Mid-Day Blog!

Posted by cokelady

This never happens! But the house is clean (finally!!!), James took Sam with him to run some errands and have Chinese for lunch, Katie and Joe are all done with school for the day and are outside playing until lunchtime... so here I am!

It's been a busy couple of days, as usual. Wednesday was James' birthday. The kids had done quite well not blurting out what they had bought him the night before, but we figured he should open presents right off the bat before they lost it.

Sam got a flashlight "for Dad." Of course, I'm not sure James has touched it outside of the wrapper... but the batteries are surely almost dead by now!

Joe got him a tape measure...and a carton of Whoppers. :-)
And Katie got a set of pliers.
I got him a set of those soft sheets he likes so well. They feel pretty stiff to me--I'm hoping they soften up a lot after being washed a few times! Ha!

James decided he wanted to hit the road and make a day of it, so we loaded up and headed north on Highway 14 toward Santa Fe. There's this cute little former ghost town called Madrid not too far from here and James thought it might have some neat stuff there. Ha! Apparently a bunch of Hippies moved in and took over in the 70's 'cause everything there is creepy! The only thing that looked like it might be neat was the Old Mine Museum & Restaurant... but it was closed. It was nearing lunchtime, so we thought we'd try the soda fountain we'd seen down the road a bit. Now you have to understand, James has a real fixation with soda fountains--would LOVE to own one some day, full of all of the old-time original stuff from back in the 40's or something. Well, we walked in this store and were overwhelmed by the New Aginess of it! Ha! It was nothing but weird rocks and charms and sculptures and who-knows-what-all. They had some of that terrible incense stuff in there that comes in all sorts of differnt offensive aromas, probably used in some sort of "make yourself well" religion. The brand name was Evolve and it had a picture of a sick looking Earth with the motto, "Change is Good." Bleagh!!! The look and smell and feel of everything just sort of gives you the willies. It reminded me of about 15 years ago when the whole "New Age" thing was really going nuts and you could just feel that spirit some places. Our family took a trip to a GORGEOUS little town in Colorado called Teluride... Ha! Never again! The setting was out of this world beautiful, but everything else was... well, out of this world, but... !!! I remember seeing bulletins posted for you to call so-and-so if you wanted to locate your "spirit guide" and such creepiness. Anyway, it was the same kind of feel in this "soda fountain." That's just wrong!!! I did see a little Coca-Cola sign way at the back of the store (apparently where they were hiding anything that didn't fit into the wacky spiritual stuff), but we weren't about to "partake" of anything in a place like that! Ha! We decided to blow that joint (no pun intended--HA!) and kept heading toward Santa Fe.

There is a place just south of town that's called Rancho de something-or-another... it was a great big, long name that I can't pronounce. Anyway, it has lots of buildings that are 100 or 200 years old and they have people posted here and there in period costumes to tell you all about life way back then. They say it's like Williamsburg... but New Mexico style! Some of it was very interesting, but other things were some more of that weird spiritual stuff! The whole Spanish Catholic thing with all of the statues gives me the creeps about like all of the New Age stuff does. You know, the little shrine on the top of the hill where they would go to pray to the patron saint of whatever and ask for a good crop and whatnot. Freaky. It's always so weird to me when people make gods out of anything and anyone but the true and living God! ANYWAY... the coolest thing was the old school house.

It was built in 1880, I believe, and there was a "teacher" there to show the kids what school was all about back then. Did you know they had a whole hour each day devoted to teaching manners and proper etiquette?! Wow. We should do that!!! Ha! (I feel especially strongly about it after our lunch of grilled cheese and ramen noodles today!)

Fitting, isn't it?

Aside from the Catholic stuff, there was one other troubling thing we encountered. There is a mile and half long trail that you walk, from one building to the next, as you tour this place and there's a little bridge with a shallow pond underneath it. Well, there were these people there who had brought a picnic lunch with them. That's cool. They let their kids play in the water. That's cool. The kids were BUCK NAKED. That's not cool!!! I couldn't believe it!!! And there was NO other way to go. You had to walk over the bridge to get anywhere--or back. I was sooooo frustrated. What kind of parents let their children play buck naked--even in the privacy of their own home or backyard--much less on the path of a trail that hundreds of people might be taking on that particular day?!?!?! What is WRONG with people?! These weren't babies either (not that I personally would've thought it was acceptable then either). One of them had to be 3 or 4 years old. Gross!!! Our kids were greatly troubled, too, and nearly fell off the bridge several times because their faces were turned fa-a-a-a-ar away from the eekness below. Worst of all, I forgot to mention it to the lady at the front when we left. I'm sure the people who toured after us didn't appreciate the "period costumes" under the bridge any more than we did. ~sigh~ Hippies.

Fortunately, the creepy statues and eek children were only a small portion of what we saw. :-) Everything else there was pretty cool! This is a house that has been used in numerous movies... the only one I remember by name is Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid.

This used to function, but no more. Sad. Still--it was really neat.

This place was arranged, like most attractions we've visited, so that the first half of the tour is all downhill. Meaning that after you're hot and tired, you have to climb back UP the hill in the heat of the day, with your shaky jell-o legs and whiny children. Joe was cracking us up. Sooooooo pitiful. They had jugs of water back up at the entrance/exit, but I told Joe he wasn't allowed to have any until he let me take his picture. Ha! What a crab!!!

Once we left the Rancho What-Have-You Place it was about 1:30 and we were famished. We drove into Santa Fe and the birthday boy chose Red Lobster. Of course, being Santa Fe, it was an adobe Red Lobster!

The restaurant was right next to a mall, so we decided to check it out. In the end, I came away from Christopher & Banks with two new shirts for $10 (total!) and the kids had a ride on the carousel. Happy Birthday, James! Ha! How sad.

I drove us home after that, but just barely! I was soooooo tired. I even pulled over once and got out and walked around a bit. I prayed hard and GOD HELPED US to make it home safely... at which point I crashed on the couch for about an hour!

I made a fantastic birthday dinner of a grilled roast beef sandwich and ramen for James. (Hey, it's what he asked for!) Then, to satisfy the children, I helped them bake a cake. James doesn't particularly care for cake, but the kids find it extremely disturbing that someone could have a birthday without a cake. Look at that smoke! 29 candles. :-)

Yesterday was supposed to be finish-cleaning-the-house-up-after-Camp day since Wednesday had been birthday-outing day. But instead we loaded up again and went into Albuquerque. James had received a coupon to one of the antique stores there and wanted to check some things out. I need a desk and Katie will need a dresser at some point. We found a couple of things we really liked, but want to think about it a while first. I'd so much rather pay to have an old fashioned piece of real wood funiture than to pay the same amount or more for a new piece of fake wood furniture somewhere! It was fun to look around, even if we don't end up with anything for a while yet. :-) We had to go to Wal-Mart before coming home, but it wasn't as bad as usual. We had a good time, even there!

When we got home last night I went to work on the house again and actually FINISHED! We are finally totally unpacked and the bedrooms are put back together, closets and dressers cleaned out and organized. Mostly. ;-) ~sigh~ It felt so good to get up this morning and not have to play catch-up! Everything was already in order, so we just hopped right into breakfast, devotions and school--just like we're supposed to! It was GREAT! :-)

I managed to the get the Spanish Western Skies formatted last night and James got it printed today, so that means the next big project is putting together a Camp paper. :-) I'm not going to post any Camp pictures on my blog until after I'm finished with that paper and have it mailed out. I don't want everybody to get their paper and just set it back down because they've already seen it all, you know! I'm clever that way. Ha! We'll see!!!

Okay, it's back to work. I need to get the school table cleaned and put away, then start on that Camp paper, Sunday School class, or VLB service. Eenie-meenie-miney-moe... Then, of course, there is the mountain of Camp and Convention ironing awaiting me... Hhmmm. Perhaps a nap. Kidding--I'm just kidding! I'll do something good, I promise. :-) Until next time...

~Bec~

Ah, yes--here are some pictures of my new rugs, Bekah.

Try not to pay too much attention to the chairs that don't exactly match. ;-) They are WORLDS better than the other ones, and I have grand and glorious plans for these chairs... someday! For now, just look at the nifty braided rug--in a rectangle! :-)

7 comments

Some Fun Pics

Posted by cokelady

It's been another long, but productive day around here today. My rugs came yesterday. I had ordered them from Aunt Sue a couple of weeks ago and they finally came... but my house was so trashed there was no putting them out! So I worked really hard today to get the piles of laundry off the floor (!), got all of the dusting done, and moved all of the furniture and did the big scrub job on all of the tile floors except for the kids' room. It feels sooooo much better! And I know have a couple of GREAT, country, braided rugs--one in the living room and one under the dining table. They are the same pattern, but the one in the living room is the traditional oval while the one in the dining room is rectangle. I love 'em!

I managed to get all of that done (although both bedrooms are still trashed--that's tomorrow's project) and get everybody all cleaned up in time to go to the library, then go into town early so everybody could do some shopping for James. Tomorrow he will be a whoppin' 29 years old! AMAZING. If you didn't know you'd guess at least, what... 84??? Ha! It is pretty crazy. Anyway, the kids had a good time shopping for Dad and were all willing to part with a few dollars to get a little something for him. They actually did pretty good. Initially Sam was wanting to get him a bow and arrow or some such thing, but they finally tried to grasp the concept of buying something they think DAD might want instead of something THEY want. :-)

We had a good BTI service tonight--studied outward adornment. James took us through the Church's tract on it, as well as some church history about the splits in the 20's and 90's.

Well, I'm bushed. But I put a whole slew of pictures up for you, although they're not all of Convention.

This is Sam wrestling a tree...

The day Mom & Dad got here...

Ha! Love these ones. This is Brother Dustin trying desperately to keep hidden the pretty, girly purse in his left hand...

Ha! Look at him go! :-)

Trying to get a good picture of Grandma and Abbie... not so easy! Ha! Abigail is such a cheeseball!

Handsome Sam...

You'll be glad to hear that the following craziness took place AFTER Convention. They guys were in some sort of competition to see who could jump and touch the whatever-it-is. This is Keven Lewis... I think he got it a time or two.

Jon... Believe it or not, he was pretty consistant. He can somehow out jump most of the others!

Chris Clarkson... No problem! He even looks like he's having fun!

I had several pictures of Brother Dustin... but I'm too nice to post them all. (I must be going soft! Ha!) All I can say is that he had GREAT form! ;-)

Doing the guy thing... Gotta prove just what it is they are conquering, you know. :-)

Somebody mananged to throw something into the globe of this light, so it had to be fetched. Good thing they had Philip around! And a nice stool for him. :-)

Some of our fathers with their Father's Day gifts: Coca-Cola and beef jerky. What could be better?! (Great job, Tammy!) :-)

That's it for now. I'm not going to post any Camp pictures for a while. I have a plan. :-) They'll come, it'll just be later than sooner. Have a great day!

~Rebekah~

9 comments

Regional Convention Pictures

Posted by cokelady

Tammy was smart enough to take notes during Camp and Convention (let's not talk about the ones I lost) and she has put so much great stuff on her blog! So... I encourage you all to go over there to read what she has posted, 'cause you ain't gonna find it here! :-) I will, however, post some pictures. I'll start with some Convention stuff tonight. Tammy and I have always been a pretty good team. She'll tell you about everything, and I'll show you! That works, hu?! :-)

One of our impromtu flag marches...

We had time on the program for a special tribute to John Clarkson. Although it wasn't planned, everybody in the Convention came up front to greet and hug and pray for the Clarkson family. It was beautiful. There is so much love in The Church of God!

A special plaque was presented to Sister Clarkson in honor of her husband's service to God and the Church in this region.

Not sure how this picture made it in with the serious ones (I intend to post the fun ones next time), but this is the Shulers helping Jon out... who was helping me out with the boost for the Western Skies. :-) It turned out better than I ever could have imagined! Ha!

Mama singing a special

This is Brother Gutierrez (that can't possibly be spelled right... somebody help!), the pastor of our new Spanish church in Phoenix. It was so wonderful to have him and his wife with us, along with another couple. They were a great blessing to us and I believe they were blessed as well. :-)
The VLB March

Have you ever noticed that every picture of Brother Rob Hawkins is nothing but a blur???

:-) It was SUCH A BLESSING to have Brother Hawkins with us. He has a special place in our hearts out west, although he wasn't here for as long as we would have liked. ;-) God really used him to speak to the Convention and to be the wonderful blessing that he always is. Not to mention the energy he brings with him!

We had such wonderful altar services at the Convention and several experiences. I'll have to ask James about the exact amounts--he never forgets stuff like that!
One of the great highlights for me was Brother Olivarez's testimony. I believe he said that he had recently had surgery (or was he about to go in for surgery?!) on his arm and that he was supposed to wear that sling for 6-8 weeks.
He testified to the Lord touching him and removed the sling and we all rejoiced with him over his wonderful healing! It is so marvellous to see God doing the things that we used to hear about Him doing. :-)

That's it for the pictures. There will be more to come, I'm sure. I'm trying to pace myself. Ha! I took the first two off entirely after we got home! I was feeling pretty sick on Saturday night (sounds like several of the Camp crew were feeling that way!), but was perfectly well by Sunday morning--Praise the Lord. Oh! I've got to say this--

There is a 15 year old kid who comes to church with his family here in Albuquerque on Sunday mornings. His name is Aaron and he's a really nice kid. We were able to get him to Family Camp and boy-oh-boy did he enjoy himself! He got down in the altar and was involved in the mighty moves of God there and he came home saved and sanctified. His Mom and Dad both testified on Sunday about the change in him. They said that from the moment he got home from Camp he has been a different kid. They can see it in his eyes and he's just so happy and peaceful. :-) PRAISE THE LORD! Aaron himself (who has never spoken a word in church before) stood and thanked God for what He did for him at Camp--and requested prayer for an uncle of his and for a couple of the kids he met at Camp who have difficult situations at home to deal with. After church he was telling me how he had already tried to talk to a cousin of his about the Lord. He was pretty much mocked, I think, but not discouraged. Please pray for him--I know this is something that he's never experienced before and we have no other young people here locally for him to serve God along side of. That makes it tough. I pray that God will move and we'll soon have a youth group here--wouldn't that be wonderful?! :-)

Today has been a busy, busy day. I finally decided I was going to have to do something. :-) We had managed to unload everything from Camp, but that's as far as we'd gotten. Everything has been scattered all over the house (worst ever???) and you couldn't even walk through. I've worked sooooo hard on it today but somehow there's still quite a bit to be done tomorrow! It always amazes me the amount of laundry there is to do after Camp. It's only a week, you know?! But it's a dirty, nasty, filthy week! Ha! I also felt it necessary to wash all of the blankets that we took to Camp (those of you familiar with Mountainair will understand why!), so that's added to the laundry, too. Our morning was interrupted by another snake sighting at the pond. Sammy was able to nab this one for us, too, and relocate it up the hill. I pitched the tent on the front deck for the kids to play in today since I knew I'd be swamped with laundry and housework. Didn't seem to help too much. They pretty much just fought over it. I've been ready to kill all of 'em since we got home from Camp. They run soooooo hard all week long at Camp, they eat more junk food (snack shack) than they get the whole rest of the year put together, it seems (!), they're up early in the morning and way, way late at night--and by the end of the week they are so out of whack that they completely flurb out on me. Some kids go to Camp and come home saved. My kids leave Camp a bunch of little monsters! In fact, they may not be allowed to go next year! Ha! They were all in bed promptly at 8:00 tonight. Surely by tomorrow things will be better. Right???

I'd better go to bed just in case things aren't better tomorrow. G'night!

6 comments

The Post Party Crash

Posted by cokelady

That's what we are experiencing today. We had a great time with Mom & Dad, a fantastic Regional Convention and a truly terrific Family Camp, followed by lots of fun with our overnight company last night. We managed to look alive and keep on enjoying it all to the fullest until the guests pulled out of the driveway this morning. We walked back into the house, plopped down and thought about all we have to do now to recover from the trip. We quickly decided against doing anything and opted to watch a movie instead! After that we ate some sandwiches and laid down for a nap. Is that a worthless day, or what?! I've been trying to pull myself out of the nap for the past hour or so, but now I have a bit of a headache and a very severe case of the grogs.

In all truthfulness, I didn't really intend to blog about Camp. I had determined that we would put together a full 12 or 16 page Camp paper and I worked on it all throughout the week, carrying the laptop hither and yon, recording all of the happenings and getting pictures and information from all of the teachers about their classes and whatnot. All was going well until the last night of Camp when I LOST IT ALL. Because I'm an IDIOT. I really don't want to talk any more about it. Let's just say I now have zip to work with. My memory is meager at best, so who knows all the things I won't be able to include in the paper now! Anyway, after putting so much time into reporting on Camp I didn't feel like blogging about it, too. Still don't. And I'm not! Not right now anyway. I may feel inspired later on to play catch-up on my writing, but not at this moment. Instead I'll just show you the proof of a truly good time...

This is, of course, the game of Balderdash. If you'll look closely however, you will see the perfectly even distribution of Coke that is splattered about the table and game board. If you have spent any time in the study of splattering, you will recognize this as the evidence of the perfect "Pppfffffftttttt," which is, of course, the technical term for when one takes in a mouthful of soda at the exact moment of an unexpectedly hilarious happening, resulting in the marvellous spray of spit and soda up to a distance of 4' in tiny droplets and even mist form. An art form, for sure. This occurred last night while the Hays were with us and we all laughed until we were struggling for breath and our insides were sore and achy. ~sigh~ There is nothing better in all the world! Ha! THANK YOU FOR COMING, JAMEY! I know you were tired and ready to be home... but just think of all the great new memories we have now! :-)

That's it for now. If I get prepared for Sunday School unexpectedly early, perhaps I'll be back. As Joe would say: "Maybe... maybe not!"

;-)

8 comments

Last Post for a While!

Posted by cokelady

That is, of course, because Mom & Dad are coming tomorrow. Wa-Hoo!!! The house has been scrubbed top to bottom (well... that's probably a bit of a stretch--but it's as good as it's going to get!), I'm well on my way to being packed for Camp and Convention, and I can't even count the number of times I've been "caught up" on laundry in the past few days. Every time I finish the laundry and iron everything up there seems to be another pile in need of the same. Laundry is such a frustrating chore. You think you're all done, but inevitably your family is wearing clothes at that very moment (at least I hope so!) that are going to need laundered as soon as they take 'em off. I've got "just one last load" in the dryer right now. Again.

The biggest excitement we had today was more snake snatching. I was sitting at my computer and I glanced out the window just as James went running across the porch, hoe in hand. James does not run. Coupled with the fact that he was carrying a long and lethal object I gathered that it must be another snake. I went running outside for to join the excitement and found James at the pond with the long pool net stretched into the pond. He had the "big" snake (18-20" instead of 12") trapped on the bottom of the pond and was screaming for Sam to come help. Pretty soon there were three kids and a dog pondside. Sam yanked his shoes and socks off and I lowered him into the pond, he grabbed the snake by its head and I pulled him out of the pond. Our hero! Again! Sam dropped the snake once out of the pond, but I was able to step on it and hold it steady for James before it disappeared under a rock. It occurred to me after a few moments that I was standing on a snake--something that would generally give me the willies and make me jump and (I'm ashamed to admit) probably scream--but it didn't bother me this time. We were in a family effort to catch the big, bad snake and the adrenaline was pumpin'! James killed this one 'cause he was good and mad at it. This snake was a little bigger than the others and when James first saw it the snake was chasing one of the fish that James just added to the pond yesterday. The snake almost nabbed it by the tail. That's when James decided the snake would DIE and went running for the hoe! Ha!

That's about all the news from here. Like I said, Mom & Dad will be coming tomorrow and we'll have a nice, relaxing day. Convention starts on Friday and we'll all be moving into the Howard Johnson to help out with the room quota. (If we have enough rooms rented we get the Convention Center for free.) We are looking forward to a WONDERFUL Convention and expect some visitors from several different locations. Please pray for God to have his way! Convention ends on Sunday, then Monday morning we'll do the grocery shopping for Camp (which will be soooooo much easier, thanks to Cathy and her excellent prep work!) and head to Mountainaire for a fantastic week of Family Camp! Wa-Hoo! I'll try to post lots of pictures when we get home. Chances are you won't be hearing from me before then. After all, I'll be with PEOPLE! :-)

In closing, I'll post some pictures of the master bathroom. It's the first room we did, but somehow I never posted pictures of it! So here they are...

Before...