It hasn't been all that long since I last posted, but WOW, a lot has happened! Before I get into all of the little stuff our family has been up to, let me throw out a couple of urgent prayer requests.

Ellis Poole (our 95 year old church member) was taken to the nursing home two days ago, kind of against his will. It's a loooooooong story and pretty complicated, but tomorrow it all goes to "court" of some kind to determine whether he'll stay in the nursing home or be able to go back home. Please for him and his wife, Elizabeth, that God would work all of these things out according to His will. And pray for Sam & Tammy, too. They have been pouring everything into the care, shall we say, of these people and they are bearing an extremely heavy load right now, emotionally along with everything else.

The second request is for a distant cousin of mine, Renee. She was in an automobile accident yesterday and is in pretty bad shape. If I understand correctly, her neck is broken but her spinal cord is still intact. They are planning on doing a pretty dangerous surgury on her tomorrow, so please pray.

With all of the "heavy" things going on around us, God has been good to provide our family with some relief from the burdens and a couple of really nice days. Yesterday was terrific!!! We woke up to great big thunderstoms and dark gray skies. It was hard to believe it was even morning, as dark as it was! James worked at Mardel, so he was gone from about 8:00am until about 6:00pm. The kids and I had breakfast and devotions, then did some light housework and then school. By noon it was time to start the rainy day fun. So we grabbed the Totinoes and spread a tablecloth on the floor of the den for our pizza party!

I had decided that I was going to have the kids watch Night at the Musuem. James had bought a DVD player with TV Guardian in it for $27 a few weeks ago, so that's the one we used to watch this movie on, just in case. It "bleeped" (went silent, actually) in two or three different places in the movie and we don't know what was said there (sometimes the Guardian is way too sensitive and cuts out stuff that is perfectly clean and innocent), so I would be scared to recommend this movie to anybody not using the Guardian simply because it might have one or two bad words -- I don't know. I can say that with the Guardian it is perfectly clean and a whole lot of fun!

Anyway, James and I have been discussing what sissies oure kids are and how every tiny little thing freaks them out--they are soooooooo over-sensitive to lots of things. Anything remotely scary or even mildly suspenseful ("Why did they put Dumbo's Mom in jail?!?!?!? What's going to happen to her???? Mom!!!!!"), along with other things. I am all for "sheltering" my kids from everything evil and questionable, but sometimes I wonder if maybe we've gone too far--they're such wimps! Ha! So we decided it was time for them to learn to "get over" their wimpiness and realize that sometimes suspense can be fun--it's not always bad and something to freak out over. Night at the Museum was the answer. It's just a fun little show about a guy who gets a job as the night watchman at the Museum of Natural History, not knowing that everything in the museum comes to life at night. Without giving too much away, I thought my kids were going to die when he walked past where the t-rex skeleton had been and it was gone, and the guy went looking for him. That whole scene was more than they've ever been exposed to their whole lives put together! Ha! I was sure to sit with them and keep them close, and speak some reassurances to them every now and then. It would've been great to have a picture of it. A Mom, three kids and a poodle all cuddled up tightly under a blanket together on the couch, the children's little bodies getting stiffer by the moment as they're watching the dinosaur... Like I said, I wouldn't want to ruin anything for anybody who hasn't seen the movie and might be interested, but I will say that it's a "happy" movie and nothing truly bad happens. The kids toughed out the few suspenseful parts and at the end of the movie they were begging to watch it again! They loved it and I was soooooooo happy! I even lete the watch the second half of it again. They talk about "Rexy" (the t-rex) and wish they had their very own... It was so fun to watch it with them--and hopefully they can start to enjoy life a little more and not be such weenies about everything!

ANYWAY... (I spent way too long on that!) I intended to make corn chowder for dinner. Then backed off to potato soup because it's much faster and easier. By the time James got home I had decided on a can of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches! That didn't sound too good to James, so he loaded us up and took us out to dinner. Then we went by the nursing home to visit with Brother Ellis for a few minutes and have a prayer with him. We came home, put the kids to bed, and James and I had a nice relaxing evening, just loafing.

Oh, I forgot! The flowers! I've been meaning to give an update. Here's a purty little pink one that bloomed a few days ago.

After buttering the dough, spread a generous amount of brown sugar evenly over the top, all the way to the edges...

Sprinkle on one box of butterscotch pudding mix, then cinnamon, but not too much...

Add as many raisins as your family would prefer...

Then roll the dough from the long edge...

Slice evenly (Emilee and Haley actually used a ruler! Ha! What a couple of nerds!!! Ha! Ha! Ha!), not to thick, but definitely not too thin...

Place them in the prepared pans, let rise for about 20 minues, pour whipping cream over the top, let rise another 20 minutes or so, and bake. Viola! When they're done, they look like this...

Until you flip them over, that is. You have to flip them upside down onto foil so all the great gooey stuff with be on "top." Then you sit your family down and tell them go at it...