Catching Up

I seem to have fallen into the ranks of the unfaithful bloggers who abound nowadays. Still not sure how that happened! I'll never remember everything that's gone on, but I'll try. :-)

Wednesday was a big, ugly, messy, smelly, productive day around here. The kind you love and hate all at once. We moved all of James' stuff out of the shed and into his office... FOR THE LAST TIME, I hope! We got the bookshelves and file cabinets and stuff like that moved in, while piling all the boxes of stuff all over the deck James built during the first part of the week.

As always, the kids were a great help. ;-)

Here's James starting the "moving in" process at long last: his beloved White Wing bound editions. :-)

We didn't do any school that day. We did devotions in the morning, then worked solid until about 6:00 that night. While James was unloading boxes and trying to get settled, I spent the day out on the shed, cleaning it out and trying to put things in order out there. Again. Oooooh, I hate that job! It's so nasty and dusty and buggy and just plain gross. But it needed to be done now that James' junk is out of there and, if organized, we can function and be able to FIND what we need. That will be nice. Until the first time James uses a bunch of tools and then throws them in there with no rhyme or reason instead of putting them in their designated places and it turns into chaos again. I've already told him that if it happens he'd better be prepared for marriage counselling because we'll be needing it! Ha! I am sooooo tired of cleaning out the shed and organizing tools and yard stuff and boxes and whatever else belongs in a shed! But for now, it looks great! For a shed. ;-)

I took this picture a few days ago. Joe has been writing books quite a bit lately. He'll write one or two chapters at a time and just keep building. I'm not sure they ever really end. Anyway, I thought at least Grandma Vicki would enjoy this. :-)

He also had a red letter day on Thursday. He caught his very first lizard and was sooooooo excited!!! He just giggled and pranced around and giggled and then giggled some more. Ha! I was pretty proud of him. Katie caught a lizard with one unusable leg (I had to wash the sap out of it's toes, remember?!) and Joe caught one a while back, but it was obviously sick. So this is his first healthy lizard catch and he was ecstatic. He was a crazy looking little thing. He was normal from the top, but had these metalic blue markings on his underside. Weird!

Thursday was the big prep day before leaving for Youth Convention. It was just a little itty-bitty trip for us (only about 3 hours to Hatch), but I always take the opportunity to accomplish a lot as if it was a big trip. Lots of house cleaning and laundry. I stayed up late and got all the ironing done as well. Friday morning we got up and packed and headed out at about noon.

I'm sorry to say I didn't get take very many pictures at Youth Convention. The building didn't have the greatest lighting and we were sitting near the back of the very full building (a great problem to have!) and it just wasn't a very good set up for taking pictures. In fact, here's my one and only! These are some of the Colorado folk... doing something! Leading songs, perhaps???

We did have a really great Youth Convention and were so very blessed. We had an attendance of over 140, which is our best ever. Praise the Lord! There were lots of visitors there, 3 saved, and 8 baptized--some who had been wanting to for nearly 2 years! How exciting!!! I did get pictures from the baptismal service, so here we go!

The Banuelos boys used their guitars as much for sun screens as they did for instruments. ;-) That Hatch sun was really beating down on us and it didn't take long to make you start looking for shade! There was a wonderful spirit there, though, and those being baptized were so blessed. That, of course, was a blessing to the rest of us!

Daniel Doerfler

I never did learn this guy's name!
This is one of the Olivarez boys... Moises? Is that right??? He's so shy, but God is really doing a work in his life.

Belen had to be triple dunked (didn't get her all the way under the first two tries!), but I think that just means she was triple blessed. :-)

Sophia has been needing to be baptized for ages now. She had some physical issues that could have hindered her this time, but she wanted to be obedient to the Lord and she was soooooo blessed. And, of course, she didn't have any negative side effects--God touched her physically as well. :-)

About half way through the service I felt somebody tapping me and turned around to find Joe behind be with tears just streaming down his face. He said he felt like maybe God was wanting him to be baptized. Joe has a hard time saying conclusively that he's saved most of the time. "But Mom, how do I know that I'm saved?" "But I'm still bad sometimes--I can't be saved." Stuff like that. Only God knows when the "age of accountability" comes for each person and when true salvation occurs, so I just encourage Joe to keep seeking God and that at some point God will help him know that he is saved. Anyway, with the baptismal thing, I just felt like he should follow through and DO it since he felt like God was prompting him to do so. So I encouraged him to go ahead. I want him to learn to be sensitive to the Lord and quick to obey. I know what it's like to go through those "What if it's not really God telling me to do this?" feelings. Anyway, Joe was near backing out (was scared to death to be baptized--even asked James and Brother Tanny, "Do you have to put me all the way under???" And then, "Don't hold me down too long, Dad!" Ha!) and wasn't at all thrilled about getting into that ole' muddy Rio Grande! But he felt like that's what God wanted him to do, so in he went. We didn't have any extra clothes for him, but that's a silly reason to not be baptized if you feel like God is telling you to!



As always, we had some late nights and good fellowship at Convention. Though I shocked most of the crowd by actually missing out on some of the craziness this time. It was weird from my end, too, I assure you! Ha! I feel confident it was a one-time thing and I'll be back in full party mode by next time. Which is... oh, about a week from now! :-)

We couldn't talk the Fiend into stopping by our house on his way back to Colorado, even though his wife was all for it and it would have added only 20 miles to his trip... Jerk. We ate at Panda Express after church tonight and this is what my fortune cookie said:

I was sure to call the Fiend and tell him that he BLEW it. It was written in the stars that they were supposed to stop by and he has now thrown everything out of whack. He wasn't impressed. The welcome visitor, of course, would have been his wife. Oh well, maybe next time. :-)

We made it home at about 2:00 today, I think. Unloaded the van, then crashed for a while. I slept so hard and had a terrible time waking up for church! But I felt great by the time we got there and Sister Galaviz had a really terrific ABM service, as always. Sooooo many good thoughts--and I even felt some inspiration here and there concerning our Camp theme, although her service was on a different theme. How does that work?! Anyway, it was very, very good.

The kids are in bed now, the laundry is started, and I go a-blogging. Not sure what to do with the rest of the night now though. I'm sure I'll think of something! Hope everybody had a GREAT weekend. :-)