~whew~ What a day. It's been a good one, but I am worn out! Grandma Wanda made her famous pancakes for the kids this morning (they've been talking about them for weeks now!), then we all loaded up for a day on the town. "All" being everyone except for Grandpa Norman. He's not much of a shopper so he decided to sit this one out.

The rest of us headed to Altoona, wherever that is. Don't ask me. There are all sorts of towns around here, most dinky, some more substantial, but I haven't a clue where any of them are. The one thing I do know is that any road will get you there. And it doesn't matter were "there" is. For real! If you want to go, say, to Shirleysburg, you pull up to the highway and somebody will ask, "Which way do you want to go?" You can turn left and go to Shirleysburg or you can turn right to go to Shirleysburg. Take your pick. It's like that with any given location around here. All of the roads twist and turn and weave in and out from one another and it just doesn't matter which way you turn, you'll eventually get "there." Crazy. Anyway, Altoona...

We went in search of a cheap little suit for Sam, but we bombed on that one. We found a nice little vest outfit for him and a cheap tie to go with his purple dress shirt, so it worked out just as well. We did bumble into a suit for Joe, though I'm scared to describe it! Ha! I love pinstripes and have been telling James to buy himself a pinstriped suit for some time now (to no avail), but this suit of Joe's is black with wide, broken pinstripes and three buttons on the jacket. (Let it be known that I dearly love black people--especially ours in the Church--and I mean this in no derogitory way, so please do not be offended by this statement!) It's a black guy suit! I just can't think of how else to describe it! Ha! It's so great. He didn't really need it and I never would have conceded to buying it except that it was only $12. And Grandma Wanda was with us. We end up with lots of extra things in the cart when Grandma Wanda is with us. :-) She loves to shop for the kid-o's.

Joe wasn't the only one who benefitted from our shopping spree today. James bought a brown suit for $29.50 and a gray one for $31.50. Can you believe that?! Entire suits!!! I kept looking for the tag saying "THIS SUIT WILL SELF DESTRUCT IN 10 SECONDS." Ha! The suits look terrific, too. He found a nice tie that goes with both suits, a pair of socks, and some suspenders. The receipt said that he had saved $513.91!!! You can't imagine how happy that made him! Ha! Later on he found a pair of really nice dress shoes marked down to $10. I found a few much needed items, myself--and a Bible cover for my odd shaped Bible, at long last. It's just plain black, so I'll have to get creative and doll it up a little bit one of these days. But for now at least it will keep my Bible from getting torn up.

We got back to the house at about 6:00 tonight, ate dinner, and let the kids play for a while. It rained all day today, so it was a good day to be out and about. The kids are dying to play outside here at Granma's house and it would have been a terrible day for that. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Hhmmm. I think that's all from around here today. Except that we've received lots of phone calls informing us of folks from our Region who won't be attending the Assembly this year! It's terrible! I feel so bad for everybody having to miss--it's just awful! I hate it for them, that they'll be missing out on everything. I hate it for me, that I'll be missing out on seeing them. And I hate it for the region, that we're apparently going to have a very small showing this year! That's so sad. We're still hoping and praying that God will work some miracles for some of these folks to make it there after all.

I'm actually online at the Horne's house right now and the dial-up connection isn't half bad. Who knew?! I posted my blog earlier today from a parking lot near a Holiday Inn in Altoona! Ha! But James got all of the dial-up numbers and passwords and all that into the laptop today, so now I can blog from here. That'll be nice.

Well, I'm going to go. I'm listening to the TV in the other room--James' Dad found a program from Answers in Genesis (the Creation Museum people) and it sounds very cool so I'm going to go check it out. G'night all!

~Becki~