Okay! On Saturday morning we got up and headed to Estancia, the Punkin' Chunkin' capitol of New Mexico! Sounds impressive, hu? I figure it's the perfect location for slinging or blasting pumpkins because there is NOTHING THERE!!! We had read that there would be a parade through town at 11:00 and we got there at 11:03 to find that it was over with already! Ha! No, it wasn't THAT tiny of a parade. Well, I guess it could have been... The story we got is that they started it at about 10:30 instead of 11:00. So much for that!

Like this.

Hey, don'tcha' just love the girl in the black skirt in the first potato picture?! Looks like she's smoothing out her heating lamp skirt! Ha!

I stood in line so long I got bored and took a picture of the lady in front of me--her hat, actually. She's apparently quite the Punkin' Chunkin' enthusiast!

And here are the boys enjoying those ribbon fries, at long last!

Here's the fam, enjoying the show and some cotton candy.

It was a good, fun day. But there are only so many pumpkins you can watch soaring through the air before it loses it's novelty. We left the big event and headed home, but made a couple of stops along the way. We went into a thrift store we'd never noticed before in Moriarty. WOW!!! It was huge and sooooo clean and organized--and CHEAP. We walked out with a turtleneck and 3 nice denim skirts for me, a vest for Katie, a book for Joe and a complete pirate outfit for Sam (pants, vest and hat) for $5.40. !!!!! Wa-Hoo!!! Now THAT is the way to shop! :-) Don't tell James, but all of the skirts are a little small for me. I wanted to try them on there, but he said no, at that price just take 'em--surely one of them will fit. I'll bring them to Ladies' Retreat, Em! ;-)

We came home and I spent about 40 minutes looking high and low for the new batteries and charger James just bought a few weeks ago. The camera batteries had died at the Punkin' Chunkin' so I needed to put the new ones back in. I couldn't find them ANYWHERE and kept looking and looking and looking, having that dread feeling swell bigger and bigger knowing that eventually I was going to have to tell James. I HATE THAT!!! That's why I spend so much of my life secretly spinning circles in search of whatever I've misplaced. ~sigh~ I get so tired of it, but I just can't seem to REMEMBER where I put stuff and I so dread the lecture that occurs when I TELL James I can't find something! Ha! He's so much nicer about such things than he used to be, but you know. Lectures are NEVER fun! ;-) Anyway, I did the same thing with my purse a few days ago. I can't tell you how much time I spent looking for it, knowing it was here SOMEWHERE, but just not seeing it and not able to remember where I had put it. I eventually found it right out in the open in the dining room. I found the batteries, too, yesterday. In my purse. Good grief.

After I finally solved the missing batteries mystery I was free and clear to work on Sunday School and VLB service. James made our new appointments last week and I have been relieved from WMB and appointed to VLB. Wa-Hoo!!! Is it okay to wa-hoo an appointment loss?! It feels so good to NOT be the WMB leader. I know that sounds terrible, but I was just really ready for a new focus, you know? I've been WMBing it for a whole lot of years now and I felt like I was just kind of saying the same thing over and over again. I'm excited about the VLB work, even though we don't have any VLB's other than James and me. :-) We've got some potential and I'm excited about working witht that. :-)

We had good services today, although Sunday School was a disaster. We use a spare room at Sister Galaviz's house and I had the brilliant idea of PAINTING this morning. I had brought a vinyl tablecloth to spread on the floor and it did it's job of sparing Sister Galaviz's carpet. For THAT I am very thankful! I don't know why I hadn't thought to bring trash bags for the kids to wear while they painted; I somehow just thought it would be okay since they were going to painting just a little tiny thing. HA. Sam slopped greenish-blue paint on my peachy-orange colored skirt right off. I went to the bathroom to wash it off and came back to find paint on Sam's pants, shirt, tie, and suit jacket. Aaaauuuugggghhhhh!!! What a dope!!! We never did finish the crafts. We spent the rest of the "class" cleaning up our clothes and washing the paint off of everybody's hands. No matter. The crafts had nothing whatsoever to do with our lesson! Ha! I couldn't come up with anything to do with the story of Jacob and Leah and Rachel and then his wrestling with the angel. So I talked about him having great perseverance, in both instances! We made some fall leaves and talked about trees persevering through the long winter even after sad things happen like loosing their leaves. I know: LAME. That's okay, the kids don't know it! Then we were going to talk about Columbus (we just had his holiday, you know) persevering and making it all the way to "discover" America. We were in the middle of making tiny Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria's when the paint got out of hand and we had to quit. The kids didn't even know what we were making or that it had anything to do with Columbus! Ha! Maybe we'll get a chance to finish them up tomorrow.

My VLB service went okay tonight, I think--although it was quite short. I'm notorious for having very, very short services (I just don't have that much to SAY, you know?!), but it seems like they've been stretching out longer lately for one reason or another. In lieu of true-blue VLB's, Joe read a scripture for me, Katie led songs, and Sam took up the offering. I talked about the sons of the prophets eating the pottage with the wild gourds in it and crying out to Elisha that there was "death in the pot." They didn't know they were eating anything dangerous until it was too late. The young people in the world today are doing the very same thing--partaking of so many things that will lead to their distruction, but they don't even know it. Elisha knew the remedy though. He simply said, "Then bring meal" and had it thrown into the pot. Meal is the main ingredient of bread, so I talked about Jesus being the Bread of Life and how He is the only thing that can save us from the poison of this world. When young people finally realize that their lives are not turning out the way they had thought and that the things they're partaking of are actually destroying them, they will cry out for help. When they do, we need to be ready with the solution--the Bread of Life! It made great sense in my mind--I just hope it came across clear enough that the dots connected for everybody else tonight! Ha!

We stood outside and visited for a little while after church tonight, which was so nice. Came home and let the kids have a snack before bed instead of dinner. Got everybody in their pj's, teeth brushed and in bed, then I went back to the dishes. Turned and looked at the clock and saw it was only 7:55!!! HA! Bedtime is 8:30 around here, so the kids really got gyped. It just FELT later than that--and the clock in the kids' room is still flashing the wrong time from another momentary power outage yesterday. I didn't tell 'em. What they don't know won't hurt 'em, I say! ;-)

And that's about it! Mom gets here on Tuesday and then it's work, work, work! :-) So I've got tomorrow to try to get the house cleaned up a little bit and HOPEFULLY get all caught up on the laundry and ironing. No problem except for one tiny little hitch. I think James is going to want me to be caulking and staining the new log siding tomorrow! Hhmmm... Guess we'll see who's jobs take priority, hu?! ;-)