Don't remember a thing specifically about Tuesday, except school. Wednesday was more of the same, but come 4:00 it was time for the kids' first horse riding lesson! Wa-Hoo!!! Before anybody has a chance to comment, let me just say, "I KNOW--IT'S SOOOOOO STUPID TO HAVE TO WEAR A HAT LIKE THAT TO RIDE A HORSE!!!" It just drives me crazy, but "it's the law." ~sigh~ Anyway, here are a few pictures of the kids enjoying their first spin on "Secret."

Miss Katie

Mosey Joe

We had a little lean-to in the back yard for firewood, but it happened to be in the perfect location for the office. Naturally! So James disassembled it, gave some of the wood to the boys to hammer on (one of their favorite pastimes) and saved what was salvageable. And here we have the work in progress, roof and back wall already gone...

And here we have what will be James' office! Cute, hu?! I know, I know--it's a little... wee, shall we say?! Ha! It's much smaller than his office in Andrews, but sometimes ya' gotta do whatcha' gotta do. :-) I keep thinking of the office that Dad had when we lived in Howard. Mom had this nice, spacious office/sewing room... and next door was Dad's little closet of an office! Ha! James' little joint is 10'x12'. That's got to be bigger than what Dad had! Actually... it's probably about the size of what Dad has right NOW, hu, Mom?! Anyway, it's totally unfinished on the inside--just studs--so James will have some work ahead of him.

It's actually a Tuff-Shed and the dudes came out and slapped the thing up in just a couple of hours. James, always the one to store away information that he'll be able to use later on, planted himself next to the back window and watched the entire process thinking all the while, "Wow, I could have done this myself." But, of course, now that he's watched somebody else do it he knows HOW to do it and will no doubt tackle it unassisted next time around. :-)

This is Joe enjoying "recess." (I call recess for my sake as much as the kids'! Ha!) Katie helps him get up his speed and off he goes! Oh yeah--James bought this bike for Joe this week. It had a problem of some sort, so he got it 50% off. Joe was really, really excited--especially when he saw that the bike says "COBRA" on it!



Sue & Jerry surprised us with a visit this past weekend! They were on their way home from a camping trip and stopped over on Thursday night. Friday morning we all got up and started driving up the mountain. James took us to the Tinkertown Museum. (Don't laugh, Dustin & Jamey--didn't we say our trip with you was our first and last there?!) Tinkertown was built buy a guy who apparently devoted his entire life to carving little figures and scenes...and collecting every possible article of JUNK known to man. Really, he must've been a really strange character. There is some really neat stuff there... and there is some really weird stuff there! Anyway, here are the boys checking out some of the miniatures.

We spent a decent amount of time at the museum because... well, because Uncle Jerry was with us and things ALWAYS move pretty slow when he's around! Ha! He's a slo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ow moving guy. He's also a very curious guy and likes to take his time learning and inspecting things. We're lucky we got him out of a place like Tinkertown at all! Ha! SO MANY things to see and think about!

Once we left there we drove up to the top of Sandia Peak. I think the elevation is somewhere around 11,000' or something. It usually has a really great view--you can look straight down on Albuquerque and see the entire city. But it was a wee bit cloudy while we were there! Actually, I enjoyed the clouds as much or more as I would've enjoyed seeing the city. I just wish the pictures would show the DEPTH that you could see in real life. It's so cool to be above the clouds and looking down at them. And they were moving so fast--almost sliding up and over the mountain. It was very cool!

After the peak we drove on down into Albuquerque. We had lunch at Furr's, making James, Uncle Jerry and Joe pretty happy campers. We took them out to show them the Petroglyphs just because we couldn't think of what else to do! Uncle Jerry, true to his nature, was pretty skeptical about them truly being 3,000 years old like the sign said. A critic in every crowd. He can't just look at an etching of a dude on a unicycle and take it for what it's worth, you know?! Oh well. If he didn't enjoy the drawings, at least he enjoyed the view.

We came back to the house and I fed everybody a fantastic dinner of ham sandwiches. Actually, I can't even take credit for that--Aunt Sue supplied the ham! Ha! I am SUCH a bad hostess!!! Aunt Sue kept trying to teach Joe how to get started on his bike (he can ride once he gets going, but getting going is still a problem for him) and she finally just grabbed the bike so she could SHOW him...



You can always count on a few good laughs from Aunt Sue. ;-) We had a really good time with them and I'm sooooo glad they decided to stop and spend a day or two. We were all pretty wiped out after our adventuresome day, so we called it a night pretty early. Sue & Jerry were turkey's and took off without saying goodbye the next morning. ~sigh~ Early risers. I tell ya'. ;-)

The kids and I started our Saturday with a Muppet Show, just because it seemed like the thing to do. :-) We finally got going and ended up having a really nice no-school day. I had plenty to catch up on and stayed busy throughout the day. So busy, in fact, I totally forgot about lunch! James had taken Joe to Wal-Mart with him and they ate while they were out, but Katie and Sam and I were just occupied doing other things and never thought about it. There's NO WAY lunch would be overlooked if Joe was around! Ha! Anyway, James made us fajitas for dinner--they were really good! What a guy!!! :-) I made all of the kids take their baths, then I got caught up on all of the ironing while we all watched The Asparagus of La Mancha and Sheerluck Holmes. Put the kids to bed and got to work on my WMB service.

We had really good services today, this morning's service at Sister Grimes' house and this evening's at Sister Galaviz's. Sister Grimes' daughter, Pat, has been in several services with us since we lost the church building because we've been using their house a lot! And she seems to be loving it and wanting more. Praise the Lord!!! What a small price it would be to pay--if we were to lose that building, but see Pat saved! God knows what He's doing. Pat cooked dinner for us after service and we had a good visit with her and her mom. We really, really like both of them--they are quite the pair! Both have plenty to say and you never have to wonder how they feel about an issue! Ha! Sister Grimes is somewhere around 80 years old, I think, and she reminds me of the Grandma on the Garfield Christmas special--she is just soooooo funny! What a neat lady--and she always has such a good spirit. Never has a negative word to say about anybody.

My WMB service went well tonight, I thought. I talked about Juan Ponce de Leon and the search for the Fountain of Youth--and how people are still searching for it today in one way or another. That, of course, led us to the living water that Jesus can give us, a well springing up into everlasting life. I never really know how my services go over, I just know the ones that I enjoy preparing and this was one of them for me. :-) I know the Lord really blessed in our worship and prayers and there were lots of good comments.

Tomorrow, it's BACK TO SCHOOL!!! Pray for us. ;-) And if anybody thinks of any more ideas on how to keep things running smoothly, I'm sooooooo open to them! :-)