were actually able to shift the whole sha-bang because I was at a total loss as for what to do otherwise! I'm so thankful it all worked out. We then finished up on the final pieces--tricky ones with lots of angles, edging around trim and closet door hinges--and then James just laid carpet in the closet. We were DONE with laying wood floor and the carpet was faster, easier, and just an extra scrap we had lying around. Perfect. So now that room is finished! Except that it's a full tools and sawdust. We'll take care of that soon enough.

The other grand and glorious accomplishment of the day was dinner. We had tomato soup and grilled cheese. No, no, no, no, no. Not like that--like this!



I made homemade Tomato Basil Parmesan Soup and I baked some homemade bread to make our grilled cheese sandwiches with. Somehow none of it looks nearly as good in the picture as it did in person, but it was all sooooo good! As I'm sure most anyone who reads my blog knows, this past week was the Prayer & Fast Week for the General Assembly. I have the same reaction to this each time we go on an extended fast. By the end of Day 2 I'm scouring the Internet in search of wonderful things to eat once I start again. :-) This soup looked and sounded so good and I actually had all of the necessary ingredients on hand (including some canned tomatoes from the Cogburns), so I gave it a shot. I threw most of it in the pot at lunch time, then made a roux (I've never heard of that and have no idea how to pronounce it, but that's what the recipe said it was) and added the last ingredients just before we ate it. YUM. It was sooooo good. And grilled cheese on homemade bread is only about a thousand times better than on store bought bread. :-)

I couldn't handle it. I had to Google "roux." It's pronounced "roo" (I guessed that, but felt uncertain still) and is "a cooked mixture of butter or other fat and flour used to thicken sauces, soups, etc." Yep, that's what it was. And it TOTALLY transformed the soup. I was worried before that step, but it made an instant transformation. Then the whole cup of Parmesan cheese pushed it right over the top. :-) I wonder why I don't find and try new recipes more often. It seems like I cook the same things over and over. Even the stuff we used to love just isn't that enjoyable anymore. I used to pore over cookbooks and still come away with no inspiration, but in this day of Internet recipes the PICTURES make a world of difference--everything just looks so good! I collected quite a few new ones while we were fasting this past week, so now I'm all excited about trying them out. Of course, most of them seem to be desserts. :-)

The only other news around here is Sambo. He's not been feeling very well and could use prayer. He's been so sweet and lovable. As much as I hate it when my kids are sick, I love it when Sam is so sweet and cuddly. :-) Please say a prayer for him. As much as I enjoy him all sweet and subdued, we want the Lord to heal him and make him perfectly well. I'm not quite sure what to do when he's not rambunctious and keeping us on our toes all the time. ;-)

And I guess that's it. My house is clean, my family has been well fed, I feel all domestic because I made HOMEMADE soup and sandwiches instead of popping open a can or opening a bread bag (it's amazing how fulfilling little things like that are!), my children are all squeaky clean and ready for church in the morning, I get to RELAX tonight because I'm not teaching Sunday School, and I've got a ham set out, ready to put in the oven for lunch tomorrow. ~sigh~ It's been a good day. Oh! And the Ridlespurges stopped by to see the latest improvements on the house. I love it when they do that. :-) I don't know what we're going to do when we actually finish this house and there's nothing new to look at. We'll have to come up with some reason for them to come by. ;-)

I'm Back!!!

And it's only been two days! Wa-Hoo!!!

Saturday, the 4th, was a GREAT day. :-) We had some money in our local VLB fund, so I drove around and picked up all of our local VLBs and we went shopping for VLB vests and materials to make signs for the Youth March. First stop: Burlington Coat factory. We found vests for Kody, Dalton, and Michael. :-) Then we went to Hobby Lobby and bought some felt, Hancock Fabrics and almost bought some fringe for the banner but the line was too long, Michael's for some sticky-backed felt letters, Arby's for lunch, Joann's to finally come to the conclusion that it would cost considerably more to buy all of the materials necessary to make vests for the girls (that's what all of the craft/fabric store stops were all about) than it costs to just buy finish vests AND it would heap on lots of extra stress to try to find time to make them in the week and a half before we leave. Then we went back to Hancock to buy the fringe we didn't get the first time. We had a GREAT day and I had so much fun with all of them! And now they all call me "Mom." There's another half to that story but I will omit it to protect the shy and easily embarrassed. Ha! The highlight of the day was when we were standing in line to have the fringe measured--the first time, when we ended up leaving instead. The guys had wandered off, so when I decided to put the fringe back I took Laura and Katie F. and we snuck out of the store and out to the van. We then drove around the parking lot for several minutes, the girls giggling up a storm over having left the fellas in a fabric store. When they finally emerged and found us they just sort of threw their hands in the air and shook their heads in a you've-got-to-be-kidding-me sort of way. I told them that they seemed to be enjoying the fabric store so much I just didn't want to interrupt them and pull them away before they were ready. :-) I must say, the guys were really, really good sports going to all of those stores! They never griped or complained at all. Amazing. My sons would have been miserable. Ha!

I dropped all of the kids off, came home, and busted open the box with my sewing machine in it--first time I've seen that machine in two years. ~Aaaaahhhhh~ It felt so good!!! I hate sewing and always feel incredibly stressed and DIStressed (ha!) when I attempt it (no matter how badly I WANT to sew and be good at it!), but this was really a CRAFT project more than a SEWING project. So, amazingly enough, it all went smoothly and I just had so much fun making a VLB banner for Bessemer.

Sunday, the 5th, started with an early morning trip to Wal-Mart. Strangely, I really enjoy Sunday morning trips to Wal-Mart! I can be there in about 2 minutes and there are NO crowds. You get to park right up front, grab what you need, check out, and be back home--in no time!

As a side note: A week or two ago I was making dinner and suddenly realized that I had NO cheese with which to top the casserole I was about to put in the oven. I hopped in the van, zipped over to Aldi--right by Wal-Mart, walked in, grabbed my cheese, checked out, drove home, and walked in the door EIGHT MINUTES after I had originally left the house!!! As much as I've always declared that I am NOT a good city girl, there's no denying that I have quickly fallen in love with conveniences like that!!!

Anyway, I went to Wal-Mart that morning to pick up a few materials for our VLB signs. After service we came home and had left-over deer stew and taco soup for lunch ~YUM~ then I met the VLBs back at the church so we could work on their signs. I'm not allowed to tell you about them though because the kids think somebody will steal our idea and they're a wee bit prideful about having the coolest signs at the Assembly. Ha! I'm LOVING it that they are so excited! They're going to look GREAT in their brand new VLB uniforms and carrying their new signs, and with a nice, new banner to represent our church. And again, we had lots of fun on Sunday making signs and then just hanging out until church time. I love being with these kids and am feeling more of a connection with them all the time. Like they're "my" VLBs. I just love that. :-) Is it wrong to be possessive??? Of course, there are a couple of them I'd like to trade in... HA! Seriously, I just love, love, LOVE having the opportunity to work with these kids. It's KILLING Katie that she's not one of them. She is NOT handling her pre-VLBhood very gracefully at all and HATED being left out of the outing on Saturday. I did let her and Madison come help us make signs on Sunday--because we needed all the help we could get! Ha! Anyway, the signs turned out great and we had a ball.

On Monday, after searching NUMEROUS websites for several days and making some phone calls to boot, I place an order for two red ladies' vests. Just an hour or two later I received an e-mail saying they'd been shipped. WOW! They came from Brooklyn, New York, (which makes them so much cooler) and arrived at my house first thing Wednesday morning. GREAT service. And the vests are really, really nice. I was worried about them being junk--really cheaply made or with flimbsy costume fabric of something--but they are so, so nice. They are a shorter than what I prefer, but Mom says that women's vests are SUPPOSED to come just to your waist, so I'm guessing that makes them perfect. Anyway, if anybody is in need of red vests for the Assembly you still have time! Check sixstaruniforms.com. We paid $18 per vest, then $9 shipping, bringing the total to $21 per vest--plus tax, of course. We would have paid more than that to buy the materials and they wouldn't have been as nice. Just some handy info for ya'. :-)

Where was I? Ah, yes--Monday. I found and ironed all of the curtains for my bedroom and the guest bedroom and got them hung, and also ironed the bed skirt for the guest room and put it on the bed in there. (It had some tears in it, so I had FIXED IT--wow!!!--when I had my sewing machine out on Saturday. Amazing!)

That night we went to the Cox's house for dinner. The Hopkins joined us there, too. We were pretty rude and showed up about 30 minutes before we were supposed to. HA! Chalk that up to my short attention span or really bad memory--one of 'em was the culprit! We were there for several hours just visiting and enjoying some really great food. They made "hobos" and they were excellent. I'm guessing it's a southern thing, because I'd never heard of it before. (I could just be ill informed, of course.) They put a burger in foil, covered with green peppers and onions and carrots and potatoes and Greek seasoning and what-not, then wrap it up tight (one for each person) and throw it on the grill for about an hour. Yum. I'm wanting to try it with all sorts of things now! If only we had a grill... The season is just about over, so maybe grills will go on sale real cheap and we'll pick one up. :-) Anyway, it was Madison's birthday, so we also enjoyed some really fantastic cake and Blue Bell ice cream. It was all so nice.

I spent a great deal of my time on Tuesday cleaning out the work room. It's where we've been keeping all of our paint and tools and trash and plumbing supplies and hardware and extra WHATEVER while we've been working on the other rooms upstairs. So it was no easy task to clean it up! We had the kids haul lots of stuff out to the shed and we gathered up lots of trash, carried paint and brushes to the basement, collected tools and hardware in a giant tub to be sorted out later, and finally got it all DONE sometime in the late afternoon. Then I spent the evening sorting through that bin of tools AND our way-too-big junk drawer in the kitchen, figuring out what needed to go to the garage and what needed to stay. I even made a late-night trip to the store to get some "junk drawer organizers" (plastic bins with different compartments) because things like that just make me so happy. ~aaaahhhh~ It feels sooooooo good to have those jobs taken care of and have a PLACE for everything! I hate rummaging through piles of tools or WHATEVER trying to locate something.

Wednesday I painted the inside of the door in the workroom, but decided I hated that color in there. So I mixed three colors together (the brown, cream, and white that I had on hand) and created a really dark cream or really light tan (I can't decide) that works PERFECT in there. I got the first coat on the door, the two closet doors, the window sills and trim, and all of the baseboard and chair rail that day.

Thursday I put the second coat of paint on all of that stuff, then painted two coats of dark green on the panelling down below. The top half of the walls has some sort of grasscloth on it. It makes me think of bamboo. With the dark green on the bottom of the walls I keep picturing a palm tree in there or a hammock or something! Ha! It's our Gilligan's Island room. :-) Of course, it will have nothing of that nature at all. It will be full of vinyl cutters and other machinery and sewing supplies and painting stuff. But still, it's going to look great. I'm so excited about having a room where we can just keep all of that stuff out and have easy access to it whenever we want it (will I actually sew more???), but I'm so surprised that I actually LIKE the room itself so well--the paint and trim just worked wonders in there and it looks fantastic! It makes me really, really like the grasscloth where before it was just so-so.

Today we laid the floor in that room. Well, almost all of it. We ran into some difficulty toward the end and called it a day. We hope to finish up tomorrow. It went fairly quickly, I thought. James made all of the cuts for me and I whacked the planks together. I like that job. Joe helped out quite a bit, too. He likes my job, too. :-) This is laminate flooring that was actually in the chapel room when we bought this house. We hated it there, so we pulled it up and have now reused it in this room--and it looks soooooo good! It goes with the walls just perfect.

The other really exciting event of the day is that my Papa Jerry called me this morning. :-) He called to tell me happy anniversary. It's been 21 years since our plane crash in Colorado Springs. AMAZING. Thank the Lord for sparing ALL of our lives. I was so happy to hear from him--it's been a long, long time and it was just so good to hear his voice.

So THAT gets me all caught up. Wa-Hooooo!!! Next week I'll race off to IYC, the General Assembly, and a family vacation, thus putting me way behind again. But for now I'll know that I'm all caught up. :-)

At This Point

How do you even know HOW to blog when you haven't done it in so long??? It's been nearly a MONTH since I last posted--and even that was just a recap of sorts and didn't bring us up to date, even then. I've just been so, so super busy and most of my computer time has been given to computer-ish jobs that I've been way late on accomplishing, but that way outweighed the blog in terms of importance. But--finally--as of today I finished up the last one of THOSE projects. So now I can BLOG with my evening computer time instead of work. :-)

Backing up to July 16th...

It was a red-letter day for us because it's the day that the carpet guys completed the upstairs. Wa-Hoo!!! Soooo exciting! We had the usual moving committee over that night to assist in moving to big and tricky pieces upstairs to the chapel room. After much maneuvering and brainstorming and finally some sincere praying the green couch made it into place followed by the chuck wagon table--which had about 1" clearance on the sides of the doorway and 1/2" on top or something like that. I felt a Dustin Hays quote come over me as we slid it easily through. "Jesus loves me, this I know..." (Those close to him can finish it off. Ha!) Once the carpet was laid in that chapel room--even before any furniture was up there--it quickly became my favorite room in the house. It's just so, so pretty. And it's as close to cabin-ish that I'll ever get in this house, so it just makes me feel all comfy and cozy and RELAXED. I love it. :-)

Tuesday, the 17th, I sanded, primed, and painted both bathroom vanities along with ten doors and two drawers, all needing two or three coats of paint. I also managed to paint the inside of the bathroom closet and all of the shelves for in there and in the foyer closet. It was after 10:00pm before I finished.

Wednesday, the 18th, I applied two coats of poly to everything I painted the day before, I wallpapered the small bathroom, then lined the cabinets and drawers with paper.

Thursday, the 19th, I built two beds (the only upstairs beds that hadn't been assembled yet), washed LOTS of sheets and towels as I was moving them in from the garage, wrestled with three new memory foam mattress toppers (they come with zip-covers that are nice, but a royal pain to get on!), made up five beds (not including two to be done the next day--felt like a regular motel maid!), installed a monstrous mirror in the larger bathroom with James help (it's crooked, but it's UP!), helped him install the hand rail for the stairs, went shopping for LOTS of groceries for the weekend, and scrubbed both upstairs bathrooms. I get tired again just thinking about that day. Ha! It was the day before State Convention and there was still sooooo much left to be done. But I had really been praying that God would help us and bless our time and efforts. He absolutely answered and helped us to do way more than I would have thought humanly possible (for me anyway--not my Mom. Ha!) that week.

Friday, the 20th, I did lots of baking, cleaned the floors, wiped down the lower bathrooms, and then the Convention crowd started to arrive. :-) Sister Bishop stayed with Katie in her room, Brother Ard stayed in Joe's room, Bert & Valerie Schoonmaker stayed in Sam's room, and Brother & Sister Ricker, Janet Tally and her grandson Eli all stayed in the guest room. We were hoping to have one more couple/family stay with us but it didn't work out. Still, we had a great crowd and I LOVED having company at my house for Convention! It had been my goal for the past few months: get the house far enough along to be able to keep some folks that weekend. God helped us to get JUST THERE, building the final beds just in time for folks to come sleep in them. :-) I loved, loved, LOVED having a house full of company!!! With all of the high-gear house prep I didn't have time to do as much cooking and baking as I would have liked, but I managed barbeque pork and several goodies--lemon bars, raspberry cake, cookies, cinnamon rolls for breakfast... then cereal, lunch meat, chicken salad, chips, stuff like that. The whole crowd came back to the house and ate and talked and laughed and had a wonderful time together. It made me so, so, so, so, sooooo happy to have a house full of people eating and visiting. ~Aaaauuuggghh! I AM SOOOOOOOOOO BLESSED!!!

The Convention itself was wonderful. There was a good spirit, good unity, good worship, and good Word. Everybody LOVED having Brother Ard. He was in good form (ha!) and gave a stirring message/testimony/"Look What the Lord Has Done" sort of exhortation. It was followed by a prayer line and beautiful altar service. I also really enjoyed Brother Jeremy's VLB message that night. His message was entitled "Don't Blame the Manna" and addressed the way we sometimes grumble and complain about things in our lives without realizing that they are actually a blessing from God, sent to meet needs that we may not know we have. Excellent. Sister Washburn also gave an outstanding Sunday School boost.

There were lots of appointment changes this year, though only one pastoral change. (Jeremy Wallace is now pastoring the Somerville church.) Brother O'Dell had the nerve to show up at Convention Sunday morning after having just stolen Brother Grimes to pastor over in Mississippi. I think James called him a "preacher stealer" or something like that. After service he was standing there with his arms around two or three of our pastors, then called James and just grinned. James stomped over, grabbed him by the ear (for real!) and drug him a-a-a-a-a-a-all the way out of the church. It was GREAT. :-)

Even after that Brother O'Dell agreed to come to the house and visit for a little while before heading home. Richard Barnes also came over--actually delivered our State Convention pounding--and spent the night. We were sooooooo tired though. I'm sure we were pretty poor company. I think we were all in bed by about 10:00.

Monday, the 23rd, started off pretty slow. We finally got rid of Richard after lunch (ha!), the started sorting through the garage and hauling boxes in. The kids were sooooooooooo anxious to decorate their rooms--especially Joe, oddly enough. Our progress was stunted considerably when my washing machine tried to eat a sheet. I talked to my ever-smart Dad, then spent some time on Google and You Tube, then took the problem in hand and managed to get it fixed. Wa-Hoo! Makes you feel all smart and fulfilled to fix something yourself. (It wasn't anything horribly difficult, but I was thrilled nonetheless!)

We drew straws to see whose room would be decorated first. Sam won, so his room got all cowboy-ed up that night, Matt Dillon in the corner and all. :-) I LOVE his brown paper walls, too. I think the room is looking terrific.

We went to Wal-Mart that night so the kids and I could pick out a new game, just because James said so. We chose The Game of Life. :-) This version is way different than the one I grew up with, and even from the one we played a couple of months ago. I didn't know if the boys would like the game at all since it involves getting married and having babies, but Joe was totally on board once he learned that everybody has to pay you $5 or $10 every time you have a kid. (How is THAT like real life?!) He spent the rest of the game saying, "I just wanna have another BABY!!!" Ha! Sam was happy that his career turned out to be "hairstylist" so he could give people mohawks. And Katie just gets really angry when she loses her high paying job and has to take a lesser one. She is such a horrible loser. I can't imagine where she gets that from.

Tuesday, the 24th, Joe and I decorated his room (he was sooooo excited!), then I started on Katie's. The Ridlespurges showed up to check on our progress and I ended up talking everybody into going out to dinner together. Time had gotten away from me and I had nothing planned for dinner--and besides, it was my birthday. :-) James bought me new silverware for my birthday. Sooooo nice! We had somehow lost several pieces and were running low (it was especially noticeable during Convention when we had a crowd here all weekend) but after much searching I just couldn't find anything I liked as well as what I already picked out when we got married 12 years ago. So I did some searching and Oneida has discontinued that pattern but still had some available--and discounted. Wa-Hoo!

Wednesday, the 25th, I finished decorating Katie's room, then had to redo some of Sam's because James found a big dresser (what's it calle when it has doors on the top and drawers on the bottom?) and two nightstands at a flea market. It's pine and looks great with all the cowboy stuff. After church that night James and I moved beds and dressers around in circles in the guest room, trying every possible location for each item. We finally figured out what would work best after about half an hour. Ha!

Thursday, the 26th, I decorated that room. It took forever to figure out what to do and get started, but I LOVE IT now that it's finished. I've always just loved the Americana stuff. The colors are so rich and pretty. We had some work done on the car that day, too, making me a bit late for Ladies' Bible Study. :-/ But the car is well now, thank the Lord.

Friday, the 27th, I cleaned house a bit, ran some more laundry (still bringing in sheets and towels and blankets that had been packed away for a year and a half), and started unpacking things into the den/chapel room. James left for Cleveland that night because he had a committee meeting the next day.

Saturday, the 28th, I spent most of the morning working on the state paper--a new duty for me since Convention. Then I worked on the chapel room some more before loading the kids up and we went to Kayla Wallace's birthday party. It was nice. My favorite part was visiting with Brother Fender. I've always loved that man. James got home not too long after we did, so we worked on the chapel room some more that evening. I worked on the paper again that night, of course. I'm always a late-night computer work person. I just seem to get more done after the house is still and quiet.

Sunday, the 29th, I loved BEING IN Sunday School instead of TEACHING Sunday School. ~Aaaaauuugghhh~ It's so refreshing to be taught every now and then. :-) We came home for lunch and I was able to work on the paper for about an hour before we headed to Alex City for a Singin'. We've lived in the south for about a year and a half and this was my very first Singin'. Ha! It was great and we thoroughly enjoyed visiting with Sister Bishop and all of the good folks down there. Brother Brandon was also set forth as an evangelist that night and I was so blessed by his sincerity and how seriously he took it. He and his wife are always a blessing to me. Well... maybe not ALWAYS... ;-)

Monday, the 30th, I worked on the paper. Again. James brought home a new bed for Sam. He already had bunkbeds, but that room is just so BIG that it still looked empty and not-moved-into with all of the wide open floor space! So James found a SUPER cool rustic metal bed on Craigslist that came with a fabulous mattress (most comfortable in the whole house, I think) at a great price. Praise the Lord! Now a family of five could stay in that room and nobody have to sleep on the floor. God has blessed us with far, far more than our family could ever need; SURELY He's given it for the sake of being a blessing to other people. Lots and lots of other people!

Tuesday, the 31st, I worked on the paper by day and my VLB service by night.

Wednesday, August 1st, I worked on VLB service. That's about all I accomplished that day! I managed to pull off a last-minute skit using the VLBs. It wasn't nearly the catastrophe I expected it to be, but I was still glad when it was all over. :-)

Thursday, the 2nd... I have no recollection of whatsoever.

Friday, the 3rd, we went to a funeral viewing for a member from Anniston--Sister Campbell's father. We met Mom & Dad and Sister Bishop for dinner before going to the funeral home. It was good to see how God is blessing and comforting Sister Campbell and all of her family during this time and we were so glad that we'd made it over there. I especially enjoyed visiting with Brother Dupre. That's another old guy I have dearly loved for many years. :-) We were able to stop by Sister Bishop's house to enjoy a tasty watermelon with her before driving back home that night.

Saturday, the 4th... ~whew~ I'll leave that for a new post, I think! I'm ALMOST caught up. I'll save the rest for next time. I would say I'd find some pictures to post, but I don't remember taking any. I'll check though, just in case. :-)