Well... almost. ;-)

TONIGHT IS OUR VERY LAST NIGHT IN ROOM 132 AT THE CROSSLANDS ECONOMY STUDIOS!!! Wa-Hoooooooo!!!! I am soooooooooo excited! You know what this means, don't you?! It means we're MOVING! Really and truly! Fully! Completely! Like, I'm gonna have a true-blue house again!!! No more going batty in an itty-bitty room with stiff beds, no oven, no tub... I'll stop. I've been really good about not dwelling on the negative while we've been here, so why magnify it now? :-) Honestly, it's just been some memory making time for our family and we haven't "suffered" at all... except on those days when we were cooped up all day long without getting out and about! It's been great, but I'm not going to miss it here. And I'm certainly not going to miss Hershey's early morning ricochetting from the door to the bed and back again "I wanna go out" routine. And I'm not going to miss running him and the kids around the motel for exercise and fresh air. I'm not going to miss having a table with only two chairs at which to feed my three children. I am going to miss Dylan. He's a really nice kid who works the front desk most nights. Okay, so I'm not really going to miss him, but he's been one of the nicer parts of our stay here! Ha!

Saturday was a good, productive day for us. We fed the kids some cereal, then loaded up and went down to the U-Haul place and rented their smallest truck. We went to Sears and picked up my brand-spankin' new front loading washing machine and matching dryer :-) :-) :-) and went to Shoney's for lunch. They have a breakfast bar until 2:00 on weekends (weird), so the kids had breakfast for a 2nd time that day.

After lunch we drove to the far western edge of Albuquerque to pick up our dining table, chairs, hutch and wine rack. (Ha! That still cracks me up! --We've been sure to mention how we'll be using it for "lumber" just so nobody gets the wrong idea!) We drove back through Albuquerque and out the east end of town and up to Cedar Crest to pick up the chuckwagon table and stools. (I'll post pictures of it once we get it all set up, Jay!) We went up to the house, but we weren't sure anybody was home. The yard is fenced and Mike (the guy we're purchasing from) has two big, scary dogs. They are plenty friendly when he's around, but not trustworthy otherwise. We tried calling him, but there was no answer and his voice mailbox was full. (I hear it's been full for weeks now.) We called Jason (he's been able to fix all of our other problems, why not this one?! Ha!), but he didn't pick up. I called Mike's realtor and was trying to get some info from her on where to find him when suddenly he was outside with his daughter jumping on the trampoline! We'd been calling him and various other people and honking the horn and whatnot for 15 minutes and he'd been there the whole time! Anyway, he let us in (and happened to mention in passing how the guy came to read the meter one day and let himself in and one of the dogs "purt near chewed his leg off 'fore I got home..." SO glad we didn't open the gate to knock on the door! Ha!) and helped us unload our junk into the garage. That guy... Ha! I can't begin to describe him!!! He is just absolutely one of a kind. He's rough and tough and gritty and has a deep, raspy voice. He's very... non-pretentious, shall we say?! He's very old fashioned and could easily live off the land with no supplies to start with. In fact, he told us that once he rids himself of a house payment he's going to move up to the acreage he has in Colorado and build himself a house. "There's deer there--you can eat them--and there's a stream goin' through it with all the trout you could need and you can grow your own vegetables..." And he'll do it, too. Every bit of it. And probably never step foot in a store or see another human being for the rest of his life. Ha! He has a truck that is jacked up so high on HUGE wheels that it barely (like, quarter of an inch to spare) fits into the garage--it's almost too tall. The truck is green and white and all beat up. And it has no doors. And the seats are seats from a go-cart or something! Ha! He also has a little tiny motorcycle that can't stand more than 18" off the ground (at the seat) that he rides all over the place. He's a big guy--I can't imagine how hilarious it must look! And he uses the word "wicked" to describe everything. He loved our chuckwagon table. "That's cool, dude. Wicked cool!" He was telling us about how many dumb drivers slide off into the ditch in front of the house in the winter time. "They come around that bend there going wicked fast, man!" Ha! That giant truck of his (he has a name for it, but I can't remember... I think it's "The Creature" or something!) has a winch (ha! I almost wrote WENCH) on the front of it and he declares he's probably made 3 or 4 thousand dollars just pulling people out of that ditch. He says in the wintertime he'll drive up the mountain a ways and just park there. "You wait long enough and some idiot's gonna come get hisself stuck in a snowbank--I'cn make 2, 3 hundred dollars a day just haulin' idiots outta the ditch. Wicked good money, man!" Ha! I'm telling you, he is hilarious!!! It's been so great getting to know him a little bit. He's a little odd, sure, but he's just so simple and old fashioned and... well, it's like he walked straight out of Gunsmoke or something. Except for his vehicles and over-use of the word "wicked," that is! Ha!

James decided we'd go to Cracker Barrel for dinner after we took the U-Haul back. Joe ordered breakfast, making that his third breakfast of the day. You've never seen a kid so excited about eating. That kid loves to eat and he does love breakfast--and the thought of three in one day was nearly enough to make him bust. Literally! Ha! Cracker Barrel is so expensive, until you learn how to order. The 3 kids split 2 kids meals between them, I order a kids meal, and James has been ordering the 4-sides thing. $20 for all five of us. And it makes for a very, very happy husband and a very, very, very happy Joe. :-)

We spent last night studying and preparing for our services today. I needed to put together a Sunday School lesson and craft for the kids and also my WMB service for tonight. I never, ever re-use lessons that I've already taught, but I was in a real jam with this service and out of time to prepare when James discovered that I had 4 or 5 of WMB lessons saved on the laptop. There was one from February of 2004, I think, and it was about love and Valentines Day and all that. I felt like a failure resorting to that, but didn't know what else to do! Anyway...

This morning we got up and got ready for church, then ran to Wal-Mart to get a few supplies for my SS class and some desert and chili to take to the pot-luck after church. (I can't wait until I have a real kitchen and can take part in the next put-luck--I was so embarrassed today!) We went to church and had a really good service. Sunday School went well, I thought. It was our three kids, then three other siblings who have never been before. It was great! And I think the other kids enjoyed it and acted excited about coming back. Song service was good, then James preached a message and talked about God, the Creator. It was good. We had several visitors again today and it was nice to have them there for the pot-luck, too. There are some girls (three sisters, ages 18-26, I think) who I especially have a burden for. I pray they'll keep coming and that the Lord will truly save them.

After the pot-luck we went back to Wal-Mart (can you imagine?! Before church AND after church?!) because there were a few things we needed that we just didn't have time to get when we were there in the morning. We also went to Staples so we could have my WMB lesson printed off. (Can't wait to have our office stuff set up again!) We went back to the room and had time for a little nap (a desperately needed one!) before heading back to church. We had some visitors again tonight (one of the three girls I mentioned and the three kids who were in Sunday School this morning), so that was exciting. It's very rare that you have visitors on a Sunday night around here. You might get 30 of them in the morning, but that's the only time they come. It's weird. Anyway, we were glad they were there tonight and I felt like the Lord really helped us, rehashed lesson or not. ;-)

We came "home" to the motel and I started packing up! :-) Oh--I missed someting! After we went to Wal-Mart (the second time, that is) we drove around behind some businesses until we found what we were looking for--and I sent my husband dumpster diving! HA! Of all of the times to not have my camera with me! There was James Horne, all duded up in his Sunday best, rumaging through the big green, smelly dumpster... Those who know James already know that it wasn't nearly as bad as I make it sound. He just yanked a few cardboard boxes off the top for me. :-) We have so much STUFF in this room and I didn't want to just throw it into the van by the armful, so the boxes helped a lot. I've got everything pretty much packed up... now we're trying to figure out what to do with it! It's just stupid to haul all of this junk (and there is a lot!!!) back to Andrews, only to turn around and haul it all right back to Albuquerque! We're going to need all of the space in the van we can get, you know?! So I think we've got a plan to leave it here in town and retrieve it when we get back. We'll have to make a phone call or two in the morning to make sure it'll work out, but I'm pretty sure it won't be a problem. Then we can take just the one suitcase with us that we'll be needing and have all that extra storage space in the van to MOVE with. :-)

We'll get to Andrews tomorrow sometime, go to Odessa for haircuts from Aunt Stacey on Tuesday (the boys look terrible!), then throw a party together for Kate & Joe that night (haven't even thought about birthday presents yet!), and then away we go!!! Loading the moving truck and heading west again! Wa-Hoooo!!! :-) Life is so grand. It may be a while before I get a chance to blog again. It'll be pretty chaotic for a while and it's only going to get a lot worse before it gets better, even once we get to our new house. I mean, eventually this house is going to work GREAT for us. But to start with, we're going to be short one bedroom, one den, two offices, and a shed from what we're used to! So I'm sure it's going to be pretty confusing figuring out what goes where! Ha! Should prove to be quite an adventure! :-) I'm just going to be so happy to have a house. A real, live house of my very own! With a yard for my kids and dog!!! ~sigh~ It's going to be so great. :-) Keep us in your prayers!!!