Where has the year gone?

Well, the year, productively speaking, is over. The girls get out of school in less than an hour, and the Christmas vacation begins. By the time it ends, it will be a new year.

I finished all my Christmas preparations, aside from a few shipping snafus, earlier this week. All the gifts are bought, presents wrapped, cookies baked, and carols sung. Now, you'll just have to take my word for this, because I have not taken one single picture of this holiday season. So, here's a variation on the old bear in the woods question - if there's not a page about it in the scrapbook, did it really happen? Like I said, you'll just have to take my word for it.

All rambling comments aside though, this year has gone by in a flash. I think we all know that as you get older, time goes by faster. Then there's the whole old job/new job/moving factor. That adds some speed too. Each year I think maybe we'll have a boring year that will move slower, but it never happens. I guess it never will until the inevitable happens and we move into eternity. That happened for a family member this week. My Great-Aunt Charlotte passed away. Although she had lived a long life, it is always a sad occasion when you lose a family member. It seems though that this is happening more frequently lately, partly because (again) we are getting older, and also because our families seem to be genetically predisposed to long lives, so we are just now losing our "great" generation. I know it's inevitable, yet I just can't bring myself to think about losing those I love. As a card that my roommate in college gave me when I had to have my appendix out said, "You realize this comes as a great shock to those of us who thought you were invincible."

Well, I don't really have anything else of consequence to say, I just didn't want you guys to think I'd dropped off the face of the earth during this blessed holiday season. Enjoy your Christmas, and be safe!

Oh, the weather outside is FRIGHTFUL!

Well, as you more than likely have heard, Oklahoma has turned into a deep freeze once again. Here's our view of it:

The icy weather started on Sunday morning with a little snow, then a little sleet, then a lot of rain complete with thunder and lightning. Then it froze, then it rained, then it froze, then it rained, then it froze (are you getting the picture yet?) By Monday morning there was about a 1/2-inch thick sheet of ice on everything. The school closed down, much to the delight of my children, but Jerry's work didn't, so he left for work before 7:00. At about 8:15, we lost power, thanks to a large ice-covered tree limb two doors down that got heavy enough to touch the power lines. As the hours crept by our house cooled down and our refrigerator heated up. When it got to 43 degrees inside the fridge, the girls and I unloaded all our food from the refrigerator and transferred it to our front porch, where it was a chilly 35 degrees. The girls had a great time playing, and I watched the limbs fall off the trees and the icicles grow. Here's some photos:

Somehow, I don't think those herbs are going to make a comeback. I tried to get the mail, but the ice had sealed the box shut. I got out the hammer and busted the ice to get the mail (how did he get it in there anyway?) and then dragged a large limb that had fallen from our tree into the middle of the driveway out of the way so Jerry would be able to get to the garage when he came home. (You can see the base of the limb up there in the first photo in the background.) It was slicker than snot out there on the ice, and all that ice is heavy! I was sweating up a storm by the time I got back in the house.

Our electricity was restored after 5 hours, and we relocated the groceries back into the refrigerator. The girls played some more, and then we tackled going through Maggie's toys and weeding out stuff to make room for the new toys Santa (and the Grandparents) will undoubtedly bring. After that, I didn't have the energy to do Gracie's room.

I put the girls in bed at their regular school bedtime, hopeful that there would be school tomorrow, since the temps were back up above freezing, but alas, Gracie's prayers were answered, and they had no school today either. The roads are pretty clear, as I found out when I went this morning to do my civic duty and vote, but the ice-laden branches hang so low that I have to steer around them in the minivan - I'm sure a bus would do terrible damage if it came down our street. Oh well - that gives me the opportunity to help Gracie with her room today.

One last picture and I'll be gone:
Everyone stay safe and warm!

Ho, Ho, Ho. . .

Well, it's beginning to look a bit more like Christmas around here. After listening to Gracie pray for several nights that we would decorate our gingerbread houses soon, I spent Wednesday afternoon putting together the houses so we could put the decorations on when the girls got home from school that day instead of waiting until this weekend, as was my original plan. Here's our final results:

I decided that the girls were pretty self-directed at this age, and it would be okay for me to make my very own house instead of trying to influence the girls to do it a certain way. Not that they ever did what I said. "It's my house, and I'll do it the way I want!" was a common refrain from years past, so I figured I'd make one the way I wanted this year! As you might see in the photo, our icing was a bit on the thin side, so the doors / tree, etc. kind of slipped down the side of the houses during the drying time. See if you can guess which one is who's house!

Full of the Christmas Spirit - NOT!

Ah, the holiday season is upon us, and I am dangerously close to losing the Christmas spirit already! This is mostly due to run-ins with the retailing giant we all know and either love or tolerate as a necessary evil, Wal-Mart. Let's just say that now that they are online, they have two ways to make my head spin, and leave it at that. I called my sister with the whole sordid tale, and informed her that I'm ready to take back everything I've bought from Wal-mart for this Christmas, and re-shop somewhere else, because - gosh darn it - it's just the principle of the thing! As usual, Amy got right to the point and informed me that my principles were going to give me ulcers. She's right, so I got in the car, returned merely two expensive things (and bought one cheap one, and several groceries, because let's face it, Oklahoma is a grocery-store wasteland. Why doesn't Kroger expand here?????)

All shopping frustrations aside - and there are plenty - I'm trying really hard to get over my post-Disney let down and become jolly for the season. It's hard though. We are trying to nail down plans for the holidays, and I as try to juggle three families (four if you count us - and why shouldn't we count?) and their respective dinners I find myself having to remember that YES, this IS why I wanted to move closer. Don't get me wrong - I do want to see all of our families, but why, oh Why is this one day the mecca of family gatherings? Like, if I don't see you on Christmas, but see you the day after, it's somehow less of a family gathering? Anyone who doesn't see us on Christmas or Christmas Eve is somehow "shorted" and will bring it up next year so they get juggled to a better spot on the schedule. Jerry and I did try several weeks ago to nip this in the bud by scheduling Christmas in various locations for the next three years, but my sister spoke up again (who would have thought she'd end up being my voice of reason?). She said she can't commit to what they'll want to do next year, as she doesn't know how having two babies will be like when one is already a challenge. (Sigh.)

Luckily for me, I'm almost finished with my Christmas shopping - a few more stops and a few more boxes on the doorstep and I'll have the rest of December to stoke the fires of Christmas Spirit, and my girls are eager to help. We've got our Gingerbread houses to make, Santa to see, and presents to wrap. We've begun the marathon of Christmas movies that come out only between Christmas and New Years. I love looking at the holiday through their eyes, and remembering when December 25 seemed to take forever to get here. Now it comes much to fast, and, truth be told, is over much too soon. Because once I get my Christmas Spirit going - It's a great thing, and I wish it could last all year through.

Magical Days!

Wow – so much has happened since my last entry! I had every intention of blogging before we left for our very first Family Vacation, and since I seemed to be in denial that we were leaving right up until the day before, I should have had plenty of time, but as usual, the difference between “should” and “reality” was vast.

School was busy before we left – Gracie started her morning computer sessions, and seems to be doing well with it. Donuts for Dads was one Tuesday – the girls were so excited to have their Daddy go to school with them. He stayed for the Charge-Up – that’s their weekly pep-rally type assembly. Between the two of us, we were at the school every day that week – I got Campbell’s flyers out before the holiday cooking season heated up on Wednesday, helped in the Library on Thursday, and with the Book Fair on Friday. The next week was Turkey Bingo (Bingo with frozen turkeys as some of the prizes) and Thursday was Oklahoma’s centennial. There was a school-wide assembly and each grade did a song and skit about Oklahoma. The local news channel filmed it, but we didn’t get to watch the news to see if the girls were shown or not.

Since our big trip was taking us out of town for Thanksgiving, we headed to Mary Jo and Jerry’s house for an early turkey dinner the weekend before. I didn’t realize that it was (my) Jerry’s first trip to Texas since we moved to Oklahoma – I’ve made the trip so many times in such a short while but he didn’t make it across the border once! We got up early on Saturday and had pancakes and went to see the Bee Movie. That was the first time I’d been to the cinema in my old hometown – it was actually very nice inside under that plain-looking exterior. We also stopped and stocked up on Caffeine-Free Dr. Pepper, since it isn’t available in Oklahoma, and then did our usual feeding of ducks and eating of Tex-Mex. Sunday before our dinner, Uncle Larry was kind enough to repair my messed-up hairdo. I guess I’m just not cut out to be trendy. At least I feel presentable again! Bill and Jimmy drove out for the day, and we all had a great meal a la Mary Jo, (Her stuffing is my favorite – sorry Grandma!) and watched the football game while we visited. The highlight of the trip was Gracie’s loose tooth – everyone wanted to pull it for her! Pepaw even offered her $100 if he could pull it, but she decided to wait until we got back and have Daddy do it. It was a stubborn tooth – he had a hard time getting ahold of it, but he eventually got it out and she put it under her pillow – the tooth fairy gave her $2! For such a tiny tooth, it sure left a big gap in her smile!

The weather turned a bit cooler, and the leaves are coming down in droves. Gracie was totally pumped about making a leaf pile, since we have never had a yard that had a tree big enough to produce enough leaves to make one. While Maggie was at scouts, Gracie decided our mommy-daughter activity should be to make a HUGE pile of leaves, and I got some great shots of her flying into it. Maggie also made a pile when she got home – she named her leaf pile “Blush-Bottom” from a book that she’s reading at school.

Finally, the day before we were supposed to leave, I started freaking out about not being ready – I printed out boarding passes, confirmed our Disney Dining reservations, and tried to leave my type-a personality behind. We got us packed, and were ready to go, and out the door early for our flights to Florida. We made it without incident, and got settled into our hotel suite, got a few groceries for breakfast and purchased our Disneyworld tickets. Now we were ready!

We tried the strategy of starting with the most boring (from a kid’s point of view) park, and working our way up, so our first day we went to Epcot, since it’s more educational. We stopped to meet characters first, since Gracie said the thing she wanted most from our trip was to meet Minnie Mouse, and she was there, along with Mickey, Pluto, Goofy and Chip & Dale. We did the Seas, which the girls liked, and Crush even picked Maggie out of the audience to talk to at Turtle Talk with Crush. Next we went over to the Land, and the girls really enjoyed touring the greenhouses, and then we tried a new ride – Soarin’. We all liked that a bunch! We spent the rest of the day leisurely taking in the attractions, and then moved on to the world showcase in the afternoon. We found us a good vantage spot for the light show, and left with the crowd after that. We all slept very soundly that night!

The next day we visited the Animal Kingdom. We enjoyed looking at the animals, especially on the safari, and also in the Hippo tank. The hippos are very graceful under water, but you usually don’t see them that way! The girls rode their first big roller coaster – Everest – and they liked it right up until they saw the animatronic Yeti. I kind of wondered if we would get them on any more coasters after that, but Maggie tried the Primeval Whirl in Dinoland, and loved it (Gracie didn’t meet the height requirement.) Both girls loved the triceratops twirl (three times!) and had a blast in the play area with all the slides. We weren’t sure we’d ever get Gracie out of the area where you “dig” up fossils. She was well on her way to uncovering the entire mammoth skeleton by herself when we dragged her away. This park closes earlier, but we went to dinner afterwards, so we didn’t get home until late.

The third day was our first day at the Magic Kingdom. It was PACKED! We made it through Adventureland, Frontierland, Liberty Square, and half of Fantasyland. The girls really liked the Big Thunder railroad. We were running out of steam, so we found a good spot for the 8:00 parade, and sat there for awhile until the parade came by. Then we went to Fantasyland to use our last FastPASS and watched the fireworks before we left the park. Whew!

The fourth day was the pinnacle of the trip – the day we met the princesses! All my effort to secure us a table at Cinderella’s castle would finally pay off! The girls dressed up in their princess costumes and we headed back to the Magic Kingdom. We took the train around to Mickey’s neighborhood and saw his house and visited him in the Judges tent. He danced with the girls, and they gave him a kiss on the cheek. All the cast members around the park addressed the girls with the name of the princess they were dressed as or as "princess". Then came the big moment – we went to the castle and had lunch with the princesses! First Cinderella came out to greet us, and then we went upstairs to eat. As we ate Jasmine, Belle, Snow White and Aurora each came around to our table to visit. The girls got to talk to each of the princesses, although they were pretty shy with most of them. After lunch we finished up Fantasyland and Tomorrowland and headed back to our hotel for sweet princess dreams.

The next day we relaxed in our hotel for the morning, and then headed to Downtown Disney to see the new movie, Enchanted, and get our shopping done. The next day was Thanksgiving, so we headed to the Old Key West resort for our dinner, and then went back to Epcot to ride Soarin’ again. Before we left the park, we decided to ride the monorail around to the TTC and back to Epcot. On the way back to Epcot Jerry asked if we could sit up front, and we could! The girls got a monorail co-pilots license when we left.

The next morning we very reluctantly packed our bags and headed to the airport, back to cold Oklahoma and away from our Magical vacation. We had a great time though, and the girls and I are looking forward to making a scrapbook so we can remember it always! In case you want to see more pictures (we took more than 600!), they are at our family picture website, just e-mail me or leave a comment if you need a password!

Hope your day is Magical!

A Full, Rich Day. . . Make That Week

Well, today has been what I think of as a full, rich day. I know that is an expression that I picked up in my reading, and I wish I could remember who to credit it to, but my mind is not the steel trap that it used to be. You know, they say that when you are pregnant, many of your brain cells go down to the baby, resulting in the ever-so-common "Mommy Brain." I've also heard that you regain those cells after the baby is about two years old. Since my two babies were only seventeen months apart, I figure my supply of brain cells was so depleted, it'll take me about 20 years to get my mind back. At least that's what I keep telling myself. Anyway, I searched through my favorite blogs to see if I could find that term, but I can't. If you know where I picked it up, please let me know and I'll credit them for it!

Anyway - to define a full, rich day, let me tell you about today. The girls and I got up late, having gone to bed ridiculously late last night, and went about quietly making pancakes since Daddy was asleep on the couch. He had an important "thing" at work, so he was up late, late, late last night dealing with that, so I tiptoed around in the kitchen doing my best to make pancakes quietly. Why, I don't know, as Gracie has never learned to lower her voice below a scream when they are playing, and Jerry has been known to sleep through storms, smoke alarms, and freight trains going by in the night.

After pancakes I got dressed and went to look at a FSBO house in the neighborhood. It was cute and well taken care of, but it had room for neither a craft room or our office furniture, (and it had leopard print carpet on the stairs) so it is out of the running, I think. Unless we downsize considerably, it was just too small. I've got appointments to look at two more tomorrow, so who knows?

Once I got home I got the girls up from their descent into the Disney Channel and into their Girl Scout uniforms and we headed off to an event that celebrated the 100th birthday of Oklahoma and 95th anniversary of Girl Scouting. The girls got to try their hand at cattle roping, play with games that were popular in 1907, learn a dance from an Indian Fancy Dancer (Creek Tribe, Muskogee Nation), see a magic show and a mad scientist show, take a ride in a horse-drawn wagon, and play on the playground. Whew! Then we went back home and rested for awhile before heading for a long-promised dinner at "the McDonald's with the palm trees in the play land." Lastly we stopped at Target for some bananas and hit the Halloween half price sale. Maggie picked up some pom-poms and has since been chanting around the house, "Give me an M! Give me an A! Give me a G! Give me another G! Give me an I! Give me an E! What does that spell? Maggie! YEA!!!!!" She did all our names, plus "Girl Scouts", but she left out the U. When she yelled, "What does that spell?" I yelled, "Girl Scots!" and she was a bit confused, but I thought it was a riot. I foresee an extremely enthusiastic spelling test review this week.

So, that was it for today. As I said, a full, rich day. As for the rest of the week, it was also jam packed, but not so much as today. Here's the highlights:

Thursday was Parent Teacher conference night for us. We were fretting a bit about having to take the girls with us to this, but Monday, my dad called to let us know he was going to be in town on Thursday evening after business meetings. I jumped on that opportunity, "Hey Dad, how would you like to babysit that evening?" I think that was more than he bargained for, but he was a good sport and agreed. On Thursday evening the girls inquired how I was going to go to the Parent Teacher Conference - "Are you going to leave us at home by ourselves?"

"Um - no. Have I ever left you by yourselves? No. I got a babysitter."

"Really? Is it a boy or a girl?"

"A boy."

"It's Daddy, isn't it?"

"No, Daddy is going with me to see your teachers."

"Is it a stranger, or do you know them?"

"Like I would leave you with someone I don't know! I know them."

"Do you know their name?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"Robert."

"Robert. Oh." They ran off, contemplating a new sitter named Robert. When Dad got there and rang the door bell, they yelled, "The babysitter's here!" and cautiously peeked through the window, and then went berserk when they saw their Granddaddy. What a big surprise! They had a great time while we were gone, reading books and such.

While both girls are doing well in school, and working hard, Gracie is having some trouble overcoming some issues concerning fine motor skills and letter reversals, so we are going to be going to school 15 minutes early every day for extra practice on the computer. We will also be seeing about having her tested for any learning quirks. It was very interesting to compare the two conferences by the two teachers - Maggie's teacher is relatively new, this being her second year of teaching, while Gracie's teacher has 28 years of experience. Both are good teachers, but Maggie's teacher is still very much in learning mode.

Wednesday, of course, was Halloween, and I'm sure everyone wants to see my little princesses - you just knew that was what they had to be, right? Here they are: Okay - the big one is me. Gracie was Ariel, the Little Mermaid and Maggie was Barbie as Rosella (The Island Princess). Both girls begged to have crowns/princess hats as part of their costumes, and I caved. On Halloween though, I braided Maggie's hair to look like Rosella's does on the video, and then she didn't want to wear the hat because it hid her braids. I figured that I had paid $5 for that hat, and somebody was going to wear it! I even wore it into Barnes and Nobel with Maggie to pick up a Children's Dictionary for her on the way to the Halloween festival that we went to. We also went around the block trick-or-treating. Gracie totally cracked me up - after each house she would say very emphatically, "They gave us even MORE candy! I totally LOVE this night!!!"

Tuesday I helped out with the children's program at Bible study. I observed something while watching the kiddos. We were teaching the story of the good Samaritan that day - the leader told the story, and they play-acted it out so nicely, and then the leader asked them a few questions to see if they had understood the story. As she read the questions, she would never get very far into the questions before someone's little had would shoot up and an eager voice would shout, "GOD!!!!" And it made me wonder - when and why is it that as we grow up we stop thinking that "GOD!!!!" is the answer to all the problems?

Well, I think that's about it - I spent most of the remainder of the time this week in bed or on the couch resting - I got the crud that is going around. I think it's whatever Maggie had on our trip - I don't feel sick, just nauseous. Most folks that have had it says it lasts a week or two, but I'm ready for it to be over. I'm already feeling much better though, so perhaps I'm on the upside. I hope so! Enjoy your next week - I hope it's a Full, Rich one!

Our "Snuggly-Warm" Pumpkins

Ever since our trip to Dewberry Farms where we picked up some pumpkins, Gracie has been asking us every night if we can carve pumpkins. We had told her we would do it this weekend, so she's been counting down the days.

Jerry thought larger pumpkins would be easier to carve, so in addition to the two we picked up at Dewberry Farms (that had to be small enough for the girls to carry) I went to Walmart and picked up four humongous pumpkins. There's barely enough room in our house for us, so I put them around the front porch area, all decorative-like. Jerry decided on Saturday morning to bring them back into the house to give them a chance to warm up before we carved them. When Gracie found out that was the reason they were in the house, she immediately got her tumbling hearts blanket from her bed and tucked them in. When Jerry asked her about it, she said it was so they would be "snuggly and warm" when we carved them. Jerry even convinced her to sit on the pumpkins like a duck sits on its eggs to get them warm faster.

Sunday afternoon we finally got around to carving the pumpkins. The girls stood firm - they wanted to carve the pumpkins from Dewberry Farms, so we helped them do theirs first. Maggie thought hers was, "not too scary, but kind of nice too." Miss Gracie characterized hers as, "Spooky, and not kind at all!" Then Jerry and I decided to carve up two of the bigger ones ourselves - with the girl's help of course. Jerry went with a friendly-pumpkin theme, and I got creative and made a cat. We took pictures - I thought we might could use this for a Christmas card, but I guess a Halloween Christmas card would be too weird:

Other than pumpkin carving, I have been unusually non-productive this week. I think after our road-trip, I just kinda felt like not doing anything for awhile. The only thing I did this week was get a haircut, which I am worried may have been a total mistake. It's medium length, and is very "kicky". I may have to drive to Houston to have Larry fix it for me. He's the only one who truly understands me and my hair, I think. (Sigh. . .)

Well, If I'm really going to get something done today, I better post and run! Happy Monday!

There's No Place Like Home

There's nothing like a road trip to make you appreciate being home, no matter how fun your trip is, you know?

Here in Oklahoma the schools have a fall break, so the girls had a five-day weekend this past weekend. Since Jerry is saving up his vacation days for our first real family vacation in November, he stayed and worked, but the girls and I went road-tripping to Texas to see our now-closer family. We stopped the first night and spent the night at Grandma's house, and then headed down to Houston to spend time with Aunt Amy, Uncle Brad and Cousin Will.










The first day we mostly hung out in the backyard. Gracie found a little baby toad in the first 15 minutes, so we made him a habitat in a big bucket and watched him until nightfall, when we made the kids release him back into the wild of the backyard. The kids also took great delight in picking all the limes off of Amy and Brad's lime tree - they picked 68 limes before the weekend was over.

Friday we got the kids and their car seats all crammed into Amy's backseat and went to the Zoo. As soon as we got there I realized that I had left my camera at the house - ugh! We had a great time at the zoo, but have no pictures to show you. The Houston zoo has been updated quite a bit since I had been there last. The girls liked the sea lions, and we got to see a baby giraffe getting bottle fed. Mind you, the average size zookeeper had to hold the bottle above her head to get it to the top of the baby giraffe, but it was still a very small giraffe! We also got to hear some of the monkeys giving a free concert - they were whooping to each other, and they had chin pouches that stretched out as they made noises, just like a bullfrog. On the way back to the car we stopped and rode the Hermann Park train. I was amazed that I had spent several Saturdays in Hermann park when we lived in Houston, but I had never seen or known that there was a little train that ran through there. How did I miss that? Of course, there were many new things to look at as well, such as the light rail, which was being hotly debated when we lived there. The Astros no longer play at the Astrodome, and the place where the Rockets used to play is a church now - a new big arena has been constructed for them. AstroWorld is GONE - totally demolished. It's not the Houston we knew - it's even BIGGER - and I really didn't think that was possible.

Saturday we went to a Pumpkin Patch west of Houston, Dewberry Farms. This place not only has a pumpkin patch, but a barrel train, and a corn maze kind of like Sutherland Farms in New Mexico did, but this corn maze is huge! It's around 7 acres, and you really can get lost in it. We didn't go through the maze, but maybe when the kids are a bit older we will. We had plenty to do without the maze. We started off in the play area for kids. They had lots of tractors and trikes to ride around the area - Will was in heaven! The girls especially liked the rubber duck races. You put your duck in a trough, and then used a hand-pumped water pump to float your duck down the trough into a big tub.

Next we went to the barn to see some animals, and then it was time for the pig races! After that we were pretty hungry, so we went to the pavilion for some eats. The girls and I had a cold lunch, but Amy and Brad waited in the hot lunch line, so I took the girls and Will to the hay barn while they were finishing up. Will definitely has the right name - he is a very strong-willed little boy! He knows what he wants to do, and by gosh, no one is going to stop him! I told him that when he was with Aunt Suzy he had to hold hands. He didn't care for that, and kept pulling away, but I kept up with him and kept holding hands. It was hot, and he was SO tired - eventually he threw himself down on the grass, I think perhaps his original intent was to throw a fit, but he found the grass so comfy he just folded his arms into a pillow, closed his eyes and took a five-minute power nap. I just stood over him, shading him from the sun, and watched that cutie-patootie look around every few seconds before closing his eyes again. It gave everyone a much-needed five minutes of downtime. After that we rejoined his Mommy and Daddy, who were wondering what we were doing out there in the grass, and went for more fun. We played on the barrel train, swings, play fort, carts and roller slide before heading to the pumpkin patch to pick out our perfect pumpkins. My original intent was just to get each girl a

miniature pumpkin, but they were so adamant that they get big pumpkins I told them that if they found one they could carry, we could get it, so they both picked a medium sized one, and for the most part, they carried them. By the end of the day we were all dusty, tired, and I was sunburned. We had a good time.

The next morning we headed back to Grandmas house for another stopover on the way home. We were supposed to stop by and say hi to Mimi at work and Nanna at her house on the way back too, but Maggie woke up the next morning with an apparent stomach flu. We abandoned the rest of our visits and made a beeline for home. That night she seemed to feel better and was finally able to keep something down, so we got a good nights sleep in our own beds and headed back to school on Tuesday. A whirl-wind tour to be certain, but lots of fun!

Sometimes It Feels Like a Rut!!

As last week dawned, I was feeling rather resentful against my "rut". You know - the everyday monotony of life - the seemingly endless repetition of being a mother. I was about to reach critical mass when I went to my Bible Study Fellowship for the week. At the end of each lecture they hand out notes, and this weeks really hit home. Here's the paraphrase:

Do you despise the little places and people with whom you live? Do you despise your daily occupation? Are you willing to do your work today to show the people around you how the Son of God within you lives the homemaker's life to the glory of God? If it is God's will for you, it is workable if you will cooperate with Him and let Him work it out through you. . .

Ouch.

So with a deep sigh I tried to humble myself before God and my family, and guess what? As usual, when I stop thinking about me and start thinking about making God smile by doing what he has called me to do at this time in my life, it stopped being a rut, even though the same activities were still present. God is so good.

As for the rest of the week, on Tuesday we made an important discovery! Baskin Robbins has $1 scoop night on Tuesdays! I had told the girls that if they finished dinner and homework before 7:00, we would go get ice cream. They did, so we did. I got lemon custard, which took me right back to my childhood, when we used to go to Baskin Robbins as a family. When I found out about $1 scoop night, I decided we needed to make this a tradition for us as well. The girls, of course, gave me no argument about that!

In my last issue of Cooks Country magazine there was a recipe for Tres Leches cake - Jerry's favorite. It's not an easy recipe, but I decided to give it a whirl. Some four bowls, one pot, one mixer with whip attachment and three hours later it was done. I had high hopes, although past recipes had not measured up to the ultimate tres leches cake served at Churrasco's in Houston. When Jerry got home and I served it up, he took a bite, and his eyes opened wide, and his eyebrows went up. The verdict - "Hey, this is good - really good!" I think we have a winner!

Last week was Maggie's school program. It was a jungle theme - Let's go on a Safari - and she was a monkey. The kids were on one side of the gym, and the parents were sitting on chairs at the extreme other end, so my pictures weren't great, but they did make a very nice video that has several clear shots of our monkey girl. Speaking of school plays, I finally spent way, WAY too much time on a project I have put to the side for almost a year. When I videotaped Gracie’s kindergarten play last year, I ran out of tape, so it was split between two tapes. I bought the cable to transfer it to the computer a long, long time ago, but I finally got around to actually doing it last night. Then of course, I couldn’t just splice it together and slap it on a DVD – NO! I added titles, credits, chapter markers, music, etc. It looks pretty nice, although I can't recommend either of the programs I used for intuitiveness.

This week Gracie is Pooh's Special Friend at school. She gets to be the line leader for the week, bring things for show and tell, and in general be special. She gets to bring her favorite snack on Friday. I asked her what she wanted - cookies, brownies, rice krispy treats - what? Her choice: Goldfish. She definitely knows what she likes.

On October 31 there is a parade of storybook characters at the girls school. For Maggie, she has to do a book report, and then dress as a character from the book for the parade. At first she wanted to be Jasmine, but when I got the costume, it was too big, and it was purple instead of the aqua blue that Jasmine usually wears. Maggie didn't want it if it was not blue, so we returned it and looked at all the costumes. She finally chose a Barbie Princess Rosella one, so now we are reading that book. Gracie went to the store convinced she wanted to be a ladybug, but we ended up with a Little Mermaid costume. I can hardly wait to see what Jerry says when he sees her wearing seashells. Luckily, it has long-sleeved flesh-colored material under them, so we can wear long johns if it is cold.

Perhaps this week wasn't so monotonous after all. I guess it's all a matter of perspective, yes?

Searching for Intelligent Life

You know how, at each company, there is one person - or if your lucky, more than one - who can actually solve problems. I am in what seems like an endless search for that person at AT&T.


See, we have had the same e-mail addresses for 10 years now. I don't want to change it, because all my friends know that it's the best way to get ahold of me, and it's on all my business cards and most of all BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO!!!! For the last two years, we have actually paid an extra $10 a month to keep those addresses even though we didn't use AT&T for our internet service. So, now that we are back in AT&T land our accounts were supposed to merge when we got our AT&T high-speed internet service set up and we would be back to having our e-mail and internet service on the same bill. Well, the key words there are "supposed to". Even though we had an AT&T agent on the phone when we set up the account, I am still getting a bill for $10 for a dial-up account, and a new bigger better bill for a high-speed account with an e-mail address I don't use. I've tried to resolve this problem a couple of times, but have run out of patience before I got the issue resolved. So, today, I am biting the bullet and I am going to wade through as many customer service representatives as it takes to get this problem solved to my satisfaction. Here we go: Christina in Billing (5 minutes) -> Christy in High Speed Internet (7 minutes) -> Diego, a DSL / Dial-up Specialist (on hold for 26 minutes) -> Denise in 2nd Tier Support ( 34 minutes!)


While I'm on hold here with AT&T, let me tell you about our spectacular ending to September. First we had Family Fun night at the girls school. It was a big success for the school, with plenty of attendees. They had bounce houses and things set up, and we feasted on Cici's pizza, sodas and homemade desserts. My PTO given assignment was to take photographs - an assignment that was right up my alley. Unfortunately, the picture-taking was cut short by a playground injury. Maggie has been determined to make it across the monkey bars, and she was practicing under the watchful eye of her daddy while I went to take some photos. She was doing great until one of her hands slipped off, and rather than let go with the other hand and drop, she held on. Well, eventually gravity got the better of her, but since she was gripping the bar so tightly, some of the skin was pulled off the palm of her hand. It wasn't a major injury, except to Maggie, but we decided it was enough that we needed to go home and administer first aid. I'm not sure whether Maggie cried louder because of her boo-boo, or the fact that we were leaving, but either way, she wasn't very happy.

We made up for the leaving early by arriving early at the next night's event, Screen on the Green at Jerry's company. They have a large green area with sport fields surrounded by a jogging track across the street from Jerry's building. For this event they set up a large movie screen up at one end of that area, and all the families could either bring a picnic or purchase hot dogs and hamburgers there, and set up their blankets and lawn chairs and watch a movie - Charlotte's Web was the selection for the evening. At the other end of the big field they had set up bouncy houses, obstacle courses, and a big inflatable slide. They also had a caricature artist, carnival games, popcorn, sno-cones, and cotton candy. The girls were thrilled. Of course, the biggest fun was provided by mother-nature: There was a big hill that sloped down to the seating area, and the girls had the best time just rolling down the hill. It reminded me of the scene in "The Princess Bride" where Buttercup pushes Wesley down the hill and they are both going "Ow! Oh! Ump! OOH!" Yet they would get up and run back up the hill to do it again. Here in Oklahoma there is a definite change in seasons, and we could tell it was fall - by the time the movie was over, the girls and I were all wrapped up in a blanket - it was rather cool! The weather is supposed to make the fall colors really pop this year - I can hardly wait!


WooHoo!! After a little more than an hour, we are done! Denise is the intelligent life at AT&T! Way to go Denise! Now I'm going to head out - my tile guy called in sick today, so I can leave the house to run errands. I don't really need to do anything, but I'm going to make something up.

You know, as we have moved so many times, I have reached the conclusion that the hardest part is not the actual moving, although that is the hard labor part. THIS is the hardest part - now that everything is unpacked, this time where you are settled in and don't have too much stuff to keep you busy, but you haven't yet made a good friend that you can just call and chat with, this is the hardest time, at least for me. I'm sure I'm driving my sister crazy with all my phone calls, but I'm sure glad I have her to talk to!