Thursday again! We left home one week ago today. Wow. The time always goes so fast. And so slow! Ha! I'm already getting a little homesick. This morning I woke up and reached over to pet Hershey dog (who always sneaks into our room in the early hours of the morning) and he wasn't there! ~sigh~ It's pitiful to miss a dog!

Today James and I left the kids with Grandma for a few hours and did some running around. We went to Lewistown to go to Ollie's. It's... hhmmm... kind of like a Big Lots store, I guess. That means it's a big MESS, but if you're willing to wade through it you can find some really good deals. ;-) James loves it. We found a few nice books for the kids and a battery charger. Our batteries or our charger is giving out on us (we encountered big problems at the Creation Museum and had to buy some regular batteries to see us through!), so we bought one at Ollie's today for about half price. Nice.

We went a couple of other places, but I can't recall where. Then we ate at Hoss's for lunch. That drives me batty. Hoss's. If the name is Hoss then the proper possesive spelling would be Hoss'. That's it. It already ends with an "s" so you don't add an extra "s" after the apostrophe. But they do! So I make sure to pronounce it "Hosseses." If they're dumb enough to spell it that way then I should have the liberty to pronounce it just as dumbly. Ha! Dumbly! Anyway, in spite of the poor spelling, it's a nice steakhouse/buffet kind of place and we had a good lunch. :-)

James' Uncle Don came to visit while we were gone, so we missed seeing him. Too bad. He's the cutest of James' uncles, by far, and has one of the thicker accents so it's always entertaining to listen to him. I've been teasing James about the goofy way he talks when we're up here. It doesn't take him long to fall into the old lingo and weird pronunciations. The craziest thing is the way they ask questions up here. It never goes "up" at the end to make it sound like a question, so everything they ask sounds like a statement. It can't be explained, it just has to be demonstrated. Ask me at the Assembly. ;-)

When we got back to the house Duane Booher was here. He's a CoGoP guy that James has known forever. Really nice guy. James was able to have a good visit with him. I decided I'd take the opportunity to call Tammy to see how everything is going out west. Sounds okay, so that's good! Hershey Dog is doing well and behaving himself at Stacey's house. I'm soooooo glad to hear that! And it sounds like Sam & Tammy are doing well and getting excited about the Assembly. It was nice to talk to her and hear about home. Pennsylvania is great and we always have such a good time here, but it's almost like being on Mars. It just feels like a totally different world and I feel so detached from everything else, you know?! I guess that's what a vacation is supposed to be like. Still, as great as it is it's still nice to know that the real world is still out there somehwhere. :-)

Aunt Grace came to visit tonight--she's another one of my favorites. She's a mess. She just sort of bumbles her way through life, so I can relate to her far better than most of the stiffs up here. Aunt Grace is uptight and paranoid like the rest of them, but she can't seem to actually pull it off and she just sort of rolls with the punches when things go wrong (a painfully rare quality in this family!)--and it seems like they often do for her. She can't compare at all to those who "bumble through life" in MY family (like Aunt Sue), but still--it's something I can relate to! It was good to see her today, although her daughter Amy wasn't able to come with her. Amy is my all-time favorite person up here. She TRULY bumbles through life, not quite at Aunt Sue's pace, but close. ;-)

This afternoon we left Katie with Grandma Wanda, and James and I took the boys in for haircuts at Sharon Long's barber shop. Don't know why a barber shop is run by a woman, but it is. I must admit I was a wee bit nervous about this lady touching my boys' hair. Stacey always does it at home and she does such a great job. This was the first time a stranger was to cut them and I was getting more nervous by the minute as I watched her hack up the first guy that came in there! Good grief!!! He was a shaggy mess when he came in and although his hair was much shorter when he left, he really didn't look much better. Bad, bad, bad. I thought we were doomed. She actually did a pretty good job on the boys for the most part, and I must admit it was far better than I anticipated as I watched the hack job on the first fella. The only bad thing is the way she cut them in the front. She gave them straight-across bangs like Moe from the Three Stooges and it's driving me crazy!!! The back of their hair looks terrific, but that straight line going across their foreheads is just absurd. They just look DUMB. Oh well. It's just hair, it'll grow back. I'm hoping it does some serious growing in the next few days before I take them back to the real world where real people will see them! Ha!

Oh yeah! Don't know how I forgot this--it was the best part of the day! James and his Dad grabbed the guns (a .22 pistol and a .22 rifle and a bb-gun) and we went "up the hill" (that means up behind the house on the rest of the property--where the barn is) to do some shooting. It was soooooooo fun!!! I had a hard time remembering that we were doing this for the kids. ;-) Katie shot a few times, but was more interested in "building her house" inside the hay wagon. She started on it a day or two ago and keeps on adding more and more junk--it even has chairs now. Sam found the .22's too noisy and just didn't want to shoot them, so he kept Grandpa Noy-man busy with the bb-gun. As fast as he could get it pumped and ready to go Sam was pulling the trigger. I really think it's best he was scared of the .22's. He is way too dangerous!!! Joe, on the other hand, loved the .22's. The pistol was a little too loud for him, so he stuck mostly to the rifle. We took turns shooting at an old milk jug and Joe hit it twice all by himself! He was resting the rifle on my knee, but he was taking aim without any help. He was pretty proud of himself. Almost as proud as his mother was of her own shooting! Ha! It was sooooo much fun! James and I tore that jug up pretty good. I enjoyed trying out the pistol because it's so much more challenging (until James told me we'd made enough noise and needed to put it away!), but did much better with the rifle. It was lots of fun. Maybe I'll become a pistol packin' woman, too! ;-)

That's about it, I think. It's been a good day. One more to go in this leg of the trip. Tomorrow I'll need to do some laundry and work on getting us packed up and ready to head south. At least a little south. If it doesn't rain we'll let the kids fish in the creek tomorrow, too. They've been dying to do that, but the weather and all of our running around hasn't allowed for that yet. We'll see how tomorrow goes. I'm anxious to hear about how IYC is going. I've been thinking about that a lot and praying for everybody there. Only 4 more days until everything "starts" and I'm so excited!!!