~whew~

Posted by cokelady

What a day. But my mother informed me that I haven't posted in FOUR days. Weird. Seems like just last night! Okay, let's see...

Saturday I don't remember at all, I just know it was busy. Easter prep stuff.

Easter was GREAT. Sunday School was a hit. I did those "empty tomb" rolls with the kids. You know, where you roll up a marshmallow in a cresent roll and "seal" it, then bake it and the marshmallow "disappears" and you have an empty hole in the role where it used to be--like the tomb of Jesus. Except in our case the marshmallows didn't really disappear, they exploded and oozed out of the rolls and all over the pan. (I made it very clear to the children that that is NOT how Jesus made his escape from the tomb! Ha!) They were great anyway--especially because we sprinkled them with cinnamon before we rolled 'em up. ;-)

We had three new visitors in church on Sunday, so that was exciting! One gentleman in particular really seemed to enjoy the service and assured us that he would be back. Praise the Lord!

James had cancelled the evening service, so we headed home for a nice, leisurely afternoon with the fam. I had put a brisket on the night before, so I just had to fix the trimmings: corn on the cob, cheesy potatoes, rolls, deviled eggs... and whatever I'm forgetting about right now. It all turned out GREAT. I think the brisket was the very best I've ever had. It was sooooo juicy and tender--we had to spoon it out of the pan! It was delicious. (Hope yours is as good, Sister Tammi!)

James had bought some plastic eggs and "fillers" for them, so he went out Sunday afternoon and hid them all over our mountain. The kids had a blast finding them! It was sooooo fun!!! And they were sooooo excited. It was almost like Christmas. Ha! They were thrilled to pop them open and find a couple of coins or some candy or a sheet of mini-stickers. They played with the eggs all day long--hiding them for each other to re-find. :-)

I set up the projector again and let the kids watch the Easter Veggie Tales, so that was fun, too. While they were watching that, I made a pineapple upside-down cake. It, too, was sooooo yummy!

After the kids went to bed that night James and I watched Facing the Giants on the projector. I had forgotten how much I enjoy that movie! It's a little "cheesy" in ways, but it's just sooooo good.

Monday was a long, long day. My goal was to get all of the laundry and ironing done that day, and finish up on the regional paper. I worked hard all day long, but I didn't even start the ironing until 10:30 that night--and I still hadn't finished the paper. It was one of those days when you know you've worked hard all day long but you look back and find that you haven't finished anything!!! The projector was still set up, so I watched the Thursday morning session of the Assembly while I ironed. It was great and I was blessed--it helped my spirits (=mood) greatly. :-) I finished up at midnight and then worked another hour on the paper and fell into bed sometime after 1:00.

Yesterday we waited for the plumber to show up. Never did. I did some more work around the house, then we left early for church because we had some shopping to do. Had to buy PAINT. Lots and lots of paint. And some other odds and ends.

We had communion and feetwashing last night and it was such a good service. There were just a handful of us there (the Faithful Few, I call this crowd!), but the Spirit of the Lord was so rich and sweet and we were all so blessed. It was wonderful.

This morning I called the plumber and rescheduled. Then I got to work on the day's project: painting the ceiling in the living room/dining room/kitchen. ~sigh~ If only it could be that easy! Ha! It's a vaulted ceiling, so that doesn't help. I cleared everything out of half of the room, the taped plastic all over the baseboards and floors and doors and the window and the bricks and fireplace and all across the beam that goes at the peak of the ceiling... That alone takes forever!!! I finally started painting at about noon.

The plumber showed up and... well, didn't do much, just made me mad! Ha! I took him around and showed him what we were needing done. He didn't even turn the water on in the bathtub to investigate the problem, just said we'd be best buying a whole new unit, blah, blah, blah... I took him out to the garage and showed him what we were wanting out there and he started rambling on about permits and codes and how we won't be able to sell the house, blah, blah, blah... THEN (this one made me soooo mad) I showed him the gas pipe that sticks out from the wall behind the stove. We just need it capped at the wall so we can push the stove back all the way. He said he'd have to shut the gas off at the tank, then bleed the pipe that goes into the house, wait for it to finish it's thing, then cap the line, then relight the furnace and, blah, blah, blah... --And that it would be 1 or 2 hours labor. That means about $140!!! I refrained from saying what was really on my mind. "What kind of an idiot do you take me for?! The last two plumbers we had cap gas lines just cut the pipe and held their finger over the opening until they got it capped!!! Didn't even shut the gas off. It took all of about 5 minutes!!!" He was a nice enough guy, but I was just sooooo frustrated that everything was SUCH a big deal to him. I was very polite and kind, but when he finally left I called James and ranted and raved for a good little bit. I told him I want a different plumber out here before we make any decisions. This guys was just such a pessimist. He was so negative about everything!!! Not the kind of guy I want doing work for me, you know?!

Anyway, I spent all day long taping and painting and cleaning and such. The ceilings had to be painted and the walls had to be scrubbed so they'll be ready for next week's project. I scrubbed the top of the walls and Katie scrubbed the bottom, so that was a big help--and fun to work on together.

James took Katie to town with him today, then he was good to occupy all of the kids once he got home so that I could work without distraction. He had the boys busy with shovels and hoes, digging a pond out front for a while. Then they all played bocci ball (is that how it's spelled?!), tag, and hide-n-seek outside. How fun!!! (For them--I was still painting! Ha! Still, it was fun to watch them out the window!)

Ah yes, I didn't mention that our family went out and played bocci ball the other day. All over our mountain! Ha! It was sooooo much fun. The kids are hilarious. Joe is a lefty, so everything he does looks awkward and he has different form every time he throws the ball. Katie is a bowler. When it's her turn she holds her ball up next to her cheek and bends way over and squints (almost like a golfer sizing up his shot), then tosses her ball and immediately spews forth a series of "Oh, man. I'm never gonna win" kind of statements. Then there's Sam. He is sooooo great to watch! Ha! The balls are pretty heavy and he's still a pretty little guy. He doesn't toss them underhand like the rest of us, he hurls them--kind of like s shot put. With a mighty heave and equally mighty grunts and groans, he slings his ball... and wins almost every time!!! It is absolutely uncanny. I can't tell you the times that James' ball was 3 inches away from the little while ball and Sam would hurl his and ker-plunk-plunk-plunk it would knock James' out of the way and butt right up to the white one! Ha! It was amazing. He probably won close to half of the rounds. I finally had to quit. I just can't handle losing to a 4 year old--legitimately, not letting him win--in game that takes at least a degree of physical skill! The little rat!!!

ANYWAY, this has been another never-ending day. Finally, after 11:00 tonight I have the whole ceiling painted and trimmed out. My body was exhausted, but my mind still busy so I thought I'd blog before bed. I didn't get the second half of the room scrubbed, just painted. So that means the project will continue tomorrow. Naturally. There's no such thing as a simple one-day project around here. We just don't believe in 'em. We like to drag things out as long as possible so we appreciate the finished product all the more. ~sigh~ Or something like that. Tomorrow is my last day to work though because we've got District Convention in Alamogordo this weekend, so we'll see how much I can get done. For now, I'm just going to go wash the rest of the paint off of my arms and face (the stuff in my hair will just have to wait!) and go to bed. Maybe tomorrow will be an easier day. Right???

~Bec~

--Too tired to proof read, so go easy on me! ;-)

20 comments

Could it Be???

Posted by cokelady

Has it really been 5 days since I last blogged?! How did that happen??? And I was doing so well. Oh, well. To tell you the truth, I really don't have a clue what we've been up to this week. I know that--for the first time since we moved into this house over a month ago--I left the house willingly. I've had to leave for a few short trips and, of course, we go to church... but aside from that James has pretty much had to take me kicking and screaming from the house if we needed to go somewhere. I was without a house for two full months and now that I've got one again I have no desire whatsoever to step foot outside of it. I LOVE being HOME. James kept saying things like, "Why don't we run into town and..." That's all I got. Those first few words. I never knew what followed them because I had heard all I needed to hear and I knew I wasn't interested. I finally asked him, "What part of 'I don't want to leave my house' do you not understand?!" ;-) But after being home alone with the kids this past weekend, I was ready to get out. We had a good time while James was gone, but I was ready to get out of the house once it was all over! So... one of the days this week (they all run together) we loaded up the kids and went to the library for a while, then did some necessary shopping at the new Wal-Mart in Edgewood. That's right--I don't even have to go to Albuquerque to shop anymore! Wa-Hoo!!! Edgewood is all of 10 or 15 miles from here and it's a quaint little mountain town far away from all of the chaos of the city. The Wal-Mart is (reportedly) the largest one in New Mexico and the fourth largest one in the U.S. Crazy. Anyway, it's nice to have what we need so close by! And NOT in Albuquerque!

But since I've passed the Don't-Ask-Me-to-Leave-Home-or-You-Might-Get-Hurt stage, we even took a trip into Albuquerque a few days ago. We took the kids to Explora (the kids' museum thing) again and had a good time. Then we made use of our gift certificate to Chili's (compliments of that dopey water filtration demonstrator that invaded our house a couple of weeks ago--James finally went and picked up our certificate this week), complete with that great white chocolate cake thingy. That's really the reason we got roped into the demonstration in the first place so we went ahead and ordered one even though we were all too full to really enjoy it as much as we otherwise would have. It was still great. :-)

Hhmmm. I'm drawing a blank. The kids are doing better in school, for the most part. (Like my nice schooling-little-ones template?!) There have been several times lately when Katie has gone and grabbed her school book and sat down to do some--just for fun. Even Joe did it tonight, which blew my mind. I grabbed him on both sides of his head, looked into his eyes and screamed, "Who are you and what have you done with my son Joe?!?!?" He just gave me a funny look, took the school book, and walked away. He, too, has been writing reports this week. That happened because he "bet" his Dad a game of checkers. That was the deal--if Joe lost he would have to write a report this week. Well... We told him he could pick out any book he wanted from the library, so he chose something highly educational. A Star Wars book! Ha! The kids have only seen a few minutes of Star Wars once in a motel, but it's one of those things that is just so fascinating for them, you know?! So his report was all about C-3PO. Whatever. I was impressed that he WROTE one! Joe's also learning to "borrow" or "carry" or "regroup"--whatever you want to call it--while adding and subtracting double digits now. He's doing great with it, but doesn't enjoy it much. Katie is learning to multiply and she's doing great, too. She'll see 8x6 and spend the next 4 minutes adding up groups of eight... six times. She's getting the concept down, so that's good! I'm going to let her practice a little bit more, then give her the actual chart to memorize and work on. She and Joe still need to learn their basic addition and subtraction by memory! They still add up most problems instead of just knowing the answer. Either way, they're using their brains and doing a great job.

Then there's Sam. Sam fell in a cactus today. I heard the scream and then the two messengers arrived with excited screams relaying the news, and finally Sam hobbled into the house, the inside of his left pant leg completely covered over in cactus "thorns," as the kids call them. We took his pants off and he immediately calmed down, even though his leg was full of needles. Katie and Joe would have been screaming bloody murder the whole time and freaked out every time I tried to pull one out, but Sam is much tougher in these instances. He didn't really want my help though--he pulled all of the needles out himself. I'm sure this was only the first of a series of cactus encounters.

James brought home a mirror for me today. :-) That means our bathroom is very, very near completion. And that makes me very, very happy!!! The plummer is coming on Tuesday to fix the faucet thingy for the tub, then we'll be able to do the last touch-up stuff and ~voila~ we'll be done! ~Voila~... like 3 weeks after we stared the dumb room we'll be done, that is! Ha! Oh, well. It's exciting to be so close after it all! I'm anxious to post pictures one of these days, hopefully soon.

Okay, I'm gonna go. Gotta hang that mirror (!) and do a few other last minute things for Sunday School tomorrow. Then put the brisket in the oven. We're having an Easter brisket this year instead of an Easter ham. Disgraceful break from tradition, I know, but brisket was on sale and James bought it and there's not room for it in the freezer and it's got to be cooked, so Easter brisket it is! I hope you all have a wonderful Easter and that God richly blessed your services with His Spirit's moving and lots of visitors who will turn out to be "good ground." :-)

~Becki~

5 comments

They're Home!

Posted by cokelady

James and Sean, I mean. :-) James got back this afternoon, so the kids and I drove into town to pick him up at the airport. It was our first time there. It's very... New Mexican! It's neat. We're all really happy to have James home (although the kids are bummed about the "party" being over! Ha!) and I think he's happy, too. He had a great trip and really enjoyed the Convention and service in Denver as well as all of the fellowship. But now he's glad to be home. And we're glad to have him home! Or them, I should say.

Ah, yes. I forgot to mention Sean to you. Before James left on this trip he went out and bought one of those nifty little GPS devices that shows you a map of where you are and where you're going and it talks and tells you when to turn and all that stuff. Mom and Dad have one they named Margaret and they are completely lost without her. I'm not sure they could read a regular map anymore if they tried! Ha! Anyway, these things are terrific for people who travel a lot and we definitely fit that mold. I got to looking through the book of the one James bought and it said that you could download celebrity voices onto it instead of using the generic ones that come with the machine. I immediately thought of Sean Connery and told James that that's the voice I want on our machine! :-) Sooooo...

While he was in Denver, Jon downloaded several voices onto our machine. They actually did have Sean Connery (wa-hoo!), so that's terrific. But now we also have Captain Jean Luc Picard, Darth Vader, Yoda, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. James said he was using the Darth Vader voice on his way to church in Denver and he had Nathan and Caleb with him. When they got to church Vader said, "Your journey to the Dark Side is complete!" Ha! How terrible! I love the Arnold Schwarzenegger voice. When you first start him up he says, "You are going somewhere... but you'll be back!" (You have to say it out loud in your best Arnold voice to really appreciate it!) Ha! Still, I like good old Sean the best. In fact, I had him guide us home tonight just for the fun of it. :-) Life is grand!!!

Let's see. Not much else to report. We had waffles for breakfast and one last pizza party with a show on the wall before James got home. We watched the Sumo Veggie Tales so we could see Lutfi's Fanciful Flannelgraph about St. Patrick's Day. Ha! That one is so great. "Oh, mighty pond scum! Ye are powerful and... scummy!" :-)

Got the castle cleaned up for the king today... That's about it. Wow! A decently short post! Do I get a ribbon or something?! Have a great night, ya'll!

~Becki~

10 comments

Total Score...

Posted by cokelady

Tammy -- 560,250

Becki -- 559,965

Of course, that's not really the "total" since, by definition, there can never be an end to Eternal Rummy. But that's where things stand at present. I got our old score pads out and did all the math and that's what I came up with. That means that after 12 years and leads and losses of 6,000+ points a one time or another... we are only 285 points apart! Ha! That's so cool! ~sigh~ It wasn't as great as actually playing with Tammy while James was gone, but just flipping through the score pads brought back some of the fun. ;-)

The kids told me today that they miss Dad, but they can't wait for him to go to another Convention so they can party with Mom again. I told them that we're all going to the next Convention. "Ah, ma-a-a-a-an!" they said. Ha! James said maybe I should make sure they're good and miserable next time so they'll WANT to go to Conventions!

Yesterday started out with cinnamon rolls... with a cherry on top. :-)

We did some mild housework, but mostly just played. We went out and jumped on the trampoline for a little while--that's about their favorite thing to do, especially if they can get an adult roped into joining them. Even Sam gets on now. He still doesn't jump, or even stand. He just sits on the edge and holds on to the rail while everybody else jumps. But at least he's there and seems to enjoy himself!

Katie caught a caterpillar the other day and it entertained her for quite some time.

She found a big plastic jar to put him in (is it considered a jar if it's made of plastic?!) and gave him leaves to eat and "logs" to climb on... and a little bouncy ball to play with! Ha! She toted him around all day, in and out of the jar, but every time she'd put him down he was in great peril. There is always a Sam lurking about, you know. He was jealous because Katie wouldn't share her caterpillar, so being the vengeful child that he is, he took every opportunity to try to steal the poor thing and wreak havoc on it. He kept clunking the jar around (I can't believe the thing didn't die just from that) and trying to hide it--I even caught him trying to put it in the refrigerator one time. ~sigh~ That kid is such a creep. That evening I finally told Katie that she needed to let her little pet go. We didn't know anything about caring for caterpillars and he was sure to die if we tried to keep him. Especially with Sam around. I told her to go tell him goodbye and let him loose outside somewhere where the boys wouldn't find him. She nearly cried, but pulled herself together and agreed it was the best decision. Of course, the next morning she went back to the same spot and found him again. The poor thing. He hasn't got a chance.

Katie, Katie, Katie. That girl. She is such a hoarder. Always has been. I remember when she was one year old, toddling around and jabbering up a storm... and always carrying around a basket or purse or something jam-packed full of things. She rarely played with the things, but she wanted to have them and keep them always. She never has learned how to get rid of anything. A few days ago she came to me with the bottom half of a box that used to contain stationary and asked if she could keep it. I told her no, that it was trash--we had enough stuff sitting around the house already. "But, Mom! This box is very special to me! I'll use it for... a tray! A tray for my dishes!" "Katie, we got rid of your dishes before we moved." Panic attack. The thought! We got rid of something! She hasn't missed them a single time in the past three months but now that she knows we got rid of them she finds it a terribly cruel thing to do. She wants to keep everything, including (and sometimes especially) trash. ~sigh~

And she's still emotional. Wa-a-a-a-ay too emotional. I can't relate, so I either get frustrated with her or laugh at her. The kids had been begging to play Cadoo the other day (it's a kid Cranium game), so I finally sat down to play with them. On Katie's very first turn her card said to go and find something that was red and something that started with an "r" before the timer ran out. I flipped the timer and told her to go. She immediately burst into tears as she was running into the other room. "I don't know what to get!!! What's red?! And I don't know anything that starts with an 'r'!!!" After several seconds she came running back into the room, dragging a blanket with red patches, but she was still bawling and insisting that nothing starts with an "r". ~sigh~ Fun game. I usually just say "Forget it--if you're going to act that way, you're not going to play." But I had to laugh this time. She is just sooooo dramatic! Everything is SUCH a big deal to her! My little girl. I pray most for her these days, that God will help her to level out and that He'll give me the wisdom to be able to connect with her and aim her in the right direction. She is such a wonderful girl... with so very many hang-ups! If God gives us the grace to succeed with her, she will be a wonderful, loving, helpful, giving, talented worker for the Lord. If we fail... well, she's going to be a mess! Ha!

Anyway, I started talking about our weekend... We mostly just played! We had the cinnamon rolls for breakfast that day, ramen and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, and a Frito pie for dinner. :-) I kept the projector set up and let the kids watch several things "on the wall" over the weekend, which was fun. We can still do that because our walls are still blank, void of paint, wallpaper, and decor. It will only last so long, so we made the best of it! :-)

After I put the kids to bed last night I did it. I attacked the mountain of ironing full force. And two movies and a vanilla coke later... I had conquered. :-) I watched In the Good Old Summertime (with Judy Garland and Van Johnson), then Sense and Sensibility. On the wall, of course. It makes the ironing bearable if you have something to distract you and make you forget that you're ironing. ;-) I got every stitch of everything washed and ironed last night and it felt GREAT.

We had good services today, but we sure missed James! Sunday School went good, but it was just my three kids in class until the last 3 minutes when four others came piling in! I hate that! We were just cleaning everything up and these kids come in and see the fun crafts we made, but there's no time for them to do anything. I told them what we learned today (Palm Sunday stuff) and said to be sure and tell their parents they want to be to church early next week so they can do Easter stuff in Sunday School! We'll see.

Sister Sally went ahead and did her ABM service, so I didn't have to do the show-a-video thing after all. :-) It was good. We missed having a preacher and especially a piano player (!), but I finally went and plinked around a little bit on the last couple of songs since I knew I had played them before. I sooooo need more practice! Ha! Tonight was had a prayer meeting and there were just a few of us there, but the Lord blessed and I'm thankful for the good spirit and the good season of prayer with the faithful few. :-)

Came home and had mac-n-cheese for dinner. Gotta love that. Let the kids watch one more show "on the wall" before bed, and now I'm blogging. It's been a good weekend, all in all. I've needed the break from the bathroom project. All I've done in there since James has been gone is clean things up (it was TRASHED) and put several coats of polyurethane on the countertop. And fix the mini-blinds. I don't know what it is with James. He wants everything just so... and then he hangs mini-blinds and doesn't cut all of the extra blinds off the bottom! So when you let the blinds down there's a big pile of "extras" that crashes down on the window sill--and the pull strings are sooooo long, they dangle three feet down from the window! He always does it that way and it always drives me crazy. So I fixed that yesterday. I managed to ram a screwdriver into the palm of my hand in the process, making a pretty nasty gash about an inch long. Dumb, dumb, dumb. It's in a very inconvenient place and it's bothered me a whole lot, even today. I'm hoping it's not infected or something. There's no telling what was on that screwdriver!

Hhmmm. Guess that's all the excitement from around here. James comes home tomorrow and then it's back to the old grindstone. ;-) I talked to him tonight and he said that they had a really good Convention up there, although there were several who were unable to attend due to sickness and bad weather. I'm looking forward to the next Convention (two weeks from now) all the more after missing this one! Well, I'm off to... Hhmmm. Don't know what I'm going to do! But I'm off!

~Only Losing by 285 Points~

BECKI ;-)

P.S.--I almost forgot. Here are a few pictures I took the other day. Have you ever seen a kid put Lincoln Logs away like this?! For being so... well, so Sam (!), he is very organized. He's the one to go and line all of the shoes up in the closet or separate Legos according to color or size--or line up Lincoln Logs in the bin!

The kids have been begging James to jump on the trampoline with them ever since we moved it, but to no avail. The other day he came inside and said that he'd been on the trampoline and they were extremely distraught that he had done it without them. I told him it was cruel to have done such a thing and insisted that he go jump with them!

Here are the kids trying real hard to "bounce" their Dad...

And James' turn to bounce them...

And here's a game James invented. He calls it "Log Roll" and it, of course, involves rolling over one another...

The poor kids! Ha!

This is what is known as Trampoline Hair! :-)

Okay. That's all, folks! :-)

6 comments

Tammy! Where Are You?!

Posted by cokelady

This is so wrong. James is gone for the weekend and I'm home alone with the kids. This is supposed to be party time! Girl time! The time when Tammy can come over and we can spend all afternoon chipping away at our Eternal Rummy game! I can make taco salad (James doesn't like it) and Sam will come join us for dinner and then the three of us will play games well into the night. Maybe Tammy and I will watch a chick flick or something--but it's time to party in one way or another! But no more. ~sigh~ Tammy is 6 hours away and for the first time since moving to New Mexico, I'm lonely. Isn't that pitiful?! I hate hearing people say pitiful things like that. Oh, woe is me and all that stuff. But for the first time in years I actually miss my husband! It's not as terrible as it sounds, really! Ha! It's just that even when he was gone (before), there were plenty of things to do to fill my time and make life fun, -- but not now! "I am as a sparrow alone upon the housetop," Emilee! Ha! ~sigh~ Nevermind. Emilee won't be reading this anytime soon. She's at the District Convention that James is at. The one I'm missing so I can be home alone with nobody to party with. Oh, woe is me! Some more. ;-)

Yeppers, James is at the District Convention in Colorado right now. It's one of the very first things that I've missed and I'm not liking it one bit. Still, I'm sure it was the right decision. Our family is on the go soooooo much and it's so hard to maintain any kind of consistency for the kids. We came to the conclusion some time ago that our family suffers when we stay gone more that we're home and the kids just sort of fall apart on us. They do so much better (in every possible way: happiness, good attitudes, obedience, schooling, etc.) when things are regular for them--at least for a little while! So that fact (along with how expensive it is to take the whole family everywhere) made us realize that the kids and I are going to have to start staying home every now and again. We'll still attend all of the Regional functions, of course, but for the Convention that isn't in our district and for some of those Overseer visits we're just going to have to let James go alone. ~sigh~ So here we are.

James flew out of Albuquerque this morning and will be getting back on Monday. The kids and I are doing our best to party, even without Sam & Tammy. (It's just not the same though, Tammy!!!) We came home and had spaghetti-o's for lunch. Actually, the kids had that. I fried myself a hot dog and cooked some french fries so I could enjoy some Arctic Circle fry sauce for the first time in months. (Thanks again, Kasey!) We took a nap (fun for me, not so much for the kids), then we had a pizza party tonight, with popcorn and vanilla coke. We don't have a tv, so I dug around in the garage and found James' projector and a DVD player. :-) I decided to let the kids watch National Treasure. They saw part of it when we were in a motel sometime and were dying to watch the whole thing, so tonight was their night. They loved it--especially Joe. And especially because it was HUGE on the wall of the living room. It was fun! Tammy called while we were watching it, so it was nice to at least be able to talk to her. I'm going to have to see if we can set up a way to play our games on the Internet or something. ;-)

After we had devotions and I put the kids down I headed out to the garage again. You see, it's like this. James will be gone for Sunday services--visiting some churches in Colorado. We don't have a preacher to cover for him this week. That means I have to come up with something. It wouldn't be that big of a deal if it was "just us," but on Sunday mornings we can have between 30 and 40 people! (I'm amazed at the numbers of visitors!) I'm no preacher and I'm not about to pretend to be one. So I figured since I found the projector and a DVD player... :-) "Show a video!!!" Right, Mom?! Ha! That's the plan. I decided I would hook it all up at the church and after Sunday School we could watch a message from the Assembly or something like that. It's a little awkward, I know, but not nearly as awkward as me trying to cover the service myself! So I spent, oh, 45 minutes out in the garage tonight clawing my way through the mountain of boxes in search of the Assembly DVD's. I climbed up and over and sometimes tumbled into or off of all shapes and sizes of boxes as they collapsed under me. It's a pretty ugly sight out there after all that. But just as I was about to give up hope I did, indeed, find the Assembly DVD's! Wa-Hoo! I was afraid I was going to have to substitute a Veggie Tales or something. (Ha! Just kidding!) I also found a DVD of a message that Dad preached in Bessemer some time ago about the Pearl of Great Price. WOW, what a great message! I watched that one tonight so I could see how long it was and if it would be a possibility for Sunday. 40 minutes. Not bad for Dad! He seems to be getting longer winded in his old age. ;-) I never remember him being that way in my growing up years, but if he gets enough encouragement while he's preaching, well... :-) Anyway, I'm going to pray about it some more and look through the Assembly messages and try to figure out what to do. There's a CHANCE we may have an ABM boost Sunday morning (I'll have to find out tomorrow), but if not, I want to be prepared. It's nice to have a preacher in your pocket. (Or your DVD player, as the case may be!) The blessings of modern technology. :-)

I also ironed tonight. You'd never know it though. Didn't even make a dent in the mountain. I haven't ironed since we moved into the house a month ago. I ironed just enough for us to be able to make the trip to Arizona, then I ironed just enough for James to make this Colorado trip. I decided to move the mountain out of the closet yesterday and onto (and around) a chair in the living room. Maybe if I have to look at it I'll finally take care of it. We'll see! I'm hoping tomorrow will be my day to ascend the mount and press and prevail. ;-)

That's it for now. So many things to write about, but I (like my Dad?), seem to be too longwinded. I'm going to call it a night. Have a great weekend!

~Becki~

~Poor, Lonely Becki~

~Poor, Lonely I-Miss-You-a-Whole-Lot-Tammy! Becki~

;-)

6 comments

Joy Cometh in the Morning

Posted by cokelady

... Catastrophe hitteth by mid-morning.

What a glorious day this started out to be! No, wait. Let me back up a little bit.

What a terrible night last night was! We've been working on this stupid bathroom for days and days now and there is still no end in sight. It doesn't matter how hard you work and how much you do, remodeling projects have a way of multiplying before your very eyes. And often behind your back. There are innumerable evils to endure when you decide to remodel something, that's all there is to it. Last night I hit "the end." The part where I just want to scream or cry or run away, or do all three at once. I've been working and working and working, but every time I finish one project, three more appear. It wouldn't be so bad except that we were feeling like we were getting close to wrapping this thing up. Deferred hope maketh the heart sick...and the Hornes frustrated and irritable. That was me last night: frustrated and irritable. The kids were already in bed when it hit, so James was the lucky one to field all of my irritated babblings about this dumb bathroom and how it's just never... going... to end.

Due to the heavy fumes in the bathroom that had spread to our bedroom, James decided to sleep on the couch last night. (Or perhaps it was the irritated wife ranting and raving in the bedroom! Ha!) He's exrememly sensitive to such things and had been coughing and hacking throughout most of the evening. He knew he'd never be able to sleep in the bedroom, so he moved to the living room. I, on the other hand, have been exposed to a whole lot of heavy fumes in my day and most of them carry fond memories for me in one way or another. Don't bother me a bit. (Or perhaps they make me irritable...?) Anyway, I had the bed to myself last night, so I plopped myself right in the middle of it and spread out as far as I could. James is a pretty serious bed hog and I'm usually struggling to maintain 18" of the bed as "my own," so I made the best of being able to stretch out. It was great! The first enjoyable thing that had happened all night.

This morning was wonderful. I heard the kids get up, but since James was in the living room they took all of their early morning requests and babblings to him. I heard him tell them that their Mom had been working very, very hard this week and was very tired and that they were going to let her sleep in. WOW!!! What a wonderful husband I have!!! (I had been ready to take a baseball bat to him the night before, but no matter--) So sleep in I did. When I finally woke up, wrapped up in Granddaddy's fuzzy robe, and stumbled into the living room at 8:30 all of the kids were dressed, their beds had been made, there were freshly baked mixed berry muffins on the table and nice, soft music playing. ?! Better than Mother's Day!!! What a wonderful morning!!! And what a wonderful husband!!! I'm so glad I couldn't find a bat last night--I would have missed out on this terrific day! ;-)

We ate our breakfast and had devotions, then I told the kids to go play outside for a little while so I could paint the inside of the cabinet doors for the bathroom. Everything was going well and I was feeling blessed and cheerful, even though I was still in the midst of bathroom projects. I was humming along to the music, smiling, and painting away when suddenly I heard, "~GASP!~ Oh, nooooooo!!!" The scream had come from the bathroom and I could tell by the agony in the voice that it was truly a heartfelt and pained, "Oh, nooooooo!" I dropped my paintbrush and rushed into the bathroom to find...

James standing in the middle of a small, dark pond that was all over the bathroom floor. A small dark Special Walnut Minwax Stain pond, that is. Yeppers. He was working in there and set the can on the floor for just a second, turned around to do something, stepped back and ~ker-plunk~glug~glug~glug~ there it went. All of it. This is the bathroom we've been working on all week long. The bathroom that we've been changing absolutely everything in... except the floor. The tile floor and the big, nice bathtub were the only two things in the entire room that we were planning on keeping--"No need to change those. The tub is huge and neat, and the tile floor is sooooo cool--now there's a floor that's going to be great for the way we decorate!"

As you can see, the grout is supposed to be a light brown color. And large portion of it is now a very, very... well, Special Walnut kind of a color! When I saw the catastrophe (and the agony on James' face) I grabbed all of the cleaners I could find and flew back into the bathroom to get to work. We sopped up the pond with a roll or two of paper towels (last rolls--gotta get more soon!), then poured bleach and Comet and Oxy Clean all over the blackened areas and we grabbed some scrub brushes and got to work. After about 30 minutes we mopped up all of the cleaners and discovered that we had accomplished... nothing, of course!

Now, I have to say... as sad as it was that our nice tile floor was ruined, way deep down inside of me I was aware from the very beginning that this was one of "those things" that God uses to bring balance to our marriage. I am continually doing stupid things--big things, little things--just really dumb things. I have accidents of all natures on a regular basis and I forget and lose most anything of relative to major importance. James is the complete opposite. He so very seldom has accidents or forgets or loses anything at all (important or not) that sometimes I wonder if I married a human being or a machine. So when things like this happen it brings a sense of peace and wellbeing to me as an individual, and it brings a degree of balance into our marriage. If he would have been in any condition to hear it, I would have told James that he should be more like me. I mean, when you flub up all the time then it's no great shock when you pull "a big one." But for a guy who never does dumb stuff, it just about does him in when "a big one" occurs and he was the culprit. I spread my mistakes out evenly throughout the course of my life. James seems to store them up and then *wham-o!* he'll pull "a big one" and then have a heart attack over it. Like the time he set the diaper bag down in the parking lot and drove away... and we were on our way to the airport to fly to Pennsylvania... just after 9-11 and there was no way to get anywhere without proper ID... and we didn't realize the diaper bag was missing until we got to the airport... ~Ah, yes~ I love that story. (I hopped in the van and zoomed back to the motel and found the diaper bag still in the parking log, mugged, but with ID still intact!)

Anyway, it's been one of those days around here. We did the best we could to recover from the tragedy and then I looked up and saw James dabbing paint at the doors I had been working on earlier. "Are you really sure you should be doing anything with paint, James?" Tee! Hee! How fun it must be to to married to a fun-loving, understanding wife like me! ;-)

James had to run to the hardware store, so I decided to work in the bathroom for a little while myself. One of those "innumerable evils" I mentioned earlier is the loathsomeness of wallpaper and it's accompanying border. I mean, how hard can it be for some smart person to invent a paper that will actually stick to the wall like it's supposed to?! All of my hard work from a couple of nights ago was starting to peel up all over the place--in some places huge chunks had started pulling away from the wall. So I decided we should get some extra wallpaper paste and try to glue it back before we had naked walls and strips of paper laying in piles all over the floor. The wallpaper actually went back into place pretty well and some of the top edge of the border was willing to comply, but the bottom edge (which is "bumpy," not a straight light) isn't sticking anywhere. And on the two places where I tried to glue it down, it just made it worse. For real--it's curling up more fiercely than before! So I decided to make a truce with it. I agreed to leave the bottom edge alone if it would just not get any worse. We'll see if it will hold to it's end of the deal. Ha! In a bathroom, where it's going to be all steamy?! ~sigh~ Mom... help?!

James got a really, really cool faucet for in the bathroom and worked for the longest time trying to get it installed this afternoon. I studying the instructions for a while, too, and all we can figure is that there must have been a flaw in the design. Yet another roadblock. Just what we need today! Ha! But James is pretty good at being ingenuitive (well... sometimes!) and worked out an ulterior plan that turned out great! I was thoroughly impressed. So we now have a sink (however not caulked yet--I'm scared to death to do that!) and just a few seconds ago I saw him carry a nice, clean, new toilet into the bathroom, so that should be up and running shortly, too. The cabinet doors are about dry, so they'll be put on this afternoon as well.

Someday we're going to finish this bathroom, despite how fiercely it opposes being transformed into a decent room. We will not be bested by this dumb little 8x12' room, no siree!!! And one of these days, when we do win, I'm going to post pictures. Expect them about two months from now.

;-)

More to come, I'm sure.

5 comments

Dreadfully Busy

Posted by cokelady

You've no idea what we have to do! Busy! Busy! Shockingly busy! Much, much too busy for... well, not really. ;-) But we have been quite busy this week. It's been a good one.

We've been in high gear remodeling our first room in this new house of ours: the master bathroom. It's a strange place to start, I know, and I'm still not sure why we picked it first (James had reasons, but I can't remember any of them), but it feels good to be getting SOMETHING done! I'm anxious to post some before and after pictures (I actually remembered to take "before" pictures this time!), but we're not quite done yet. Even once we do finish it's going to look a little weird for a while just because this bathroom is so BIG (8'x12', to be exact) and I have no idea what to do with all of those great big walls! In any case, it's going to be fresh and clean and... well, very, very cabin-ish. :-) James started on the bathroom several days ago, but I only got involved yesterday. I cleaned up all of the nastiness (it took quite some time!), then started at the ceiling and worked my way down. Three colors of paint, some wallpaper and a border later and ~voila~ it looks like a new room! Today I painted the cabinets in there and tomorrow I hope to get the cabinet doors painted. We took them off so it would be easier--especially since they will be two-tone. Anyway, that's what we've been up to! Pictures soon to follow. :-)

I've also been playing around with some different paint combinations to use on my kitchen cabinets. They are going to be sooooo great! I'm so excited!!! I'm especially excited because...

Mom is coming!!! The tickets are so cheap through Southwest that James decided to fly her out here to help with some of the big projects we're going to be diving into. So she'll be here for a little over a week in the first part of April. It's going to be so fun!!! And this house is going to be soooooo great once we start getting some of these ideas of ours actually into effect. (Or is it affect?!) Wa-Hoo!

The kids are doing well. They spend a whole lot of time outside nowadays. Every now and again I'll see the top of a little black cowboy hat go bobbing past a window, usually with a long stick bobbing along, too. That's Sam. He's still short enough that all I can see is his hat. He and the dog rarely come inside--they were both made to run around the side of our "mountain." Katie and Joe spend plenty of time outside, too, and they really like the trampoline. (Sam likes it until somebody gets on and actually starts jumping--then the fun is all over!) Katie has been making crafts and Joe is doing great in math and Sam is finally kind-of-sort-of learning something in school. He's finally begun recognizing the beginning sound of each word. He still doesn't know his letters and which ones make which sounds, but if you tell him "'F' says, "fffff" he'll spend the next 5 minutes saying, "F-f-f-f-f-fish! F-f-f-f-f-fan! F-f-f-f-f-fun! F-f-f-f-f-freak!" And so on. This is a great accomplishment for our resident dunce. Ha! No, Sam is anything but a dunce. The kid is just as sharp as the others, he just doesn't have any interest in academics at this point. And that's okay. I kind of like the cowboy hat bobbing past the window. He should be outside exploring and finding bugs and catching bad guys right now--that's what God made little boys to do. There will be plenty of time for learning him something later on. ;-)

Speaking of dunces... James took Joe for a father-son outting today. He was going to take him out to lunch, but that's a bit of a problem up here. There aren't just a whole lot of restaurants here in the mountains! We've got a Subway (which Joe isn't crazy about) and Burger Boy--that's closed on Tuesday. And there are two Chinese restaurants. So they went to one of the Chinese places. Joe found "mixed vegetable soup" on the menu and decided to order it. (He's not a Chinese fan and this sounded safer than everything else.) It sound like there wasn't a single vegetable in it that he recognized! It was full of mushrooms and crazy beans and broccoli and those little corn-on-the-cob looking things. He sipped a little of the broth and really tried to be a trooper, but James said it was hilarious watching his expressions as he spooned through and picked up some strange and unknown object each time! Ha! Anyway, to the dunce part...

When they came home, James decided to show Joe how to open the gate for the van. Our entire yard is fenced and you have to get out and open a gate to be able to drive up to the house. Very inconvenient. Anyway, the gate doesn't swing open, it has a little wheel on it and you can push it sideways (parallel to the fence) to open it, then pull it back and "latch" it. James said the only real problem was that Joe couldn't figure out how to close the gate and be on the inside of it! Ha! He was on the outside when he opened it, so he just stayed on the same side when he slid the gate closed again. "Hey, Dad? Now what do I do???" It took some explaining and example before it finally occurred to Joe that he could step into the yard before he closed the gate! Ha! I can just picture him standing outside the gate, looking in with that befuddled look of his. "Now what???" That kid cracks me up!

Well, that's about it from here. I'm going to try to get to bed at a decent out tonight. I didn't finish up with the paint and wallpaper until after midnight last night (I did, however, stop long enough in the evening to make a nice meatloaf dinner for my family--I'm SOOOOO happy to have a real kitchen and a working oven again!!!), then I had to take a shower because I was covered in paint (I'm an even sloppier painter than I am a cook!), so it was after 12:30 before I got to bed. I hate that! I've been doing so much better at going to bed early since we moved here. I don't want to get into a bad late-night rut again! G'night!!!

~Becki~

3 comments

Joe & Dr. Jiggle

Posted by cokelady

I could share what we've been doing the past couple of days, but I figured this would be more interesting. But first, some background...

I'm sure I've mentioned before that I have two very cowardly boys. Tandem cowards they are, Joe and Sam. They refuse to go into any restroom without the other, especially if there is a noisy fan in the room. They have a real phobia about those automatic flusher toilets, but that's another story entirely. Sometimes at night one or the other (an on rare occasions, both) of the boys will come into our bedroom in or near tears and tell us of some scary dream they've had or something scary they are thinking of. We can usually just pray with them and send them back to bed. (By "we" I really mean me, since James usually sleeps straight through and never knows there was an issue.)

While we were living in the motel before getting our house, I noticed that every single time Joe went into the bathroom, he would start singing. Davy Crockett, of all things. He would walk into the bathroom and--without fail--as soon as the door clicked closed we would hear, "Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee, greenest state in the land of the free; raised in the woods 'til he knew every tree, kill't him a bar' when he was only three--Davy!!! Davy Crockett! King of the wild fronteer!" James and I thought it was hilarious and would sometimes beat Joe to it--before he'd have a chance to shut the door we'd burst out, "Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee...!" Ha! Anyway, one day I asked him why he sang that every time he went into the bathroom and he explained in typical Joe fashion, "Well, um... I think it might be so I won't be scared." Ah-ha! That had never occurred to me. Mom says when she was a kid she used to sing "Power in the Blood" when she was scared. Joe sticks stricty to Davy Crockett. ;-)

Anyway, the other day after I watched Dr. Jiggle and Mr. Sly with the kids... ~sigh~ You guessed it. At 3:45 in the morning a little boy appeared at my bedside. "Um, Mom... I think I was just thinking about something from Dr. Jiggle and..." ~SIGH~ "Oh, Joe!!!" I was too tired to even ask what specifically was scaring him, so I just started praying (though it was mostly half-asleep mumbling), "Jesus, please be with Joe and help him to not be scared and..." When I finished my mumbling Joe said thanks and trotted back to his bedroom. About 20 seconds later I heard the thump-thump-thump of him jogging back into our bedroom. "Um, Mom? Is it okay if I sing?" HA! I was soooooo tired. I said sure, as long as he sang quietly so he wouldn't wake Katie and Sam. I heard him thump-thump-thump back into the kids' room, and then loud and clear...

"BORN ON A MOUNTAINTOP IT TENNESSEE..." At 3:45 in the morning! Even at that hour, I couldn't help but laugh. That kid! Ha! He actually tried to be kind of quiet to begin with (things really echo in this house and always sound much louder than intended), but the longer he sang the louder he got until I was finally hearing his deep-down, from the heart, "DAVY-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y!!! DAVY CROCKETT!!! KING OF THE WILD FRONTE-E-E-E-E-E-E-R!!!!!" He sang that through a few times and then moved on to "My God is so Great" and "Priase the Lord, Amen, Amen." I was glad he finally got God involved instead of placing all of his trust in good ole' Davy. ;-) I have no idea how long he sang. I finally fell asleep after about 10 minutes and he was still going strong. I love that kid. :-)

Ah yes, and I didn't post pictures of Grace's wedding the other day. There were probably 100 or 150 people at the wedding, but there had to have been at least 3,000 cameras--it was crazy!!! So I just took a few pictures.

Here is the very excited and jittery groom, waiting for his bride...

Saying goodbye to Mom... Through the tunnel of bubbles...
One last pose for the paparazzi...
And then they were gone! After they kicked Jacob out of the backseat, that is. :-)

Okay, I've got to get busy. Have a great weekend!!!

~Becki~

5 comments

Thursday

Posted by cokelady

Several extremely funny things happened today. I'm sorry to say I can't recall a single one. I remember laughing... I just don't remember what at. Oh well.

We got up this morning and loaded up the crowd and drove down to Los Lunas (about 45 miles from our house) to visit Sister Sally. She's been sick and this was our first opportunity to go see her. She's doing much better now, thank the Lord, and we had a nice visit with her and a good prayer before we left.

We drove into Albuquerque and went to Lowes to do some mental shopping. I was just needing to LOOK and see what our options are so I can start getting a clearer picture of what should be done in this house of ours. We looked at light fixtures and cabinet/storage units, toilets and vanities, faucets, tile--you name it. Unfortunately everything we saw there now runs together in my mind, so it really didn't accomplish much. Still, it feels better having looked. Another problem was that every time we found ourselves looking at something we made the same statement: "Hhmmm... I wonder if that would work. We need to go home and measure!" Still, it was fun to look. The dreaming-it-up part is always fun and exciting and not painful like that actually-part-with-the-dough-and-BUY-it part. For somebody like me, anyway.

On our way back to the mountains this afternoon we decided to stop by the library. The East Mountain branch is 8 or 10 miles from here and is connected to all of the big Albuquerque libraries. We were all thoroughly impressed! Wow, what a great place! It's larger than I would have expected for a little mountain library and they've got a terrific kid section. The people there were very friendly, too. James took the kids to look up books on the computer while I stayed at the front desk to get a library card. In a few minutes Joe appeared behind me with huge, happy eyes and that doofy grin of his and said, "Mom! They have 20 Calvin and Hobbes books!!!" Ha! The lady informed me that they have the great big one, too, so I took Joe with me to go find it. You should have seen his face when I pulled it off the shelf. It's called "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes" and it's a very, very large hardback book that weighs almost as much as Joe does. Oh, to have had a camera! Ha! That kid looked like I'd just given him a million dollars. He toted the thing to the nearest seat and sat down and read and giggled until we were ready to go. I think we checked out 8 books total, but I was blown away to find out that I could check out as many as 50!!! (The limit in Andrews was 10.) And you can have as many as 40 on hold, you can check out 10 CDs, 6 DVDs or VHS... Amazing. And they even have a self check-out thing! I find them rather impersonal, but it's still kind of nifty! You just scan your card and all the stuff you want and march right out. :-) I'm sure we'll be visiting our library now that we've actually made it there the first time and discovered how great it is!

We had to hurry home because we had a guy coming tonight to come run some tests on our water. They had called last night and asked if they could come out and do that and said that if we'd let 'em they'd give us a $20 gift certificate for Chili's. I immediately had visions of that fantastic white chocolate cake thing with the raspberry sauce and... well, I said yes. What I actually said was, "Ma'am, you're just going to come out here and prove to us how terrible our water is and explain all of the different ways it's killing us, then tell us how we need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on your product so we won't die." She laughed and assured me that wasn't the case--they are just promoting water quality awareness, or some such hogwash. I was about to say no, but then I saw another vision of that white chocolate cake. Ha! What a sucker I am! The guy showed up and said it would take about 30 minutes (which is what they told me on the phone). The tests were really pretty cool and the kids thought it all very interesting. He did, indeed, prove that there is a big difference between water that came from our tap and the water that was run from our tap through his fancy little machine. At this point, tell us the price and we'll tell you if we're interested, you know?! But a salesman can't ever make it that simple. We had to sit down and watch and listen as he flipped through a mini-easel of diagrams and illustrations depicting the innards of the machine, a copy of the pattent, pictures of the inventors and the impressive factory where these things are produces and who knows what all. --All things that I couldn't care less about. I've seen what your product does. Skip all the extras and just tell me the price! When he finally did quote a price we almost laughed out loud. It was only about, oh, $4,000 more than we were expecting to hear! Ha! Can you imagine?! He was a nice enough guy and I felt bad for him, but we basically asked for our chocolate cake coupon and ushered him to the door. Unfortunately, he didn't give us a coupon for Chili's. He gave us a paper that we have to take into their store in Albuquerque and present, then they'll give us the coupon for Chili's. At least that was the story. There's probably another sales pitch involved at the other end. Ggrrrr. And, of course, it didn't take 30 minutes like promised (it would have if he would have skipped the dumb slide show and accompanying narrative!), it took an hour and 15 minutes. And we still have no cake coupon! ~sigh~ Live and learn. Maybe. ;-)

The kids are sacked out, James is, too, and I'm well on my way. James and I both have headaches today, although mine is very mild. I very seldom get headaches and when I do it's really more of a nuisance than actually painful. Still, my body is screaming for sleep, so I'm going listen.

~Becki~

4 comments

A Great Day!

Posted by cokelady

Ever since I was a boy in widely tailored pants,
My only aspiration was to be a gourd who danced;
But for what it's worth, my portly girth only served to make folks giggle,
'Cause the more I moved the more I proved all I could do was jiggle...
I want to dance! I want to groove!
I want to feel the rush of the wind under my shoes...
I want to dance!!!

Gold, Milward! That's gold!!! Lyrics like that don't come along every day, I tell you. As you may have guessed, the kids and I watched A Snoodle's Tale today for the first time in a long, long time. Possibly a year or more. The Snoodle part is okay, but the Dr. Jiggle & Mr. Sly part is sooooo great--especially if you've read the original work by Robert Louis Stevenson. You can't truly appreciate all of the humor otherwise. The book comes highly recommended. Not just so you can better enjoy Veggie Tales, but because it's a great book--and the spiritual parallels are quite profound. :-)

It's been a great day around here. Started with some good all-alone time with God, which is really the only right way to start a day. The kids had breakfast while I showered, then we headed into devotions and school. Katie was in tears for the first 20 minutes of school, then got all perky and whipped through the rest of it saying, "Wow, school is great--this is so much fun!!!" ~sigh~ Sanguine-Melancholies. They wear me out. About the time she got perky is when Joe fell to pieces. He's learning to subtract double digits and regroup and is completely freaked out by it. I wouldn't push the issue (he's only 6, you know!), but he is sooooo good at math and he is totally capable of doing this. He turns the page, sees something he's never done before, and gets that frustrated look on his face and says, "This is going to be hard, isn't it?!" Only if you make it hard, kid-o! I'm looking for a school day where everybody is cheerful at the same time... Does it ever happen???

We have a rabbit. A very large rabbit. I saw it sometime last week and took note as it hopped away from the dog that it was very close to the same size as the dog. The afore mentioned dog didn't even notice the monster rodent. What good is a dog like that?! Anyway, my Mom brought up an interesting point. If the rabbit is the same size as the dog (or nearly so) and the rabbit can find a way to get in the yard, then the dog... I felt certain he couldn't escape because if it was possible he would have already done it. Nonetheless, I went out and walked the entire fence line today, looking for holes and filling possible ones with rocks. We've got such a great yard! This is the first time I've seen every inch of it and it's no wonder the kids are outside all the time--it's terrific! Back to the rabbit, I'm assuming he must've come through the gate the one night that we left it open for a few hours (we didn't know we'd be gone that long) and is now trapped in the yard. If he does have a way out, I'm sure he never would have come back. I mean, no rabbit in it's right mind would come a second time to a yard with three small children and a hyper poodle (oblivious as he may be) running amuck, so he must be stuck. Stuck or not in his right mind. Rabid, perhaps?! Ha!

Katie came and asked if I'd go jump on the trampoline with them today. We've lived here three weeks or so (although we've been gone half of that time!) and this is the first time I stepped foot on the thing. Ha! If only it were that easy! It's rather embarrassing to have your children say, "Whatcha' doing, Mom? ...Trying to get on?" I mean, shouldn't that be obvious?! Ha! This trampoline doesn't have the nifty blue cover over the springs that most of them do, so I was trying to figure out a way to get on without getting pinched. Once I finally got there (!), it was a lot of fun! Kind of reminded me of the good old days up at Papa Jerry's house in Idaho, playing Crack the Egg or something like that with Emilee and Libby and my cousin Chuck--even Tim Cox from Virginia once. It's amazing how much deeper I sink into the middle nowadays. Amazing and a little disturbing. Almost as disturbing as it was to discover my bag of "fat clothes" when we were moving. I pulled a bag with that title out of the top of my closet and began sorting through it. It was all of the clothes I wore in my post-pregnancy/pre-loose-any-weight days. I was thinking, "Oh, yeah! I remember that skirt!" and I suddenly found myself thinking, "Hey... that looks the same size as the skirts I'm wearing now!!!" Sure enough, some of those "fat clothes" fit just fine. ~sigh~ I thought I was doing pretty well, but I guess the truth is out now. Oh well. At least it's as if I have a bunch of new clothes to wear again! :-)

I got all of the laundry done today and several other projects around the house, although I can't recall them all now. I know I moved all the furniture and cleaned the floors in the living/dining room. I still haven't had the time to do the great big hands-and-kness-scrub job that it needs yet. I just keep sweeping, vacuuming, or running a mop over it! One of these days. Still, it feels better than it did before the quickie job. I even mopped the nasty kitchen floor. I hate that floor. When we moved in it was grotesque. Any time anything wet touched it it would create actual MUD. That's just wrong!!! Anyway, things are looking better around here, but I'm going to have to find a way to stay home more if I expect to get things really whipped into shape. Oh yeah, I scrubbed the bricks around the fireplace tonight, too. Used a stiff brush and just about the whole can of oven cleaner. It helped a lot, but there are still some black marks that I can't get off. I'll have to work on it some more one of these days, but I ran out of steam tonight.

I dug out three or four boxes from the garage that said "Bec's Computer" on them and pieced the thing together today. So it's up and running now. Kind of. The batteries are dead in the mouse and we don't have any extras. So I'm still using the laptop right now. But maybe by tomorrow I'll have my computer up and going again!

At lunch time I threw some Totino's in the oven and hooked my computer speakers up to the laptop, put in A Snoodle's Tale and declared it Pizza Party time. :-) We have no TV at this point, so the laptop serves nicely for those every now and again things.

The kids all got baths today. I love the mountains, but the kids (and dog!) get soooo dirty up here! Oh well. It's the price you must pay. And it's well worth it. Gotta find the motivation to bathe the dog one of these days. He stinks.

I cooked my very first real meal tonight! Wa-Hoo! Spaghetti with meat sauce, ham and cheese stromboli, and garlic cheese toast. Yum! You can tell it's been wa-a-a-a-a-ay too long since you've cooked when you have a hard time recalling the particulars of how to make spaghetti! Ha! I really did struggle. "What do I do next? And when should I start that???" It turned out GREAT though. Except the stromboli. I'm having some real troubles with this new, glorious oven of mine. I've only used it a few times (pizza, pizza, and this stromboli), but the bottom of whatever is in there gets burnt while the middle isn't quite cooked through yet. ?! Tonight it was BLACK on the bottom, but the dough wasn't done in the middle. What's the problem?! I think the temperature was correct (although I could be wrong--I was going from memory and it has been a long time!) and the rack was in the middle... ??? Help?!

After baths I sat down and played a game with the kids. "Whoonu" by Cranium. The kids seemed to really like it. I think it's great that they're getting old enough to play some games that are actually a little bit fun. I love games. :-)

That's it for the day. I guess I should try to fill you in on our trip. I don't remember much, so you're in luck! ;-)

We drove to Arizona on Thursday, found Mom & Dad and went out to eat with them and Grandma Bunny. We went back to Grandma's and visited for a little while before going to our 2 bedroom "suite" for the night. Ha! The place was... Well, let's just say it left some to be desired. I would have desired carpet that wasn't torn and stained, for starters. I won't list all of the issues. I will, however, mention the worst one: the bed. I think it's the worst bed I've ever slept on in my whole life. It was kind of like sleeping in a hammock... Made of cardboard. It had the "give" of a hammock, but the slight resistance and "crunch" of cardboard. James was already in bed the first night when I went to get into bed. I sat down and did all I could to stifle a scream as I went tumbling over into the middle of the bed, where James had already surrendered to the "hole" there. I spent the first two nights laying on my left side hanging on for dear life all night long. After that I made James trade sides with me so I could sleep on the other side and hang on with the other arm, just for a change! Ha! It was terrible. But definitely a memory!!! Gotta love those.

Friday morning was spent running around town the Dad and James and the kids, then the afternoon was spent running around with Mom and trying to help out with wedding stuff. The wedding itself was like every other: laden with stress and mishaps, fights and tears, screaming and slapping... Okay, not exactly. There were, of course, a few small hitches, but they were worked out and the wedding turned out beautiful. Grace was a beautiful bride, as we all knew she would be. It's still really weird though. This is the first KID that I've known all my life who's gotten married (at least, the first one who's wedding I've been able to attend) and it was very, very strange. Still, I'm really, really glad we were able to be there. It was a neat wedding with a little bit of everything. I laughed. I cried. It moved me, Bob. ;-) Uncle Colin even threw in the classic line, "Marriage... marriage is what brings us together today." The only thing that could have made it better is if he would have used the proper voice and pronunciation. Ha! Jake & Phil sang and played great--I was wowed all over again--and Paul sang two songs to Grace. Ah, yes. Paul. I can honestly say that in all of the weddings I've been to, I have never, ever seen a groom so completely and totally enthralled with his bride! He smiled, he cried, he trembled, he fidgeted, and he simply could not take his eyes off of her. Had I been witness to this type of behaviour for the months leading up to the wedding I would have been thoroughly disgusted (ha!), but in the wedding itself it was sooooo great! It was just sooooo fun to watch him! :-)

I was going to post a few pictures, but I figured I should wait and ask some Shuler or Alexander permission first. The bride might wanna see them first, you know! :-)

The wedding was fun and we enjoyed being with all of the friends and family for the weekend. We had a big family lunch on Saturday to celebrate Grandma Bunny's 91st birthday, so that was nice, too. I regret that we weren't able to spend any real time with Devin and Lyndi, though. Just never seemed to work out. Next wedding, maybe. Jake??? (KIDDING--I'M JUST KIDDING!)

It was great to be with Mom & Dad for the weekend, too. And we had a good service on Sunday with some folks who are possibly going to be joining the Church in the near future. :-) That's exciting! Please be praying for them. They need some teaching and training (they've been away from the Church too long, if you know what I mean!), but we have high hopes for them.

I think that's about it. As usual, it's more than enough. Right now I'm typing away while James is banging away, installing a door between the master bedroom and master bathroom. ~SMILE~ It's moments like this that I love him a whole lot!!! What kind of a moron builds a house and doesn't put a door on the bathroom?! Married or not, that's just gross!!! James is quite familiar with my feelings on the subject (I'm sure you can imagine) and is tired of getting up in the middle of the night and walking to the other end of the house to get to a bathroom. Thus, the door. It'll make him happy, it'll make me happy. What a good husband I have. :-)

I'm going to call it quits for the night. Tomorrow we're planning on doing some visiting. It's been a while since we've had a chance to do that and one of our members has been sick and needs a visit and a good prayer. So that's the plan for tomorrow morning. Hope you all have a great day!

~Becki~

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