First of all, a repeat of the last post---I'm ticked off that AOL is closing down the blog site. Grrrr. I've checked into wordpress & blogger tonight. They're both very similar. Since most of the world uses blogger/blogspot (what's the deal w/ the 2 names anyway?), I will probably go there, but I'm not sure yet. If you have any experience w/ other blog sites, let me know which ones you like(d) best & why. I could use the input.
As far as my day today........
I'm much less weepy feeling & sad tonight. Last night was rough. I was seriously missing Larry like crazy. Today I'm ok. I mean, i still miss him, but I'm not so whipped with hormones tonight I guess.
I went to work today, took a 20 min nap afterward before going to pick up the kids & decided I wanted a snack from Sonic. We pulled in & ordered. 20 minutes later, our food still had not arrived & I was getting a little mad. I watch 4 or 5 cars of teenagers pull in, order & get their food while we sat there & waited. Finally, some guy came by (a manager of some sort) & I waved him down & asked how much longer it would be. He asked me what I had ordered & when I started telling him he said "ok, so that was your order!" Apparently they had somehow not rung up what stall to send it out to when it was done so they weren't sure where to take the order & it had just been sitting on the counter all this time. He said he'd have it "right out". I waited for another five minutes before I drove off without anything. What a colossal waste of my time! All in all, I spent nearly 1/2 an hour sitting at Sonic waiting on food that never came. Since I was (by then) super thirsty & still feeling kinda munchie, we drove 1/4 mile to Dairy Queen & were in & out of their drive thru in 5 minutes.
Tonight I had 2 meetings at work -- an age level meeting (all the 3yr old teachers) and a staff meeting (the entire staff). The kids went with me & sat in my room to play while I went to meetings. We got info tonight on the workshop that we attended last Fall. I'm really anxious to go again. I enjoyed the classes last year, so it was fun to read through all the course descriptions this time & pick out what I'd like to go to!
It's getting late. I need to hit the sack, but before I do, I'm giong to take a quick shower & get my clothes out for tomorrow. :::Yawn::: I have an 8am PTO meeting before I go to work. I wonder if I could cram anything else into the day tomorrow.
AOL is shutting down their blog site on 10/31/08. I have 1 month to manually move the entire content of this blog elsewhere. I may just save it all to a word pad file & put it on a CD and start fresh with a new blog site, but I'm really irritated that I have to do this at all! Stay tuned. I'll let everyone know where I'm going as soon as I figure it out.
I have friends whose husbands have been deployed for as much as a year at a time.
And here I am, 4 days into this trip Larry's on......and I'm dying. I am REALLY beginning to miss my sweetie. This is part of an email I just sent him a little bit ago:
Ya know, I've gotta tell you.... it's nearly 11pm on day 4 of you being gone. We're ok, but I'm beginning to miss you like crazy. I need my buddy around to tease & hug & hold & snuggle up to in bed. These first few days have gone by pretty quick and I have been OK. People have asked me if I was doing alright with being so far away from you for so long & I have truthfully told them I'm ok. But the novelty of having a whole bed to spread out in is wearing off. I am missing your sense of humor & your jokes & just hearing your voice. I want to touch your face & hold you tight & kiss you. I guess I figured that since you're often at work late or whatever that this trip wouldn't be so hard because I'm kind of used to taking care of a lot of things on my own. But, well.....it sucks. I'm not too good at this after all.
Take care & be safe over there. Stay clear of the drunken knife-wielding folks. Tell them about God, hug them and let them know that the One seated on the throne loves them. Hold the children, flirt with the old ladies, offer them a little touch of Jesus, and then come home to me safe & sound on Saturday. I'm praying that these last few days go by quickly. I miss you baby. I'll go wipe my tears now & take a shower.
I Love you!
You see? Good grief.....I would never survive a year-long deployment. Girlfriends, my hat is off to you!
Into the wee hours of this morning (about 1:15am to be exact), I heard from Larry via email!!!! Yahoo! I was so tickled to get his emails & get to "talk" to him in real time. I had hoped & figured he might get online, so I stayed up & voila---I "saw" him! I miss ya baby. Here are some excerpts from his emails:
"I crashed as soon as I saw a bed."
"the flight was good. the first leg sure was long, i got pretty stiff, but I watched four movies. that was pretty cool. they had an interactive screen that would trak the flight and tell you where were at each time. I think we ate 4 times on that flight. I lost trak."
"The city we stopped in to eat was a real mix of 2 worlds. You can see the old soviet influence in the architecture, the way the street are laid out. then you see mcdonalds and satelites hanging out the window of each of the apartment windows. what a mix."
"the pastor took me to the church i will preach in this morning. it is beautiful. it is round looking thing. 3 story. It reminds me of the old drawings i have seen of Spurgeons church."
"Oh, just so you know, the urinal in the mens room, is like a gold fish bowl on the wall that does not flush."
"I preached this morning. The church very beautiful. lots of natural light and great accoustics. the hold thing is round. the choir sang and there was testimony time. they sang a couple of songs that we knew the tune too.
Leslie Brotherton interpreted for me. We worked well together."
"the homes are late 1800 model, some have been re done and are great. other are need some tlc. the streets were cobble stone. the pastor's house reminds me of a southern american type, formal sitting and dinning room. the pastor has travled lots. he had many books from around the world. on top of one table and shelf were books about Texas"
As for our day back home, it was a good one. Our church had their big groundbreaking ceremony this morning for the Family Life/Community Center we're building. The mayor, chief of police & several other local 'celebrities' were there. A quick shot of the service itself:
We came home, ate lunch & took a nap (I was tired from staying up so late to hear from Larry last night!) and accomplished quite a few things I needed to get done for work tomorrow. We spent the evening watching a movie & just hanging out. It was a great day.
I'm going to take a shower now & will send Larry a quick email before heading to bed. Gotta actually sleep tonight!
We started out our day pretty early. Well, early for a Saturday morning when we could've just slept in & hung out at the house. For FOUR weeks, Samuel has been cleaning his room. No, I'm not kidding or exaggerating. You read that right. 4 weeks. Count 'em. FOUR! After the first couple of weeks, he slowly got grounded from doing just about anything he enjoys -- TV, going out to play, computer, you name it. I'm a very patient, very layed-back parent & preschool teacher. I don't ruffle easily. I can take a lot of things in stride. But seriously, after FOUR weeks of working on ONE bedroom, what parent wouldn't be getting a little flustered? He really is a good boy, but he's a slob. He's so stinkin' creative & distracted (ok, I'm saying A.D.D. in a nice way aren't I?) like his mama that he can't ever finish a job. He gets started & has good intentions, but about 2 minutes into the job, he gets distracted & then spends 3 hours sitting in the floor writing a story or drawing a picture or playing with a toy. I'm the same way. My house perpetually looks like a bomb went off. I have the "but first" syndrome. You know the one... I was going to do the dishes BUT FIRST I saw the mail on the counter, so I sorted it & threw away the trash. I realized the trash was overflowing so I went to get a trashbag from under the sink BUT FIRST I needed to get Sarah a drink of water. I went over to the fridge to get the water and realized that the pitcher needed to be refilled BUT FIRST I found a coupon on the counter. I picked it up to put it away BUT FIRST the phone rang. I could go on & on, but you get the idea.
ANYWAY.... On Tuesday, I walked in with a trashbag & told Samuel to start filling it up. He freaked out a little. I told him that I would let HIM be the one to fill the trash bag if he'd get on it & do the job. The instruction was clear. Either clean up your mess or throw it away. If you don't have a place for it, but you want to keep it, ask me for help on where to put it. If you don't have a place to put it & aren't that excited about keeping it, THROW IT AWAY. After school each day this week, he did his homework then went immediately to clean his room. On Wednesday night at bedtime I told him that he had til Saturday morning (today!) to get the room done. Whatever was left laying in the floor by then would be thrown away. I would come do it myself.
Last night I set his alarm for 6:30 & told him to get up & start cleaning when it went off. I'd be getting up at 7:30 to come through with a trash bag. And this morning, I did it. There were no tears. In fact, he helped me walk things to the big giant Hefty bag in his doorway. I threw away broken pieces of toys, a thousand disks from those dollar store disk-shooter toys (& the disk-shooter too!). I threw away old pens, dried up markers, a million pieces of paper, trash, a pair of outgrown, stained up socks (WHY OH WHY did he still have these?). I filled an entire big, black trash bag. But it's done. He vacuumed his floor up afterward to get all the teeny bits of paper up and now, after four weeks of asylum in his bedroom, the boy has been released from his dungeon.
I'll give it 5 days.
We reported to the city park at 9:30 this morning to get our order forms & instructions for the annual Boy Scout POPCORN BLITZ! Today was my first experience with a popcorn blitz. Larry usually handles all things Scout-related, but since my sweetie is away at the moment, I got to be the Scout mom today. I wore Larry's Cub Scout pack Tshirt & trotted myself to the park with my sweet boy to figure out what a mom's to do for a "blitz". Apparently the idea is that you get your selling supplies (paperwork, collection envelope) & then you go out for a very short period of time & SELL SELL SELL. Today, our selling timeframe was about 2 hours. At the end of the 2 hours, you come back & report how much you've sold and the highest sellers get a prize. Cool! Let's do it! Go, Samuel, go!
We went to our street to sell popcorn this morning. Look at this sweet baby ringing his first doorbell.
No one was home, but I just thought he looked cute, all uniformed up & anxious to sell some popcorn!
The very next house brought our first sale of the day -- a $40 order! THANK YOU, lady in the yellow moo-moo house dress! We appreciate your business! And by the way, your little white dog was cute, too.
The girls & I stayed in the van with the windows down, rolling along behind the great salesman as he went from one house to the next all the way down & back up our street. When we reached our own house, Savannah asked if she could have the holy grail of preteen years. She wanted to go into our house & stay there alone while we sold popcorn. I decided that since I'd be RIGHT THERE on our street & she could flag me down at any time...and I had Larry's cell phone w/ me, it would be OK. She was so excited to get to stay home alone for the next 45 minutes. Wow...what freedom. :)
By the time we reached the end of all the houses on our street (plus a couple of others on connecting streets), Samuel had sold $219 worth of popcorn!!!!!!!!!! Hooray little man! I'm proud of you! We made our way back to the park for a hotdog lunch & prizes. Samuel earned a small scale cast iron frying pan. I'm sure it'll make the Spring trip to Tyler State Park with us when we go camping again.
We left the park, took the frying pan home, let Samuel change clothes & then headed out again. To the grocery store. Need I say more? I think that near the end I had a permanent dent in my forehead from beating it against the freezer doors & shelves in the store. Why is it that my children must nit-pick & snip at each other all the way through the store? :::sigh::: I sure was missing Larry by the time that I reached the checkout. He usually keeps the kids at home for me while I go grocery shopping. Not this time. Oh honey.....are you ready to come back home yet? :)
When we got home, we unloaded the groceries & everyone sweetly helped me put them away. Really! If only they could be so kind & sweet while we're in the grocery store. You know, where other people have to observe their behavior. On one aisle, I was looking a little frustrated I guess, because another lady (no doubt a mom of several closely spaced kids like me) grinned & said "I feel your pain".
It could've been much worse. They could all still be toddlers, screaming bloody murder while throwing a tantrum. They could've been stealing things. They could have piercings & tattoos of creepy blood-dripping skulls or something. They could be running down the aisles throwing things at other customers. They could be sooooooo much worse. I shouldn't complain. But at the moment I was walking through the aisles asking my eldest to stop picking on her brother...and asking my son to quit aggrivating his big sister....and thanking Sarah for all her "help", I wanted to pull my hair out. On the way home, we had a good talk about a particular Scripture that I felt like they needed to hear. My children were not exactly exhibiting the fruits of the Spirit on our drive home, so they needed a reminder of how to treat each other. It says
A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
Then tonight, I saw THIS video. What a great perspective. I've heard this song a bazillion times before, but putting the video with it makes all the difference. Thank you, Father, for my precious children & this crazy, chaotic time in our lives.
Today, my eldest embarked on one more "new" thing. It may not be a big deal to many of you, but it is pretty huge at our house. You see, when Harry Potter books (& movies & bookbags & toys, etc, etc, etc) came out a few years back, our kids were all pre-school aged. Larry & I decided pretty early on that we were not comfortable with our kids jumping onto the Harry Potter bandwagon without us having some time to research it and see what it was all about. Our kids were much too young to even worry about it anyway, but we knew that all too soon they'd be older and if HP was still "popular" then, they'd want to know what the fuss was about. Larry & I rented the first HP movie several years ago. And while a lot of the movie was no more "dark" than many other fantasy-themed movies, there were things that we decided were not child-appropriate for our family. We decided then that we'd prefer our kids not read HP books until we felt like they were firmly grounded in our faith with a strong sense of right & wrong, with a good grasp of the Scriptures. We felt like we could call that age 12, but discussed that we'd have to decide on a case by case basis with each of the kids when they reached 12. We have told the kids this & reminded Savannah over the summer that if she was interested in reading one of the HP books, she had our blessing to give it a try. She checked her first one out of the library at her school late this week. She usually plows into books & goes through them FAST. She's only a few pages into this one so far. We'll see how it goes and if she has any desire to read the rest. I really wouldn't mind her reading them if they turn out to be something she enjoys. It's something of a milestone since these books were such a HUGE deal in the past few years.
Tonight, we watched a Garfield movie together before the kids headed off to bed. It's now nearly midnight & I need to hit the sack myself. Goodnight!
Since Larry discussed his trip a little bit on his facebook page, I figure it's ok for me to mention it here. Due to safety concerns, I'm not going into detail of where he is, what he's doing or how long he'll be there....but, here's the scoop on what I can say.
This morning, before we left to go to the church (where he joined the others), I had to take a picture. After all, I make all the kids pose like this before going to camp! He was a good sport & played along.
We got into the car & cranked it. Then he remembered that he'd forgotten his glasses. I turned off the van, gave him the keys (to get back into the house) & waited. He got back in & we left the driveway.
Then he remembered something else. That's our house in the picture. Yep....we didn't make it far. Finally, we left. We got to the church & joined the others in loading the ministry boxes into the van. Afterward, we loaded all the team's luggage. Don't worry...there were 2 vans. This is the one w/ all the ministry boxes.
After a huddle with the group & some prayer time, they were off! See?
I got into the car, said a prayer for their safety while they travel & went to work. I felt like this.
So I did what any intelligent, independant, responsible, strong woman would do.
Yep, it worked. I've felt just fine all day today! :) We'll see how I do with my Cub Scout mama responsibilities tomorrow.
At 9:20, one of the subs I contacted earlier this morning called me back. She was available! She would arrive at the school late, but she was on her way there when we talked! Hooray! At least that was covered!
I picked up Samuel & went to the doc at 9:30. When we checked in, the VERY SWEET receptionist said "are you aware that you have a balance of $62?". I was aware that we had a balance, but it was $100 last time we checked.....but I told her that yes, I knew we had a balance. She asked if I could pay it today. I had NOT been planning on this visit even occuring, let alone adding $62 to my $30 copay. I explained what had happened w/ the $100 ear wax removal thing. She laughed about it all & agreed that it was insane to charge that much for that! But then she said (in a quiet, whispered voice) that our account had a note--- "Pending dismissal if balance is not paid". I asked her (in an equally whispered voice) "Dismissal from what?". Apparently the doctor who had frozen our account also marked us as a "non paying patient" & if we did not pay it off, they were going to "dismiss" us from being patients there!!!!! Ack! You've GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! We have children who've been patients there for 12 years now....and you're going to cut me off from having a pediatrician b/c of a $62 balance?! Good grief! What are poor people supposed to do for health care???? We are by no means poverty-stricken, but we certainly don't roll in the dough either. I expressed by shock & disbelief about this little matter & she was soooooo very sweet & gracious about it. This same lady has been the receptionist for the entire 12 years we've been seeing Dr. H, so she KNOWS us & knows that we're not going to skip out on paying them, even if we couldn't do it right away. She told me (in that quiet, hushed tone) that she's actually seen the docs in this practice "dismiss" patients for a lesser balance. Good Lord!
I went ahead & paid the balance just to get it over & done with....but I was seriously ticked off about the whole scenario. I joked with her that "Samuel's ear had better be infected....I've lost a day's pay & now I'm paying $90 for an office visit!"
Since we were being worked into the schedule, it took us forever at the doc's office. The appointment was at9:45, but it was nearly 10:40 before we got in & then it we got to sit & wait in the exam room forever. Thank goodness Samuel's Ibuprofen had kicked in & he was feeling alright. We played a thousand games of tic-tac-toe on the exam table paper while we waited.
And as it turns out, Samuel's ear was flaming red & his eardrum was bulging when I looked at it before the doc came in. (Yes, I borrowed the otoscope!) He confirmed that & gave us an antibiotic (can you say "ka-ching"?). By the time we got out of Walgreen's & I got him some McDonald's for lunch, it was 12:00 by the time we got home.
Oh, and to make matters worse, Larry discovered fraud on our checking account this morning.
Can you say SPIRITUAL ATTACK?! Larry leaves in the morning for a mission trip & every member of the group has been attacked. God must have something HUGE waiting for the team when they arrive. Feel free to cover all of the team (& their families at home) in prayer! Looks like we can all use it!
I am married to the most awesome man alive. I have 3 fabulous kids that make me proud to be their mom every day. I am an unashamed follower of Jesus. Without Him in my life, I wouldn't be who I am. I love to write, so this is my world.
