Mon., Oct. 8

Alrighty! The pictures I tried to post last night actually posted tonight! So I'll tell you a little bit about them.

In this first picture you can see the dining room area. I talk a lot about Travis Campbell (age 25, from Oklahoma, graduate of OC); he helped us move and has been here twice for supper since then. He has been Ina Road's youth minister for just over a year. The first time I saw him, at Mountain Avenue's youth rally last year, I didn't even bother to speak to him because of my own insecurities about the stereotypical jock/football player type. Thankfully that's not who he is on the inside - and I got a good lesson in stereotyping. So, in the picture below that's Travis in the gray short sleeve shirt on the left in front of the screen. The guy on the right in front of the screen is Jesse Warren, the campus minister here in Tucson! He's also 'new', having been hired on in May. He and Desarae (blue shirt in the shadows on the right) got married in June and Jesse started at UA in July.

I'm so glad I took this picture because it reminds me of a hilarious game they played. They said it was a "Pick-Up Line Contest" and got five guys to volunteer to test out a pick-up line on two girl volunteers. "One girl will sit at each end of this 'couch' that we're going to make out of a blanket over some chairs. You will come down and sit between them and try out your pick-up line, but first you have to go outside with Brant and tell your pick-up line to an adult to guarantee its appropriatenes." So the guys and Brant went outside. Then it was announced that this is NOT, indeed, a Pick-Up Line Contest. It is a prank! They lay the blanket over two chairs, one at each end of the 'couch', but leave the middle without a chair (put pillows underneath to break the fall and avoid an injury/lawsuit! lol). OH MAN, it was funny - with the teenage boys walking in all Rico Suave and then falling to the ground between the two girls whose job it was to stand up at the moment he was sitting down. Aaaaaahhh!! LOL

The "Lodge" fireplace situation is very bad and makes me almost not want to even go back. The fire is too far from the chimney hood and most of the smoke just drifts into the room!! It's absolutely gagging and choking. SO BAD. Everyone's clothes, hair, etc. stink, and headaches are rampant (Ya THINK??). A solution DEFINITELY needs to be found for this problem!

Here are Jesse and Desarae Warren. Jesse is doing in Tucson the job Scott is doing in Albuquerque - kind-of; Tucson's campus ministry isn't nearly what Albuquerque's is, yet. Jesse and Desarae are friendly, wonderful people! We had seen Jesse four times before we got to see Desarae. (She works full-time as a nurse - strange schedules and all, you know....) Last time we saw Jesse I told him I thought he had made up the story about having a wife ... that she didn't really exist because we hadn't seen her. So when she got to come up to camp for the weekend Jesse was hunting me down to show me that Desarae is real! lol

Here is a picture of Dave and Jessica Knapp (Yes, Dave is of the same Knapp family Mom grew up with in MT.). Dave is also the president of the board of directors of Tucson's campus ministry. In addition he is a native of Albuquerque, where he was active in the campus ministry there and got to know Scott! lol Dave is as anxious as I am for Jesse and Scott to get to know one another! I am anxious to SING with Jesse and Scott!! :) lol Anyway, Dave is a physicist, and then his wife Jessica, whom he met through the campus ministry here in Tucson, is a professor of mathematics (I think I mentioned that last night.). "They" are the youth ministers for Mountain Avenue Church of Christ, but it's mostly Jessica who is the one most-involved since Dave is so involved with the campus ministry (which is overseen by the Mountain Avenue elders.)
We stayed home all day today. Well, Elaine worked and Jeremy actually spent the day in Sierra Vista with Cecil! (Jeremy was returning Cecil's projector which he had let them keep at camp the rest of the weekend even though he had to go home early.) In fact, in case you're interested you may visit Ina Road Youth Group's MySpace at www.myspace.com/iryg and see more pictures of these people. There is a funny picture of Cecil and Jeremy who was holding Jabba on that first day when we brought him home.

I guess the only interesting thing is how COMPLETELY EXHAUSTED we all are, including Jabba, who slept almost alllllll day!!! In fact, there were about three hours there, before supper, when I was thinking I was not going to make it through the family activities of the evening! But then I had a piece of the chocolate cake Natasha made today (completely by herself, from a box; I answered no questions and gave no instructions - just stayed close-by in case of emergency) and the caffeine in that has me floating, it seems ... which turned out to be a really GOOD thing because Jabba's intestinal issues didn't do any favors for the cleanliness of the hind end of his coat and his care required more time and energy tonight than usual. ...

I think I didn't mention that on the way home from camp yesterday Natasha lost another tooth. Upper left "pre-molar" - even though she hasn't yet lost that canine tooth yet. The girl's mouth looks like such a mess!! I should shoot a picture of it to show you!

Jeremy has terribly sore muscles all through the right side of his upper body. He, Travis, and an older, athletic (former Olympic-training gymnast!) teen, Ben, were a three-man dodgeball team on Saturday that was unbeatable even when the rest of the teenagers all made one huge team the Three Guys still won. lol I think Travis and Ben aren't as sore as Jeremy is today ... because they work out regulary! lol

One thing I did today that was out of the ordinary was to re-work our Daily Schedule/Household Serivce chart. It's been basically out of order since before our move; isn't it funny how much can change within just a few weeks sometimes? So now the children have more unspoken direction, and I have less to 'think' about in order to get some of our basic tasks accomplished. I'd somehow taken on a few of the household chores the children can do ... which isn't best for many reasons. So those have been worked back into our routine and will be a blessing for everyone. One new service the children are providing for our household is to pick up Jabba's poops twice a week. They are also responsible to get the full trash bins to the street and then back to the back yard once they're empty. It's more difficult at this house than it was at the last house for two reasons. 1.) The gate is locked, so Natasha has to fiddle with a tricky gate lock; 2.) There is a TRENCH leading out from the gate; it's to drain the water from the back yard during monsoon season, but it makes it a little tricky to balance especially the heavy trash bins on the way to the street. However, N & J work together to accomplish the task and it goes well. They are to water the garden every other day, and there is one day in the week for them to dust their rooms and another day to vacuum. On one day when Natasha is doing the outside sweeping Justus is to water the inside plants. :) As with everything else about training children, it's always MORE WORK, at first, to have them help. But there is much pride to be had in doing hard work to serve the family!! :) Don't we know it! lol

There are three things I wrote down to include in today's blog. First, something so sad. I asked an unnamed man who was at camp on Friday night why his teenage daughters weren't there. The older one was busy with a school activity, he said. I said, "What about (the younger one)?" He said, "Well, I thought about making her come, but then ... I decided I'd rather enjoy the weekend." Their youngest daughter is giving them so much trouble that they'd just rather her not even be around - even if it's a church function. She's only 15, still! Even in just the small amount of time we've had to observe the situation it is clear there are a number of parental malfunctions that Jeremy and I believe have caused this problem and continue to exaccerbate it. My heart breaks for them, yet I'd like to shake them by the shoulders too since it is so clear what at least some of the problems are!! [lack of consistency, one parent un-doing what the other parent just did, favoritism of certain children in the family, absence of consequences, parent/s' long-term problem of being overcommitted to church work, the 'my child can do no wrong' syndrome...] (sigh) So not only is it really sad to witness, it's also really frustrating because these GOOD PEOPLE have lost at least some of their credibility due to their lifestyle of unbiblical parenting....

Jeremy has a joke he thinks is hilarious. Any time we eat crackers someone will say, "May I please have another cracker?" Jeremy asks, "What'd you call me?" "Cracker!" So this happened tonight as we were eating our grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup. It was Natasha who asked for the cracker and had to go through the exchange with Jeremy. lol Then, as she began crumbling her cracker into her soup she said, "I'm making my cracker crummy." Jeremy said, "What'd you call me?" She said, "Crummy!"

After supper we were (exhaustedly, as I said before) sitting around the table before cleaning up the kitchen. Elaine had already left the table, and Natasha had cleared her place and was standing at the end of the table just relaxing, listening to the conversation. Jeremy started absentmindedly tapping out a rhythm on the table with his hands and before we knew it we realized that Natasha was moving to the beat. She had raised her arms out to the sides and was swinging her hips like a hula dancer, bopping her head for four beats to the right, and then switching to the left for four beats and then back again! OHMYGOODNESS we all just started cracking up and laughing so hard!!! Seriously, you know those "Bobblehead" hula dancers that ride along on people's dash boards? THAT'S WHAT SHE LOOKED LIKE!! And she just stayed as serious as she could be! LOL LOL LOL It was really, really funny!! I'd never seen her do anything like that before!