Fri., Mar. 14 - Sun., Mar. 16

Friday, after our long, hard day on Thursday, Jeremy awoke at 5:00 a.m. to drive to Sierra Vista for his last day helping Cecil get his house ready for his family to move in (which they did, on Saturday). Jeremy was gone alllllllllll day, and got home even after the children went to bed! The children and I spent every available minute finalizing the garage sale. Our house is nicely cleared-out of everything we don't "use or love", to quote Flylady. ;) Yay! One reader (Hi, Judy!) will be happy to read that for supper that night I made Pasta e Fagioli ... which (You were right!) we greatly enjoyed. Natasha had a rotten attitude meltdown pretty early in the day; thereafter I had a headache which I ended up treating with aromatherapy. This is the first time I have actually followed the "directions", including start when the headache is still small, massage the temples, forehead, and back of neck, lie down in a quiet, dark place. Shockingly, I basically half-slept for about an hour! WIERD; THAT is a first. But then once I got up and moving again, although I didn't feel necessarily 'great', the headache was largely gone and did not require pills at all! YAY.

Saturday morning came ridiculously early, which is the first of my reasons to never again have a garage sale. :) LOL The second reason is all the lifting ... of which Jeremy was some help of course, but he was practically sick from the amount and difficulty of the work Jeremy did in S.V. the day before, baking himself in the sun all day. :*( At any rate, we did get rid of a lot of stuff, and now we have a few boxes of things to put out at the street for the Veterans next time they come by. The biggest point is that it's out of the house. Natasha made about $9. Justus made $8. Elaine made $55. Jeremy and I made a little over $80. READ MY LIPS: NOT WORTH IT!!!!! I am MUCH happier to donate stuff we no longer need!! It is such a nice blessing ... especially compared to having a garage sale. argh. It was a fine experience to do once. It was good for the children to watch how buying and selling and bartering and money changing go. It was also good for them to experience the boredom, seriousness, hard work, and very little financial benefit there is in a garage sale so they can compare that to the joy of giving. Hm, think I've read something about that somewhere.... Ya think Jesus was on to something?? ;) Here is a picture of Elaine, Natasha, and Justus all ready for the garage sale. We ate breakfast at the sidewalk.... Strange. The most pleasant thing about the garage sale is all the exercise and fun the children had playing on the treadmill!! Even once we moved it back into the garage (It didn't sell -- big surprise!) they continued playing on it, off-and-on, through the rest of the day!

I'd really hoped for a nap. Yeah right.... Clean-up from the garage sale took longer than I expected. Well, actually everything that entire day took longer than I expected. I didn't even glance at e-mail on Saturday, a major rarity. Jabba was bathed, I did some laundry, and showered while everyone else napped, and then began getting ready for company. Last Sunday Jeremy invited the Koenigs over for fried catfish; as it turned out, the only day that worked for both families was Saturday.... We had a lovely time together; they stayed until 10pm!!

Here is a picture of our dogs sleeping in the back yard. Chewie, for some reasons, likes to sleep stretched across the little landscaped concave areas at the base of the trees in the back yard. But, of course Jabba is too good to sleep on dirt!

Today was Third Sunday Potluck and Afternoon Service. Justus's tummy was too hungry to last through set-up, the birthday/anniversary announcements, the prayer, and the line, so as we were setting out the food, I told J he could have one deviled egg. He's never liked them before, but that one went down quick! I told him, "In order that everyone else gets one, when we go through the line you should not have another one." Justus considerd what I'd said, and sweetly offered the following input: "I think I do want another doubled egg!"

The children and I napped in the afternoon. Then it was fruit and popcorn while we watched the Transformers movie. I got two calls this evening, one from Stephanie, and one from my cousin Van ... from whom I haven't heard in ... ever. LOL He's getting in touch with 'long lost relatives'; it was nice to hear from him and catch up some. I am suffering from the leftovers of yesterday's sunburn; I was smart to sunscreen the children, not-so-smart to not sunscreen myself. Aye-yi-yi

So tomorrow is errand day; in the evening we will welcome out-of-state company who will stay through Friday! Do I have you curious...??