Fri., Jan. 25-Wed., Jan. 30

Fair warning: This is a long one. The details just keep coming and coming ... so endure it if you choose. Or just skip to the pictures. :)

Last Friday one of my most enjoyable things was watching The Bourne Ultimatum with Jeremy after the children went to bed; he and I really like the Bourne movies ... they're way better than most. Neighbor Antonio's bil came and picked up Kiana before supper. It was a little sad to see her go, but especially because of our confidence that the situation she was going into was going to be 100x better than what we could offer her, it was mostly just a relief. The children played outside a ton, and Jeremy installed some wire screen on the back yard gate so Jabba can't slip through anymore. Yay! He can now spend more time outside unsupervised ... though still not very much since he's a Maltese and can't take temp extremes. N's and J's spare moments not playing outside were spent, both children, in picking the strings on the guitar. In preparation for Ladies' Day Work Day Elaine and I hosted here on Saturday, I vacuumed downstairs, and the stairs themselves. I don't do the stairs often; it's difficult, unpleasant, and not needed. Also, I moved one of the coffee tables from the living room into the entryway. We needed more room in the living room for the event on Saturday - and for always, actually, and we really needed a table in the entryway, too. Yay! Success.

Saturday was awesome. Jeremy had organized his week so he could work all day and be out of the house. Counting Elaine and me there were TEN ladies who got together here at our house to slam out all the 'crafting'-type preparation stuff. [Donna brought Shelby along, so Shelby, N, and J played together perfectly happily and nicely all afternoon!!] The list of little projects was long, and almost all the work was done in just two hours. Two of the ladies stayed an additional two hours and helped/watched Elaine and me work on the scrapbook of the last two years' Ladies' Day pictures while talking with Jeremy - since he was home by then. We had the entire kitchen table absolutely COVERED in scrapbooking stuff, with boxes and organizer drawers scattered around on sundried chairs, etc. NOT the ideal scrapbooking situation, yet ... it worked, and we got it done. Sadly, it did require me staying up very late on Saturday night (which I HATE to do) in order to get it done, but I made the choice that it was better to do that than to spend an hour packing it all back up just to have to spend an hour getting it all back out again just to wrap up those last three hours of work and have to spend another hour re-packing it all back up. Can anyone say "CRAFTING ROOM"????? That one experience has given me more motivation to get the family room reorganized than just about anything else in recent times. uggh Supper on Saturday was a gift from my sil, Jennifer! She sells Wiltree Herbs, and on our last order she gifted us Wildtree's Alfredo mix. OH, MAN, that was heavenly!! I will order it in each of our orders from now on!! Strange it was, though, our family eating supper sitting around one of the work tables in the living room ... since the dining table was still under all the scrapbooking stuff!!!!!

Here are Ladies' Day Work Day pictures.

Lillian Blount, Leota Ryen, Bonnie Backer, Elaine's back, Margaret Ash's profile, and Donna McDaniel (Bonnie's daughter)

Leota, Lillian, & Bonnie

Margaret, Donna, & Elaine

Leota got me back! lol

Here's one with Fern Stapleman and Gail Kish, who arrived a little later! (In case you're doing the math, Kathy Santaniello is #10; she couldn't stay long.)

Sunday was awful for me - since I'd had such little sleep. argh, those Saturday nights.... Our lunch was a ham in the oven and baked potatoes in the crock pot; under normal circumstances Jeremy would have taken care of that during his morning time. However, he headed to the building early to make sure some of his stuff there was taken care of, so that left me with too little time ... and then there were malfunctions with both dogs and children.... Then, it was a confusing afternoon, too, because Jeremy was in a pickle about returning to the Blounts' son-in-law his trailer that Jeremy had borrowed to loan to Cecil so he could deliver to his new house some cabinets he bought at a second hand shop. There was a miscommunication about how to get Pete & Roni's trailer back to them, and the solution required Jeremy to go out to the East side and pick up the trailer between the morning church meeting and lunch! argh! He and Justus had a good time doing the 'chore', and Jeremy was very happy to have a smidgen of time with Bobby Valentine (Palo Verde's preacher); whenever we have time with Christians from the other side of town the time is always too short and there is always too much to talk about, so we end up cramming as much good conversation into the short amount of time as possible, and coming away feeling enriched, but exhausted too. lol

Well, it was taking Jeremy so long to get home that I figured if I was going to get these brownies made for "Fingerfoods" after services that night, I'd better get it done right then! See, I wanted to take a NAP and catch up on some sleep! Well, all that for that >> once I did get into a prone position my mind wouldn't stop and I ended up not even getting to sleep at all. GR! We had a Ladies' Day meeting after a wonderful "Singing Service"; since all our guys/families are so patient to hang around and let us have our meeting while everyone is together for worship, we feed them. :) Hence, "Fingerfoods". :) Needless to say, it was an early bedtime that night.

Monday was kind-of nice, in that I didn't have to grocery shop! As much as I hate to admit it, the truth is the truth and we are, in fact, at this point in time still living paycheck-to-paycheck. Thankfully we had been able to take advantage of wonderful grocery sales earlier in the month that we were fully stocked on groceries to carry us through the end of this month ... which worked out well because by the time this last week came around there wasn't any more to be spent on groceries. All's well that ends well. The most exciting thing is that N & J got to paint!!

Jabba has not been neutered. His natural desire to dominate should work to his benefit with having this 'big dog' around these days ... you know, the puppy! lol There is LOTS of dominance/play going on! Well, Jabba likes to let the whole world know that this house is his territory. We keep up pretty well on his marking, but it's extremely irritating. "These curtains are my territory!!!" "This bed post is my territory!!!" "This basket is my territory!!!" So while the children were playing, Chewie was innocently sleeping under the chair where Justus was painting, but once when Justus stood up and looked at Chewie, Justus cried, "MOM! Jabba peed all over Chewie!!" Sure enough. "Chewie is my territory!!" Well, Jabba needed a bath that day anyway, but Chewie got one too -- his first, I think; he was rather uncooperative and freaked out. lol I think that's when my migraine started.

With my back out again (who-knows-why), I was downright physically miserable most of the day. I managed to complete one load of laundry that day, and did get supper cooked, including (to round out the meal) an "Oatmeal Cake" that was an interesting experience to create. Not difficult, just unique. It's baked in a spring-form pan, of all things. Not very many cakes like that. Since the camera was there, I shot a picture of it. It was fine to do once but we'll not do it again. Once the cake cools the recipe has you put this "Toasted Nut Glaze" over it and then put it under the broiler for a few minutes. Strange.

A fascinating thing that happened on Monday is that Justus VOLUNTEERED to do all of the kids' household services for that day!! This included bringing in the trash bins from the street (including unlocking the back gate ... which J had to do standing on a chair, but HE DID IT!!!! What a kid!) and picking up all the poop from the previous three days. Trooper Boy!! I was so, so proud of him about all of that. Natasha was also appropriately thankful!! :)

Jeremy worked a long day on Monday since the Men's Bible Study was that night. It is really, really wonderful that instead of just spouting off with discussion/disagreement/decisions in Men's Meetings, there are six men of the leadership who are both willing and able to meet once a week on Mondays for some Bible study on the topics of discussion. However, they're not 'easy' nor 'fun-and-games' ... since there are so many different personalities and levels of spirituality, if that makes sense. It makes everyone all the more anxious for when this congregation can fulfill God's desire to have local bodies of His church led by elders/bishops/overseers/shepherds/pastors ... (These five descriptives are used interchangeably in the New Testament, evidently spelling out the various roles this group of godly men are to play). Please be praying about this: Steps are being made toward seeing if there are men in this congregation who are qualified and willing to serve in this capacity. However, it will require great amounts of prayer from great numbers of people to overcome some obstacles that have kept an eldership from being established in this congregation for a decade or two. Please, please be praying about this. I personally believe that the future of this congregation is largely dependent upon the outcome of this effort.

Here are two funny pictures of the dogs. First, in a loud moment on Saturday when the house was full of cackling ladies (ha), I took the phone outside the front door in order to hear well. Jabba, who was in the back yard, obviously heard my voice and couldn't stand the suspense, so he stuck his head through the water outlet in the fence!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Chewie sleeps in many positions that do NOT look comfortable to us!!!

When Jeremy got home from the Monday Men's Bible study at 9:45pm (Study started at 7!!), he wanted to talk and talk and talk. This didn't mesh well with my migraine which was waiting for bedtime so I could take the migraine pills. (Since they have caffeine in them, I'm better off to endure the headache using natural/aromatherapy treatments until bedtime, and then take the pill when I'm ready to sleep, so it doesn't keep me up!) Jeremy popped my back, bless him, before heading to bed; needless to say, this was an early bedtime - again. And then, at 4:30 a.m. I woke up feeling GREAT!!! Drugs do amazing things to a body ... no one argues with it! No headache, wide awake. GR! I'd been sleeping all of, what, five hours. Brother, man. After letting Chewie out to potty, I crawled back into bed where I laid for 2 hours, 30 minutes - through Jeremy's alarm - before getting back to sleep for a couple more hours of sleep.

Tuesday was an earlier-than-usual morning because since Sundays have been changed-up so much lately (having Ladies' Day meetings on Sundays, and then having the second service on the third Sundays of the month be an afternoon service), we had to find a different time to do our C.A.R.E. Group work. Every 2nd Tuesday morning at 10:30a.m. was agreed upon as the best time when the most ladies could make it. We would have had at least seven ladies there, that I know of, but two had conflicts pop up, so there were just five. However, we accomplished a great amount of work and had great conversations - of course. A homeless man who worshiped with us on Sunday was meeting Jeremy at the building at 1pm on Tuesday to pick up some food from our church pantry (Yay! That's the POINT!) We were all surprised that us ladies were still there! Good grief! (We'd not had a C.A.R.E. Group meeting in three weeks, so we had a lot to catch up on! lol) Sadly, becuase of the compromised state of my health and the overload of work, I forgot to have Elaine's car back to her by 1:05 so she could get to work on time. Thankfully disaster was averted because after taking the homeless man and his food back to his tent, Jeremy just went straight home and Elaine was able to take our car to work. OOPS.

After that, the children and I had four more short errands to run, but we were STARVING, and I didn't have a way to get us to a good amount of decent food very quickly. I was feeling faint, dizzy, and nauseous by the time we got home. That's some L-O-W blood sugar! (eye roll) Duh. I should have known better.... I usually do better thinking than that, but I'm telling you, I was NOT right that day, for all the list of reasons!! After we ate, J got his nap and I took my shower then, but I'd like to have not made it through, so awful was I feeling. (Yes, I like talking like Yoda sometimes.) Thanks to some quick computer/phone work on Sy's & Mom's part, I was able to make some great Split Pea Soup for supper (I'd misplaced the recipe.), and after supper I did get to feeling MUCH better, which was good because I still had a lot of church secretary work to do that night. Jeremy was an angel and worked with the children cleaning up supper so I could churn out that work and be done with it in time for what I thought would be another early bedtime! However, since I was feeling better than I'd felt in three days, I was happy to catch up on some laundry and computer work. (Got these pictures uploaded, etc.)

So that brings us to today. I slept IN. My ear is noticeably bad again, though not awful; I really need to baby it with a good amount of sleep and normalcy! Frustratingly, I woke up to THREE excrement messes on the carpet because the children had let the dogs out of their kennel (They sleep in one kennel that has a divider in it.) and had not been watching them. I declare! I have a beter relationship with the carpet in this house than I do with my own husband, with all the attention I have to give to it! Supper was a cinch: frozen tamales from Food City in the crock pot, and a salad, so I didn't have to think much about that. I worked in the kitchen a bunch, catching up on some stuff that had been neglected the previous funky days, continued working on that gift I'm prepping for the young mother in the church, and enjoyed the children's antics on the exercise ball. It's so interesting how their natural, enjoyable activities so often turn into 'educational' things. Each child made a hand-written list of his/her names for the exercises he/she does on the ball!! Then they combined the lists into a master list! HA! For real! huh ... They played outside zero minutes today because, "It's too cold!" True, it didn't go above 60 today, but "cold" it was NOT. I prepared my Bible class in the afternoon and fought the computer some; for some reason it's feeling that it's necessary to re-install the printer all the time.... GR! Sometimes it gets it done, other times it doesn't, and it always seems to be the times I'm in a hurry to get something printed that it blips out on me. Murphy's law.

We're on a short count down to the Area-Wide Teens' Lock-In we're hosting on Friday night, and I've still not made the cookies I'm wanting to donate.... Justus and I made some tonight right after supper, but I messed up the recipe by leaving out the 1/4 c. of water. Dumb. That's frustrating. They're actually still super-delicious, just terribly crumbly. We'll start over tomorrow and make some cookies the teenagers will actually be able to handle.... And now, to wrap up this day, I will do my part of the work for Sunday's bulletin, so Jeremy can wrap up his week's work tomorrow and have all day Friday to do Lock-In finalization! Should be fun!