Jumping ship and miles of nothing...

Ok, so due to some difficult circumstances with my grandparents the girl's and I trekked across the massive state we live in to see Mom and Dad and offer our support in helping my grandparents. It was fun to see Granddaddy (my Dad) preach and go with "Honey" (that is what the girl's call my Mom) to get a fresh gingerbread man and pumpkin cookies! It is amazing to realize that my kids have my parents as grandparents, it is hard to believe that life is moving that fast!

It was also nice to see trees. I certainly used to take those for granted! =]

We drove for 9 hours on the way there and 8 1/2 on the way back, and both times when we finally got there, R would happily announce, "That didn't take too long at all!" That's optimism for you! Tom had the entire house to himself for almost a week (I am so jealous of all that time alone to get things done). I think the more chaos there is around here, the more lonely and quiet the house gets! He was certainly glad to see us come home!

Well, Tom's Mom is coming Sunday to stay for a week! So, I have got to go clean and get ready for her visit. Hopefully, this will be a fun week, I have cookies planned, a girl's lunch, and catching up on family stuff.

Hope all is well with everyone!

Being outdoorsy....

This was a fun weekend! For starters on Thursday night we taught the girls how to play kickball! That was a lot of fun, it seems R has a pretty competitive streak (no idea where she got that)! She picked up on the rules pretty quick once she learned to run the bases in order! By the end of the game she had learned how to steal bases! (again, no idea how she learns this stuff :)

E's big breakthrough was she stuck with us! She is not a game-player and generally clams up at Cubbies (AWANA) and won't even play "duck-duck-cubbie". But we are working with her so she learns how to play so she will have fun (she hates it when everybody shouts orders in the heat of battle....seems like I have some other family members that hate that too.... :-).



Then on Friday Tom constructed a backyard campout! Complete with 6-man tent and smoldering fire! We live next door to a county fireman so Tom made me happy by asking before we finished off our stump in the backyard! We managed enough hot dogs to justify s'mores! It was great!

Cheap Entertainment.

Ok, it has been shamefully long since I last posted. No doubt, I have lost my viewing audience. Too bad, you'll have to waste time some other way now!
Let's see, I ended with a book review last time and have since blown through "The Devil Wears Prada". Other than reading is better for your mind that television, it was "fluff". It is amazing how I can take months to go through an uplifting worthwhile book, but then can put my life on hold to read something completly entertaining.... It's not a bad book, but, in my opinion, the movie was better.

Fall seems to have found us, and I have been working through getting out the fall clothes for 2 weeks now -- mind you, we don't have that many clothes, it just seems to take me that long to do any project these days. Which brings me to home school. That is going good, R is really coming along on some things, but she would much rather know everything rather than go through the process of learning it! Tom and I both know she came by that honestly, but that doesn't make it any easier to keep my patience on some days! We only know 1 other home school family in town and their daughter is our babysitter. It is difficult to feel alone in doing this, so I will still be calling my distant homeschool buddies to get some advice!

We are working hard to adjust to small town life, the entire town revolves around the local school and football is definitely king out here! We are friends with about half of the coaching staff (there are 15 coaches working in the football program right now), so we are learing about the ups and downs of coaching!

A picture is worth a thousand words so I will close with our "friend" who wandered into our backyard today. It was fun watching him try to sneak off on the girls when they forgot to watch him!!!

Book Review

Ok, a while back I auspiciously mentioned a whole list of books I was going to read and let you know if I liked. Yeah, um, here I am months later finally almost through with the first one. Ok, "Passionate Housewives Desperate for God". I really like this book. It is pretty convicting when they talk about dying to yourself, living for God and selflessly serving your children and husband. They are a little more extreme in some things than I personally am, but most controversial subjects (i.e. amount of children to have) they have left to your own personal convictions. They do go into how much our society, and even the Christians, have been influenced by the feminist movement. We are all subject to swallowing something that appeals to our selfish nature, when we know what the Bible says about selfishness:

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should not look out for your own interests, but also for the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as Christ Jesus: Who, being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death even death on a cross!" (Philippians 2:3-8)

Whew, I always feel terribly convicted whenever I come across this passage. It takes away all of my "but I's". But I am wasting my college degree. But I am just not getting my "me" time. But I am tired. But I worked hard all morning and I deserve for these kids to take naps! Etc., etc. All of these were running through my head as I was reading some of the passages in this book.
I recommend "Passionate Housewives...." But, as always, remember there is only one Bible.

Caffeine Buzz

I think I should stop drinking caffeine. It has affected me weird since I was expecting Mae. Like tonight, I had a Coke Zero with supper and now here I am typing away when I should be sleeping! Oh, well.

Let's see to update, M's birthday bash was a success. All relatives arrived safely, seemed to enjoy themselves and got safely home. Tom smoked a brisket for the main meal and it was delicious. M loved her birthday cake it was white cake with red letters and strawberries. She very methodically crammed her piece of cake in her mouth and loved every morsel! -- Shameless plug, I love Blue Bell's Strawberries and Homemade Vanilla ice cream. It is the official 1st birthday ice cream of our family!

After the birthday excitement abated we decided to take a "mini-vacation" to one of our local hub-towns last weekend. We got a two-room suite at one of those extended stay places. It was great to have a microwave and a refrigerator in a kitchenette for feeding M. R asked at one point why we weren't cooking in the room and I said we were on vacation. She said, "Oh, so we have to eat out?!?" Exactly. We enjoyed plenty of Chick-fil-A and Pei Wei and had a good time. Although, I must say that R caught a cold on the day we arrived and M wasn't sleeping good due to either getting shots, or teething molars or just being a one-year-old, take your pick. So, I describe the trip as "Fun, but not relaxing". =)

Ah, yes, we are a 2 guinea pig family now with the addition of Shy, "Dottie's sister". She looks just like Dottie in the face so we couldn't just leave her there, now could we? So far she lives up to her name, even after being here for a week and a half now she still dives into her box whenever we walk into the room. I decided "Shy" was a better name than "Terrified". :)

So, never a dull moment around here! I am signing off to play freecell until the sandman finally shows up!

It's a Jungle...In Here?

Ok, so as part of "M's Birthday Prep Week, Part 2" we are starting redoing R & E's room. The people who lived in this house had a boy, so the girl's room was covered on two walls with glued brown paper sacks that looked like this:

That is essentially brown paper sacks, and Elmer's glue, lots and lots of glue. Good news was if we got it wet, it would start to peel off! 2 walls had this on it and 2 walls looked like this:

Do you remember that scene on "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" where she said the neighbors could check out their subtle tribute to the Greek flag, then it pans up and their garage is painted to look exactly like a greek flag? Yeah, that came to mind when I saw this room! Check out the star, it is a window shade!
Ok, so we peeled paper and peeled paper and under the first wall we found this:

That is khaki and those are stenciled animal prints around the closet door (BTW the closet door was red to go with the Texas theme.
And then under the next wall we found this:


Giraffe, Leopard, Tiger and Zebra? What? Keep in mind as I took this picture, the walls to my right and behind me, still look like the Texas flag! Wild! The girls though this was funny, but, mind you, continued to ask when we could get to the pink paint!
Needless to say we are priming the walls!
This is what happens when you buy a house with lots of history!!!

Back to the land of the living!

So, sorry for no correspondence with anyone the last week or two, our computer went kaplooey. It was anticipated, but as always, ill-timed since we are waiting on the insurance adjuster to give us the verdict on our roof. You know, the hail storm..... Anywho, I am overhauling the house in anticipation for M's 1st birthday party next weekend. All grandparents will be coming so I am working on getting the girl's rooms rearranged and ready. It will be lots of fun when everyone is here, but right now I have an overwhelming todo list! I finished the back flower beds today though!

I totally finished the study so I will post pictures of that when we get the computer box out! Woohoo! Another room bites the dust!

Tom got an unheard of 4-day weekend for the 4th so we got to see all of my family! That was great, and a major blessing to get to see Bonnie and Scott before they head out this next weekend! :-( Their moving is giving us an excuse to plan a field trip to Pennsylvania! Independence Hall here we come!!!!

Well, I am off to enjoy the rest that naptime brings to Mommies before the evening commences!