Yahoo! Samuel was a Tunnel Cat!

Samuel was a Tunnel Cat tonight.  You may remember my post from a couple of weeks ago when traffic kept us from arriving on time.  Well, tonight we went WAY early to make sure he was there on time & he did it!!!  Here are some pictures.  You can spot Samuel pretty easily.  He's the only one in a red shirt!

I seriously got teared up right after I took this picture.  When I put the camera down, there were 2 little boys in wheelchairs being run/pushed down the field by their dedicated teachers.  Those 2 boys won the honor to be a Tunnel Cat tonight, and while they couldn't run on their own, they earned the right to do it, so they had a "runner" for each of them!  God bless those precious teachers who took a jog tonight to push a wheelchair-bound child down the field to celebrate their good behavior at school!  Dang it...here I go getting all teary eyed again!

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Band Nerds Rock!

In all of our band family glory, tonight before the game:

I took quite a few pictures tonight at the game, but I will spare you most of them.  This is where the band sat.  Look at how many kids there are in the Jr. High band!!

My niece & Savannah both play French Horn.  I don't know if this pic will show up big enough for you to spot them, but if you put your finger in the very center of this pic, my niece & Savannah are just below your finger, to the left, looking directly at the camera.  Savannah said they saw me holding the camera & posed for me!

It was a great night.  Our team won the first game 24-0.  I'm not sure what the final score was on the 2nd game, but they were doing pretty well when we left.

On a more serious note, please add my father in law to your prayer lists.  He is in the hospital again.

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firsts

Tomorrow holds 2 'firsts' for my firstborn.  Tomorrow she will experience her first pep rally & her first junior high football game, both as a band member.  Tomorrow she will wear her band Tshirt to school for the first time and Larry & I will don our matching band parent Tshirts.  Tomorrow night, she will wear her band 'uniform' (all white, which I think is INSANE, but no one asked me) to the football game.  Tomorrow, she will sit in the stands with the band & play her French Horn.  (Don't worry...there WILL be pictures!)

I'm excited for her.  I'm excited to get to be a part of the great band "family" that I feel like I'm just joining in on.  In middle school & high school, I thought it was nerdy to be in band, so I never joined.  My husband, on the other hand, was a band geek right through high school (wink!) and actually got a college band scholarship as well.  Then again, I thought boy scouts & girl scouts were nerds, too.  Then I married an Eagle Scout.  But I digress...

Tomorrow will be a great day of 'firsts' for my sweet girl.  What a fun day it will be!

a lesson in grace

Tonight was our monthly staff wives' dinner.  We ate at Olive Garden & enjoyed our meal & the fellowship of other ministry wives.  On the way home, I stopped at Brookshire's (local grocery store) for a couple of things.  When I got to the check out line, there was 1 lady ahead of me buying a gallon of milk.  The checker was my neighbor, a 17 year old girl who I've watched grow from a new-teenager who was still quite the tomboy when we moved into this house.  Anyway, I figured it would only take a minute & I'd be out the door, headed home.  It was past the kids' bedtime anyway.  Larry had them at home.  I was just hoping to get home & kiss them in their beds before they fell asleep.

So anyway, I walked up to the checkout & there is this one lady in front of me.  Let me paint you a picture.

She's wearing what looks like pajamas.  Her hair is pulled up in a ponytail.  The ponytail itself is blonde, but underneath it's purple.  She's got 3 children with her.  The oldest, a little boy who looked to be about 8 or 9, is pushing buggies back & forth across the front of the store, ramming into checkout lines & "threatening" to get into one of the motorized carts & ride it.  The mom is screaming at him from a distance, creating quite a scene.  She's got a little girl, about 5 or 6, standing quietly next to her, wearing a pair of little girl-sized high heels.  Cute.  She is holding a toddler who is squirming & whiney.  Oh, and did I mention that all three kids are in their pajamas?  Aside from the high heels on the little girl, all of them are wearing slippers.  It's late.  The purple-haired, pajama-wearing, bratty kid toting mom is buying a gallon of milk with her motley crew & then she does it.  Yep...she pulled out her LoneStar card.  (If you don't know what that is, it is Texas's version of welfare/foodstamps.)  I rolled my eyes & waiting for her to get her wild bunch of kids & go home.  It turns out that she was buying the milk on WIC & apparently the one she picked out was not a WIC-approved type of milk, so there was a 15 minutes-long fuss between her, the cashier, a 2nd cashier & the manager.  I sat there getting more irritated & judgemental of this woman in front of me who was causing such a fuss.  While watching the scenario go down, a man & his Cub Scout uniform clad son walked up behind me.

At this point, I've been waiting for this transaction to end for at least 15 minutes.  I'm getting more frustrated by the moment & then the man behind me asks the cashier "Pardon me, how much is the lady's bill?"  When she tells him that it's $3.88, he offers to pay the bill for her.  He never says he's doing it to get her out of the way or because he's in a hurry or whatever.  He simply says he'll take care of it.  The lady politely turned around & thanked the man and left.

By now, I'm cringing & slapping myself in the forehead.  Here I was, whining (although silently) about how long this weirdo Welfare-mom was taking and some complete stranger steps up & does what I should've offered much sooner!  What a great Christian example I was tonight!  Ouch.

I drove home thinking to myself what a great picture of grace & kindness this man was tonight.  I was frustrated, and rightfully so, but he walked up, saw a problem & offered a way to solve the problem that put more weight on him than the person who was causing the problem to begin with.  He took the cost of her purchase & paid a debt he didn't owe to help her.

Hmm......remind you of anyone else?

Our doggie, King

I know this may sound silly....but can you pray for King?

A couple months ago, back in late June when our neighbors (behind us) moved in, they did a ton of work clearing out brush & stuff.  A few days after they did that, King was covered up in big ticks.  We pulled them all off of him, shampooed him w/ flea & tick shampoo, put on a flea & tick collar, and put a dose of the Frontline stuff on him.  (we had 1 last dose of it at the time, thank goodness!)  Within a week, we quit seeing ANY ticks on him at all.  We were happy to see them gone & felt like the brush-clearing must've been what started it all because our backyard (where King lives) backs up to the yard where they cleared out so much stuff.  I guess they were living in all that mess & when their habitat was disturbed, they went haywire.  We have continued treating him all summer even though we have not seen any more ticks on him since that first week, and trust me, we've checked him extensively almost daily up until a week or two ago when we quit being so obsessive about it.

 

Fast forward to today.  When we got home from church, he didn't come greet us at the fence like he usually does.  However, he's nearly 10 years old & is 1/2 crippled anyway, so once in a while, he doesn't jump up & run to the fence....but it still bothered me, so I went to check on him.  Larry followed me & I quickly discovered (while petting him) that he was covered up in ticks again!  Larry & I sat there & pulled tick after tick after tick off of him.  Immediately, we decided to re-treat him & the yard.  We went inside & changed clothes & grabbed a quick bite before going out (all of us--kids included) to bathe him.  We used about 4 layers of the shampoo, covered every inch of his body & found (seriously) at least a hundred more ticks--babies & big fat adults.  It got to the point that I wanted to throw my hands up & say "forget it..there's too many."  We pulled so many off that his fur was bloody in places & our hands were bloody when we came in.  On his chest, there are several lumps that look like infected bites.  Before we finished bathing him, Larry put tick poison stuff all over the back yard (dog-safe stuff) & afterward, we put a new collar on him.

 

As Larry & I sat there pulling off ticks, he whispered to me "you know, this many ticks could kill him...I hope we found them soon enough."  We sat there, silently pulling off ticks, praying that he will be OK.

 

King has his vet check-up on Tuesday afternoon, so I guess the doc can give us some idea of how good or bad things look.  We're really worried about the poor old dog.  We haven't said anything to the kids about how bad this could possibly be.  No need to worry them if there's nothing to worry about.  But if there is a chance he could be seriously ill or die from this, it would just kill them.  They're so attached to the big fluff-ball & it would break their hearts (& ours!) to lose him!

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Hurricane pics

This morning as the hurricane began to blow through, I went out & took these pictures. 

This is the windsock that Sarah made earlier this summer at daycamp.  It's made of craft foam (stapled together) with ribbons tied onto the bottom.  I figure if it stays together & doesn't get torn apart in the wind, we're probably OK.

We were kind of laughing at the idea of this storm doing much damage.  I mean, we're 8 hours inland & we figured that it would lose its strength by the time it got to us.  A couple hours into the storm, this was all the "massive wind damage" we had.  One little piece of a branch in the yard.  Woop-tee-doo!

 

And for the most part, we were right, but we did get a little bit of trouble from it.  Several hours into it, I was walking around the yard with my camera & umbrella to see what I could see.  I found this.  Yikes!  When did that happen?  We didn't even hear it!  That's our fence under there!!

Thankfully, it didn't do much damage.  The 2 caps on the top of those posts were popped off & broken, but once we cut the branch off the fence, everything was fine.  My dad told me I ought to apply for FEMA help to replace those caps.  (snicker, snicker)  We'll have to clean this up later, but for not, it's off the fence.

As the storm as gone on, we've got more debris out in the street in front of us.  But still, there is nothing real major going on.  Just a lot of wind & some moderate rainfall.

I took a bit of video to show the wind whipping around earlier.  I could email it but for some reason, AOL won't let me post it here.  Let me know if ya want to see.

ABCs of my youth-just something for fun

These are all things A-Z that bring back a memory from growing up. If you were born in the 70's, you'll probably recognize a few..........

A- Annie:  it's a hardknock life for us...Yes, Mrs. Hannigan!....the red curly hair....loved it!  AND American Bandstand (loved that show!) AND Al Denson (he did the music at the Dawson McAllister conferences)

B- BIG bangs (oh, the 80s & early 90s were not nice to my hair!)

C- Cabbage Patch Kids & Cartoons that were only seen on Saturday mornings for a couple of hours

D- Def Leopard (the Hysteria CD still rocks!) AND Dawson McAllister conferences w/ the church youth group

E- Eagles (the band)  My family listened to a lot of their music.

F- the Fonz, Fraggle Rock, frizzed out hair

G- Guess? jeans!  They were the ONLY pair of "designer" jeans I ever had.  My mom made me wait til my birthday to buy that $50 pair of jeans.  It was my only present that year & I wore them til I couldn't breathe deep enough to get them zipped up.  I was soooo proud of that little triangle on my rear end!

H- Hypercolor shirts!  They were so cool!

I-  Ice, Ice Baby 

J- Jelly shoes (oh my gosh..sweaty feet & blisters....but they were so cool at the time!)

K- Kirk Cameron....my future husband (when I was 12)

L - Layla (the Eric Clapton song---I was in High School-- such a catchy tune)

M- Menudo (another Saturday morning-only favorite)

N- New Kids on the Block

O- opal earrings & necklace that Larry gave me when we first started dating (awwwww!!!)

P- pink everything--specifically HOT PINK!  earrings, shirts, shoes, eyeshadow!

Q- quirks....we all had them in our youth, right?  Oh wait, I still have some of mine!

R- Radical!  Oh the stupid stuff we said in Junior High!

S- Smurfs (I still hum the theme song tune all the time.)

T- twirling a baton in the front yard (well, trying anyway....) AND teased hair

U- Underoos!!!!  I got the Wonder Woman variety when I was 3 or 4 years old.  Loved those things!

V- Vanilla Ice & all those other cool bands!

W- What you talkin' 'bout Willis?

X- Xavier-something....the guy who signed the butts of all the Cabbage Patch Kids

Y- Youth group, Youth director, Youth Camp @ Timberline......oh the fun!

Z- Z Cavaricci