Mon., Feb. 18-Fri., Feb. 23

Bullets will help me speed through letting you who love us know about our week.


Monday

• No coupons and a short grocery list allowed me to clean the microwave, the window over the kitchen sink (super hard to get to), and bathe both dogs. [While I was cleaning out the microwave I was half-berating myself for two things. a.) "If I would do this more often it wouldn't be so hard." b.) "Why am I so concerned about getting the microwave cleaned out 'for company'...??
• Jeremy spent the day in Sierra Vista doing more tiling ... as opposed to, what, tilling...?? hm
• I was able to get a new outfit for N at Mervyn's, on sale of course. Did I blog about running out of hand-me-downs for her??? eek!!
• Jeremy got home from S.V. in time for the Men's Bible Study at the building at 7:00 p.m.; the children and I met him there at 7:45 with a pizza, which was our supper in the car on our way to a singing at Jesse and Desiree's house that started at 8:00 p.m. Besides the six of us there were five others there and the singing was without-a-doubt the best singing we have been involved with besides singing with my family. :) Wow, what a shot-in-the-arm!! We are so glad we got to go, even though it did extend our day prrrrrrretty late....

Tuesday

• Big "company day"! I did a load of laundry and sprayed off the back porch/polished the sliding glass doors from all the mud that was finally starting to dry up....
• I let Natasha take both dogs on a little walk, just up and down our one block here. It was hard for her and I doubt she'll want to do it by herself again; the dogs kept crossing their leashes. lol Wait; I took a picture of that. Hm, I guess it'll show up for you one of these days.
• We had an absolutely lovely time with Larry & Priscilla. Having never once hosted a Free cousin in our home, it was just a thrill to share that intimate, across-the-supper-table time. Larry & Jeremy worked on computers, their 'favorite thing' (and MINE TOO, this time, because I think the progress made that night might just make a HUGE difference in my satisfaction with my computer!!). Priscilla and I did photo albums and stories and catching up. At my previous request it was decided that the best/easiest way for them to share "pictures" of their inordinately-exciting past year would be for Larry to burn a CD for me/us of all their pictures of Sarah's, Daniel's, and Jonathan's weddings, the reunion, and baby Preston. That's a lllllot of picturs; I'm so happy. :) :) :) lol!

Wednesday

• In preparation for our trip to Casa Grande this weekend, we asked Elaine to take the Rodeo to work so we could clean out her car and prep it for this little trip. I CLEANED it, since I hadn't done it in about a year and it definitely needed it.
• While I was there working in the garage I decided to push the clock a little bit and do some long-overdue tidying up of the garage itself. The weather was gorgeous, so it's the perfect time of year to do some 'spring cleaning'-type work. Seriously, the only thing that made me go in that day was when I totally ran out of time. :(
• N helped me in the kitchen; we made Tortilla Soup to stay warm in the Crock-Pot for supper after Bible class.
• For our family, the big excitement of this day was the lunar eclipse!! It was so fun to watch the beginning of it on the way to Bible class, and then since N & J were my only students that night, I decided to take us outside twice during the middle of class to check up on the eclipse's progress. It turns out that I'm sssssssssso glad I did that because by the time 15 more minutes were up, there was a cloud cover so thick that we could see nothing more of it at all. :*( That was the children's first memorable experience with an eclipse. The rest of the church folk were as interested as we were; Oneta even brought binoculars, which were the perfect thing to use to watch the eclipse ... though I think I would never have thought of that on my own.... (duh)
• Jeremy said the closing prayer that evening. It was especially meaningful to me, including a number of sentences about the eclipse ... how we know that God is God when we witness the things in nature that He created ... and how the eclipse was serving Jeremy a stark reminder of how the blood of Jesus hides from God's sight the sins of the faithful.

Thursday

• Jeremy left, early, for Sierra Vista. This trip was an over-nighter again; he returned home around 4:30 today, Friday.
• Thursday started out normal, as an 'at-home' day (my favorite!) of preparing for our trip. Welllllllllllll, a phone call from Priscilla around 1:30 changed all that because, as Priscilla said, "Larry and I have to fly away tomorrow afternoon, and I can't stand it that you're only an hour away!" :) So we worked and worked to figure out how to best use the time we could carve out, and have a few more hours together. About Plan C or D ended up being for Elaine, N, J, and me to drive across town to their hotel, Hilton East, and let N & J swim in the pool until Larry's class got out. Then we had supper at an "old west" restaraunt called Tiny's Saloon. Sadly their facility isn't the greatest and when they're busy the wait is llllllllllong. We waited an hour and ten minutes for, okay, granted, the best and least expensive hamburger we've had in a long time! ;) The food was good but the company was better.

Friday

• Caught up on church secretary work
• Bathed Jabba in preparation for his weekend away from home (Chewie's too); Joe and Joanna will keep them at their house along with their FIVE CHIHUAHUAS until we get home. [Jabba's pretty white coat gets dirty faster nowadays. Since the weather is gorgeous and the gate is blocked, we leave him outside for longer time periods; he and Chewie wrestle about quite a lot in the dirt/mud.]
• Helped the kids pack for the trip. In addition to their routines and household service they played outside, read, crafted, and played Guitar Hero ... basically the same as they have done with the available hours of every day this week.
• Washed a sinkful of hand-wash dishes procrastinated since Tuesday/Wednesday (the company and a collection of water bottles from Elaine's car).
• Bible study in the evening was wonderful, again ... fun, too! In addition, Shavon let me use her new cell phone (free long-distance) to call Mom for the details of her oncology appointment today.
• Mom's health issue is 'high-grade pre-cancer'; she will see the radiologist next week or the week after. Radiation on the spot every day for six weeks, along with Tomoxifen, is the oncologist's recommendation. She is the same doctor who treated Gram's breast cancer 15 years ago; she is an excellent doctor.
• Tonight's work for me is just wrapping up church secretary work for the week and prepping for the trip! Thanks for your prrrrrrrrrrrayers for our safety, et. al. ;)