Yes, once again I'm sitting in the motel's laundry room. I actually kind of like doing this once a week. I'm a definite people person and I need to have fun and fellowship... But I'm also a definite "I need to be alone for a little while!" person--and it's hard to pull that off when you're living with a husband, three kids and a dog in a 12'x16' room! You can't go into "the other room" for a break unless it's the bathroom. With no tub in which to soak and relax. So laundry night is my once a week all alone time. It's great! Until some burly guy with hair in places that I'd really rather not be seeing anyway comes to wash some clothes that he's obviously never cared about washing before... No, really--it's nice here. And so far tonight, it looks like ours is the only family in the motel that has run out of clean socks and ghandi's. ~aaaahhhhh~ Alone for a little while. :-)

Well, we had a truly great weekend. We got up on Friday and threw our things into a suitcase or two (in my case, I threw everything the kids and I would need into a giant bin) and headed to Colorado. The drive was beautiful, especially from Walsenburg up to the campground in Hillside. WOW. Everything was snowy and sparkly white and loooked fresh and clean and all of the branches to the pine trees were drooping low from the weight of the snow. The sky was bright blue and there were little puffs of clouds sitting on top of the crisp white mountaintops... Surely there will be mountains and snow in heaven. I can't imagine anything more magnificent!

Anyway, we got James up to the campground at about 4:30, but our dumb van couldn't make it up the snowy hill again this year. The groundskeeper came and helped us avoid certain death, so that was nice. Actually, he just came and redirected the van for us so we wouldn't get stuck in a snowbank. The kids and I headed for Denver at about 5:00. About 10 miles from the campground is where it started. Snow and ice and more snow. Nothing was too awful bad until we got just north of Colorado Springs. The roads were really bad by then and I passed 3 or 4 accidents, at least. We sort of slipped and slid our way up to Aurora and right into Emilee's driveway--which she was outside shoveling for us as we arrived. (What service!) We averaged about 35 mph for the last 75 miles or so and it took forever!!! But we finally arrived safe and sound sometime after 9:00, I think.

We let the kids stay up and act like animals for another hour or two, just because they don't have much opportunity to be together. Once we put them down, Haley and Emilee and I played games, but don't ask what. We played a whole slew of games over the weekend, but I don't know what we played when! Clue (several times), I Buy, Scattergories, Life, Memory Madness (kind of), Blink, and something else I can't think of right now. It was great. No wait. I'm not sure we played any games that first night. Hhmmm. Seems like I remember sitting around in the basement talking--and experiencing several "30 second silences"! Ha! It was fun anyway.

Saturday morning the good Mom's (everyone but me) fried and baked some bacon to go with the strangely beautiful cinnamon rolls (!) they had made the day before. The kids played outside in the snow a little bit that day, but mostly just hung out in the basement. We cooked up 10 packages of Ramen for lunch (can you imagine?!), which was a huge hit. Just think--it cost somebody (Haley?) all of $1! That's the way to go! We had planned to watch a girl movie during "quiet time" that afternoon, but when the time came we girls were just too worn out! So we napped. Can you believe that?! During our girl weekend! That's just wrong. We must be getting old!!!

For dinner that night the good Moms (again, everybody but me) whipped out their Papa Murphy's coupons and ordered a truckload of pizza (3 BIG ones, one cheese bread ring thingie, and some fantastic cinnamon desert thingie) and it only cost each of us just under $10. Wa-Hoo! Gotta love those thrifty Moms! ;-) It was great.

After the kids went to bed that night, we moms (good and bad--ha!) headed down to the basement for our big girl night, the highlight of the weekend. Haley had gotten a recommendation from Mandie "Used-To-Be-Our-Friend" Alexander about a movie entitled Nicholas Nickleby. The plot took place in the same era as Emma and Sense & Sensibility, some of our favorite movies, so coupled with the fact that Mandie said it was good we had high hopes. The costumes were right, the music was right... The movie was terrible! It is by far the absolute worst movie I have ever seen in my whole entire life. I usually just sit back and enjoy a movie and go on with my life. But I experienced such frustration during this movie that I was actually moved to violent thoughts by the end. I just couldn't wait for the mean old geezer to die and I almost celebrated when the creep finally hung himself. Isn't that terrible?! A Christian girl shouldn't feel that way!!! I must admit though... we laughed ourselves to tears several times throughout the movie. Not because of it. In spite of it. I remember something about a lost duck and us screaming through our teary laughter, "Lock the doors! We've lost our ducks!!!" (That can't possibly make sense to anybody else, but it was a highlight of the weekend for me! Ha!) I'm sad to say that I have fallen out of contact with Mandie for the most part and although I still love and miss her terribly, I only actually take the initiative to call her once a year or so (I'm such a bad phone friend!!!)... But this warrents a phone call! That girl is going to be hearing from me about this Nickleby movie, I assure you! Ha!

We were so disgusted with the movie (although there was one 30 second highlight at the end when Mr. Elton from Emma performed the Highland Fling! Ha!) that we had to fix our ruined night. I can't remember who's idea it was, but somebody grabbed Darby O'Gill and the Little People and shoved it into the DVD player in an attempt to right the terrible mistake we'd made with the first movie. Needless to say, the attemp failed miserably! Ha! Emilee had never seen it before and Haley and I hadn't seen it since we were about 10 years old, so how were we to know?! It had a struggling plot, at best, with a creepy, conniving little leprechaun who was no more trustworthy than the drunken Irishman who captured him and a doofy redheaded girl who stuck her lips out an inch in front of her face every time she tried to speak. The one thing that could have saved the movie is that it had a very young Sean Connery in it. (Probably a movie he never mentioned on his resumes...) But alas, since the plot took place in Ireland, he was constrained to cover up his naturally terrific accent with a dopey half-Irish sounding one. And he sang. ~sigh~ I'm all for musicals, but Sean Connery?! Come on! Anyway, we played I Buy throughout that movie because we knew early on that the plot just wasn't going to be enough for us. We tried Memory Madness, but after about three cards of that we realized we simply weren't up to it!

We were still desperately frustrated at the end of the Little People movie, so Haley grabbed an Anne Hathaway movie that she and Emilee love and I had never seen before. We were feeling the need to purge our systems of the two loser movies with a good one before our girl party came to a close! Unfortunately, it was far too late by that time to be able to really enjoy any movie, so I'm not sure if I loved it or hated it! Ha! Probably somewhere in between. Emilee didn't last through it--she was the smart one and called it a night halfway through. Haley and I made it to the very end, then I looked at the clock and saw that it was 3:30!!! In the morning!!! I said, "What are we doing?!" I mean, for goodness' sake--I'm 30 years old! I've got three kids upstairs fast asleep (although that took some doing at the beginning of the evening--Joe and his fears again!) and I'm staying up until 3:30 in the morning?! How dumb is that?! Besides the time, I felt like scum having taken in three movies--what is that?!--5 hours of TV?! Good grief!!! Last time I did that I was about 13 years old!!! ~sigh~ I told Haley that I'm making the schedule next year (ha! Like I can do any better!) and that Mandie will be hearing from me. :-)

In spite of the terrible movie selections, we had a whole lot of fun and I'm sooooo glad it worked out for us to do the annual girl party! I'm already looking forward to next year. :-)

Oh, I almost forgot. I was so tired after the movies that I knew I'd never be able to get up early enough in the morning to get a shower, so I took one right then. Dropped onto the couch in the basement at 3:45. Wide awake. I actually laid there and laughed out loud as I thought about the stupid movies and wasted time and teary laughter and all of the fun. I was just about to drop off to sleep at about 4:00 when I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Joe. I had been to take care of him several times before he finally fell asleep and the only way I was able to convice him to lay in the boys' room was to promise him that I would come check on him. That was at about 10:00. This was 4:00 in the morning. He came over to the couch and said in his typical Joe voice, "Mom? Hey, Mom? You didn't come check on me." "Yes, I did, Joe." "No, you didn't." "Yes, I did. I came and checked on you and you were fast asleep, so I came back downstairs." "You did?" "YES." "Oh. Okay, Mom." I sent him back to bed, but in about two minutes he was back by my side again. "Um, Mom? I think Luke's feet are on my pillow." !!! So move your pillow or Luke's feet, you goon! I said it a little nicer than that, though. After another five minutes or so I heard footsteps upstairs again, then saw that a light had been turned on up there. I went to investigate and sure enough it was Joe again. "Mom, somebody turned the light off on the bathroom, so I just turned it on again." ~sigh~ I turned the light off, told the kid to grab his pillow and blanket and hauled him downstairs with me. He was thrilled to be able to sleep on the other couch down there and I was thrilled to finally be able to get some sleep!

We got up sometime before 8:00, fed the kids cereal, and I loaded up our bin and threw it into the back of the van. We said our goodbyes and left at about 9:00. We arrived at the campground at about noon, I think, then waited for the service to get over and all of the men to get done gabbing (and they say women are bad!) before finally hittin' the road around 2:00. I then found out that James, too, had been up until 4:30 in the morning! Ha! So who's gonna drive?! I drove for a little while, then him, then me again. We made it "home" just fine at about 8:00 Sunday night.

Yesterday we did some running around town, looking at antique and junk stores just for fun, and I don't remember what else. A little grocery shopping. Then we went to our soon-to-be house and met up with Jason, the owner, and the inspector who was there to check everything out. We were there for about an hour and a half, I think, and the inspector seemed thoroughly impressed with the condition of the home. Just a few minor little things in need of attention and the owner will gladly take care of them. The owner. Ha! That guy is a riot! He is a very, very interesting character (the kind that makes you scoop your children up and look for a hiding place if you were to walk past him on the road! Ha!), but he is sooooo nice. And funny! He is a very self-sufficient, live-off-the-land kind of guy and he was showing the kids all of the arrowheads he's found there on the property and little rocks of some sort that the indians in the area used to use for war paint (Katie and Joe looked ready to attack by the end of the evening!) and who knows what all. The kids just fell in love with him.

I learned a little more about the house and got a few more ideas for what we'll probably do with it, but it's going to take some definite time and thought before we get too deep into projects there! I want to make sure we KNOW what we want to do before we just get in a hurry and start doing, you know?! It's going to be fun though, I know that much. :-) I took a whole bunch of pictures, but don't have time to post them tonight. James actually thinks I'm working on the regional paper. Ha! Won't he be surprised! Ha! Ha! I worked on it for quite a while last night (it's tough because I don't have my computer and my usual programs--and we don't have our printing equipment, so we'll be printing on regular 8x11 paper this time, just black and white, with one staple in the corner, leaflet style) and it won't take me too much longer to finish up. I'm waiting on one last boost before wrapping it up. No biggie. I can get it all done tonight easily enough.

ANYWAY, today we drove back up to the mountains to check things out a little bit and see what kind of things we'll have access to up there. Went into a thrift store and found a terrific denim skirt (just can't have too many!) and a pair of hiking boots for Joe, and went into a country store there that has some really terrific rustic furniture at very reasonable prices--we'll be keeping it in mind, for sure! We drove on out to Moriarty and found two really, really great antique stores with some furniture that we really like--and it was so cheap! I would so much rather pay a lot less money for something old and one-of-a-kind-ish than to pay a whole lot more money for some factory made something from Ashley Furniture or something! We found several pieces that I'm sure we'll go back and check on once we actually have the house! It felt like a really productive day, learning what we can find where when we need it. :-)

Well, the laundry is almost done and it will be time to go back to the room and get working on the paper again. I'll try to post some pictures of the house sometime soon. That's all the latest from here. And now it's time to say goodbye... to all our family... M-I-C... see you real soon! K-E-Y... Why?! Because we like you! M-O-U-S-E!!! ;-)

~Bec~

Ha! I've been caught. James just showed up to say that he put the kids to bed (our room is only two doors down from the laundry room--very convenient!) and to check on me. "How's it going?" he says. Translation: "Are you done with the paper yet?" HA! I confessed my blogging and told him I'd do the paper next. "Next?" he said as he cocked an eyebrow. Yeppers. First things first, I always say! ;-)