~Aaaaaaaaahhhh~ How peaceful it is in the early morning. Everything still and motionless, the mountainside pink from the rising sun on the snow, the long shadows peeking through the limbs of the trees, men stomping around on your roof banging and clanging and hollering to one another, other men walking past the window smiling and yelling "Good Morning!," compressors roaring on and off... So serene. ;-) HA! I got up earlier than usual today because there is a skylight in the bathroom and I needed to take a shower safely before the guys were due to arrive and be up on the roof. Good thing I did, too--I think they showed up at 6:45 this morning! Good, hard workers they are. Today Brother Chris brought Brother Juan and Carlos with him. And to be fair, they really tried to be quiet when they first got here. But roofing a house is a noisy job, you know?! Anyway, back to the beginning...

We did, indeed, miss church last Thursday night. It never had stopped snowing all day long and we just didn't know if we'd be able to make it back home or not. I always have big guilt over that decision (what if we COULD have made it without any trouble and we just stayed home?!), but not this time. When the decision was made to not try it, the kids and I bundled up and started walking down to the mailbox. On our way there we helped push one lady's car to the side of the road. She was stuck in the middle of the road, sliding all over the place but going nowhere. We got to the box and it was completely frozen shut. In fact, if the neighbor man hadn't been there picking up his own mail we probably would have come home empty handed. He scraped with his key and banged and yanked and pulled and finally got our box open for us. On our way home we stopped at the same place the first lady had been stuck to shine our flashlight for a guy who was crawling around under his vehicle trying to put chains on the tires. At that point all of my guilt over staying home from church vanished. Ha! There is NO WAY our van would've had a chance out there.

I dug out my Christmas puzzle that night because it seemed like the thing to do. ~aaaaaahhhhh~ :-)

The next day was a great snow day around here. The kids spent most of the day outside, having a blast. I spent a most of the day proofreading off and on. James cooked all three meals that day! He's The Good One. I can't tell you the last time I cooked three meals in one day! I usually shoot for just one! Ha! He made oatmeal for the kids for breakfast, some of those fantastical turkey tacos of his for dinner, and ziti and homemade stromboli for dinner. Oh wait, the ziti and stromboli were the night before. Either way--it was great! :-)

We had about a foot of snow on the ground. ~Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh~ There is nothing more wonderful in all the world. :-) Look at how deep it is on the deck to the office--and you can barely see where the three steps are that lead up to it.

The van doors were frozen shut and James had a hard time getting in. :-)
Mid-morning we looked out the window and found that some guy was out there shoveling our driveway and was half done already! (That's no small job here, especially when the snow is a foot deep!) It was Brother Chris, of course. He decided to come up and shovel off our entire roof so it would have a chance to dry out and he'd be able to work on it on Monday. How many roofers do you know who would do that?! He got here and did the driveway for us just because that's the kind of guy he is. :-) Then he got to work on the shed roof, then the house. The kids were thrilled that he was here, of course, and kept pelting him with snowballs while he was trying to work. So he began shoveling the snow from the roof down onto the kids. :-)
Apparently Sam joined Brother Chris' team for a little while.
Here's Joe, anticipating the next shovel full...
If you look closely you can see Joe getting slammed. :-)
We ended up with a clean roof and some mighty impressive piles of snow surrounding the house. The kids dug them out and made lots of "igloos" out of them. :-)
This is the view from our front porch the next morning. I do love it here. Soooooo pretty.
On Saturday James wanted to go to town. Ha. HA. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Town! On a SATURDAY. In DECEMBER!!! On the LAST SATURDAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS, IN DECEMBER!!! He has mental issues sometimes. He tried long and hard to talk me into it, but I think he finally became a little concerned for his own safety (ha!) and gave up on the idea. ~whew~ That was a close one. James took Sam and went to Edgewood while Katie and Joe stayed home with me. Another reason I didn't want to go to town (like additional reasons were really necessary) was because I had lots to do to get ready for the pot-luck the following day. I made 9 loaves of Poppy Seed Bread (I give small loaves to the ladies at church, large loaves to the families) along with the pot-luck food: more Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies (though I used red and green M&M's this time to make them more Christmassy), Jamey's Mexican Chicken Casserole, Chicken Pot Pie, and lots and lots of Popcorn Balls. It was about 10:30 that night when I was finally ready to make the popcorn balls. I had (for some unknown reason) decided to make a double batch and it's really too much for one person to handle--the syrup would cool and begin to get stiff before you could get it all mixed up and formed into balls--so I asked James to help me. He said, "Too bad Joe's not still awake--he could help." A moment later we looked up to see Joe standing in the kitchen smiling. Ha! So he came and helped us, too. I can't remember anything specific, but I know we laughed at Joe a lot. That kid cracks us up!

By the time we had finished up the popcorn balls and I had them all individually wrapped, had washed every pot, pan, and giant bowl in the house (popcorn balls are the worst for making lots of sticky dishes!), wrapped three Christmas gifts, got the Clarkson's gift from the church ready, and wrapped up and ribboned all of the Poppy Seed Bread it was 1:30am! CRAZY! And here I thought I had everything well in hand and under control. Thanks for sharing these particular genes with me, Mom, I love 'em. ;-)

We had a good service Sunday morning, Brother Chris completing our Advent messages--this week on "Joy." It was so good. I love teaching and preaching on things like hope and peace and joy. :-) Brother Chris had arranged a scavenger hunt for the kids, so we all headed outside to watch it just before he preached. He used it to illustrate the wise men diligently searching for Jesus and the great JOY they experienced when they finally found Him. The kids also got all dressed up and acted out the Christmas story as Sister Shanda read through it. They did a great job. I filmed all of the above, so that means I don't have any actual pictures of it. But I haven't had a chance to do anything with the videos yet either.

After service we had our pot-luck with lots of great food and fellowship, as always. I love that. As a kid we used to have a pot-luck once a month (every third Sunday, I think it was) and I thought it was fantastic. :-) Sister Yolanda made some super tasty, not-spicy-at-all tamales and some sort of hot punch with lots of chunks of fruit in it--it tasted a lot like hot spiced cider. Yum. :-) All the other food was good too, but that was my favorite. :-)

Here is James in his Christmas garb, doing his best Brother Grimes pose.

And me with Sister Galaviz, looking rather jolly and festive. :-)
After service the Clarksons had some gifts for our family. They got us "Where the Red Fern Grows" due to all of our recent conversations about who bawls like babies watching sad movies and who is cold and heartless and unaffected by them. Ha! They also got us some Jelly Bellies and peanuts to snack on while we watch the movie... and some flavored crickets. That's right, crickets--the real thing. I think they were sour cream and onion flavored. (Like THAT is supposed to help?! Gross!!!) It was HILARIOUS watching the guys try to eat one. Brother Chris took one too and told the boys they'd all do it together on the count of three. This is right after they'd popped them into their mouths...
And about a second later, right after Joe and Cainan had spewed theirs into the trash. Ha!
And Brother Chris laughing and holding the cricket that he had only pretended to put in his mouth. :-)
Of course, he's a strange one and decided to go ahead and eat the cricket anyway, just because. Bleagh! He's the only one who actually swallowed one. NASTY!

Carlos decided he would try too, but he had a much harder time than the little boys did actually getting the nasty little thing into his mouth.
This is just moments before he actually got it in--which was only fractions of a second before his head was in that trash can, spitting it out! Ha!
Boy, I hate it that the last pictures I have are of cricket eating. Gross! I'll do better next time.

We came home from church and had a nice, relaxing evening. Left-over tamales for dinner, then later on a popcorn ball and a hot pumpkin spice cappuccino and a Christmas movie. ~Aaaahhhh~

Yesterday Brother Chris and Carlos showed up to work on the roof bright and early. Our family worked on getting the house all cleaned up, then went into town to shop for some necessary things, most of which we were unable to find. Bummer. We even ended up battling the crazies at the mall, of all things. The only good that came of it was the Hawaiian chicken and rice we got at the foot court. Yum. We did end up buying a few things on our outing, mostly at the dollar store. I got some stocking stuffers for James (all junk this year--it's the best I could do) and James helped Joe search for a present for me. James said Joe picked out a very nice, thoughtful gift for me... after he finally convinced him that a gallon of bleach was not a good gift. HA! I love that kid so much! :-)

We got home at 2:00 or 3:00, I think, and did some school and housework. Had left-overs for dinner, then James took Katie out to Edgewood and Moriarty to return something to Alco. I read a pile of Christmas books to Sam--since they need to go back to the library today and we hadn't gotten to most of them! It was a nice evening.

I got a call last night on an ad I'd listed on Craigslist two or three weeks ago--or more? I'd listed both car seats, the highchair, the baby swing, and the walker. Sam is seven years old, so that tells you how long we've been hauling that stuff around! I had a couple of calls in the beginning, but nobody came to look. I was just telling James the other day that I was going to donate everything to a crisis pregnancy center. Then this lady called last night and said she'd take it all, sight unseen! Wa-Hoo! :-) So James loaded it all up and delivered it to her this morning. Good for her, good for us!

It's now nearly noon. It's hard to keep a line of thought when you type a few lines, then leave, then come back and type a few more! Ha! Brother Chris and the guys just left. He's got to get home so he can head to Colorado with his family for Christmas--I'd hate for them to leave him behind and Sister Shanda just might do it if he doesn't get there soon! Ha! I created what I HOPE is a complete shopping list (though we all know it's not) to send with James so we can have everything we need (ha) for the rest of the week and Christmas dinner, so he's being a wonderful husband and taking care of that for me. Nice. :-)

One more thing... Sam woke up sick early this morning, rushing to the bathroom just in time. He went back to bed, but had to make another run for the bathroom when he woke up a couple of hours later. Brother Chris came in and prayed for him a little while ago and he perked up a lot and seemed to be doing great--making trouble and everything (ha!)--but he's been sacked out on the couch again for about an hour, saying he's feeling sick again. Katie has started on lunch, soup for Sam included, so I'm going to go assist her. I love having such a grown up girl around the house. :-) Anyway, pray for Sam--I know God can heal him totally, with no relapses.

Christmas Activities & Pictures

But first, a few random pictures I found on my camera. We start with Sam. I don't know how a person goes about discovering he has a talent like this...

But he seems happy about it! James wanted to take a picture of Katie and me together because we matched so well in our happy Christmas green. :-) James couldn't help himself and bought Christmas shirts for all three kids this year. They were pretty excited about it. :-) Ah, yes. How could I forget about this?! James was given a true rarity the other day! Sister Grimes keep sorting through every nook and cranny of her house in search of things to donate to our family or the Clarksons. Her most recent donation to the Church history museum is (are you ready for this???) Fields of the Wood olive forks! HA! Could you die?! At least that's what she said they were used for. There are only three left out of the box of twelve, but three is enough to make James a very happy man. A piece of memorabilia he didn't even know existed!!! HA! Here's a picture of Charlie hanging out with Sam. This doesn't happen often. Usually if he's with Sam is a free-for-all with running and jumping and romping and biting and growling and pouncing. And Charlie gets wound up, too. ;-) Okay, here we go! Sunday morning James woke up sick, so the kids and I headed on to church without him. Brother Chris preached a good message on hope, then we hurried home to check on James. We found him still in bed... WITH THE DOG!!!! Yep, you heard right--he was in bed, cuddling with Charlie. The same Charlie who is "not allowed" to sleep with us at night. I love it. :-) The dog still sleeps with Katie at night, of course (and he's doing GREAT with that, by the way--settled right into that routine and sleeps with her all night with no problem), but I love it that James is so schnookered by this dog. He would declare he only did it because he was sick and it was easier than trying to keep an eye on him, but I know that's only a handy excuse for something he really enjoyed anyway. ;-) I worked on Christmas cards again that afternoon, but still didn't get done. Oh, well--I tried! James still wasn't feeling great that afternoon, but was doing well enough to go to church with us. He hadn't eaten all day and after service McAllister's is what sounded good, so we went there to grab a bite before heading home. Monday morning I got up bright and early to get to work cleaning up the house for the showing. That's right, we had a SHOWING!!! Wa-Hoo! We hadn't even heard Jason's voice for a month or more, so it was pretty exciting to have a little action. The lady said she loved it, it was the best house she'd seen in the three days she'd been looking, it was "adorable," etc. I don't know what her situation is, but we haven't heard any more since then. It's strange, really. I don't get my hopes up over anything anymore. But at the same time I don't want to be faithless and expect that this WON'T be "it," you know?! It's in God's hands, right? I'm trying to just leave it there. :-) We loaded up the family, including Charlie, and headed out at 10:30 (we had been told the showing would be between then and noon) to go to the dollar store out in Edgewood, ate lunch at the Chinese restaurant out there, then stopped to pick up a few things at Wal-Mart on the way home. I made some Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies that afternoon (wa-a-a-a-ay too addictive!), then lasagna for dinner. It was a great day for food around here. :-) I stayed up until 1:00 working on Christmas cards that night, but at least I finally got them finished. Wa-Hoo! I slept in a bit on Tuesday after my late night, then we had devotions, school--the usual. That afternoon we all went to the library, then to Hobby Lobby to get Dad's Christmas present (crazy, hu?!), then on to the Route 66 Diner. It's supposed to be pretty popular (been around since the 40's, I think), but in three years of living here we'd never been able to find it. I don't know how we missed it with all those neon lights and all. Ha! It was really neat and the food was fantastic. James, Mr. Adventure, had a vanilla malt. I went with the Pink Cadillac milk shake (strawberry ice cream with Oreos) because it seemed like the right thing to do, considering the setting. The only other option was the Elvis Presley (peanut butter and banana shake, of course), so... :-) We left the diner and headed down town to the River of Lights. Most of the displays were the same, but they did have some new things that were really neat. James especially liked the cactus. That's an owl on top, I just wasn't at the proper angel to be able to see it well. Joe had to have his picture with the lizard. Not very impressive to most minds, but to Joe... It's a lizard, you know?! Katie & Sam liked the t-rex. The lights were fun but better yet, the entertainment was fantastic this year! There was an all trombone band there playing Christmas carols and they were great! I always enjoy live music and it was so cool to have nothing but trombones (who ever heard of such a thing?!) playing a bunch of different parts like that. They did stray from Christmas every now and again and would play an oldies song, my favorite being Duke of Earl. Ha! It sounded fantastic, but since it's Christmas time I'll post this one.

A little farther on we came across a whole slew of cute little old men in Santa hats--an old guy's choir! I think they call themselves the New Mexichords or something like that. When we got there these four guys were singing something very barbershop quartet-ish. I love that stuff! :-) At the end of this corridor is where the trombone guys were playing. It was a great night and we had lots of fun.

Yesterday morning the shingles and roofing supplies were delivered to the house! While the guy was still unloading them Brother Chris and Brother Juan and the three Clarkson kids showed up. The men worked all day hauling the packs of shingles up to the roofs, working on the skylights, and totally re-roofing James' office. It looks great. :-) Here are the fellas hard at work.

James was gone all day long, but there was no such thing as loneliness around here with the six kids running wild all day! Ha! They were all really good for the most part and there were only a couple of times I when it got too chaotic and I had to put the kibosh on them. They had a blast together and I was so glad they had all day to just hang out--they never get to do that.

I decided to make potato soup for lunch, but didn't have all of the ingredients and had to improvise. That made me nervous, so I decided to make a big pot of chicken and noodles as a back up. Good thing I did! The soup turned out okay, but the noodles were scarfed down nearly completely--and there was a pretty good amount of soup gone, too. One wouldn't have been enough. It was great being able to "host" and feed my workers. That makes me so happy! :-)

When the crowd left that night (sometime after 6:00) James hauled in all the stuff he'd bought throughout the day--groceries, Christmas presents... and a little jacket for Charlie. HA! COULD YOU DIE?! James is killing me! With Hershey he was sooooo stingy. I think we bought two dog toys the entire 6 years we had him. We finally paid $1 for a sweater for him that last year. Charlie already has two beds (saw a cute one on sale for $6 last week) and a box, several toys, treats, etc. And then James comes home with a jacket AND another toy and some treats for the dog's stocking!!! HA! I love it. James declares he doesn't love the dog ("he's okay, I guess" is the most he'll admit to), but his actions prove otherwise. Hershey taught him that, like it or not, he's going to end up loving Charlie--so he's already started giving in to it. It makes me very happy. :-) Anyway, Charlie's jacket has a hood and James keeps picking him up and pulling his hood on, then just laughing and laughing. It IS funny. Ha! Here's Charlie trying to behave...

And showing his true feelings about the hood... I took this after he finally settled down and got used to the jacket. It CRACKS ME UP because the jacket fits snug around his little body, squishing his hair in... then he's got this huge poofy rump sticking out the end! Ha! This morning we woke up to SNOW!!! It's our first real snow of the year. We had some flurries and a skift on the ground a couple weeks ago, but this is the first REAL snow. And it's sooooo pretty! James built a fire for us so we could have devotions in there all nice and toasty. Sam's been keeping the fire going for us throughout the rest of the day. He's a good fire boy. The kids finished school so they could head out to play for a while. They had me dig the inner tube out of the shed but it's too flat--they'll have to wait for their Dad to air it up for them. Charlie wasn't quite sure what to think of the snow at first, but it didn't take him long to decide that it's a blast. A dog after my own heart. :-) Come on, now--all together, "Aaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwww!!! That's soooo cute, Charlie!" That's what Joe says at least 50 times a day. :-) It didn't show up well in any of the pictures, but the back of his jacket has a picture of a peppermint and says "sweet."

Okay, so that was a little bit of Charlie overload. Sorry--I've been trying to be better about that. Ha! Right now James is taking a nap, I'm blogging, the kids are playing games, and the dog is snoozing at my feet. ~Aaaahhhhh~ This is the life. I love snow days!!! My only concern is that it had to come on a Thursday. We have church tonight, but last I saw the snow was still coming down heavily--I don't know if we'll be able to make it in or not! I know we could make it to town, I just don't know if we could make it home afterwards once it gets colder and icier, especially if it keeps snowing. Time will tell! I hope we can make it, but if not we'll just have devotions here tonight I guess. And put a puzzle together or something. :-) And because I just can't help myself, here's some more Charlie. ;-)

Back to Normal

Whatever that is. ;-)

James made it home just after 8:00 Tuesday night. The kids were still up, of course, and were THRILLED that they got to see him before they went to bed. He had been gone for two and a half weeks and it was good to have him home.

Wednesday... I'm trying to remember. I know we took James' rental car back to town, then we had plans to have a nice dinner and go to the River of Lights or whatever it's called. But some dummy forgot to take a coat with them so we couldn't do the River of Lights. Okay, it was me. We ended up at Church's Chicken for dinner (so much for the "nice" dinner--ha!) and then went to Hobby Lobby to let the kids pick out their annual ornament. Then we went to the dollar store for the kids to start picking out their gifts for one another. I knew that was a bad, bad idea. It's way too early to be doing that--there's no way they'll be able to keep their secrets that long! Cato is in the same strip mall as the dollar store, so I went to look around. I've never actually found anything worthwhile at Cato before, but every time I ask a friend where they got a cute skirt they tell me that's where. And they have girl cloths, too, though all of them have always been too big for Katie. Well, I finally hit the jackpot! :-) I found a nice, long denim skirt for Katie--she's always in desperate need of those. It's too big at the waist, but can be cinched up with a belt, so we took it! And I found an outfit for myself, too. Whoa! It's a skirt and a jacket-sort-of-thing. Kind of like a dress suit, but not really. It fit really nice and was on sale, so Katie and I both walked out with something! All those dozens of trips to Cato finally paid off. Ha!

Thursday I started working on Christmas cards, but didn't get very far. It was just one of those days that seemed to stand still. No, actually the day flew by, but the goals for the day stood still! Went to church early that night because we needed to run by Lowes and Home Depot. After service we stopped to pick up a few things at the grocery store.

Yesterday was a different kind of a day for us. I went to work and James stayed up with the kids! Ha! Brother Chris has been working on a house for months now (a total remodel) and is finally coming to the end of the project. After all of the grinding and sanding on the tile all over the house all of the walls had a heavy coat of dust on them. He's needing to get everything cleaned up over there so the carpet can be laid on Monday and he can finally be finished, so he asked if Sister Yolanda and I wanted a job for one day. :-) I picked her up at 7:30 and we got to the house at about 8:00. We worked all day long and still only got about half of the house done. Brother Chris was there, too, for part of the day working and cleaning, but he had one of those killer headaches that had him SICK and unable to function. It got worse as the day went on and he finally went on home and went to bed sometime in the afternoon. Cainan had come to work with him and he worked by my side and talked up a storm and kept me company all day long. In all these years I've never actually been around just Cainan (when he's not playing with the other kids) and I was amazed at how much I enjoyed his company! Ha! I had such a great time with him. He stayed with us when his Dad left, so I drove him home when we quit for the day. I felt terrible that we didn't get more done, but the dust was just so thick the same areas had to be cleaned over and over and over again to get them clean enough to move on to the next, you know? I think we took care of the two worst rooms in the house though (the rooms where there was the heaviest dust) along with 4 other rooms. I guess that leaves 3 rooms to go, one big one, one small one, and one bathroom. I sincerely hope Brother Chris is feeling 100% better today and able to get it all done! Wish I could've gone back to help again!

I took Cainan home and then drove on up the mountain. I think I made it home at about 6:00 to find three happy children and a very, very, very happy Charlie Dog. :-) They said he missed me and looked for me all day long. Aaaawwwwwwwwww. ;-) It sounds like everybody had a great time while I was gone. I had the only vehicle so they were stuck at the house all day. They baked cookies with Dad and he had them doing all sorts of exercises and who knows' what all. They did some painting. And James had them each brind one object (Katie brought a small Christmas tree, Joe brought his guitar, and Sam brought his remote controlled truck) and he arranged them, then had all of the kids draw a "still life" picture of them from the angle they were sitting at. It amazes me the things that James thinks to do with them! It was great for him to have some time with just the kids after being gone for so long. They all seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. I think we should do this Mom's Day Away / Dad's Day with the Kids once a month. It's good for ALL of us. :-)

So today I am a wee bit sore and achy from the work yesterday. Don't tell Brother Chris, though. Every time he complains of aches and pains I tell him that I feel great--must be because I'm so much younger than him. ;-) I don't know why, but I was soooooo tired last night. I know it wasn't because of the work itself. I hadn't slept well the night before and I was up early, but still--I crashed on the couch with Charlie at 8:00-something last night, before the kids were even in bed! Ha! I woke up at about 1:00am (!), put Charlie in bed with Kate and went on to bed myself... and slept until 7:00!!! I couldn't believe it. Crazy. AND Charlie slept all of that time without needing out! Good, good puppy. :-)

We all had cookies for breakfast this morning. :-) James left a few minutes ago to go to town and shop with all the other loonies. I'm supposed to be working on Christmas cards today. I'm having a hard time getting motivated. Thus, I blog. But James wants them in the mail by Monday, so I'd best get busy. I need some hot chocolate, a toasty fire, and some good Christmas music. It's sounding better already. :-)

I wrote all of the above this morning, but didn't post it for some reason. Now it's after midnight and I still haven't posted it yet. Might as well update it, then post, right?

James was gone most of the day doing some Christmas shopping (our own, and for his folks--saves on shipping that way, you know) and I did work on Christmas cards off and throughout the day. I used to lo-o-o-o-o-o-ove doing cards. It was just so much fun. It's nothing that I dread, but it just doesn't seem to have the thrill that it used to. Probably because we send out way too many now and I don't write personal letters to everybody like I used to. It's too overwhelming to really be a lot of fun, I guess.

James got home just in time for dinner--orange glazed pork loin. I didn't know he'd used the last of the brown sugar when he made brownies yesterday, so I--completely forgetting that you can substitute white sugar and molasses for brown sugar--melted some butterscotch chips as a fill in. Ha! Crazy. It turned out okay, but nothing to rave about. I thought the garlic cheese mashed potatoes were fantastic though. I'll have to do that again sometime. :-)

Once we got the kids and that crazy dog put to bed (he was HYPER tonight!) I got busy wrapping presents. We've been stashing them in our bedroom, but with what James came home with today I knew it was time to start getting them wrapped. Besides, it's a lot more fun for the kids to see the packages under the tree and wonder what's in them for a couple of weeks. :-)

Now it's way past my bedtime. I'm going to read through the Sunday School lesson and call it a night. Looking forward to good services tomorrow and a good nap in between! :-)

The Party's Over

That's right, James gets home tomorrow. ;-)

We had a great Sunday yesterday. I so enjoyed the lesson on wisdom. I so lack it. Ha! I love all of the promises, though--that it comes from God (every good gift comes from HIM) and it's not something that we just work at to achieve; he gives it even to the simple ("babes"); and He gives it in response to our acknowledging that we are with out it, and in need of it, and asking for it. Good, good stuff.

Then Brother Chris preached a message on PEACE. He's doing the Advent thing this year. Last week he preached on love, this week on peace. He read the passage where Jesus and the disciples were on the boat and He spoke, "Peace, be still" to the storm. He said that that particular "peace" literally means silence, or to hush. It means that all else has to stop speaking and listen to God. I love the thought that God speaks PEACE to my soul (causing me to hush up and listen to what He has to say, allowing Him to take control) and that he speaks it to my problems and our enemies. The Prince of PEACE. Love that.

After church we went with the Clarksons to the Whole Hog Cafe, a barbeque joint none of us had ever tried before. It was really good (even the kids loved it) and the kids and I ate for $13. Of course, they were still hungry but they didn't tell me that until we were about ready to leave and I didn't want to take time to wait on more food! Oh well. We had a good time visiting and listening to Brother Chris tell more of his crazy stories from way back when. I've known him all my life and heard some of his stories several times (though the never cease to be entertaining), but I'm amazed that after all these years there are always stories that I'd never heard before. He's been in the craziest situations--and has an amazing memory to recall them all! Ha!

That night was Sister Bailey's WMB service. I remember enjoying several of the scriptures that were shared, but I had a hard time focusing that night. I hate it when that happens! We had a visitor, however--a homeless lady in a wheelchair the Clarksons picked up and brought with them. That's always exciting!

After church we did quite a bit of laughing as we had a photo shoot with Brother Chris. Mom had asked me to set up a make-shift green screen (two pieces of lime green poster board taped to the wall--much cheaper than the real thing, but with the same result) and take a picture of him that could be put on the website. He's one of the few Overseers they didn't have a picture of. He was a great sport and we took a whole slew of crazy pictures just for Mom... ones Brother Chris was a little concerned MIGHT end up on the website! Ha! In the end we got the good picture we needed and a whole lot of crazy ones we didn't need, but thoroughly enjoyed. :-)

I got to bed late last night and ended up sleeping in a bit today. Both boys have been a little stuffed up the past couple of days and were sort of groggy so they slept in, too. Katie never has any problem sleeping in. Ha!

Got up and had devotions, then started the laundry. Joe has been reading about Harry Houdini lately and, although he was a very disturbed man (and sometimes a little disturbing! Ha!), what kid could not be intrigued by his amazing feats?! Joe has read a couple of books about him already and has another one on hold at the library. The kids spent most of the morning tying each other up and then starting the stopwatch to see how long it takes them to escape. Joe has dubbed himself The Great Hornini because he couldn’t bring himself to go by the Joe-ini. Ha!!! I love it. :-)

After the kids finished school this afternoon we leashed up Charlie and all walked down to get the mail. I was amazed at how well Charlie did for his first time walking on a leash! Good puppy. :-) And he's been scratching at the door LOTS today--no accidents at all in the house. Good, good puppy!!! We're working on sit, stay, and come with him right now, too. He's a smart dog and doing great. Now if we could just get him to stop screaming and pitching a fit every time we leave the house...

James left Alabama this morning, headed home. That means it's time to put the house back together. Ha! Actually, it's Monday. Monday is always the day to get the house put back together. So now we have nice, sparkly clean bathrooms, floors that have been swept, vacuumed and mopped, and everything back in its rightful place. Except the clothes all over the den because I haven't done the ironing yet. Anyway, James will be home tomorrow night. It blows my mind that his trip is already over--it went so fast!!! I'm sure he'll be happy to know that, while I didn't really miss him (it sounds cruel but it's really not--I've just never been a very good misser!) and we've had a terrific time while he's been away (one big party, you know!), now that he's headed home I'm suddenly so excited that he's coming! It will be great to have him home. And I'm sure it will feel a whole lot more Christmassy with him around. He has a way of doing that. :-)

~sigh~ One more rotation of laundry and then the ironing. I know I'll never be able to make myself do the ironing tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe I'll just wait until I get ahold of James' laundry (I'm sure there will be plenty of it) so I can do it all at once. Yeah, that's it. That's the perfect excuse to put it off. :-)

Saturday Evening Post

I stole that title from somebody who blogs so seldom he'll never know I stole it. I couldn't think of my own title, so... :-)

Wednesday morning we had devotions, then headed to the library and got there just as they opened. We were gone less than an hour and returned to a crying puppy. So we left him in the bathroom, as we've been doing, until he finally stopped crying... THREE HOURS LATER!!! He cried for four whole hours before he finally wound down to a low, defeated whimper. I couldn't believe he cried for so long! I went to the door and opened it... and he wasn't there. I looked on this side of the room--nope; the other side--nope; behind the door--nope. It didn't make any sense! I called his name, then he started whimpering again... from the BATHTUB! When we leave him in the bathroom, we arrange his stuff so:

Apparently he made it from his bed up to the top of his box, then onto the tub... and fell in?! Who knows. All I know is that he was there for hours and hours--no wonder he cried for so long! It was cold in that room and he had nothing soft or warm to sit on, just the cold, slick tub. And he had nothing to play with, nothing to chew on... except, of course, for the rugs that were draped over the edge of the tub! He was apparently trying to pull himself up out of the tub using the rugs...


All of those pieces had to come from somewhere, right? Well...

James handled the news amazingly well when I told him we had our first (and hopefully only) puppy destruct-o job. He was mostly concerned that this might start a pattern of chewing up things he's not supposed to chew up. I tried to assure him that unless he's trapped in a bathtub, I really don't expect him to do anything like this again--and we are now arranging the bathroom differently in an effort to prevent the bathtub incident from happening again. :-)

We had an afternoon cleaning spree that day, which felt good. The kids helped out with the floors and I worked on emptying all of the ashes out of the fireplace and cleaning up all of the wood chips and grime from the stove and the bricks. It looks sooooo much better! It's actually been decently warm the past few days and we haven't needed a fire since then, so it's still clean. That makes me happy. Though it will make me happy to have a nice, crackling fire again one of these days, too. :-)

That night we watched our newest video acquisition from the library: A Muppet's Christmas Carol. WHO KNEW that the Muppets would be too scary for my kids?! HA! My boys are the biggest sissies, I tell ya'! The ghost of Christmas future isn't very Muppet-ish... just a great big cape with a black opening where a head would be and long, bony fingers coming out of the sleeves--very Grim Reaper looking. ~sigh~ Joe and Sam were both a little disturbed when I tried to send them to their dark bedroom immediately following that movie. Ha! We talked for a little while, had good devotions and they went on to bed with no problems... though they wanted to make sure I was going to be in the den until they fell asleep, just in case. Ha!

Thursday was spent doing a lot of computer stuff. I worked on a header for the Alabama Evening Light--that was a train wreck. Never could come up with anything I was happy with and when I finally created a graphic it goofed up every time I tried to save it--chopped part of the fill color out! It was crazy. I don't even remember how I finally got it to work, but it was such a relief to be done with it. I worked a little bit on our Christmas letter and I secured James' Christmas gift that day. THAT feels good. :-) That night just before church I listed the play fort and the trampoline on Craigslist.

Apparently I listed both items way too cheap because I was swamped with calls and e-mails all that night and the next morning! By noon the next day both items had been hauled off and I had cash in my pocket. Good thing, 'cuz I've spent most of what James left with me. He'd better come home soon or I'll have to go and sell something else. Ha!

Katie had the itch to cook (or perhaps she was tired of the pizzas and peanut butter?!) so she mixed up a hamburger stroganoff for dinner... at 3:00 yesterday. We have no schedule right now, so it worked! We threw it in the oven, then made a run to the grocery store down the road because we were out of bread. And we needed to try the new Snickerdoodle Blue Bell ice cream. :-) The kids LOVE it. I think it tastes amazingly like snow cream (lots of cinnamon), with chunks of cookie in it. YUM. :-)

The only other thing I remember doing is researching cameras. Mine is getting slower and slower (we've had it for four years and taken thousands and thousands of pictures with it--I guess it's bound to wind down at some point!), so we've sort of been on the look-out and I wanted to know what to look out for.

Today has been another nice day. The kids have been so good and kind and thoughtful. It's a nice change because I was about ready to hurt 'em. HA! They've been playing together really well most of the day--and they cooked my lunch today, just because. I was in the den and they suddenly appeared with a tray--a plate with a ham and cheese sandwich and chips, a bowl full of Ramen, and a small plate of nachos. And sweet tea to drink. It was way more than I could eat, but it was great! I've got the best kids in the world. They had even included a note saying how sorry they were for being bad and disrespectful and they wanted me to know that they love me. :-)

Tonight I finally got around to stringing the new lights on the greenery and hanging it over the front door and the boys' bedroom door. ~whew~ DONE decorating now!

In Charlie news, he's beginning to go to the door and whine or scratch when he needs to go outside (WA-HOOOOO!!!! Soooooo exciting!) and I'm hoping he'll be doing it EVERY time he needs to go outside in the very near future. AND he slept with Katie last night. WA-HOOOOOO! I slept on the big bed in her room, she slept on the small bed. I had to go thump him with a paper towel tube several times (Clarksons' suggestion) when I first put him over there with her, but he finally settled down and then stayed with her all night with no problem. :-) Of course, when he woke up and needed to go outside at 7:00 I was there to take him... while Katie kept on sleeping like a rock. I don't know how I can let him sleep with her if she can't wake up to take him out when he needs to go! ??? Anyway, we're making definite progress, so that's good. In fact, right now he's in bed with her and I'm on the other bed typing. I'm winning! I think...

That's all for now. One last shot, though...

A Whole Week???

It's crazy how fast a week passes when you're not blogging!

Of course we'll start with a picture of Charlie--since that's all I seem to take pictures of anymore. Here he is helping Katie with school...



Let's see... Last Wednesday I spent most of the day in preparation for Thanksgiving. I made a cherry pie (it was sooooo good--the first to be devoured) and a pumpkin pie, then realized I had made too much pastry and had enough for one more pie crust. I knew I didn't have anything for another fruit pie and we didn't need another pumpkin pie. I looked down and saw a bowl full of pecans. Ah, yes! We had made the kids fill up a 5 gallon bucket of pecans from Aunt Sue's yard when we were there a few weeks ago. :-) I'd never made a pecan pie before, but I had the stuff so why not?! Do you have any idea how long it takes a woman and three children to shell one cup of pecans? About four hours, give or take. HA! It was ridiculous. I think I only got three unbroken half nuts the whole time. And Katie--good grief. Every time she tried to crack one open it would shatter all over the room. After about three of those I told her to go find some other way to help out! In the end, it turned out pretty good. But I certainly need to allow more time for prep if I ever make another pecan pie!

We needed to go to the library that day (had books overdue and more ready to pick up) and decided to take The Charles with us. I want him to get used to riding in the car so he doesn't freak out over it. We need to have a dog who's able to travel and enjoy it, not shiver and whimper the whole time. He did well and we just went into the library in shifts, two of us playing with Charlie while the other two searched for books.

I mixed up the punch that night and made the cranberry sauce. It's soooooo much better when you make it yourself (and quick and easy,too) than the glop out of the can.

Thursday was a full day of cooking, like it was for everybody else out there. The turkey turned out really, really good--and everything else, too. The Clarksons and Sister Connie got here at about 2:30 and we finished up on the last few things (mashing the potatoes, making gravy--stuff like that) and enjoyed a great Thanksgiving dinner. I'm sooooo glad they came up to my house to join us! Sister Shanda and Sister Connie had made sweet potato casserole and green bean casserole, and also brought a pumpkin pie and some rolls and corn and... something else I'm forgetting. I had them make the gravy, too, since my gravy is unpredictable at best. ;-) Everything was so good and it was great to have dear friends to share it with. They stayed and visited until we were hungry enough (not really) to try some pie. The kids spent their time watching Garfield and The Lone Ranger, then just doing whatever it is that they all do when they get together.

By the time the crowd cleared out sometime after 8:00 I was super tired. Seems like we just vegged out the rest of the night.

Friday was the big decorating day. It was frigid here that day, so Sam and I bundled up in our heavy coats and gloves and went out to the shed to dig out all of the Christmas boxes and bins. We have way too much junk! It always takes me forever to decorate. You empty the boxes out all over the place, then try to figure out what should go where--and it's such a mess you don't even know where to start! In the end I finally had everything up and looking great except for the tree. It was still in the box. The Christmas tree is James' baby. He loves doing the tree and is extremely particular about it. (He got mini-trees for the kids' room that they can decorate themselves because they're not allowed to touch his tree! Ha!) But even without the tree everything else looked great.

That night we decided to have another movie night. We've vegged out a lot since James has been gone. Watched a lot more TV than usual and played a whole lot of games. We're sort of vacationing it, you know?! Anyway, I had checked out The Love Bug from the library to surprise the kids with, so I whipped it out that night. We all enjoyed it a whole lot more than I would have imagined! I know I saw it as a kid, but I remembered little to nothing about it. It's a good one--I wouldn't mind owning it, even. :-) I've always liked Dean Jones. Makes me want to see Snowball Express again--though I remember next to nothing about that one either, I was so young when I saw it.

I had wondered about just waiting until James gets home and letting him do it himself, but... When I got up Saturday morning and everything was done except the tree I decided I'd just go ahead and do that, too. Ha. Last time EVER. Back when my family did the Christmas tree thing (my folks stopped with the heathen tree ;-) when I was a teenager) we always went up and cut our own tree. We never had a fake one. I never knew the reason for that, but after spending two hours building and "fluffing" this stupid tree I've got a whole list of reasons why real trees are better! That's just ridiculous. And your hands and fingers are all sore and scraped up by the time you finish. Dumb. And after all of that it still looks... well, fake! It's a really nice one that James got 80% or 90% off several years ago, but still... I just like real trees. ANYWAY, on the bright side, with James away the kids were actually able to partake in the decorating of the Christmas tree this year! Ha! Joe played with his dart gun the whole time (Christmas bum), but Katie and Sam had a blast helping me decorate. It was such fun!

That night we played Sorry! again. I'm so glad the kids are enjoying it! I think it's already been worth the $10 I paid for it last week. :-)

We had another good service Sunday morning and had two visitors as well. :-) We enjoyed an amazing message by Brother Chris about Leah and Rachel symbolizing the Kingdom and the Church, then the idols that Rachel took with her, how they had to be gotten rid of, how Leah (the Kingdom) brought forth so many children while Rachel (the Church), the favored one, was unable to produce—but in time she did travail and she brought forth the favored sons, two of them (the early church and last days church, perhaps?) and on and on. You would have had to have been there for all of the pieces to fit together and make sense, but it was AMAZING. God either plops deep, inspired revelations from the Word of God right into Brother Chris' lap... or he's just really good at digging them out of the Word--one or the other, because he often preaches things that I've never heard before that just amaze me. Good, good stuff.

After church we came home to find a SLEEPING puppy for the very first time!!! Wa-Hoo!!!!!! We usually come home to a puppy screaming and crying from the bathroom--and we have to let him cry it out for an hour or two before he calms down so we can rescue him. Really, people--is it worth it??? Is this dog actually going to learn to not cry if we keep ignoring him and leaving him in there????? It sure seems to have been a futile effort up to this point, regardless of what the Internet says. And him being asleep when we got home from church Sunday morning was a total fluke. He proved it when we got home from church that night. Ha!

Sunday night was Sister Galaviz's CPMA service, so it was good, of course. She taught on spiritual perfection, individually and as a body. It was interesting to see how the things necessary to achieve individual perfection would naturally enact cooperate perfection. It's obvious that that would happen, yes, but still so striking when you see it spelled out in front of you.

After service that night we went with the Clarksons to the Crusty Chili. Without James!!! The lady who took our order even asked about him. Ha! That's pretty sad. ;-)

Back to Charlie. I have done a bad thing with that dog. James doesn’t allow a dog to sleep with us. Well, in theory anyway. Hershey had his ways. ;-) But when I was trying to make Charlie sleep in his box he would wake up several times a night and I’d take him outside to do his thing (and he would), but what he really wanted was to BE with people. He could only stay all alone in that box for so long, even if it was right next to the bed, you know?! Well, I love sleeping with a puppy... And James is gone right now, so... :-) I haven’t let him sleep with me in bed, but I’ve been crashing on the couch with him most nights. Since I started doing that he began sleeping pretty much through the whole night without needing to go outside. So a couple of nights ago (after he’d started sleeping through the night) I thought I’d try to get him to sleep with Katie—since that’s the goal eventually anyway. (He can’t sleep with her until he’s house trained or can at least wait it out through the night though because Katie sleeps like a rock and won’t wake up to let him out if he needs to go. I know because when I put him in bed with her he went and curled up ON HER HEAD and she never budged.) Anyway, he curled up with her for a couple of minutes, but then I heard his jingle bells. He was at the edge of the bed, preparing to leap to his death on the tile floor below. (He’s still too little to be able to dismount the furniture without sufficient padding down there.) He just wouldn’t stay with her. He wanted to sleep with me. It doesn’t help matters that it’s what I want, too. Ha! So Sunday night I came up with a new plan. Katie and I will sleep with him TOGETHER in the big bed. Smart, right?! Okay, so it’s one more insane thing we’re doing for the sake of a dog—whatever. I’m thinking that maybe if he gets used to sleeping with both of us there I can start sneaking out and he’ll stay with her. Right??? Either way, I’ve got to figure out something before James gets home. I think we’ve got about a week and a half to go. The three of us gave it a shot Sunday night, but most of the night he was cuddled up next to me or on me. I moved him over toward Katie several times, but it's tough to make him stay there. Hopefully we can make some sufficient progress in his desire to cuddle with Katie at night over the next few days! Ha!

Then there was Monday--yesterday. Laundry, ironing, house cleaning day, though I didn’t finish the laundry, I ironed nothing, and I didn’t get the floors cleaned. Hhmmm. I had no idea I’d been such a failure until I started writing it all down! I'll have to make up for some of that tomorrow, I guess. :-)

Last night all of the kids camped out in the living room by the fire again. I decided to join them in another attempt to get the dog to sleep with somebody other than myself. I claimed the couch and Charlie seemed perfectly content to stay on the floor with the kids. Okay, so he was only really and truly content when he was plopped smack dab in the middle of Katie's pillow, but still--this is progress, right?!



This morning we had devotions, cleaned up the house, then headed into town to drop Charlie off for his very first haircut. That meant we had several hours to blow in town, so I figured it would be the perfect day to shop for a Christmas present for James. HA. I hate shopping for that man!!! It's impossible. He already has everything he wants, you know?! The only thing in the world I can think of that he needs and doesn't already have is a house in Alabama. But what can I do about that? Give him a coupon promising that I'll pray over the situation an extra hour a day or something?! Ha! Anyway, we looked all over the place but found nothing--not even anything to spark an idea. ~sigh~ I'm open to suggestions. ;-)

Although I failed to find anything for James, I was able to replace the glass chimney (to a lantern) Sam had broken last week (and had been working all week at odd jobs to earn the money to pay us back for it!), so that's good. Bought two strings of Christmas lights to replace the ones that had burnt out. Now I can weave them through the greenery that is to frame the front door and the boys' bedroom door and I'll be totally DONE with the Christmas decorating. We also did a little grocery shopping. James seemed surprised when I told him tonight that I'd spent $50 on groceries--he shopped for us before he left town, why would we need to go again?! Ha! I explained to him that we were OUT of some things and just needed more. Things like milk, lunch meat, eggs, cereal, ramen... jell-o, cinnamon rolls, Totino's, Kool-Aid, Christmas candy--you know, necessities. Okay, so I probably only told James about the first part of the list. He'll read the rest of it here. :-)

We picked up Charlie and... well, it's just sad. I love him dearly, but he just looks absurd! I ALWAYS feel that way when I pick up my poodle from the groomers--it's just such a sad, sad thing to be a poodle! Ha! They gave him a normal puppy clip, except I asked that they go ahead and start letting him grow out a bit of a mustache. A puppy clip means that the only thing they clip super short is his face and his paws, only slightly trimming the rest of his body. Well, after being bathed and fluffed it looks like he has MORE hair now than when we took him! Ha! And he just looks sooooo different. The kids were heartbroken. We all agree he looked so much better before his haircut (!), but it had to be done. His hair was getting so long and mangy it was getting dirt and leaves and sap matted in it when he'd go outside. Anyway, here's what poor Charles looks like now.



Here's a clip of him playing last night, just for fun. :-)



Pizza! I forgot we had pizza again today! Not Totino's though, so it's okay. ;-) I used the kids' Book It! coupons and we ate at Pizza Hut. They each got a free personal pan, then I ordered a kids meal for myself (personal pan and a drink) and drinks for the three of them. When the lady brought the pizzas out she said they ran out of the regular personal pan crusts, so they gave us all the larger size. Crazy! We didn't even finish two of the four pizzas, meaning we had plenty for dinner (though I allowed the two weird children to have cereal for dinner instead)--all for $5.93! :-) I love spending money when it turns out like that!

And that's about all of our news. I'll try real hard to not let another whole week go by without blogging--it makes my already way too long posts even longer. ;-)

Happy Thanksgiving

In a few hours it will be time to switch over to Christmas mode, so I wanted to make sure I had an appropriate template waiting for me. :-)

Thanksgiving dinner here will take place (in theory) at 2:00. The Clarkson family and Sister Connie will be coming to the house to join us. I'm so excited!!! I'll try to remember to take some pictures. As of last night we've got a pumpkin pie, a pecan pie, a cherry pie, pea salad, deviled eggs, homemade cranberry sauce, and... whatever I'm forgetting. The rest of it will come together in the next few hours. Gotta go!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Three Pizza Parties Down

Saturday was a good day. I think. The only thing I remember about it was that we started making turkeys out of paper plates. We spent a great deal of time painting, letting paint dry, then painting again. After all of that, we never did put them together--all of the pieces are still sitting in a pile. They weren't exactly a hit. Ha!

Sunday was good, as always. Brother Chris preached a great message, as always. Several things really blessed me and I felt thankful for so many things that I have been taking for granted--and my faith was encouraged as well. I just love serving God. He is so good and knows just what we need, when we need it. :-)

After service we stopped by Petsmart because... well, because our dog has severe separation anxiety and I'm getting desperate for a solution! Ha! When we leave the house, we lock him in the bathroom with his bed and lots of toys and everything that he'll need. When we come home, he is screaming and crying and panicking. Has he been doing it the entire time we've been away??? It's terrible, but everything I've read (and I KEEP looking things up because it's killing me! Ha!) is to LET HIM CRY IT OUT--whatever you do, DON'T RESCUE HIM until he quits or you'll teach him to scream and cry for the rest of his life to get what he wants, and he'll learn that if he does it long enough it will eventually work. ~sigh~ So we get home and I sit in the bedroom (instead of the other end of the house where I can't hear him) and read or dink around on the computer until he finally wears himself out. Truth be known, he's never actually worn himself completely out yet. I keep thinking he'll finally just collapse and fall asleep. But it's usually about an hour and a half after we get home when he finally wears out enough to quit pitching a fit and winds down to just a low, pitiful whimper. If he can hold out for a full 30 seconds without going back into "fit" mode I hurry up and "reward" him by going to rescue him. Then he starts throwing fits all over again, but these are fits of joy and relief and "I love you so much--don't ever leave me again--you have no idea how horrible it was--thank you so much for coming back..." Stuff like that. The other day he whimpered for 30 minutes after being rescued! And don't even think about putting him down--he needs some serious lap time. Ha!

ANYWAY... I kept reading about how to help your puppy adjust to being alone and a ton of people say to get him a Kong. It's a little rubber toy that you can put treats inside. The dog has to play and wrestle with it to finally get the treat out. Sounds cruel to me (ha!), but they say most dogs LOVE the challenge of it and it will keep them occupied and make "alone" time a happy, rewarding time. So I went to PetsMart to buy a Kong. How crazy! Ha!

We got home and I let Charlie cry it out (an hour and a half again), then got into my PetsMart bag and realized that in all of the different things I'd picked up and looked at I somehow managed to buy two bag of Kong treats and no toy Kong! Ha! Things like this make James so proud of me. :-) We left a few minutes early for church that night and I took the 5 minutes to run into PetsMart and exchange one bag of treats for the toy, so now we're all set. Riiiiiiiight.

It was Sister Yolanda's first VLB service and she did a good job. It was short, of course, but very good for her first time. :-) It is such a blessing to have "the Juans" here. :-) I hung around and visited with the Clarksons for a while after service, then came home and let the dog cry it out again for a while (a little less than an hour, maybe?) before rescuing him. This part of having a puppy is no fun at all! Ha!

I had stopped and picked up Toy Story 3 on the way home, so the kids and I had a pizza party and watched it that night. I liked it a lot. :-)

Yesterday was a big house cleaning day. I got the sheets stripped and washed, the bathrooms scrubbed down, and the laundry done. Katie and Joe did some dusting while Sam "babysat" Charlie. (A puppy being house trained has to have someone watching like a hawk every moment, you know.) In the afternoon we loaded up and went to Edgewood to do some grocery shopping. I got everything I needed--and was thrilled to even find canned cherries! I greatly prefer frozen cherries, but they're next to impossible to find. The canned ones are hard to find too (sweet cherries are easy, but not tart), so I quickly grabbed up three cans so I can make a cherry pie for Thanksgiving. Got home and realized that I had two cans of tart cherries and one sweet. Ggggrrrrrrrr. James stands astonished and amazed when I tell him things like that. "Bec, you've been to two stores since I've been gone and both times you bought the wrong thing. Next time, read the labels carefully and..." I keep telling him to RELAX. It's not a big deal--I can remedy the situation! And besides, I haven't done any shopping in YEARS (he does it all) and it's been sooooooo long since I've had to pay attention to anything (why bother--he's on top of it all)... I told him that this is GOOD for me. Nagging me about it isn't going to be what helps me do better next time; no, EXPERIENCE will do the trick. If I have to take enough things back to the store I'll eventually start paying better attention! But then, who can skip a wide open opportunity to nag? Not James. HA! ;-)

Before I forget about it, here's a picture of Katie with The Charles. He loves a great many things, one of which is chewing on Katie's hair. There are so many other things in the house that he's not allowed to chew on I figured I'd just let that one go. Ha! He laid on her like this for the longest time the other day, just chewing away. Crazy dog. Crazy girl.

We had just a dusting of snow yesterday, so the kids insisted on donning their snow gear and going out to play. After a while there was a knock at the front door. This is what I found when I opened it...
I think they've been reading too much Calvin & Hobbes. Ha! There was barely any snow at all--they probably had to scrape the whole front yard to make this one little head!

I had been planning on buying Sorry! (the board game) for the kids so we'd have a new game to have fun with while James was away. I found it at Wal-Mart in Edgewood, so we were all set last night! I built a nice, cozy fire while the kids went to put on their footed pajamas and we sat on the rug and I taught them how to play. I used to love that game when I was a kid. My kids seem pretty fond of it, too. I love that. :-)

I told them they could get their sleeping bags and camp out in the living room last night, so that's what they did. It was great fun for us all. :-) Here's Sam with Charlie--who keeps getting bigger and bigger by the day!

And here are all of the kids in their camped out positions, pretending to be asleep.
This is Katie after she really and truly fell asleep. With her sleeping buddy. :-)
And Joe. HA! He would be mortified if he knew I posted this. Not because of his insane sleeping predicament, but because of his jammies. ;-) He thinks blanket sleepers are for babies (probably a sentiment shared by most boys his age) though I assure him they are not--I wish I had some! I had to MAKE him wear these. James' mother bought each kid a two-pack of blanket sleepers for Christmas last year but they were HUGE at the time. It was so cold here last night (and I knew they'd be camping out on the tile floor), so I dug the sleepers out and made them wear them. And I'm so glad. Just for the sake of this picture. :-)
Today we got up and cleaned the house up, locked Charlie up with his treat stuffed Kong, and headed into town to have the kids' picture taken. The photo place was sooooo busy (we waited too long to get down there this year), so it wasn't nearly as speedy an endeavor as it was last year. But in the end, we got some decent pictures. And cheap and fast. Though not as fast as they were supposed to be. They said to pick the pictures up in one hour. So I went and filled the tank up with gas, then went to get one more can of TART cherries (got it under control, James! ;-) Ha!), stopped by the Christian bookstore to look for Christmas cards (nah-da), then grabbed lunch for the crowd at Taco Bell. Got back in exactly one hour... and they told me that the computer crashed while printed our order. Ha! They had our $9 picture package, but not the Christmas cards. I had to wait until they had an open computer, then tell them again what I wanted and which pictures to use, then wait another 30 minutes for them to print them. We were supposed to get 9 free Christmas cards with our package deal, and I had ordered 15 more. Because of the trouble, the lady said she'd throw in 15 on top of that. That made me very happy. Until I got home and discovered that they had printed the 15 I ordered and 15 extra ones, but failed to give me the 9 free ones! Ha! Oh well, it still ends up being 6 free cards.

Came home and listened to Charlie cry it out for another hour or so (so much for the Kong being the cure-all. Wasted $6 on that thing... Ha!), then sort of crashed the rest of the day. Joe did some school just because he wanted to (whoa!), but mostly we all just vegged. Toy Story 3 is due back tomorrow, so we had another pizza party tonight and watched it again. That means we've had a pizza party every other night (three parties total) since James has been gone. That's crazy! It's about to change though because two days from now it will be Thanksgiving. And as much as I love Totino's, it's just wrong to eat them on Thanksgiving. ;-) Besides, I'm actually getting tired of them. (WHOA!!!) We'd better take a break from them or I'll end up not liking them anymore. That would be truly tragic. ;-)

So that's about it from here. Tomorrow begins the cooking for Thanksgiving. I'm excited about it. :-) I love Thanksgiving. And then I'll LOVE being in Christmas gear--so much more than the people who've been indulging in it ahead of time. ;-)

Home Alone

...But it doesn't really FEEL "alone" when you have three kids and a puppy. Either way, James left at about 8:00 this morning for Alabama. He'll be gone for three weeks and will be able to visit 8 different churches down there. That's the plan anyway. I'm so excited!!!! I've been riddled with guilt over the fact that James is the overseer of Alabama, but we're not there yet. It's been such a difficult situation, the whole way around. Even though this is just a trip to Alabama instead of something more permanent, at least he'll BE THERE for a little while! I know we'll miss him, especially toward the end, but I'm so excited that he's actually going to be where he's supposed to be and he'll be able to do what he's supposed to be doing. It makes me soooooo happy.

So the kids and I need to go do some shopping. Right now we've only got six Totino's in the freezer (enough for two pizza parties) and that will just never do. ;-) I want to go pick up some junk that we don't usually have around (like those fantastical Pillsbury cinnamon rolls with icing--yum!) so we can party for three weeks straight. We'll watch some kid movies (after Thanksgiving we'll dive into the Christmas shows) and play lots and lots of games. We've got plenty of firewood and hot chocolate, so we're well equipped to have a great time. Or we will be once we stock up on pizzas and other junk. ;-)

I'm just realizing I haven't written anything since Sunday. It's been a pretty good week around here, usually directly related on how much sleep I got each night. Ha! Charlie is sleeping better at night (most of the time) and doing really well with the house training thing for such a young little guy. It's easy to see that he is very smart and catches on to things easily... but I'm also seeing that he definitely has a mind of his own! We've all agreed that he has pretty much doubled in size since we first got him, as well as learned to romp and play and bark. He's sooooo much fun! He likes to "stalk" your hand, then hop and bark and pounce on it. He also loves to bite the heads off of dead dandelions, then sneeze out all of the white fluffies. Charlie seems to like all three kids for different reasons. He likes to cuddle with Katie and follows her around frequently. He likes to play with Joe and barks at him lot. And he likes to chase Sam (when Sam's on his hands and knees) and chew on him. :-) Here's a video from a few days ago. It was the first day we started teaching him to sit, the second session. He's doing great for a little guy--and much better now than when we filmed him.



And a clip of him playing with Joe. :-)



In other Charlie news (I feel like such a nerd--all I have to write about anymore is this dog!!!), we took him to town for his 8 week shot on Wednesday. I made James take him into the clinic to do the dirty work. Afterwards we had to go into Hobby Lobby, then a restaurant. I put his box (crate) and bed and a training pad in the back of the van. I was SURE the stow-and-go hole back there was deep enough he couldn't get out. When we came out of Hobby Lobby I fully expected him to be screaming and crying from the back of the van, but as we neared the vehicle we heard nothing. The kids opened the side door and there he was, sitting on the back seat! I was amazed that he made it out of the "hole" in the back, but it totally blew me away that he made it up onto the seat! Then when we came out of the restaurant he was sitting in the middle seat--the one with Sam's booster seat in it! How in the world??? His little legs are only 3" long! I'm thinking we should have named him Houdini. Although he's proving to be an adept escape artist, the good news is that he was a good boy in the van, did nothing bad, tore nothing up, and was HAPPY and not crying when we returned. He wasn't crying when we came home from church last night either. We had left some talk radio on for him so he wouldn't feel so alone and scared. I don't know if that's what helped or not, but I'm sooooo glad he wasn't crying. We NEED for him to learn to be content when left alone!

There. My puppy news of the week. :-) The kids are doing great and still loving having the pup around. Everybody is doing good in school right now. Sam just finished up the second Hooked on Phonics series. That's all we have. We got both sets for $5 at a yard sale a few years ago. The other kids never really used them, but they've been perfect for Sam. He has to work so much harder at reading, but he's doing great. I'm very proud of him. :-) Katie and Joe are both loving their computer school, but they seem to get finished way too quickly! I need to come up with some extra work for them. ;-)

I started his post this morning and have sort of added to it throughout the day. I helped the kids make some turkeys out of paper plates this afternoon. Actually, the paint is still drying so we'll have to actually put them together tomorrow. A great deal of the afternoon was spent in pursuit of Mrs. Cottontail. That's what the kids have named the rabbit that lives under James' office. She is the biggest, fattest rabbit--and Joe is determined to "hunt" her. He comes up with a new weapon just about every day, usually made out of sticks and rubber bands. And he always carries a bag with him in hopes of "bagging a rabbit." Ha! Today they set up Cottontail Headquarters out back, complete with maps of where in the yard they have searched for the poor bunny. I think I heard something about a path of celery leading to the back door, too.

Tonight we had our first pizza party. :-) We just finished watching Meet the Robinsons. It's one we picked up at the library the other day--it's a fun one. Now I'm going to sign off and play games with the kids for a while before devotion time. Day 1 without James: happy and successful. Let's hope the next 20 go as well. :-)

Before I go, however, here are two more pictures of Charlie. Just because I can't help myself. :-) Here he is sleeping with his duck in his box...



And in his favorite place: my lap. Coincidentally, it's my favorite place for him to be, too. ;-)