...that jingle-jangle-jingle, as they go riding merrily along; And they say, "Oh, ain't you glad you're single," and that song ain't so very far from wrong!
Yes siree, my boys are now the proud new owners of spurs. Real spurs. That loony Sister Clarkson is to blame and I think she's moved to a whole new level popularity with my kids. (As if they weren't crazy enough about her already!) She also made chaps for the boys (they are soooooo cute) and a dress for Katie! WOW! What a woman!!! Katie has already worn her dress and you can't strip the chaps off the boys for anything. The spurs have an "outside only" rule attached to them (compliments of Dad), so Joe has spent most of the morning in the back yard, jingle-jangling all over the place. ~Ah, yes~ This is how it should be. Now if they only had a horse... (Don't get any funny ideas, Sister Clarkson!!!)
The trip to Colorado was sooooooo great! We had to cancel District Convention because we couldn't fight our way into Little Siberia (aka Craig, Colorado) through all the snow they were getting up there. We were bummed about that, but as Emilee said--God knows. We don't have to know His reasons, we just trust that He knows best. :-) The Convention is rescheduled for May.
We spent most of the drive on Thursday reading (proof reading, that is) stuff for the Literature Review Committee. James has been on that committee for 7 years now and this is only the 3rd time he's received anything to review (!), so we figured we'd better get it done. Made the trip go a little faster, I think, so it was nice.
We got to Colorado Springs just after 6:00 that night, got our motel room ('cuz Brother Dustin was too rude to invite us to stay with him... Well, something like that! HA!), unloaded our stuff, combed our hair and washed our faces, and made it to Church just in time for service. Perfect! It was Sister Dodie's WMB service and it was very good. We really enjoyed it. Afterward we went out to Denny's with the Hays family and Sister Karen. It was so nice. I really wish we had more time to fellowship like that. I would love to have a chance to get to know Jamey better, even if it means having to put up with Dustin for a little while. ;-) And I always love being with Sister Karen--she's been a favorite of mine for a whole lot of years now.
Friday morning we woke up to snowy weather reports for the northern part of Colorado, thus the cancellation of Convention. (And believe me, it's got to be pretty bad for us to cancel anything out here--our westerners aren't wimpy when it comes to snow!) We loaded up and headed to Denver and took the kids to the Children's Museum. A bit of a let-down, really. There must've been 4,000 kids there and you just can't have fun when it's like that. I hate crowds like that. The kids did enjoy the building section. The is the robot James helped Katie make.
The fireman outfits were great! They had a full-size fire truck for the kids to crawl all over and through, so that was pretty cool... If only there hadn't been 40 kids all over it!
Next we met Jon & Emilee and Company at Casa Bonita. Now, that was fun! There were people there, but not hordes of them. :-) For those who don't know, Casa Bonita is a restaurant in Denver that is... well, it's hard to explain! It's like a giant cave with lots of differnt rooms and passageways and a big waterfall with a lagoon down at the bottom. They put on shows (the bad guy always gets shot and falls from the cliffs down into the lagoon at the end) and all kinds of great stuff. The food is mediocre at best, but the atmosphere makes it worth it--especially when you have kids with you! They all had sooooo much fun! Although Joe (you all remember Gunshy Joe, I'm sure) pert near took his Dad out when we first walked into the restaurant because the western show was going on and somebody shot a cap gun... But even he was able to enjoy the show after a while. It was just so great! It's probably the most fun I've ever had there. Here's a picture of all the kids, minus Zeke.
After that we headed over to Mardel to check things out. James likes to compare his store to the others out there. The one in Littleton (where we went) isn't as nice as James', but it's still terrific. I think Jon and Em were pretty impressed.
We went back to the Smith house and spent the rest of the night just hanging out. It was so nice to have some "vacation time" with them! We hadn't been counting on that, so it was a nice turn of events. James, not being much of a partier, hit the sack. Jon and Em and I stayed up until 1:00 playing games. Jon won I Buy (the jerk), I won Scrabble (wonder of wonders--I'm so proud I beat Jon AND Em!), and nobody really won Scattergories... We all stunk at that one.
The next day we went down to Focus on the Family in 'Springs for the big Veggie Tales party. Well, kind of. If there were 4,000 kids at the Children's Museum then there were at least 8,000 at Focus. (It seemed that way, anyhow!) Keven & Michele and Dustin & Jamey and all their kids were there, but they had just finished watching Moe & the Big Exit. We didn't feel like fighting the crowds to see a show we'd already seen a week before the rest of them (Ha! Losers! ~big so-take-that smile~), so we just left. Went to the mall. Bad decision. It was Saturday and it's the worst I've ever seen Chapel Hills before. Ugh. That used to be the nice mall, the one you could go to and not have to worry about mobs of people. It was mostly just where all of the old people went to get their exercise in the mornings. Well, no more. It was like the Macy's parade in there, throngs of people pushing and shoving and yelling and just overall mass chaos. If I'm exaggerating, it's only slightly. The only reason we went there is because James had a hankerin' for Chinese food. And an Orange Julius. There's no such thing as an Orange Julius in these parts, so he wasn't going to miss his chance. Lunch was good (Kate & Joe and I had chili dogs from the Julius to spare us from having to eat Chinese--Sam actually eats the stuff), but that was the only enjoyable thing about the mall. That and leaving.
The traffic in 'Springs was about as crazy as the mobs in the mall. I can't figure out if it's really that much worse than when I lived there, or if I've just been so de-city-ized (can't figure a good way to spell that) that it seems so much worse. In any case, it's not nearly as enjoyable to just dink around town there as it used to be.
We drove over to have a look at Mardel over on the east side. (I told James that if he just calls up good old Mr. Green he could probably get a job as a district manager, what, with the way he keeps an eye on all those stores for him!) It's a brand new one and very nearly identical to the one James works at in Midland. The book section is actually a little larger in 'Springs, which was surprising. Fantastic store.
After that we went to Family Christian Stores. ~gasp!~ Can you imagine?! After being at Mardel??? We had to because James is a dope. He works at Mardel five days a week, but he never did pre-buy the new Veggie Tales, so he missed his chance to get it for the cheaper price. With his 20% pastor's discount at Family it made it cheaper to buy there than at Mardel. Dumb. Anyway, the kids sat and watched most of the show there at the store while James and I looked around. It was nice.
Let's see... Ah yes, then we went to Fargo's for dinner. It's a really great pizza place (although most people seem to think that the pizza is lousy) that is decorated like a really fancy... something (!) from the late 1800's. All of the waitresses wear burgundy and white lace dresses and stuff like that. It's neat. James's fascination with it is the old nickelodeon piano there. It's got tons of instruments in it--an accordion, a xylophone, a drum, a tamborine and a whole lot of others I can't remember. James had a pocket full of quarters on hand and made use of every one of them! If it was an option, I think he'd probably trade me in for that piano.
We then drove to Pueblo (are you tired yet? We were!) and did a little shopping (I picked up some terrific cherry socks and some knee-high pastel argyle ones at Target! Wa-Hoo!) and then went to spend the night with Keven & Michele. We had a really good time with them. Except every time we go there they ask James some question about taxes or some such money related thing and off we go--an hour or two of conversation that sounds like "blah, blah, blah-blah-blah, blah, blah, blah" to me. I told them that we are not discussing money next time we come--we're going to ban the word entirely and sit down and play a game or something. I tell ya'. ;-)
Keven & Michele made us a really great breakfast the next day--I was wowed. Who knew Keven could cook?! Crazy!!! It was great. Then we just kind of hung around until Church time at 2:00.
Since the Convention had to be cancelled, Jon (District Overseer) invited everybody who could to come together for the service in Pueblo that day. It was so good! Brother Keven taught Sunday School and such a good job. I was wowed. Who knew Keven could teach Sunday School?! (Kidding--I'm just kidding!) Sister Karen led song service and that was a blessing, as always. Then we had a really good time of prayer for backsliders and others who need to be saved. Afterward James preached a really good message. This is sounding eerily similar to what Em wrote on her blog, isn't it?! Ha! Guess we all had the same feeling about the service. :-)
Everybody stayed and visited for quite a while, which was nice. After a while I looked over to see Katie sitting on Brother Clarkson's lap, reading him a book. Pretty soon there was a crowd of kids sitting and standing around listening as well. It's probably a bad thing. She's going to want to have "Story Time with Katie" as a regular part of our get-togethers, I'm sure.
We finally loaded up and the whole crowd went to Country Buffet for dinner. God blessed us with a whole corner of the restaurant to ourselves. Actually, there were a few people seated nearby, but they cleared out pretty quick when they saw us coming. Who could blame them?! I think there were 12 kids under the age of 6 and several more in the next bracket up. Initially 11 of the little ones were crammed in the same corner booth. (I knew better than to put Sam over there with them--he sat with his Dad and was great all night long!) If that's not a recipe for disaster, I don't know what is. They were actually doing pretty well, but we're not naive enough to believe it would actually last. So Emilee and I went and moved the 5 little boys over to their own table. Girls are so much better than boys. The boys had 3 or 4 spilled drinks (some before they left the girls' table, some after), a food fight, one broken plate, probably very nearly a broken arm (Haley's Sam took a dive from his booster seat, taking his plate with him) and who knows what all else. I must say that my children were great. I only think they're bad until we get with other kids. Ha! No really, it wasn't quite as bad as it all sounds. It was still a lot of fun! We had a men's table and a women's table, which was a nice switch. I think the Amish have a good thing going... ;-)
I heard the party lasted until the restaurant closed at 8:30 (the employees were surly in tears by then), but our family had pulled out at 7:00 so we could make some tracks. We only made it to Raton, New Mexico, but that's better than nothing! We had a nice room and slept great...
Until we got a phone call at 3:30 in the morning asking for prayer for a friend who was having very strong chest pains and all kinds of crazy symptoms--those of a heart attack, we think. We had a good prayer for her, then I spent the next hour or two laying in bed praying for her before I finally fell asleep again. (The Lord touched her and she's doing great! PRAISE GOD!!!)
We drove home yesterday and I was able to read Book 7 of the Love Comes Softly series--only one more to go! We got home at about 7:00, which was enough time for me to unload the van and bathe three kids and a dog before putting them to bed. I spent the rest of the evening doing nothing, just talking on the phone with Mom and sitting around, mostly.
That brings us to today. I sorted through the mountain in the living room (the contents of the van that had been piled in the floor last night) and got most everything put away and the laundry started. Played ball outside with the kids for a few minutes, had a pizza party for lunch (we watched Moe, of course), and now here I am, blogging like the wind.
I've already had to ban Joe from his cowboy stuff for the rest of the day--new spurs and chaps included. I don't know what it is with that kid. Every time he gets something new like that, he gets an attitude to go along with it and has to have the new whatever confiscated for a time. This always creates a messy house because when he's been banned from something he goes around the house with an evil sideways grin, "setting traps" (two long Lincoln Logs, cross-crossed) all over the place while laughing, "Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" This, I suppose, is kind of like when he tried drawing a picture of me in jail a while back because I'd gotten on to him for something. Haven't quite figured out how to respond to the traps yet... Any ideas???
Okay, the laundry awaits. This is quite long enough anyway. Hope everybody had a great weekend!!! I'll write more soon... (That's the sure way to fail, isn't it? Commit yourself to it. It never works out like you say it will when you do that!)
~Rebekah~
P.S. -- Can't leave without posting this to-die-for picture of Abigail. I think it's my most favoritest one of the whole trip!!!
(You're welcome, Mom!)
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