It's been a good day here today, but I am exhausted! I had devotions with the kid-o's, then James took Sam to town with him for a few hours. I was able to get our sheets changed and my "desk" cleared off. The pile had gotten pretty deep and was in danger of toppling. Katie and Joe did pretty well in school today, but were kind of slow about it. I was able to get some cleaning done while they were at it, as well as e-mailing the Western Skies to "the girls" for translation and calling the guy who's going to be installing our kitchen floor to reschedule (his idea) and add a little to the job (my idea). Pretty productive day, all in all.

The real excitement came at 4:00 though. 4:00 on Wednesdays is horse time! The whole family loaded up this time and drove to Staci's house for the kids' lessons. I was sure to wear a good, wide skirt because Staci told me last week that I could get on and ride for a few minutes this time, just for fun. !!!!!!! I can't begin to express the joy of it all!!! IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!! Do you have any idea how long it's been since I've been on a horse?! I think the last time I rode a horse was with Amanda and Josh Newman and Johnny Witty (Manda's dad had several horses)--I would've been about 19, I think. That's, like, 12 years!!! It's probably a sin to go so long without riding a horse. Anyway, I was soooooo excited!!! Even just WALKING was fun. There's something that just feels so right about being in the saddle. Staci said I could trot or canter if I wanted to and she gave me a few pointers as we went along. ~sigh~ There must surely be horses to ride in heaven. It is just soooooooo fun! Even for a poor girl like me who's never had the opportunity to get really good at it. I felt like I bounced around a bit too much at first, but got into the cantering groove pretty well after a minute. It just feels so cool!!! All is well with the world when you're atop a horse, that's all there is to it. It was such a grand and glorious thing and such a terrible and cruel thing all in one. I mean, I LOVED IT... but now I want to kick the kids out of horse lessons and ME take them instead! Ha!

When they finally wrestled me off the horse (ha!), we all headed into Albuquerque. James and Sam had been to Lowe's earlier in the day and found that they are clearing out all of their wallpapers and EVERYTHING in stock was on clearance. BIG TIME CLEARANCE! So I had measured every room in the house this afternoon and wrote down all of the dimensions. We were able to get wallpaper for the bathroom, the utility room, Katie's bedroom, the boys' bedroom, and some that we might use in our bedroom. (Anything we don't end up needing can be returned for a full refund.) Wow!!! Because things were SO CHEAP (some as little as $3.83 per double roll) we will be papering a lot more than I would have otherwise considered. Wallpaper is usually SO EXPENSIVE and we actually found several things that we really liked. What were we to do?! We came away with a cart FULL of wallpaper and borders. I had told myself I was going to do a little more painting and a little less papering in this house... Oh well!!! There are certain things that wallpaper can do that you couldn't recreate with paint, so we're capitalizing on that. I just hope if (when) we ever go to sell this house potential buyers will not be anti-wallpaper! Ha!

We spent quite a while in the aisle there at Lowe's pouring over the papers and working the numbers. When we were finally finished my brain was totally fried. I plopped down in the van and when it was all said and done... I could feel myself on that horse again! Ha! What a great day. I got to ride a horse (really ride, not sit on a horse that is moseying along single-file behind 8 others) and we got some GREAT deals on some really cute wallpapers--and then we went to Panda Express and I had orange chicken for dinner. What could be better?! ~sigh~ Life is so grand. :-)

Look, Mom--three days in a row! ;-)