At Last!

Sorry about the failure to blog. It's been a long week!

Our impromptu trip to Texas was great. We got to Aunt Sue & Uncle Jerry's house in time for Aunt Sue's homemade chicken and dumplins Tuesday night. It's one of the few truly homemade things Aunt Sue makes and they are the best ever. :-) Sam, Tammy, and Frank came over after a while to help assemble the Regional Paper (which reminds me--gotta send that off for translation tonight!!!) while I whipped up on Uncle Jerry at pool. Really! It was an incredibly good night for me, which makes it so much more fun. Too bad those nights are so rare. Ha!

After that we enjoyed a nice, rousing game of Balderdash. We had several good laughs (which is, of course, the purpose of such a game) and I was amazed at how well Aunt Sue did. Came in second over all, I think. (Just behind me, of course. ;-) Ha!) And it also meant that Frank lost. :-)

Wednesday was nice and relaxing. We just hung around the house and visited with Aunt Sue and let the kids watch Gunsmoke and things like that. We loaded up in the afternoon and headed to Odessa for James to get a haircut, then to go visit with Stacey at her store. That was nice, too, especially since she wasn't able to join the rest of us for dinner at...

Carino's, of course! I can't recall ever going there on a weeknight before and now I know why. They were soooooo busy and our waiter was swamped. We were there for, oh, quite some time! But the food was great and, most importantly, my four Italian sodas were fantastical. :-) That's right, I cut back this time. I usually have four while we're there and one to go, but I cut back to 3/1 this time. Aren't you proud?! The best part is when the waiter brought the bill... on which he had charged us for all 4 Italian sodas! I had taken Katie to the restroom and was gone at the moment, but I heard from all around about the expression on James' face when he saw the $10 worth of Italian sodas on his ticket! HA! Our waiter used to work at Olive Garden and just switched over to Carino's, so he wasn't aware that you get unlimited refills here. (You don't at O.G., so we never order them there.) James got it fixed, however. ;-)

After dinner we headed over to Sam & Tammy's house to play a game before calling it a night. Actually, we read a very timely message by Brother Tomlinson in the White Wing from 1988 first. It was really good! Then we played a game Frank had brought called... Mental Floss, maybe? I'm not sure, but it was GREAT! A trivia game in which, even if you're not a brainiac, you still have the possibility of bumbling your way into a win. It was great! And I don't remember who won that one... Me or Frank or Sam, but I don't remember who got there first. Oh well. It was FUN.

We got up really early on Thursday, threw the kids into the van and drove the 3 hours over to Abilene. We were planning on visiting the Lunas in Merkel, but when we finally got ahold of them we learned that Sister Luna was in the hospital in Abilene, so that's where we went. She was in ICU, so the kids and I couldn't go see her but James was able to go in and have a good visit and prayer with her. Please say a prayer for her, even though most of you don't know her. She's a good (The) Church of God lady and really needs a touch from the Lord. I'm still not sure what all is wrong with her, but she's still listed in serious condition.

After leaving the hospital we drove to Sweetwater for our traditional stop at K-Mart and Schlotzky's. For the first time ever perhaps we left K-Mart with nothing! (This particular store is always bursting at the seams with unbelievable deals, but not this time.) Schlotzky's was a winner though. Yum!

We got back to Aunt Sue's house and had some time to relax before service in Andrews that night. We had a good service and I think there were 20 people present. Praise the Lord! Worship was good and James preached a really good message. He seemed genuinely shocked when I told him so later. He seems to think it's the first time I've ever told him that! Ha! We went back to Aunt Sue's house and played some pool with them, then just sat and visited until about midnight.

We got up on Friday and headed over to Tammy's house at 9:00 to play one last game with her and Frank (sadly, Sam had to be at work) before leaving town! I thought about Rachel's statement on one of my posts recently about how people out West have more fun. It surely must be true! I can't imagine most people rushing over to squeeze in one last game before heading home! Ha! We did though and it was great. I Buy this time. I think Tammy won. It was so great to be able to spend a few days in Texas and spend some time with everybody--and even get to play games with Frank again after way too many years. ~sigh~ What a great week!

After we left Tammy's house we went to Aunt Sue's store to pick up a lamp shade and a few other things for the house, then we hit the road. We made it home that evening and I had plenty of time to get the van unloaded before I got sick. Really and truly sick! It was so weird! As I was unloading the last of the stuff I knew I was going to bed pronto. I think I hit the hay at about 9:00. I was up a couple of times during the night and finally lost my lunch (gross, I know--sorry) at about 6:00 the next morning. James went into town to help Sister Galaviz get moved, so I got up at about 9:00, put on a sweatshirt, pulled a skirt over my pj bottoms and loaded the kids up. We headed down to Charlie's grocery store and I sent Katie and Joe in to buy a gallon of milk--and a bottle of Sprite for their sickly mother! Made 'em feel all grown up. They loved it. We came home and I spent the rest of the day in bed. I had a severe case of the sweaty chills (you know, where you feel sooooo hot and you're sweaty and gross... but you also feel soooo cold and you just keep piling on the blankets to get rid of the chills) and an ugly headache. I can't remember the last time I was IN BED sick. In fact, in the 36 hours between getting home from Texas and waking up this morning I think I was out of bed for a total of about 2 hours! CRAZY. But PRAISE THE LORD I woke up perfectly well this morning!!! I still had a headache last night, but fully expected God to touch and heal me (I HATE missing church for sickness!) and He did! Aside from being a little weak from not eating, I felt terrific. God is so good!!! He held the sickness off long enough for us to have a great trip to Texas, then squeezed it into a 36 hour period, and healed me in time be up and about in time for church today! Wa-Hoo! :-)

We had a good service this morning, then had lunch at Panda Express (that's how healed I am! Ha!) before James headed to Hatch. He's going to take Brother Hugo with him (a WONDERFUL man who is SUCH a blessing to our church... and who we're praying will soon be a member of The Church of God) and they'll be in church there tonight, along with several Church folks from El Paso that James hasn't had a chance to meet yet. Exciting! I'll be in charge of James' CPMA service here in town tonight, but it won't be difficult since he left me a complete service outline. I'm going to take the projector and show Brother Byers' CPMA message from the Assembly, since none of our folks were able to attend.

And that's all of our news! Great Texas trip, knock-you-out sickness, perfect healing, and church and then more church. ~sigh~ God's good. :-)