Where Does the Time Go?

Ah, here we are, at the end of February. It doesn't seem possible, yet it is. I think the first few months of the year go by faster than the rest. It just seems as if we put all sorts of things off until the "first of the year," and then BOOM! It's over!

February has been full of activities. It is a heavy birthday month in our family, including Miss Maggie, who is officially a tween now. Just ask Uncle Aaron - she talked his ear off for about 45 minutes the other night when he called to wish her a Happy Birthday! Maggie's party was a bit of a quick affair. I didn't get the invitations out as soon as I should have - not like I didn't know when her birthday was - but we still had a good turn out. Granddaddy, Grandma and Papaw made the drive to attend the party as well.

We still aren't out of the woods, sickness-wise. Gracie got double ear-infections last week, and this week I'm sporting another round of strep (woo-hoo)! I'm debating calling a moratorium to all extra-curricular activities for about a week, including church and scouts, just to see if we can't put a stop to it, but I'm not sure how effective that would be. We can't opt out of school - and chicken pox is making the rounds there. I know all the kids are supposed to be vaccinated - how is it we are seeing an outbreak of chicken pox? Ugh! Anyway - I finally took a list of all the meds I'm on now when I picked up my antibiotics and ran it by the pharmacist to make sure I'm not going to turn into the incredible shrinking woman or anything. I feel like a walking medicine cabinet sometimes.

The kids have given us some memorable moments since the last post. The morning that Gracie stayed home from school she was flipping through one of my scrapbooks while I was trying to get Maggie ready for school. All the sudden her little voice piped up from the chair, "Why does this man have on no clothes?" My mind was whirring as I tried to think of what scrapbook she was looking at, as I don't recall ever having put a picture of a nude man in any of my scrapbooks. Turned out she was looking at our Europe trip - at the statue of David. I tried to explain about art, sculptures, Renaissance, etc. and thought I had done an okay job of explaining when she came up with another question. "What's that thing between his legs?" I gave the short, simple, anatomically correct answer, but then she pondered the difference between the picture and other "little" boy parts she had seen before. Her conclusion, "That's gross." Not at all the conversation that I thought I'd be having on a Tuesday morning.

Maggie came home from school with the sobering news that a child she knew was moving due to a less than ideal home situation. She said that his step-dad, "spanked him too much." When asked if she thought she was spanked too much her reply was, "No, because most of the time I'm really, really, really good!" :-)

I've found THE great time-consumer. I joined Facebook. The reason I joined was because there is a group of CM consultants out there that started a group to exchange digital scrapbooking ideas. Less than a month later, I have 49 friends! Since we have moved around quite a bit, I knew we had made lots of friends over the years, and I am really enjoying catching up with everyone, but I am spending entirely too much time out there. I'm going to have to put myself on a timer just like I do for the girls Webkinz time! Oh well! If I haven't posted in awhile, you'll know where I am!

We're Still Here!

Hello Everyone! We are doing just fine here in Oklahoma. As most of you know, we got to try out our storm shelter for the first official time last night. I must say, being in one gives you a sense of security no bathtub with a mattress on top ever could.

I was actually at the girls school when the weather started getting hairy, doing my usual volunteer shift in the library. The weather was bad on the other side of OKC, so the sirens we going off, but there wasn't that much going on where we were. All the sudden there was a real pickup in activity in the school, because all these people had come to pick up their kids - the weather was heading towards us with baseball-sized hail, so folks didn't want to be stuck in the pickup line for a long time. Anyway, it was my intention just to stay until the end of school - after all, there is learning to be done, and it was still 40 minutes before dismissal! Before long though, it was apparent that there was no learning being done, with the administration trying to get kids to parents and not have the whole school be in chaos. The librarian told me just to grab the girls and go home, so I joined the queue of parents stretching out the front doors of the school and got the girls and we headed home.

By the time we got home the sky was black and the sirens were going off, so we grabbed the cat and got in our storm shelter (a.k.a. the hidey-hole). The girls were pretty perturbed, but calmed down once we were all in there. When the sirens stopped I told the girls I was going to go in and look at the radar, and they could come out. I heard their little feet going back and forth in the background while I watched the TV, and when I went back out there, they had put every blanket, pillow and stuffed animal from their room down in the shelter:

There were a few more storms to pass that way, so we watched the radar and whenever it got close and the sirens went off, we went and sat in the shelter. Once everything had passed we started out homework, and the calls from family started rolling in. By the time my sister called, I just answered the phone, "Yes, we're okay!" She said I sounded irritated that all of them cared enough to see if we were still there. It really wasn't that I was irritated - well, at least not about that. We were doing math homework! Anyway - thanks to all of you for checking on us. We're touched that so many of you thought about us!

Slowly But Surely

Well, things have slowly but surely been getting done around here. You know, back in, gee, I think it was August, I sold most of our furniture on Craigslist. My reasoning was that as long as I had a perfectly good sofa to sit on, I wasn't really motivated to go shopping for another, as I consider "shopping" right up there with getting a flu shot on the Things I Want To Do list. That's not to say I dislike ALL shopping, but it's not a big thrill for me.

There's other contributing factors to this as well, for instance, my spouses' tendency to voice "concerns" immediately AFTER we purchase something. For instance - Maggie has a pink matlesse cover on her bed. I asked him what he though of it before I bought it, and he gave me a non-committal, "Yeah, it's nice." So I bought it. Months afterward, once we'd had it awhile, washed it a couple of time (probably even had a stain on it by then) he mentions that he, "never cared for that cover." Why he couldn't mention that before I bought it, I don't know.

More recently I mentioned that I would like a hook rail in the utility room. He told me to "Go pick what you want and I'll hang it up." So I went to several local retailers, picked the thing I thought would match our room the best out of the selections I found, and brought it home. More than a month later, it was still sitting on the counter in the utility room. When pressed to hang it up, Jerry confessed that one with a shelf was more what he had in mind. So, I go return the one I bought. The customer service representative asked if it was defective, and I replied, "No. My husband told me to go pick out the one I liked, but what he really wanted me to do was pick out the one he liked, without telling me what it looked like." She looked at me rather oddly and processed the transaction.

Needless to say, this is why I don't try to pick out major furniture without him. Still, things are getting done - slowly but surely. The new hook rail showed up this week and we got it installed in the utility room:

The guest bed linens and the risers for the daybed showed up and although the linens were a bit more pink and a bit less red than we were expecting, we got it all put together and are eagerly awaiting our first guest:

We also heard from the manufacturer of our sofa, and it should begin its journey from the factory to the furniture store this week, so we could have it in the very near future. I can hardly wait. Still, even with this progress, I've confessed to Jerry in the past couple of weeks, I still don't feel settled in our new house. Part of this is because most of our pictures are still on the floor. At first Jerry didn't want to put up the office pictures because we have discussed getting new office furniture, but at the rate we are moving, he's beginning to accept my "Spackle was made for this very occasion" argument, and we are planning to hang pictures soon. Now the only thing left to tackle is the front living/sitting area. First step - getting rid of the china cabinet. So, if you know anyone who wants a very large, very nice lighted cabinet, let me know!