Yes, indeed. Actually, yesterday was a pretty good one, too. The kids and I spent the morning doing the same ole, same ole, but then Tammy came over in the afternoon. James works just one day a week at Mardel now, so that's always our Girl Day. Tammy comes over and brings me a Frito Wrap for lunch, or we'll have Totino's pizzas, or tuna fish sandwiches. Yesterday was tuna day. Yum. The only time I ever eat it is when Tammy's around, so it makes it extra good! I let the kids watch a movie and eat popcorn in the den and Tammy and I played games for a while.

James called and asked if the kids and I wanted to meet him for dinner in Odessa when he got off work. That cut Girl Day a little short, but it was still fun. I love having Tammy around to hang out with. I don't know how I made it here for 3 years without her! Anyway, she helped me get the kids looking good (what a pal!), then she went her way and the kids and I headed down to The Barn Door to meet James. It's a really great restaurant that looks like--you guessed it--a barn. They cook all of the steaks in the middle of the restaurant and it's decorated real nice. They bring you fresh baked loaves of bread and a huge block of cheese to start with. Of course, the kids and I end up ordering the same thing we would at a fast food joint (burger for Katie and me and chicken strips for the boys), but it feels like we're doing something different in the great atmosphere. And I don't know about the chicken, but the burger is soooooooooo much better than fast food. ;-)

Sam finally filled up his chart, so we went to Big Lots and let him pick out his "special thing" for being a good boy. He found a Thomas the Train book for his Leap Pad for $4, so it worked out well. We went to Target and bought 3 cases (yes, you read that right: three) of Vanilla Coke and one case of regular. It was only $2.75 per case--what were we to do?! :-) We also bought Pride and Prejudice. I had read the book a couple of years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it, so I thought we'd give the movie a try. We watched it last night and, although it was too girly for James, I thought it was very good. All except for the scene with all of the naked sculptures. Eew!!! It could have been worse, but it was still too much for me! (I'll be skipping that scene next time!)

Today was Sno-Cone day again, so I took Katie down to Thriftway with me to meet Tammy. After an hour or two James came down with the boys and picked up Katie and left Joe. Another hour or two later we switched out and I had Sam. It worked soooooooo good! The kids all had fun and got to enjoy the sale (and several sno-cones, of course), but weren't there long enough to get too worn out or bored. Tammy and I, on the other hand, were there long enough to get some pretty impressive sunburns. I don't burn very easily, but the west Texas sun was beating down hard through most of the day today and I could almost hear my skin sizzling. Actually, I don't feel burnt, but I think I look it. In fact, James said about an hour ago, "You are really red." The he paused and said, "You look like your Dad," followed promptly with, "Don't expect me to kiss you!" Ha! Anyway, the sale went okay, but it's always really hard on the first day because you're trying to recupe the money you spent to rent the machine. In fact, when it was all said and done I think we'd profitted all of $10 or $15 today!!! Add that to what we had from the last sales and we have enough money to pay Camp tuition for 2 and 1/2 kids. It will be interesting to decide which half a kid can't go. I'm guessing it will be Sam's top half--we'll need the bottom half since I'm sure it will be needing spanked periodically. ;-) Seriously, it will all turn out okay. We'll set up again tomorrow and everything we make will be complete profit, so that helps. Then we'll have another two-day sale in a couple of weeks, so we should be able to pay for two or three adult tuitions along with 3 kid ones. That will help sooooooooo much.

Then there was the rest of the evening. There's good news and bad news. The good news is: we have a swimming pool. The bad knews is: it has a hernia. James has been looking at pools for the kids and pricing them for a few weeks now. We finally decided on a 10' round pool (only about 2 and 1/2' deep) with an inflatable ring around the top--it was a great price and the sale ended today. So we came home and the whole family went to work in the back yard clearing an area to set it up. There is this one section of the yard that had tons of white rocks in it--right where we thought we wanted the pool. So we spent quite some time filling the wagon and wheelbarrow with rocks to clear the area. We did a good job and got most of the rocks out of the way. We noticed that the ground sloped slightly downward in that area (where the rocks USED to be), but thought, "Ah, no big deal." Okay, so it was me. I thought, "Ah, no big deal." We spread the pool out on the tarp we'd bought and started to fill 'er up. The fuller it got, the more deformed it got! Now, I'm well aware of the fact that water, as any other liquid, takes on the shape of it's container, but somehow it didn't occur to me as a problem when considering the "dip" where those white rocks used to be. Until the pool was about half full, that is. Suddenly we began detecting a problem. Our round pool is really more egg-shaped and--get this--we have a deep end! HA! And, of course, due to the slope, the "shallow end" of the pool can't be filled all the way up, so it kid of sags over there and bulges out below the inflatable ring like a giant pot-bellied stove. I actually got in the pool tonight and I almost slipped and fell when I got over to the "deep end" because the slope was so steep! I told James that we're going to have to get one of those dividers with the little floaty devices on it to rope off the deep end of the pool so the kids don't get hurt! HA! We've got a 10' pool and I can just see us out there screaming, "Joe!!! Get away from the deep end!!!" Ha! It's going to be so great!!! I'll try to take some pictures tomorrow afternoon. And I will do my wifely duty here. James wants everybody to know that it was my idea to put the pool in it's present location, not his. If we would have put it where he wanted it, it would've been on level ground and would be perfectly circular and not look as if it has a tumor on one side. It's all my doing. Now you know. But really, anybody could have a plain ole' round pool. Only a family with lots of personality would have an oblong one that looks like it's trying to crawl across the yard. I kind of like it the way it is. It's more fun! Yeah, that's it! What a fun, crazy pool we have! It's GREAT! I'm liking it better all the time!!! (I wish James could learn to find the silver lining. Cholerics have no idea what they're missing out on.)

Okay, that's it from here. It's getting late and I need to get some things together for Sunday School tomorrow. Hope you all have wonderful services!!!

~Bec~