On the Road Again!  

Posted by cokelady

We'll be leaving tomorrow morning for Colorado! Our District Convention is in Craig this weekend and we are soooooooo excited. They've got a terrific District Overseer up there ;-) and I can tell that he's put a lot into this function. If we can wade our way through the snow (wa-hoo!!!) and make it all the way up there, I expect it to be a great Convention! Since Craig is about 16 hours from Andrews we'll be driving part way tomorrow, then finishing our trek on Friday.

Things here have been good. Yesterday I loaded the kids up and headed to Midland in search of school desks. (The kids drive me crazy when we're trying to do school at the kitchen table--sitting this way and that, legs hanging off the side of the chair, up on their knees, then back down again, then just standing because it's a better height for them when they're trying to write--it's quite a fiasco.) I had contacted a Christian School down there (the public schools are too "regulated" to be able to sell you a desk--crazy!) and they told me to come take a look. The maintainance man led me to a storage room off of the gym that was stacked high in old, banged up school desks. I picked out three that didn't have old wads of gum welded to them (ga-ross) and he loaded them up for me... for free! Is that great, or what?!

We did some more running around, then came home, scrubbed the desks up real good, and whipped out the paint. I let each kid pick what color he wanted (of the ones that would match my office, that is), then they each got to help me paint their own desk, Sam first, then Joe, then Kate. There's no way I would attempt an everybody-paint-at-once party. You'd have to be totally insane. I wondered about my sanity allowing even one at a time to help. No, they actually did great--even Sam. In fact, he did a lot better than Joe. Poor Joe. That kid is such a slob. All of my efforts went into trying to smooth out the blobs of paint he left in is wake. In the end, they turned out great! They were pretty beat up, but now they look nice and fresh and clean. ~aahhhh~ Feels great. And just think--it cost us nothing but a little drive to Midland and some painting time! The paint was all left over from different painting projects here at the house, so that was perfect. Katie has window-shutters red, Joe has Mom's-office-walls gray, and Sam has living-room-wainscotting blue. ;-) It was a very long and exhausting day, so I ended it with a nice, hot bath. ~ah, yes~ It's amazing how great that feels! I should do it more often.

I don't want to take the time to write out all the details and I'm sure you don't want to take the time to read them all, so let's just say that I waged war on those dopey desks all morning long. It had something to do with trying to adjust the adjustable (ha) legs on them and it included lots of hammering and clanging and banging and grunting and groaning and twisting and pulling and shoving and even praying... That was all before I gave up and tried to fix the problem that I had created. It went downhill from there. My salvation was this nifty little clampy wrench thing that I found out in James' shed. (Yes, it was bad enough I dared to enter--insert dramatic sound effect here, then use your best Mystery Theatre voice--James' shed). In about ten minutes I had the desk back to how it was before I so cleverly decided that I could improve upon it. The grass is always greener, you know? Anyway...

Rats. I'm racking my brain trying to come up with a kid story... I made mental notes of several dopey little things they did today, but apparently I can't read my own mental handwriting. Oh well. You're in luck--I'll cut this short.

Everybody have a great weekend and please remember to pray for the Colorado District Convention. The theme is "Fervent Charity"--I think it's going to be great. :-) We plan to be home Tuesday night. Until then... (or perhaps a day or two after then--you never know!)

~Becki~

1 comments

Fringe Benefits  

Posted by cokelady

Aren't they great??? As any self-respecting Veggie fan is aware, the newest episode, "Mo and the Big Exit," is to be released this coming Saturday. But one of the glories of having a husband who works at Mardel is that you sometimes get a headstart on the rest of the world. James brought the demo DVD home from work on Saturday for us to "preview" it! It was sooooooooo great!!! Highly recommended. :-) We made chocolate chip cookies that afternoon so we'd be all set to celebrate. We scarfed down our dinner so we could all rush into the den and start the party! The show is TERRIFIC!!! Possibly the best ever. I remember saying that same thing when Little Joe came out a few years ago, so perhaps it's just the whole western thing. Maybe other people won't get as much out of it as we Texans... Nah, I can't imagine anybody not enjoying this show!!! Hilarious. Don't miss it!!! Of course, the rest of you sorry ninnies have to wait until the end of the week... (HA!)

In other news, we took a trip over to Merkel to be in service with them again yesterday. As always, we really enjoyed it. The Lunas are good people and it's always so nice to be with them. I know they must get desperately lonely over there. They've been getting lots of pressure from the Naborhood (am I allowed to say that on the blog, James?) and are so weary of it. But they're doing really well. We had a real good service and then a real good meal afterward! Sister Luna always insists on cooking for us and she always has enough to feed an army, but she must've tripled her efforts this time! She gave me (just for me--nobody else!) a plate with 6 enchiladas on it (!!!!), then brought in two huge tacos for me (the homemade, greasy kind that are soooooooo good), along with the large brisket she had cooked and several other huge bowls full of beans, rice, fajita meat, homemade tortillas... You name it, she had it. I did my best, but there was just no chance of eating it all. I made it through the tacos and three and a half enchiladas, but that's the best I could do. I didn't even sample the other food on the table--I was too full. You always feel bad leaving anything uneaten at Sister Luna's house ("What, didn't you like it?," she'll say), but I just couldn't do any more or I was going to be sick. The kids ate with a passion, so that helped in the don't-offend-her-by-not-eating-enough department. Two or three tamales (ah, yes--she made those, too) apiece--Joe may have even had four. And James put his whole heart into not offending her, I assure you. ;-) Everything was soooooooooooooo good. Faye, this is so scrumptious!

When we left her house I told James that we were going to stop at K-Mart in Sweetwater--not necessarily to shop, but to be able to just walk a little bit of our dinner off! We ended up shopping, however. Boy, oh boy, did we shop! Came out with a cart crammed full of bargains. That particular store never fails to disappoint. We got 5 pairs of shoes (some to grow into) for either $3 or $5 apiece, 4 pairs of jeans for the boys ($3.50), some polo shirts ($3?), a Quantum Leap Pad for Katie to use in a year or two (regular price: $40; price we paid: $10), and I can't remember what all else. It was crazy. I told James that there are always so many good bargains there we always end up spending a fortune! "We can't afford to save money like this!!!"

Sam and Tammy came over to help assemble the regional paper last night and brought with them... fajitas for dinner! Ha! They, of course, didn't know about our noontime feast. We figured we'd been exercising gluttony all day already, so why stop now?! The fajitas were great. ;-) After we finished the paper we played our usual game. Tammy won this time. Wow! That never happens. It's not as good as if I were to win, but still a lot better than letting Sam win. ;-)

Guess that's about it around here. Mom will gripe if there aren't any kid stories. Hhmmm... I don't know if this counts, but the other day I overheard Katie telling the boys, "Mom wishes she was an octopus 'cause then she'd have 8 arms and she'd be able to hold 8 switches and then even if she had 8 kids she'd still be able to switch them all at the same time..." Ha! This is only vaguely familiar to me, but I'm sure that the original conversation (when I apparently told her all of this) took place at least a year ago--maybe two. The things kids remember, I tell ya'...

Well, I've gotta get to the Post Office and mail the Western Skies, then stop off at Tammy's for a minute. Have a great day! And get busy blogging, you bunch of slackers!!! ;-)

~Rebekah~

11 comments

Been a While!  

Posted by cokelady

How come it's not as easy to blog as it used to be? I post something on my page and then look up and *wham-o* it's been almost a week. How did that happen?! And with so many fantastically entertaining things to write about!!!

Okay, so that last line was a little bit of a tease. I actually can't think of anything great to write about, which is probably why it's been nearly a week since the last post. No inspiration. Mom called this morning and asked if I'd whip up a poem for an old friend of ours whose birthday is today and who they'll be seeing tonight. It's so hard to come up with anything worthwhile unless you're really in the mood and feeling it, you know? I can't just sit down and write. I have to be inspired. My greatest source of inspiration usually comes in the form of a certain Williams over in North Carolina. As soon as I see him--or even just hear of him--I begin to wax poetic...in a rather sadistic sort of a way. Oh, but what fun it is!

Let's see, what's been going on around here... Our visitors were back on Sunday and then again last night. Praise the Lord!!! PLEASE pray for Kenneth and Clovis--we want to see them won to the Lord and to The Church of God! Also, I have a distant cousin (my Dad's cousin's son, if you can figure out what that makes him to me) who lives here in Andrews and my Aunt Sue has been in contact with him a little bit lately, even been babysitting his little girl this week. We're praying for God to make this into an open door and perhaps see this family start to come to church as well.

I got new glasses this week. Dumb ones. I always think I do well... until I go pick them up. I put them on and gasp, "What was I thinking?!" No, it's really not that bad, but they're pretty dumb. I'd just like to know how you're supposed to pick out decent frames. You take your real glasses off (the ones that actually enable you to see), put on the trial frames with normal lenses (that are always so smudged up it looks like somebody set off a smoke bomb in the building), then lean in until you're 6" from the mirror to try to see yourself clearly enough to know if the frames look good or not--like you'll really be able to tell that close up. Who set it up that way, anyhow?! Dumb. Anyway, I have knew glasses (dorky though they may be) and they--for the time being--are free from scratches and pits, so I'm a happy camper. :-)

I've been working on the regional paper this week, as well as the WMB boost I gave at Church last night. I think I've got the paper all finished now. I need to proof it one more time before we begin printing. I'm always so burnt out with it after staring at it for all those hours, I just dread having to read through the whole thing again. Isn't there anything else around here I can read instead?!

The kids are well. I guess. Sam has been a constant source of amusement this week. I made brownies a few days ago and was letting Katie and Sam polish off the batter that was left in the bowl. Sam was being a creep and not wanting to share with Kate, so I set him down from the table and told him he was done--"If you're not going to be nice, you're not going to have any." He pondered the brownies that were presently baking in the oven, then said, "Mom, when it's brownie time I'm gonna be good." Then, after a pause, "...I think." I cracked up. At least he knows himself well enough to assume that there's a great probability that he won't be good after all. Made me think of Romans, chapter 7 (is that where it is?) where Paul was talking about his pre-sanctification troubles. "That that I would not, that I do," etc. Poor kid. Ha!

A few nights ago I heard Joe hollering for me after I'd put everybody to bed. I went to see what the problem was and Joe said that Sam had been shooting his rifle in bed. (Of necessity, we have a "no guns in bed" rule around here.) I looked over and, sure enough, Sam had two rifles and a pistol in bed with him. I started confiscating them and asked if that was all. No, there was one more under the bed, he informed me. I never have taken time to count how many guns these boys have, but if I packed 10 away I'm sure they'd still find more to sneak into bed with them.

Yesterday they were all out playing and Katie started in on a "somebody just did something bad to me" scream and before I had a chance to even look out the window Sam was barging in through the back door. "Joe hurt Katie, Mom--not me!" He wanted to be sure there was no mistake--he was innocent this time. He gets enough blame for the things he actually does that I guess he wanted to be sure he didn't get blamed for Joe's badness, too.

Okay, I've gotta run. I'm gonna lay the runts down for a little while and see if I can get some things done around the house. James asked me last night, "So... is the vacuum cleaner broke or something?" HA! I guess I'll take that as my cue. Sad that it had to come to this, I know. Don't know why, but vacuuming is right up there with ironing on my list of things to procrastinate. Once I get started (with either one) it's no big deal, but for some reason I just have a terrible time getting motivated. ANYWAY, I'm outta here! Have a great weekend everybody!

~Becki~

P.S. -- Joe just came in the back door crying and rubbing a knot on his head while pointing at Sam, who had followed him in. Sam was covered in mud and explaining away, "Mom, dirt jumped on us! A bunch of it! All that bad dirt, it just jumped on us!!!" still giving no reason why Joe had been clunked in the head with who-knows-what. It's always somebody else's fault as far as Sam is concerned. He was blaming Katie the other day for something bad that he had done and it sounded eeirly reminiscent of Adam in the garden, "The woman that you gave me--she made me do it!" Sam never would have been bad if somebody else hadn't forced him into it. And we wonder why I'm going gray.

6 comments

So What???  

Posted by cokelady

I decided I was going to slap a new post up here, but when I tried to pull up my Blogger account something went awry. (Is that spelled right?! What a crazy way to spell a word...) There was a short man with dark sunglasses, slick hair, and a suspicious lump on the left side of his pinstriped suit. "Hand it over, lady, and nobody gets hurt," he said. "Huh???" was my intimidating reply. "Your password. The boss wants your password and Google information and he wants it now. And don't try anything clever, lady. Just work with me and we'll have you on your way."

So here I am, signed up with the New Blogger, whatever that is. So my question is... so what??? What is the difference? How exactly is this different or improved from what I had before? There seems to be a little more jibberish on my dashboard page, but otherwise it looks eerily familiar. So the stick-up was... for practically nothing??? I was forced to switch over... why??? No matter. I'm here now. Hope you all can find me and don't have any trouble making it past the bodyguards. Dumb.

The reason I was going to post initially, was to report what a great husband I have. (I get distracted easily, thus all of the above.) I just got to feeling rather guilty, reading everybody else blogs about how great their husbands are or what they did for Valentine's Day. Didn't want mine to feel taken for granted (not that he has time to read the blogs anymore, but just in case...), so I figured it was only fair to let the world know that my husband isn't so bad either. ;-)

Our 7th Anniversary was on February 5th. Boy, does time fly!!! God's been sooooooo good to us and when I stop to really think about it, it's nothing less than miraculous that we are where we are today. I know that sounds pretty dramatic, but you have no idea! God is sooooo good and I'm sooooo thankful to have such a good husband, one who loves me and loves our kids and, most of all, loves God.

I made out with a dozen red roses and a box of chocolates for our Anniversary. I wrote a poem for James. (I'm hard pressed to get out shopping nowadays!) On Valentine's day he came home with three more roses (the yellow and pink ones that are so pretty) in a nice vase with baby's breath. I wasn't feeling very well that night and fed the kids hot dogs for dinner. I was giving Katie a bath and had just started rinsing the shampoo out of her hair when James called for me. I thought he must be wanting help with the latest Sam catastrophe, whatever it might be, but when I came to see what he needed, he was waiting for me at the kitchen table. He had cooked a homemade Italian dinner for me, complete with candlelight! WOW!!! I don't know if it was ziti or penne, but it was really good. And so very thoughtful!!! Of course, Katie was still in the tub getting chillier by the minute and the boys were in and out of the kitchen a dozen times or more asking the usual kid questions. ("What are you doing?... Why?... How come we're not eating, too?... Is it good?... Can I try a bite?... How long until it's time for our bath?... Katie's been in the tub for a long time, do we get to stay in that long?...) This is romantic as it gets when you've got kids, I guess, so I'll settle for it. ;-)

Then a few days ago when Tammy was keeping the kids for me I decided to go on over to Midland so I could actually look around at Mardel. The kids have always been with me before and there's not the liberty to spend the time I'd like to spend combing through the whole place front to back. I went to Hobby Lobby first, just for the fun of it. Then spent the longest time at Mardel. I met James' boss--seems like a really nice guy. I had been there for an hour or more and James said, "Hey, why don't you just stick around until I get off and we can go out for dinner!" It was almost an hour until he would be getting off, but it was worth the wait! We went to a nice steakhouse and split a ribeye and a half rack of baby back ribs. Yum!!! And it was so nice for just the two of us to go. Rarely happens, you know. One of these days we're planning to leave the kids with Tammy (she's the absolute bestest!) and drive over to Carlsbad Caverns. But even if that never works out, it's been a great Anniversary/Valentine's celebration around here!

That's it. Seems like there's so much more to talk about, but I'm sooooo tired and having a hard time getting my brain to work with me. I've done all I know to coax it into remembering what was on my mind earlier, but to no avail. Just as well. I'm reaching the "this post is long enough!" stage already.

Until next time...

~Becki~

4 comments

The Birthday!  

Posted by cokelady

This past Tuesday was Katie's 6th birthday and Joe's 5th. Amazing. Where does the time go?!

James had the 12-8:00pm shift at Mardel that day, so that necessitated a morning party. Strawberry cake just an hour after the cinnamon rolls we had for breakfast. Crazy. The kids loved it, I assure you.

Tammy came over to join us. We sang to Katie and let her blow out the 6 candles on the cake. Then we removed one candle, relit the rest and sang to Joe. Ah yes, this is the way to have birthdays! I only wish Sam had been born on February 13th, too, so we could do all three kids in one whack--it's so great!


The kids, of course, had a ball. Katie had spent the previous days making decorations for her party, so there were construction paper Bobs and Larrys and cards and letters and even a 6' length of paper chain she had made. The kids loved all of the presents and Sam handled things amazingly well, I thought, being the only one not opening anything.

I said the kids loved the gifts. That's not entirely true. My Mom figured a cowboy can't have too many guns, so she got Joe a new set of cap guns with a holster, a new badge, and 2,000 caps for the guns. (Yeah, you read that right--2.000.) Joe, although possessing an abundance of guns, has never used any with caps before. (I stash them in a drawer and let him use the guns capless -- to cut back on at least a little of the chaos around here.) Well, he was very excited about his new cowboy stuff...


...until I loaded the caps into his gun and fired a few shots. Cowboy Joe quickly transformed into a yellowbellied sissy. He went screaming and crying out of the room and absolutely refused to come back. I finally ordered him to get back in the living room. He slowly peeked around the corner and then promptly disappeared amid sobs upon seeing the gun still in my hand. I should clarify. The gun was dangling loosely upside down between by thumb and index finger. No matter, it was still in my hand and therefore was surely going to go off again. I made Joe come and sit next to me on the couch while I tried to talk some sense into him. I called Mom and Dad to be sure they could share in the joyous moments they had caused. Dad laughed heartily, but then instructed me to remove the caps and give the poor kid the gun. "Tell him he's just a little cowboy now, and when he gets to be a little bit bigger cowboy and he thinks he's ready for them, you can put the caps back in for him." Pitiful. But I just wasn't up to the battle of making him shoot the thing with the caps. Joe's smile quickly returned once he'd heard Granddaddy's instructions. He agreed wholeheartedly. "Yeah, that's a good idea, Mom. Then when I'm older--like 15 or something--I'll be ready for the caps." I tried to encourage him that it might not take quite so long, maybe he'd be ready sooner than that. "Yeah. Maybe when I'm 14 like Jacob, hu?" Ha! As tramatized as he was, it may actually take that long after all!!!

Then there's Katie. She got her very first journal from Sister Tammy. She is sooooooo excited! This is what it says so far:

FEB. 13

I HAD A BITHDAY TODAY I HAD CAKE IT WAS A STRAWBERRY CAKE IT WAS GOOD AND VERY SWEET I GOT A NEW BOOK THE TOW NEW BOOKS WERR FOR MY LEAP PAD TOY AND I GOT TO BLOW THE CANDOWLES OWT I TERND 6 TODAY MY BROTHER HAD A BITHDAY TODAY TO HE TERND 5 TODAY AND HE GOT A GUN AND HE IS SCARED OF IT NOW IM GOWING TO BED AND WENN I FALL ASLEEP I WELL DREEM ABOUT WATT I WELL DO TOMOROW AND HAVE FUN GOOD NIGHT

FEB. 14

I WENT TO A VALENTINS PARTY AND HAD A SNAK AND LUNCH THEN I PLAYD GAMES WETH MY NEW FRINS THEN I WENT TO REST AND HAD A DRINK THEN I WENT AND PLAYD GAMES AGEN THEN I HAD ANOETHR SNAK THEN I PLAYD I GOT A NICE BITHDAY CROWN FROM THE LIBREY THEN I WENT HOME AND HAD A NAP I WOKE UP AT 1:00 THEN I HAD DINNER AND A BATH POGOMOS AND I WENT TO BED.

FEB. 15TH

I WENT TO SISTER TAMMY'S HOUSE TODAY AND I WACHT A MOKEY SHOW THE SHOW WAS FUNNY AND THE PAPA GURELU WAS RELY BIG AND STANLEY WAS THE BEST HE IS SKARD OF THINGS HE IS SKARD OF A LITTE BABY CAT HE IS SO FUNNY I LAVE AND LAVE AND LAVE AND THAR AR BAD MEN IN THIS SHOW THAT EYT OTHER PEPLE. GOOD BY.

Ha! Could you die?! My 6 year old is keeping a journal!!! Yes, yes, I know--we've got some serious work to do in the spelling and punctuation departments. Still, it's amazing to me that she's actually doing this! Crazy. And to clarify that last entry, the kids stayed with Sister Tammy yesterday while I went running all over Odessa and Midland (it was sooooooo great!!!) and she let the kids watch Africa Screams--you know, the old black and white Abbott and Costello movie. That's the monkey ("mokey") show she was talking about. Last night Joe went running up to James to tell him all about his day. "We watched a show at Sister Tammy's house with a bunch of bad people who were eek [naked] and wore jewelry and they ate people!" James swung around and said, "What in the world have my kids been watching?!?!?" Ha!

Okay, I gotta get. I've rambled far too long, as usual. I will leave you with a picture of Sam, since he didn't show up in the birthday shots earlier.

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6 comments

Company & Convention  

Posted by cokelady

What could be better? Sister Marcia Brooks called last week to ask if she and Sara and Aaron could spend the night with us on Thursday on their way to Convention. Then they would be on their way to spend the week in Arizona and be at Grace's graduation party! Fun!!!

I was so thankful to have company. For starters, it got me motivated to pick up where I'd left off on that thorough house cleaning I was doing about a month ago. I never did make it to the bedrooms (I burned out after my office...), so this was the nudge to get me going again. I started at Katie's ceiling fan and worked my way down and voila -- a perfectly clean room!!! ~aaahhhhh~ Feels so good. The company wouldn't have really known the difference, but I know. It's a grand and glorious thing. ;-)

A clean room isn't the only benefit to having company, of course. I actually enjoy the company itself, believe it or not! :-) We get far too little of it since moving to West Texas, let me tell you. Sister Marcia and family (minus Jimmie--the bum) got here Thursday afternoon in time to do some relaxing and give me a chance to whip up a nice, home cooked dinner before church. Sister Marcia preached for us that night and we sooooo enjoyed it. Our visitors, Kenneth and Clovis, were back and seemed to enjoy the service as well. Afterwards we invited Clovis (the 15 year old son of Kenneth) over to the house to play games for a little while. We mostly just ate (I had made cinnamon rolls that afternoon), but we eventually squeezed in a game before he had to leave. It was great to have him join in the fun and I think he enjoyed it. Sam took him home and then went on home to study, but Tammy stayed and played games with the rest of us until way too late. It was great!

Friday we drove on over to Alamogordo for the Arizona, New Mexico & West Texas District Convention. It was such a blessing. The first night especially was just so very, very good. Such a wonderful spirit and good preaching of God's Word and--as always when we're with the Spanish people--such wonderful worship. I have never been in a service with our Hatch or Alamogordo people and gone away not blessed. Even the ones that know little or no English, thus inhibiting our communication, I just love them soooooo much. When they sing and worship and I don't know what they're saying, my spirit knows and I can feel the love and worship welling up within me. They are so wonderful.

The VanDeventers and the Clarksons made the long trek from Colorado to join us in Convention and give their auxiliary boosts. What faithfulness! And, as always, we enjoyed their company as well. After the Convention ended on Saturday we all (Marcia and family, the Clarksons, the Vans, Sam & Tammy, the Shulers, and our family--22 in all, I think) went out to Denny's... for a few hours! It was so much fun!!! Brother VanDeventer came down to our end of the table to visit for a while and I so enjoyed his company. I've always loved him so very much, but rare are the times when I get a chance to actually visit with him. He is just so loveable and admirable in every way. So honest and even blunt sometimes, but it never feels harsh or stabbing--everything he says and does comes from pure truthfulness and genuine love. Oh, to have a thousand more Virgil VanDeventers! :-)

I'm rambling. I really don't have time for that tonight. Tomorrow is Katie's 6th birthday and Joe's 5th. They requested a strawberry cake just like Sam had on his birthday, so it's in the oven right now. James has to work 12:00-8:00pm tomorrow night, so that means any birthday party will have to take place before he leaves at 11:00am. We're shooting for 10:00.

Back to Convention, it was sooooooo good to be with the Shulers. I wish we lived closer and had more opportunity to be with them. It's amazing how much those kids are growing up. It's just WRONG, really (!!!), but kind of neat, too. Grace isn't a kid at all anymore (you did GREAT on your boost, Grace--by the way!) and Jacob is turning into quite the manly man. (Although if anyone tells him that I'll have to deny it--he's going to have enough problems with his ego! Ha!) He's a bit of a ding-bat, though, so that's good. He's not all muscles and deep voice... yet! And Philip. I've always loved Philip so much! That kid is one in a million -- and soooooooo cute. Sara and Megan are getting so grown up and are a lot of fun to be around. And Tommy... to tell you the truth, I never saw Tommy! I mean, only for a moment here and there throughout the weekend. He was just never around. But I'm sure he's great! ;-) And, of course, it was great to be with Aunt Kay & Uncle Colin, too. I always enjoy our time with them and just wish we could have more of it. What a terrific family. I'm glad they're part of mine!

We stayed over in Alamogordo Saturday night and James preached there yesterday morning. We went to Golden Corral with the Coyazo's afterward (the usual routine!) before heading home. We actually stopped at K-Mart on our way out of town and are soooooo glad we did. James was able to get Joe's birthday present for half price! Wa-Hoo! We made it home at about 8:30 last night, I think.

Today has been a good day, however not very productive. Just can't seem to get things in gear! Maybe I'll be more successful tomorrow. After our 10:00am birthday party, that is. I've got a mountain of laundry waiting for me and it's sister mount of ironing will be growing yet more as the laundry comes to an end... ~ugh~ I hate it when I let it get like this. I guess that's about it from here. Oh, I finished up the 4th book of the Love Comes Softly series on the drive to Alamogordo. Sooooooo much better than the movie. Actually, it baffles me how they can even name the movie after the book. The only thing they had in common at all was the names of the characters--and only some of them, at that. Weird. Anyway, I'm outta here! At least my next post should have some birthday pictures instead of a bunch of boring rambling. (Or perhaps along with a bunch of boring rambling...)


G'night All!,
~ Becki ~

3 comments

The latest  

Posted by cokelady

I can't recall anything at all about Friday or Saturday aside from cleaning, so I'll skip those days. Sunday was great, though--we had two new visitors in Church! Say a prayer for Kenneth and his 15 year old son Clovis who came to join us. We're hoping and praying that they'll be back again this coming Sunday. How exciting to have new people!!!

Monday morning was another field trip with the home schoolers. We went down to the fire station here in Andrews and it was terrific! The Fire Marshall is the nicest guy in the world and was sooooooooo good with kids. He taught a class, of sorts, about fire safety and answered lots of questions and just generally humored the 12 or 15 little kids. Then he took them out to show them his gear and let them climb around all over--and inside--the fire trucks and ask lots more questions. Then he drove one of the trucks out back so all the kids could take a turn spraying the hose. They thought that was fantastic!!!


The kids were so excited to get their picture taken with a real fireman, much less the Fire Marshall, himself! Ha! It was a blast.

Tammy came over for a little while to hang out and play games that afternoon, so that was fun too. It just happened to be James' and my 7th Anniversary, but we're waiting to really celebrate until we have a good opportunity! As for that night, I cooked fried chicken for dinner (James didn't even show up for dinner that night.... ahem!!!), made his favorite dessert (brownies) and wrote a poem for him. He had brought me a dozen roses and chocolates a couple of days earlier. One of these days we'll leave the munchkins with Tammy and at least go out for a nice, quiet dinner.

Yesterday I took Katie and Joe to an art class for little kids downtown. I found out about it through the home schoolers and thought we'd give it a try. It seems silly to take such young kids to such a thing (surely I could teach them anything at this level, right?!), but they had a blast and did sooooooo good! (Sam and I stayed to watch.) The lady had them practrice drawing different lines and shapes, then declared that they would now be able to draw anything since everything out there is made up of these types of shapes. The kids were thrilled and proceeded to copy the teacher's version of a horse, constructed of the shapes they'd just gone over. Katie did great and her horse looked almost just like the teacher's... except the legs. I asked her about it later and she said that the teacher's horse had pointy legs but she didn't want to give her own horse pointy legs because she didn't want it to fall over! Ha! What an "artistic" way of looking at it! We'll try this class a few times and see if it's something we want to stick with or not. Kate and Joe both LOVED it yesterday.

Today is library day and we'll be leaving shortly. Although we don't really need to get any more books at this point. James has brought home a whole bunch of new books from Mardel the past few nights--stuff that had gone on sale and (coupled with his discount) he was only paying pennies for. Cool!

Kid stories, kid stories... Mom said I need some on here. I'm thinking. Let's see... Oh, Katie has been amazing me again. We missed our devotions the other morning and when I walked into the living room later that day she was sitting on the couch with my devotion book (a read-the-Bible-in-a-year book that tells you which portion to read for the day) and her own Bible in her lap. She had found the correct page to go with that day's date and had found the right place in her Bible and was reading our daily devotion all by herself! That was amazing enough, I thought. But then I remembered where we were in our reading... Exodus! She was reading about all of the dimensions of the tabernacle and how many cubits the curtains were supposed to be and how many sockets were to be in them, etc. !!! Crazy kid. Makes a Mama mighty proud, though. :-)

Then there's Joe. He's a beginning reader now and doing pretty well. He writes things frequently and I can always tell what he's trying to say because he sounds things out perfectly. But that often means that there are no vowels involved, because he just doesn't hear them when he says the word. The other day he made a sign that said, "NO GRLZ ULOWD" or something similar. He taped it to the door and then said, "Hey, Mom, does that say 'no girls allowed'?" "Not exactly," I said. As he was walking casually out of the room he said, "Well, that's what it says to me!" Ha! I guess that's all that matters!

And then, of course, there's Sam. He's just been doing the usual. Yesterday I found him in the kitchen banging a hollow plastic toy on the floor trying to knock something out of it. "Come out of there you Ramen noodles!," he was saying, "I know you're in there!!!" Thinking back to our lunch an hour earlier, I knew he wasn't kidding. ~sigh~

Guess that's it from here. Gotta get the monkeys looking good enough to take to the library! Have a great one!!!

~Bec~

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Blogger's Block  

Posted by cokelady

Am I the only one??? Just haven't been able to think of anything to write about. Which is crazy! I just took a trip to Colorado, had a Girl Party, and--of course--there's the endless supply of blogworthy material supplied simply by living with three little people. Guess I just haven't been in the mood. It's a good thing I don't have to worry about NARR. ;-)

The trip to Colorado was terrific! We left when James got off work last Thursday night and got a few hours behind us. We stopped and got a motel room in a little town called Hereford, Texas. I remember because it smelled like a cow. Actually, this was without a doubt the smelliest trip I've ever taken. Driving through Texas is alwasy an aromatic experience, but usually the odors come and go as you pass by beef farms and active oil rigs. Not so this time. The whole state just stunk. Stank? Stinked? Anyway, it was terrible. I don't think Sam is ever going to be the same again. Every time he's seen a cow since then he's sure to point it out. "Look, Mom, it's a cow. Cow's stink. 'At's a-scusting!!!"

Back to the motel. The room itself was very, very nice and I've never been so glad to have my handy scented candle in my overnight bag! It made the room pleasant enough we could uncover our mouths and noses and actually sleep. I even forgot about being in a cowy town until we opened the door the next morning. ~ugh~ The lobby was great, though, and their waffle irons made waffles in the shape of Texas! How cool is that?! The kids thought it was fantastic.

The drive into Colorado was amazing. Just enough fresh snow to make everything look clean and fresh and beyond gorgeous. Besides the cool, crisp mountain air, which I appreciated all the more after our cow/oil infested trip. When I go back there I'm reminded all over again of how very blessed I am to have grown up in such a magnificent place. As happy as we are in Texas, it still feels like "home" when I drive through those mountains and I soak it all in with an appreciation I never could have had while I lived there.

We were able to visit with Dad and Jon for a little while up at the Men's Retreat campground before the kids and I headed on to Denver. We got to Emilee's house at about 8:00, I think. We let the kid-o's play for a while, then put them to bed and started the girl party! We spent most of our time sipping on flavored cocoas and looking through my old photo albums, per Haley's request. I don't remember what we did after that, but it must have been enjoyable because we were up until 3:00am!

The next day Haley's cousin Laura came over to meet the Master. Emilee, that is. You see, Laura is just getting into scrapbooking and brought her book over to show what she's done so far and receive some pointers. Emilee is amazing and had helped her make a few improvements and filled her mind with lots of ideas and inspiration before she left a couple of hours later. Laura is a really, really nice girl and it was fun to be with her.

We made hearthside cider and a pumpkin roll that day. Uummm... ordered pizza for dinner... I'm thinking... I know we didn't do anything with the kids and rarely even saw them. They just hung out in the basement the whole time. Watching videos most of the time, I'm afraid! Oh well, it was a party, right?!

That night we girls stayed up and played games. I Buy, Clue, Memory Madness, Yatzee... And talked. And laughed a lot. Although I can't seem to recall anything specific that was actually funny, now that I think about it. Oh well. That's what girl parties are all about, right?! We lasted until 2:00am that night. I was at Emilee's house for a total of about 36 hours and we slept all of about 6! Ha! Maybe just a little more... ;-)

The next morning I loaded the kids up and headed back to the Men's Retreat campground. James rode with Jon and Dad rode with me so that I'd have at least a little while to visit with him. We went out to eat in Salida, then visited at Chris & Shanda's house until church time. We had a good service and Dad preached a really, really good message on sanctification. Wow. I was so blessed. Afterward, Jon and Dad left for Denver and we stayed the night with Chris and Shanda. It was so great to be with them! I still miss the time we used to spend with them when we lived in Salida and it's sooooooooo good to have a taste of it every now and then!

We drove back to Texas the next day and it seemed like a very, very long trip after our weekend of very little sleep. It was fun, however, as it usually us. The kids didn't get restless until the last hour or so, so I tried to come up with things to keep them occupied. We sang for a while, then I started up our own Memory Madness type game. I'd give them a category and they'd take turns giving an answer until somebody couldn't come up with one. We started with colors and then animals. Then Katie said she wanted to pick the category. Her choice? Bones. Do you know how embarrassing it is to have to play a game like this with your 3, 4, and 5 year olds and you're giving answers such as "ribs" and "pelvis" while your kids are saying "clavicle," "phalanges," and "metatarsals"? One of Joe's answers was "cervial vertibrae." Dumb Leap Pad. Those things were only created to make parents look stupid. Do a pretty good job of it, too.

It's been a good week since we got home. I got unpacked on Tuesday and got the house straightened up. I've been doing lots of school and kid-related things since we've been home. Got both nasty bathrooms scrubbed down, shining, and smelling strong of cleaning chemicals. And I have half of the kitchen floor scrubbed to a shine, too. The other half comes today.

I took the kids to Midland on Thursday and we did big shopping at Wal-Mart. (It had gotten so bad around here that the night before we had had peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches... on hamburger buns (!)... with Ramen noodles... for dinner!) We met James at Mardel, then we all went out to dinner together. Afterward, James took the kid and grocery laden van back to Andrews and I took the car over to Odessa for Ladies' Bible Study at Stacey's house. Afterward, Stacey lent me a couple of books from her vast collection of Christian fiction. I went home and read the first one (Love Comes Softly) that night (only took me 'til 2:00am -- I'm so dumb!!!), then the next book in the series last night (done by 12:30am). It was so great!!! It feels so good to be caught up enough on things to actually spend some time reading. It's so much better than watching a movie--even a good one. Just seems like it's good for your brain or something. Anyway, it's been great.

Aside from that, we've had the general kid craziness around here. Joe had a personal weapon ban for a week after he shot Katie in the face with one of his dart guns... twice. I made him go around and collect every piece of weaponry in the house and I stashed them all away. That was a long week for all of us. Joe does little else nowdays than shoot guns, bows & arrows, slingshots (even if it's just a stretchy lizard he has) and slash things with swords or makeshift knives. He spends most of his days in the backyard now and I'm thinking it's a good thing.

Enough rambling. I was just trying to make up for the week+ that I took off. ;-) Hope all is well with everybody -- and I hope we see some activity out there on the blogs sometime soon!

~Becki~

7 comments

Just so ya' know...  

Posted by cokelady

I will be unbloggable for a few days. We're off to Colorado for the weekend and I am soooooo excited!!! James will be at Men's Retreat, so the kids and I are going to stay with Emilee and her kids... and Haley and her kids!!! That makes 10 kids vs. 3 adults, but we're not worried. We can take 'em. ;-) We really intend to lock all of the kids in the back yard or the basement (depending on the weather, probably) and have a grand Girl Party all weekend! Wa-Hoo!!! I just finished packing my party bag. Photo albums (Haley's request), girl movies, stuff to make spiced cider and flavored cocoas, a few games... I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I think the party bag is bigger than my suitcase--the one containing enough clothing for one adult and three children for 4 days! Ha! We're going to have a great time!!!
The kids are sooooo excited, too. They're packing their own party bags. Sam keeps picking up toys and talking about how much Luke will like them, so he's going to take them for Luke. A few for Caleb, too. But he made it very plain, "I'm not sharing with Abigail!!!" Don't know why, really. But Joe told me that Abbie really likes his lizards, so he's going to take some lizards for her. Ha!

Okay, gotta go. I've got sooooooo much to do. I had great expectations for today, but I've given up on most of them. I had hoped to get the kitchen floor scrubbed, as well as both bathrooms. HA. I've got to go clean out the van, pull it around back, load all of James' sound equipment into it, pull it back around front, load everything else up, finish up on the laundry and get the beds made, THEN see if I have time to get to work on the bathrooms or kitchen. I'm hoping to still get one or the other done. We'll see! At least I got all of the ironing finished up last night, so that feels good. We'll be leaving when James gets off work tonight and driving part way so he'll be able to make it to Retreat decently early tomorrow to get all his stuff set up. So that's the plan! Everybody have a great weekend!!! (Although I know none of yours will be half as fun and Emilee's and Haley's and mine! Tee! Hee!) Later!!!

~Bec~

5 comments

The Best Day of My Life???  

Posted by cokelady

Very nearly. And have I mentioned lately how much I love Tom Tefertiller?!?!? What a guy!!! Best weatherman in the state--probably the world. ;-) But more about that later...

James and I woke up sometime before 7:00am and peeked outside. WHOA!!! I was in denial for several minutes, but it was really true: 5" of fresh, clean, beautiful snow!!! In west Texas!!!!!! God loves me soooooooo much!!!

When the kids finally woke up (seemed like it took hours!!!) we fed them some oatmeal while I shoveled the sidewalks out back. As soon as we could, we got everybody all bundled up and headed to the front yard. Tammy showed up about that time to play with us, so we set to work on our snowman. We worked long and hard (the snow wasn't wet enough to be able to roll, so that made it quite a challenge!) while getting pelted with snowballs from the boys. We were almost done when we decided to take the head and middle section off and start over. He just wasn't looking just right. I told Tammy that no more than we see snow around here we're going to do it right and have a snowman we could be proud of! So after building, dismantling, and rebuilding him, this is what we came up with. I've never been so happy to see a snowman in my whole life!!!



Here's a pic with the whole crowd. The boys were only minimal help, but Katie brought us shovelfull after shovelfull of snow so we could keep packing it on.


While we were building I noticed that the old man next door was raking the snow off of his driveway!!! I asked if I could shovel it for him or if he'd like to borrow our snow shovel. He thanked me, but declined. After a minute he looked at our shovel and said, "You brought that thing here from somewhere'st else." I laughed and told him I'd come from Colorado. In another minute or two he picked up the shovel and said, "I think I'll give this here thing a try. I've never used one before." Can you believe that?! This man has got to be 75 years old. Never used a snow shovel!!! I've never heard anything so tragic in my whole life. Pitiful!!!

Anyway, after an hour or two enjoying the wonders of winter (that are painfully rare in this little corner of the world) we came in to get warmed up.


James ordered pizza for us (what a guy!!! -- He had stayed home from work due to the snow, by the way) so we had a great lunch. Then I brought in the big bowls of snow that I'd set aside earlier and made some snow cream. It had been years since I'd made any (you can imagine) and I couldn't remember exactly how to do it. So I called HQ and asked for Dad. I never thought anything of it until James started cracking up. "You call General Headquarters and ask to speak to the General Overseer... to ask him how to make snow cream?!?!?" It never occured to me that everybody wasn't calling him and asking! Dad makes terrific snow cream. Relaying the recipe is a different matter. The instructions went something like this: "Well, let's see here... You take a whole slew of eggs--without the shells--whomp 'em up real good. And then you, uh... let's see... you use a can of some funny kind of milk and, um..." I finally said, "Thanks, Dad. I'll call Mom." She was much more helpful, I assure you, and the snow cream was delicious!!!

Afterwards we bundled the kids up again and sent them out back to play. Fun, fun, fun!!!


I came on in and sent some pictures to my Dad -- and a few to Tom Tefertiller. I was serious when I said last time that I had e-mailed him threatening to bring the kids down to his station and refuse to leave until he got us the snow he'd promised. He had written me back on Monday and said how very sorry he was for the lack of snow and the bad forecasting to go along with it. Said to not lose hope--we might get some snow that very night. (I, of course, chalked that up as another lie, but appreciated his apology nonetheless.) He begged us to please not come down and throw any mud balls at him.

So I felt I had to write back and let him know that he had gone from "scum of the earth" to "greatest guy in the world" because of those 5". (A good weatherman in my book is one who delivers snow, regardless of what he says should or shouldn't happen.) I sent him that picture of all of us with the snowman and the one of the kids making snow angels -- and one of my ruler buried in the snow all the way up to the 5" mark. :-)

After a while we brought the kids in and put them down for a nap, then Tammy and I sat in the den and played games by the fire. ~sigh~ Can it get any better?!?!? When the news came on at 4:00 we were sure to watch Tom Tefertiller. Not only did he deliver snow, but he put our picture on the news! Ha! How fun is that?! The only bad part is that the kids were down for their nap and missed it. It was on again on the 5:00 news, but the kids were outside playing again by then! Oh well. It was fun, nonetheless!

We had left-over pizza for dinner, then I made a run to the store before coming home and putting the kids to bed. Took a nice, hot shower, put on my flannel Coca-Cola nightgown, some fuzzy socks, and sipped on some hot cocoa--cherry vanilla flavored. Yum!!! ~long, satisfied sigh~ What a day!!! I tried to blog all of this last night, but kept getting errors. Weird. Anyway, here it all is! The snow is melting fast and by last night our snowman was leaning forward precariously--the big fall will happen sometime today. But it's still just so glorious that we actually had a snowman--in my front yard--in Andrews, Texas!!!! Wa-Hoooo!!!! Life is Grand and I am just soooooooooo, soooooooooo, sooooooooooo happy!!!!

~Bec~

Update: The snowman is no more. Some punk kid came and knocked him down. (I can tell because his remnants are not on the side he'd been leaning toward; they're on the opposite side.) No matter. It was still a grand and glorious day and no punk kid is going to be able to spoil it for me now!!! ;-)

Keep scrolling--there's more!

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More Wonderful Winter Pictures!  

Posted by cokelady


Sam coming to get me



Joe making a snowman of his own



Katie and her very first made-it-all-by-myself snowman



Hershey eating the raisins and cookies off of Katie's very first snowman! HA! I was cracking up!!! He knocked the head off of Joe's snowman to get at the goodies. Everybody's got a their job, right?! Hershey figured his out pretty quick. ;-)
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Better than nothing  

Posted by cokelady

...I guess. We did finally have a few flakes today. Nothing to write home about (although, isn't that what I'm doing right now?) and certainly not enough to make snow angels, a snowman, snow cream OR have a snowball fight with, but I guess it's better than none at all. I was thinking today about how much I've been robbed. If I had been oblivious to the news this past week and had never heard any of those lying weathermen and their faulty predictions of a foot of snow... If I would've just bumbled into the little bit of cold weather and dusting of snow on the ground, I would have been soooooooo excited and sooooooo very happy! But despite my best efforts to control my enthusiasm, I bought into their lies and had my heart set on real, true-blue SNOW. So when we did get a small (very small) taste of winter weather, did I enjoy it?! Noooooo! I paced the floor fuming and flailing my arms while hashing over once again the dopey weathermen and how they should all be fired, etc. I was robbed of being able to enjoy the "wintery mix" (a term I am SOOOOOOOO sick of hearing!) because I was banking on something more! Life is so not fair.

I was also thinking today about my rotten attitude and how I really should be thankful for what we have... and if I was one of my children how I would quickly remedy the complaints and hostilities I was displaying. Ugh. It's always so bad when you realize that you're being bad. Worse yet when you struggle to straighten up after the realization!

I did my best, though, and in the end I did enjoy what cool weather we got and the flurries that are so rare down here. (Not as much as I would've enjoyed real snow, but... HA!) The kids went out and played for quite a while and they don't seem to know the difference between real snow and what we get down here in Texas. I should never tell them any different, I suppose. Then they won't struggle with thankfulness like their mother!



NOTE: Please excuse the pink and purple gloves on my boys. They were not happy about having to wear them, but it's all we had! We bought the two-pack for Katie last year (or was it two years ago?) and a two-pack of black and blue ones for the boys. They, of course, have never been used before and somehow the boys' gloves have been lost. They weren't very happy about the sissy colors, but were glad to have gloves of some kind. Sam even told me, "Mom, these are girly gloves... but I like 'em." So sad!

The ice on one of our trees in the back yard.

Let's see... what else did we do today? Nothing much, really. Played outside with the kid-o's, then went to Aunt Sue's store to pick out some Spatterware since she's not going to be carrying it anymore (yikes!), then James took us out for lunch. It was fun! We came home and the kids played out back a while longer, then watched the Jack Elam scenes from Hawmps while I made some chocolate chip cookies. It was their first time ever seeing any of that movie and I thought they'd never stop laughing. It's right down their alley, especially the boys. A cowboy--a bad guy, no less--lots of guns and lots of craziness. It's especially hilarious to hear your 4 year old in the other room saying to his siblings, "I'm loose! I'm ready! I'm walkin' death and destruction!!!" Ha!

Well, that's it for the night. I'll follow up with some more snow (I wish) pictures for you, so keep scrolling down. Hope you all had a great day and have good church services tomorrow!

~Becki~

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Icy Shots  

Posted by cokelady

Despite my disgust over not having any real snow, I was amazed at how pretty all of the ice was. This isn't the sort of weather we ever had in Colorado. Naturally, I would greatly prefer the stuff you can play in, but there's no denying that the ice adds a beauty all it's own.


These two shots were taken in our back yard.



Oddly enough, some of the trees in town still haven't lost their leaves. I never would've imagined a tree still bearing the colors of fall also dripping with icicles! Bizarre.

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2 comments

More Pictures  

Posted by cokelady

I just thought this looked pretty cool. All of the signs in town had terrific icicles.
The kids had a great time snapping icicles ("popcicles") off of the rose bush in the back yard and eating them. Strange.

And this is Sam. He spent most of his time under the steady drip from the gutter. (Notice the "2-6 inches" of snow in the background. Ggrrr.) He "took a shower" for quite a while, then decided he was thirsty.

And this is Sam after just a few more minutes under the "shower." I'm not sure what turned the experience from exhilerating to devastating, but the switch was quite apparent. The picture doesn't show it well--especially since he had cold drips from the gutter water still streaming down his face--but he had little tears flowing right along side! Sooooooo pitiful. Ha! You gotta love 'em!
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Liars  

Posted by cokelady

Well, today went just as scheduled. All except for the SNOW, that is. That's right, folks, we've got NO snow. None whatsoever. Those dippy weathermen were forecasting 2-6" (Channel 9) or 6-12" (Channel 7.) NONE. Not a single flake. We woke up to a sloppy, soggy, muddy world today. Not that I'm bitter or anything. I will tell you this, though--if we go another two or three days with no accumulation I'm going to bundle all of the kids up in their hats and scarves and mittens and hoof it town there to Tom Tefertiller's weather lab (really, that's his name--Katie is in love with good ole' Tom) and tell him that he promised us snow and we're not leaving until he makes good on it. Jerk.

No matter. We had a good day in spite of our lying meteorologists. I called Tammy first thing and told her to get over here and we'd just pretend it was a grand and glorious snow day. So she came and we did devotions with the kids, then sat down and watched a great chick flick (thanks for sending it, Melissa--I really liked it!), then played games for most of the afternoon. We had chowder for lunch and sipped hot cocoa. The only thing we didn't get to do was the snow angels. And snowball fight. And snowman! And snow cream!!! THANK YOU VERY MUCH, TOM!!!

Speaking of Tom, I was watching earlier today and he had the nerve to say that we might get a whole 3/4" of snow overnight tonight. 3/4"!!! Can you believe that?! The guy ought to be drug out to the street and shot. If that's the best he can do (which would, I concede, be better than he's done so far) he ought to invest in a snow machine. Jerk. Did I already say that? Strange. I always really liked Tom Tefertiller before today. He always seemed so nice. We even met him at Pets-Mart once several months ago. Katie insisted on talking with him and giving him several hugs. He told us to stop by the station some time to say hello and watch a newcast. We may just do that. Tomorrow. It won't be the friendly visit he was expecting, I assure you. Jerk.

James is actually in there listening to the latest hogwash. I told him I was DONE with the news. At least the weather segment. I don't even want to know what they're saying now. I just know I'm ready to take a vacation. To Siberia. But for now I'm just going to go curl up with a blanket and a book and pretend again that it's wintertime out there. *sigh* I am thankful that at least I have a decent imagination. I don't even want to think of how miserable life would be if I didn't have that much. What with no SNOW or anything.

~Bec~


P.S. -- I just finished sending an e-mail to Mr. Tom Tefertiller at News West 9 warning him of his upcoming visit if he doesn't deliver on his predictions. That'll teach him.

15 comments

Nothing Fun  

Posted by cokelady

No, really. Don't get your hopes up for some grand and glorious kid story--I don't have any tonight. I know that I've laughed a lot at them today, but can't seem to recall anything specific. It just seemed like it was time to blog again, so here I am!

Something I've been failing to report is the discovery of a Home School Group here in Andrews, Texas! WHOA!!! I've tried to find out if there was such a thing several times, but to no avail. Then last month I bumped into a lady at the library who happens to head up a group here in town! I think there are nine families involved at this point. Last week was our first outing with them and it was great! We went on a field trip to tour a candy factory down in Midland. Very interesting! And they have all of their offices set up like an old western street--the jail, the saloon, etc., so Joe thought it was terrific. The free samples were great, too. ;-) Most of the families seem really nice.

This past Tuesday was Mom's Night Out for the group. James was working the late shift at Mardel, so Tammy offered to watch the kids for me so I could go. (What a friend!) It was just me and Sara (the leader) and another lady named Angela who I REALLY like. I've really been praying for God to give me some open doors in the are and I'm excited at the thought of having contact with some PEOPLE other than church folks! These ladies are sooooooo nice and we already have so much in common. (The reasons why a lot of folks homeschool their kids are similar and usually spill over into other areas of their lives as well.) It's refreshing to visit with people who don't think you're loony for wanting to keep your kids at home with you! Anyway, they seem like really nice ladies and seem to be so very sincere in their desire to please the Lord. I'm praying that God can somehow use me to be a blessing to them. There is more out there for them and their families than just "the kingdom" and I want to be a good representation of what they have yet to discover!

Along those same lines, James has had some very interesting talks with his boss at Mardel lately. He and his family, too, share a great many of our same feelings and convictions and Brian (the boss) told James the other day that he doesn't know when he's ever met anyone so "like minded" before. He said he's pretty sure he and his family would be attending our Church right now instead of the Assembly of God... if it weren't all the way over in Andrews! (Mardel is in Midland, 35 or 40 miles away.) He's asked James LOTS of questions and seems to really be searching right now. Say a prayer for him, please! I was thinking the other day... Wouldn't it be just like God to bring us to a place where James would be required to get a secular job--so that He could open some doors and give some "ripe" people the opportunity to discover The Church of God?!

In other news, we had SNOW yesterday!!! Not really, but for around here, that's what they called it. I would call it a "heavy dusting." Nonetheless, you would've thought we got 3' of it, the way the kids carried on. I got them all bundled up and we all went out and tried to play in it for a while. Joe slipped and fell on the icy sidewalk at least 8 times. He insisted on wearing his cowboy boots. (My children have never owned snow boots.) I was scraping what snow I could off the sidewalk to try to make a few snowballs for them. They were loving it and stayed outside for the longest time. Pitiful, I know! My kids don't even know what a real snow really is! But...

They are actually forecasting SNOW for tonight!!! One station says 2-6" and the other station says 6-12". I'm hanin' with the big snow people!!! ;-) Actually, I'm trying to be very, very careful to not get my hopes up at all. It wouldn't totally shock me to wake up to nothing but some sleet and a lot of mud tomorrow. It just doesn't SNOW here, you know?! But if it DOES happen to snow, I've got my plan all worked out. First of all, Tammy is coming over!!! We'll go out and play with the kids for a while--make snow angels, the biggest snowman we can, and have a grand snowball fight. Then we'll come in and warm up by a nice, cozy fire. We'll drink hot cocoa or spiced cider and have corn chowder or ham and beans for lunch. We'll play games, maybe watch a girl movie and otherwise just celebrate the grand occassion! You know what would make it too good to be true? Getting enough snow to make snow cream! I don't think my kids have ever even tasted it before. CRAZY. So tonight (although I just stepped outside and it's completely dry and doesn't even feel very cold) I'm PRAYING for snow!!! God knows how much we need it. ;-)

Okay, gotta go. Maybe next time you hear from me I'll have some wonderful snow stories to share! Wouldn't that be something?! Easy, Bec, ... you're getting excited again... down, girl. *sigh* G'night all!

~Becki~

4 comments

Yippy-ki-ay-ti-o!  

Posted by cokelady

Howdy, y'all!!! A big, hearty thank you to Miss Jenna for being so kind as to whip up a good 'ole West Texas blog for me! Sadly, I have no time to write anything new. I have been neglecting my real life long enough already! The whole morning has been snatched away from me and I'm bound to lose the afternoon as well if I don't get back to work. That's okay. I really just wanted to say, GREAT TEMPLATE, HU?! I love it!!! Thanks again, Jenna!!!

~Bec~

P.S. -- Ah, yes. Couple things. First of all, we're going to have to do some tweeking to get rid of that GIGANTIC profile picture that's throwing the whole page out of whack! Ha! I need to change the pic anyway--it's over a year old now.

Also, the song you hear playing is the one my Granddaddy used to sing to my Grandmother. Embarrassed her to death. It's "Waltz Across Texas," for you poor souls who are unfortunate enough to not know that already. ;-)

6 comments

The Book of Blog  

Posted by cokelady

Sounds absurd, no? I agree. Nonetheless, I have just that sitting in a 78 page stack on my desk. I have finally come to accept the fact that I am a complete failure at keeping a diary. I’ve tried for years—ever since I was 10 years old or so. The first several years were sporadic to say the least (just like all of the years since then) and were either thrown away or burned when I was about 15 years old. At that extremely mature age (ha) I was mortified to go back and read the things (and guys) I had been interested in while still a mere child. (Again, HA!) I still have diaries from my teen years, but there are gaps of months—even years, in some cases—where there are no entries whatsoever. I realize that the loss of my personal history is no great blow to the rest of the world, but it always seems sad to me that I can’t remember so many of the things that have happened throughout the years, and my thoughts and feelings about them.

My failure to record the events in my own life has now transferred over to my children’s lives. That is, I am a total failure at the baby book thing. I did pretty well with Katie’s book that first year, but was already beginning to fall apart by her first birthday. Joe has no book at all and Sam only has a calendar that Auntie Em made for him—that still doesn’t have any pictures in it. I just can’t seem to make myself sit down do those things like I should!

I have, however, found something that I am successful at: blogging! Before you start throwing things, let me admit that I’m not completely successful at it. But when compared to my ability to keep a diary, I’m a gold medal winner in the universe of blog. The difference: a keyboard vs. pen and paper. I type soooooo much faster than I write. And as is being proven in this very post (!), I find myself recording every last detail, even the unnecessary ones, and it’s overwhelming to think of writing it all out by hand. SO…

In glancing back over some of my previous blogs a few days ago I began to realize that this is my diary. This is, in a sense, the story of my life this past year. And what a year it has been! True, due to the public nature of a blog I’m not at liberty to share quite as freely the details of certain things or my deepest feelings about them, but still—it’s better than nothing at all! The most important things that I want to remember are all of the crazy things my kids do from day to day. Those things never make it into my “real” diary because I just can’t write that much! But some day, I’ll look back at the stories of the weird and outlandish things the kids did “way back in 2006” and will laugh heartily. And cry, I’m sure.

Thus, Becki’s Book of Blog, 2006! James just stared at me, slightly grinning, when I told him. Just wait ‘til he gets home and sees I’ve printed out 78 pages of it. I could tell he thought I was nuts, but I insisted, “One day you’ll be glad I did this!” I hope!!!

Can’t leave without at least one kid story for the day, right? How ‘bout the latest from Joe. We’ve been having some issues with him lately and I’m certainly open to suggestions! There’s a definite power struggle going on and he’s displaying that guy thing—the will to dominate something. It will NOT be his mother, but he’s still testing the waters. A few days ago he was being too rowdy and I told him to go sit down for a few minutes. He obeyed, but there was a notebook and pen by the chair and in a minute or two he was looking at me snidely and saying, “Heh, heh, heh,” like he always does when he’s got the upper hand. I asked what he was doing and he whipped his notebook out and showed me what he had been drawing: a picture of me in jail. What is the proper way of handling this?!?!? I don’t want to overreact to stupid little things, but I can’t let the kid get away with “winning” when I’m trying to discipline or train him, you know?! I didn’t feel it was worthy of a spanking, but didn’t feel like I could just let him sit there and draw pictures of what he would really love to actually do to his mother at the moment! So I told him he’d have to stay in the chair until he could draw a nice picture of Mom. It took three or four more pictures of me in jail before he finally broke. In a defeated voice he finally called to me and said he’d drawn another picture. This one was a picture of him opening the jail door and letting me out. *sigh* That kid wears me out!

Just a few minutes ago I told the kids to clean the house in a certain amount of time. Joe fiddled around for a couple of minutes, then asked if I was going to spank them if they didn’t get it done on time. “Certainly,” I said. So he hollers to Katie, “Mom’s spanking us if we don’t get it clean, Katie.” Then, under his breath he muttered, “Mean old Mom.” !!! He only thinks I’m mean now!

Okay, I know, I know. WAY, WAY, WAY to long—just to tell you all that I have booked my blog! My apologies. Here, I’ll add a link to one of those dumb quiz things that everybody else is doing. I made this up several days ago and can’t remember a single thing on it. Anyway, here ‘tis:

http://www.quizyourfriends.com/quizpage.php?quizname=070110153203-877055

Talk to you later!!!

~Becki~

13 comments

Hhmmm...  

Posted by cokelady

Okay, I'm going nuts, are you??? I've been putting off this blogging thing far too long. There are several reasons, none of them very good, I'm afraid. First of all, I've got my team (Team Jenna, that is) working on a new template for me and--due to some Internet problems in West Texas--we've had a hard time communicating, thus delaying the appearance of the new look. I've been waiting to blog until the new template was up because this one is just so Christmassy. It's grand, true, but it just can't work anymore. (There are, by the way, some new Christmas pictures just below this post, so be sure to scroll down.) That's lame excuse #1 for my having not blogged.

Lame excuse #2: I didn't wanna.

Only good and reasonable excuse: I've been a very good and diligent wife and have been working far too hard to sit around doing frivolous things such as blog. No, really! It's true! January is always the big CLEAN IT ALL time for me. When the Christmas stuff comes down, I go nuts cleaning every inch of everything before the regular stuff goes back up. You may think I'm exaggerating, but truthfully it goes like this: you start at the ceiling fan (which only gets cleaned once or twice a year around here), then you sweep the cobwebs off the ceiling, then the walls, then you clean, scrub or dust in, on, around, and under everything in the whole room, every tiny little knick-knack and beyond. I wash all of the doilies and greenery and such. I even managed to pull the piano away from the wall this time to clean behind and under it! It's usually the one thing that stands its ground. (I've tried several times, but have been unable to budge it. This time I just kept on grunting and groaning and pushing and prying and trying different bodily contortions until I was finally able to wedge it out of there. Wa-Hoo! Yea, me!!!) All of the wood has been treated, the furniture well vacuumed and emptied of all loose change and small toys. Every inch of the living room is spotless, from the ceiling fan right down to the baseboards, and everything in between. *long, satisfied sigh* Ah yes, 'tis a glorious feeling. Of course, that was last week. Living in west Texas, the whole room is quite dusty again now. Somehow, just knowing how hard I worked on it makes it still feel clean, so I'll settle for that.

After the living room, I moved the big cleaning project to the den. Then to the kitchen. Then I took a day or two and did the big sorting and purging of the kids' toys. After Christmas there was just no room to put anything away anymore. (Some grandparents really should be banned from participating in Christmas. They go totally haywire and lose all good sense, piling up more loot than a kid could ever hope to use before they outgrow it.) Then it was on to my office. I just finished this room up this evening. It looks terrific! All except the ceiling fan. Forgot to do that one. But it's too late now! If I were to try to clean it now all of the dust and grime would fall down all over the rest of my freshly cleaned room. So I guess the fan will just have to wait until the next cleaning spree. It's really the only reasonable way to do things. *wink*

Are you bored yet? I am. There's just nothing all that thrilling about cleaning. In fact, the only entertaining thing to go on around here has been the comic relief I receive from my kids throughout the day...

The other day we were all sitting at the table and Joe was absentmindedly nibbling on his toast. He glanced down at it and was shocked at what he saw. "Hey, Mom! My toast looks like Virginia!!!" Strange thing for a 4 year old to say. Stranger yet: he was right--his toast was in the perfect shape of Virginia. Strangest of all: he knew it. Katie wasn't to be outdone, so she began nibbling away at her own toast. "Look, Mom! I made Tennessee!" Did a pretty good job of it, too. Forming states out of their food has been a regular mealtime activity since that day. It got me to wondering if other children out there spend the lunch hour whittling away with their teeth in an attempt to create the shape of Texas out of their sandwiches. Gives a whole new meaning to the term "Texas toast," hu?! (Ba-dum-bum-ching! Sorry, couldn't pass that one up!)

The kids helped me make cinnamon rolls a few days ago. Whoever said that letting your kids help with such things will save you time in the long run (because they'll learn helpful skills earlier on, blah, blah, blah) was out of their gourd. I do my best to include the kids in things like this, but I must confess that it's often because I know I should include them, not because I want to. While I was rolling out the dough Katie started saying, "Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!" and running in circles to an unknown destination. She finally found what she was looking for: the napkins. She had to sneeze and knew that if she sneezed into her hands I would make her go wash them... for the 8th time. So she picked up the entire stack of napkins and sneezed into them, rather than just the top one. I was trying to not overreact to that when I turned around to see Joe running the rolling pin up and down his forehead. "JOE!!!! What are you doing?!?!?! Give me that rolling pin! I'll take care of that, you go wash up again..." That's when I noticed Sam, who had both fists full of my freshly rolled out dough. I was about to tell him to unhand the dough before I broke his precious little fingers when I saw Joe (on his way to wash up) step on one of the plastic placemats that had been dropped on the floor and *whoosh* his boot went straight up in the air in front of him and he landed flat on his back with a mighty thud. Mind you, all of this happened in the span of about 30 seconds. What had begun building as frustration in me suddenly came out in the form of teary laughter and I suddenly realized that, yes, indeed, it is absolutely more fun to make cinnamon rolls with the kids than without them. It is NOT easier. But it is certainly more fun. And that makes it worth it all. And somehow, the cinnamon rolls turned out perfect!

Katie has had a particularly clumsy week, even for her. There was one day that seemed to be especially bad. She tripped over the same 4" step from the den into the living room numerous times, each incident ending with a long and lanky girl lying spread eagle in one room or the other. (We've lived here for 3 and a half years; you'd think at some point she'd learn to look out for her usual danger zones.) Same thing happened on the kitchen floor once that day, too--and there's no step there. She hurt her knee doing something or another and who knows what else. Then she and Joe were playing in the utility room (don't ask--I don't know why) and I heard a bad scream. Katie screams frequently and I've learned to judge the differences in tone and pitch pretty well. There's the "Hey, you took my toy" scream. Then there's the, "Ouch, I just did something painful" scream. There's the "I'm just crabby and need a good spankin' and maybe a nap, too" scream. And so on. The scream I heard in this particular incident was an "I'm REALLY hurting this time" scream. I could tell it was the real deal and was going to check on her when she suddenly came flying through the room--I mean right through, and kept on going--wailing all the way. She made another appearance and departure before I could even get my first words out. She continued her running and jumping and screaming and pretty soon I had joined in on the screaming part: "KATIE!!! Come in here and tell me--or at least show me!--what is wrong!!!!" "I ca-a-a-a-a-a-a-an't!" said the blur as it passed once more. I kept yelling at her to come to me and she just kept sailing through the room at warp speed saying "I can't!!!! It hu-u-u-u-u-u-u-urts!!!!!," her voice trailing behind her speeding body. I began to wonder if something might be broken or perhaps even severed--though obviously not a leg. It seemed like a long time (although it retrospect it was probably 20 seconds or less) until she was finally able to come to me and show me the fingers that had been smashed in the hinge side of a closing door. (No serious injuries, in case you're wondering.) The whole ordeal was frustrating, a little frightening to begin with, and all-in-all quite fascinating. I just kept wondering... What must it be like to have absolutely no control whatsoever over one's own body? I don't think I've ever experienced that before. Is it something that training can cure?! If so, how do you set up that training session??? I would really like to be able to help this child out, but there are so many times when I find myself shaking my head and shrugging my shoulders. I don't have a clue what to do with her! Help???

Then there's Sam. I was making lunch the other day and turned around to find him down on his hands and knees, licking the kitchen floor. "Sam!!!" I said, "What are you doing?!?!?" His expression showed a little confusion and a twinge of annoyance as he replied, "I spilled my juice." He was looking at me like I was some kind of a freak for asking such a dumb question--wasn't it obvious?!

*sigh* So the big question of the day is... WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?!?!? I'm raising a bunch of little hoodlums who seem to think I'm weird for not understanding when they lose any and all self-control of their own person--or lick their juice up off the floor. ?! I'm doing the work--really! I'm not a slacker!!! I'm really, really, really trying to make decent human beings out of these kids, but I think they're about to whip me. They probably have secret meetings during nap time, planning their next strategic maneuver. "Okay, Joe--it's your turn. Maybe you should tie your bedsheet to the ceiling fan and..." All in an attempt to make Mama snap and end up in the loony bin so they can have free reign of the house.

It's late and I'm bushed. All the more after recounting the events of the past few days. I think I'm going to bed. Right after I go check on those little angels of mine... and make sure they're securely hand-cuffed to their beds until morning! HA!

G'night!!!
~Bec~

15 comments

Christmas Pictures  

Posted by cokelady

The kids making sure Granddaddy gets his exercise

Joe received every weapon known to man for Christmas: swords, guns, knives, bow and arrows--you name it. I, personally, think that a cowboy hat, a gladiator breastplate and a bow & arrow are a bit of a strange combination, but not Joe. He loves it all, together or seperate. In the end, though, he always goes back to the cowboy stuff. He did tell me today, however, that he wants to be a pirate when he grows up. That's a new one around here.

This is Sammy, sharing his Christmas candy with Grandma. I think.

This was Dad's gift to Mom: a picture of their new house, with the key taped to the frame. (The frame that really belonged to us and we made Mom give it back. It holds the picture of Paladen for the boys' room--they'd die if Grandma took it away! Ha!)
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4 comments

A Few More Christmas Pictures  

Posted by cokelady

This is a picture of Sam with Joe's new sword... and his first victim: the orange he got in his stocking.

Happy Siblings!

Katie in the new dress Grandma Vicki made for her

The boys in their new suits from Grandma Wanda
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3 comments

An Important Announcement from NARR  

Posted by cokelady

That’s right, folks, it’s that time of year again! The time when the Neighborhood Association of Rules and Regulations here in Blogville takes time to recognize that one-in-a-million blogger with the worst track record of consistent blogs throughout the year. The Association has put much time and contemplation into this year’s award before making its decision, but feels confident that they have come to the only right conclusion. Without further ado, we hereby state that
The Worst Blogger of the Year Award
goes to…
Lyndi Cabales
of Springfield, Oregon!!!
That’s right folks, we have a winner (or a loser?) on our hands! Our very own Lyndi Cabales has run away with the most un-coveted award of the year!!! This was, the board admits, a difficult decision. Mrs. Cabales only moved into Blogville this past August. Never before has this award gone to one who has not resided here for the entire duration of the year (actually, never before has this award gone to anyone—but no matter…), however, Mrs. Cabales has made such a strong impression through her ability to write phenomenal and side-splitting posts that everybody awaits with great anticipation—only to delay herself for months before posting once again—that even considering her short abode here in Blogland, it just wouldn’t seem right to give the award to anyone else. So congratulations, Lyndi! You are hereby named Worst Blogger of 2006!!! You worked hard for it and it has not gone without notice.

(Would somebody please call Lyndi and make her check the blogs to be sure she’ll even see this? Thank you.)

You’re all welcome to post your words of congratulations (or rebuke) here at this time. Thank you all for your participation and, most of all, for being better bloggers than Lyndi.

This is an official statement from NARR. Be it known that the Chairman of the Board has, herself, been so swamped in judging everybody else and their failures to properly blog that she has not found time to do much of it herself lately. This is, of course, completely acceptable for the Chairman (and the Chairman alone) and is covered on page 438, section 5, paragraph 2 of the NARR handbook. Don’t ask for a copy—they are currently out of print.

5 comments
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