No Looking

...at the plethora of pictures at the bottom of this post unless you actually take the time to read through my mindless ramblings. That's the rule of my blog. HA! Yeah, right! ;-)

My memory is all used up. I filled it up years ago with mostly useless information (I still remember movie lines and birthdays from shows I haven’t watched and people I haven’t seen in YEARS) and it appears I hit full capacity some time ago. At this point in time I remember practically nothing. If I intend to vacuum the floor tomorrow, I’d better write it down somewhere because if I don’t I’ll wake up in the morning and wonder what to do with myself. Of course, I’ll never remember where I wrote it down, so it doesn’t much matter.

My terrible memory poses a real problem when I go several days without blogging. I’m lucky if I can recall what I did TODAY, much less the past two or three days. Nonetheless, I’ll try…

Thursday… Hhmmm. I think I spent most of the day cleaning house in anticipation of company that didn’t end up coming after all. That’s okay though—it always feels so good to have the house nice and clean. It sometimes just takes company (or even just the fear of company) to give you that good motivational shove to get it done. :-)

We had BTI service that night. It was a very good lesson on divine healing and tithing. There has been so much craziness said lately about what some people “teach and preach” about divine healing I hesitate to mention that we studied the subject in our local church! Ha! It just happened to be the next lesson in the book. ;-) I was blessed by the lesson, as well as by what I’ve been reading in A.J. Tomlinson. (Proud of me, Sister Galaviz??? I think I’m on chapter 5 now! Ha!) I love what Brother Tomlinson said about the verses in Psalm 102 (I think that’s where it is). I can’t quote it exactly, but says to bless the Lord and to forget not all His benefits; who forgives our iniquities and who heals our deseases. He took that to mean that while we might forget some of God’s benefits, we’d better always remember those two—He saves us from our sins and he heals our bodies. How blessed we are to serve such a God!

Friday. I’m thinkin’… I know that Katie finally finished up her Maps & Geography book and was able to start into her Switched on Schoolhouse. She LOVES it. And she’s driving me NUTS!!! Ha! It’s just sooooo exciting to be on the computer and she feels all grown up. She’s really more interested in playing games, changing her background, and writing in her journal than she is in actually doing school. And she wants to be on the computer—my new laptop, of all things—all the time. I’m not sure this was a good idea after all! Ha! No, it’s fun for her and I think she’s going to do really well with this.

I’ve been meaning to clean out the boys’ closet for a while now and get rid of all the stuff they don’t use, wear, or play with anymore. It’s amazing how quickly things accumulate in there. Well, James brought home a wooden box/bench from the flea market, so I decided that now is the time! I discovered, however, that it couldn’t be done with the boys present. I started sorting into the “donate” and “throw away” piles and Joe was about to die. I found a cardboard tube (from a roll of paper towels, I assume) and tossed it into the “throw away” pile. “Mom!!!! You can’t throw that away—I need it! I’m going to invent something!” Then a crumpled up post-it note. It was a coupon for a soda from his Dad’s soda fountain that he had found in a plastic Easter egg during the hunt this spring. “Mom!!!! You can’t throw that away! I want to keep it to remember the best Easter ever!!!” Ha! I finally told James to TAKE THE CHILDREN somewhere so I could get something done. He loaded them up and took them out for Chinese, which bought me about an hour and half. It was just enough time and when they walked through the door I had one big black trash bag of stuff to donate, another of stuff to throw away, and a nice, clean, well organized closet. It feels soooooo good!

I stayed up last night working on my VLB service for tomorrow night. Felt like I got a pretty good start on it, but still lots to do tonight to finish up on it.

The big news of the day is that the Clarksons are moving into a house!!! Wa-Hoo!!! So Katie did her school this morning (yes, on Saturday!) and the boys kept busy doing boy things while I rearranged three of the cabinets in the kitchen. The Tupperware cabinet has been a disaster for months now and I finally had all I could take. Seems I’m in an organizing mood here lately! So I rearranged where the cups, glasses, Tupperware, baking dishes and kid dishes go. It’ll be a few days before we catch on to the new system, but maybe THIS will work out. For a little while!

James was in town to help the Clarksons with their move, but it seemed the best help was going to be to remove the kids from the scene. ;-) So he loaded ‘em up and brought them here to the house to play with our kids. Not sure how it happened, but right now they’re all outside playing “the first Thanksgiving” and hunting every imaginable animal for dinner. James is on his way back into town to help the Clarksons move everything out of the storage units they just moved into (gotta love that!) and into the house they’ve found. I hope they can get it all done pretty quickly and painlessly. HA. I have never known of moving to be quick or painless. Oh well. At least they don’t have to worry about the kids getting lost, tired, crabby, or trampled on!

Okay, here are some pictures from a few days ago when we had all the kids. This first one was taken at the Tinkertown Museum.

Everybody loved this little guy! All of the horses were sooooo sociable. :-)
These were taken while we were roaming around the National Forest. James took all the kids for a spin...


I'm not sure what they thought they were going to do with this. And yes, I think it was eventually dropped on somebody's foot. Nobody ever listens to the Mom. ;-)
I had to post this picture just for my own memory's sake. You can barely see it because it had happened several days before, but there is a line going across Sam's forehead. See it??? I had noticed it and thought maybe he'd just been wearing a hat that was too tight, but several hours later the mark was still there. The following day when it was still there I finally asked him what he'd done to his head. "Oh. Joe tried to scalp me," he said, nonchalantly. HA! With a rubber knife. It's been nearly a week now and Sam STILL has a line! It's almost gone, but not completely. Who knew we had to put "no scalping each other" on the list of family rules?! Crazy kids!!!
The kids love it when James goes out to play. :-) The girls were supposed to remain attached to each other in order to win this game. Didn't seem very smart to me--I was just waiting for their heads to crack into each other real good and the tears to start flowing! They did fine though and were able to "win" every time. Cainan and Joe lost every time. :-)
James loves bouncing Cainan because he's so compact--just stays in tight, perfect form and flies!
And here are all of the kids around the fire...




Katie looks quite concerned about her marshmallow! Ha!
And the girls with their cookies...
Great lips, Sadie! :-)
HA! Ah, yes. Sister Galaviz cracks me up!!! She has a terrific stuffed animal collection and she had to bring her newest additions, Wall-E and Eve, to church the other night to show the kids. :-)
This is a lizard Sam caught earlier today. Or is it a salamander? It's rather slick instead of scaly (is that spelled right???)... Joe thought maybe it was a newt. Most probably because he thinks it would be cool to have caught something with the name of "newt."
And here are all of our Pilgrims, about to enjoy their Thanksgiving feast. Of course, since this picture was taken the boys have gone through several other costumes and the last time I saw the girls they were all wearing pj's and having a "slumber party." Oh, to be a kid again. I hope they're still enjoying it when they are doing laundry and folding all of the clothes they're burning through today! HA!