...for ironing. I ironed four of James' shirts, two of Katie's dressed, and a dress shirt for each of the boys. I looked at the pile remaining and thought... "Ah, I'd rather blog." ;-) At least I got started. I've been trying to work up the inspiration to tackle that project for days now. Maybe tomorrow will by my lucky day. Or maybe not.

Today was a good and bad day. Had to make some phone calls that didn't exactly turn out the way I had hoped. All of you regional people, don't kill me... I had to schedule Camp the week BEFORE Convention for next year. UGH. It just makes me sick! It's sooooooo much better to have Camp after Convention (90% of our folks expressed that, some quite strongly!), but believe it or not, Mountainair is booked that week--and the Howard Johnson only had one weekend available in June, so we couldn't switch those dates. I gasped when the mayor told me that week was booked. It was everything I could do to keep from saying, "WHAT?! Who on earth is willing to go to that campground and pay to stay there and repair everything on it all week long--other than us?!" Ha! Anyway, God knows. There must be a reason.

In other news, we had plumbers here this morning for way too long. I know it was way too long because James told me about the bill. GOOD GRIEF. You could almost send a kid to college for what it costs to purchace a new sprayer and diverter and have plumbers install it (along with your OLD faucet unit) in a Roman tub. It just turns my stomach. Still, it saved us a little bit to re-use the old unit instead of buying a new one.

Then this afternoon we had a guy up to give an estimate on installing the wood laminate floor for us in the kitchen and utility room. He was, oh, 6'5" (I'm a really bad judge of actual inches, so let's just say "really tall") and quite friendly. Before he started measuring he slapped a book down on the table and said I could look through it if I wanted to see pictures of some of his work. The first picture I saw just about took my breath away--the house was AMAZING. "Wow," I said, "that's some ceiling." "Yeah," he said casually. I kept flipping through the book and was becoming more and more intimidated all the time. This guy has done some fancy-schmantzy floors in some super swanky houses. --No, not houses. Mansions. I looked around our unfinished and unpretentious little two-bedroom log cabin and had to giggle. "You work in some really nice houses," I said, trying to conceal my smirk. "Yeah, I used to live in California. That's where a lot of those pictures are from." "Ah," I said, as if I understood that everybody in California has a billion dollars and kitchens as big as my house. I flipped the page and saw a "blonde" lady (too old to be TRULY blonde--you know!) who was just beaming with happiness as she stood atop her newly installed swanky wood floor. "That's Barbara Eden," he said. "Hu?" I said. "Ever seen 'I Dream of Jeannie'?" Ha! It was her--really and truly! But with clothes on--a marvellous improvement! ;-) This dude works for RICH people. Celebrities and millionaires. But apparently he also works for preachers who purchace ripped up little houses to fix up and hopefully end up with a rewarding investment. Actually, we don't know that he works for preachers like that. We haven't received his estimate yet. He's the guy that Lumber Liquidators (the people we're getting the flooring from) got us in contact with--and they're not hoity-toity at all. We'll just have to wait and see. The bad news is that this guy is already booked for the next month! We were hoping to get this DONE. Like, by Friday! Ha! Not really, but SOON.

School went pretty well today. The kids (Joe, really) are a little bit *yeagh* getting started after being spoiled on no school for so long. And I'm afraid it's going to get worse. I think it's time to start "upping" Katie and Joe's schooling. We've always just used the comprehensive curriculum books from Sam's Club (Ha! Crazy, hu?!) and I'm really glad that we went that route. I just never could see paying hundreds of dollars on curriculum for those first few years, you know? Katie and Joe are both superb readers, Joe is an amazing speller, they both do well at math and comprehension... I would call that successful. But it's time to start including some things we haven't done up to this point and I'm looking into some different options. Ooooooh, I hate decisions like this! Most of the curriculum that you look at is soooooo extensive! I don't want my kids, at ages 6 and 7, to be loaded down with hours upon hours upon hours of bookwork. We need something that is much looser and more flexible, but something that is more intense than what we've been doing up to this point. So I've begun praying that God will help us to find what we need to be doing and make the best decision.

Tonight I played a new game with the kids. It's called Super Showdown and it's from Cranium. You end up with a contest (such as a pillow fight) and people or characters, and special "helps" for them. Then the players have to debate and try to convince whoever the judge is why one of them would beat the others. For example, they would have to explain why a Grandmother on roller skates would win at the pillow fight instead of Darth Vader with a magic carpet; or why a goose with x-ray vision would win a scavenger hunt instead of a leprechaun with a light saber or Willy Wonka who runs faster than a speeding bullet. Ha! It was great--and so good for the kids' brains. I immediately thought of your kids, Em--they would LOVE it! I'll be sure to bring it next time we all get together--I wanna play with Nathan and Caleb. :-)

Hhmmm. That's about it, I think. James is going with the ladies tomorrow to sign away the church building. Hopefully that means this whole ordeal is over with and we can move on without that stress. Oh, I forgot! We had a really good service last night--at Sister Grimes' house. We started going through book two of the BTI courses and everybody took the test at the end. (Including Katie--she is soooooo excited!!!) There was lots of good discussion and everybody really seemed to enjoy it, including Sister Grimes' unsaved daughter, Pat, who joined us! I told James that maybe God needed us out of that building so we'd be forced into having some home services and Pat would end up coming to church and getting saved! Wouldn't that be wonderful?! God knows. We're praying and trusting Him to lead us one step at a time.

That's it for now. G'night!