Thanksgiving: Surprise, Shock, Sickness and Shopping

Well, Thanksgiving week has come and almost gone. And I've gotten about half the stuff done that I wanted to get done. BUT, we did take some time Thursday to thank God for all our MANY MANY blessings. Food, shelter, health, family, and our many many freedoms.

I've been working like a crazy person, but paddling up stream. I've been sick. Again. Another Sinus infection. The Dr. declined the request to bake our pies, since I was sitting in the waiting room Wednesday, instead of my kitchen. He will NOT prescribe antibiotics without seeing me. I get several sinus infections per year. I KNOW what they are, but I tend to let them go until I can barely function because I despise paying the Dr. $20 to tell me "Yup, It's a sinus infection." and hand me a piece of paper.

So anyway.....I got my first Christmas present last week. A NEW LAPTOP. It's a Dell (Of course) and it's PURPLE!!!! I now, officially OWN my laptop. It is not on permanent loan. If my daughter causes me to drop it, DH will NOT lose his job (yeah, there's a specific incident in mind, but DH didn't lose his job. The laptop still worked, despite falling off my lap, flat onto the screen, it still worked).

Fast forward a few days. It's Thanksgiving!!! We had a decent time. We have a SMALL family. Dh and I are both only children, and we only have 1 parent left, so it's not a big party. We also invite a single friend to join us, so it's a whopping 4 adults and the 2 kids. We sent the kjids upstairs to play and watched some of Jeff Dunham's youtune videos. We LOVE his work but it is NOT for kids. While we were watching those, I did some work on dd's lapbooks. Then I opened our local paper (already a week old) and perused it. And saw our Neighbor's obituary. He passed away November 4th, and was only 56 yrs old. He had broken his leg and had surgery, and developed a blood clot that hit his lung. He was so healthy and happy the last time I saw him. We had seen his SILs over there mowing and stuff, but just figured it was becasue of his broken leg.

So today, Saturday, I went shopping with a friend. We met at Starbucks at a local mall at 10:00. I started the day with a Venti Pumpkin Spice Steamer, 150 degrees And I did GREAT! I found an Asian babydoll for dd4. MIL didn't want anything for Christmas, but I just CAN'T do that. So I bought her 8 bottles of soap from Bath & Body Works. She loves their stuff and can't drive anymore, so that should keep her for a year, right?! We also hit a couple of new sotres....Crate and Barrel (pretty col) and the Container Store. I could NOT believe that store. It was INCREDIBLE. I am organizationally challenged. I wanted to buy EVERYTHING!!

AFter that, I went to ToysRUs. I dropped $200. I bought a play kitchen, some pots that match mine, McDonald's food, a bed & high chair for the doll from above, and some other miscellaneous junk. Then I went to Target and bought a bunch of stocking stuffers. I got home around 5:30 to be greeted by screaming requests to go out for dinner. I was thriled that I didn't have to cook, but jeez. I really didnt' want to go OUT again. I turned around and we all went to O'Charley's. THEN home. And NOW, I sit. With my feet up. Playing on my new laptop, ready to go to sleep.

Hope you all had a terrific Thanksgiving!! Now, it's onto the Christmas Hamster Wheel!

I'm Back!!!!

I'm sure some of you thought that I have fallen off the face of the earth. I know my family does. But I'm actually caught up on everything (except the piles of papers which I may NEVER get caught up on!) so I thought I'd revisit my blog. I might actually start posting again, maybe even weekly?!?!?!

The past few months have been a blur. I have been SO busy, but have been enjoying it, and learning SO much. I have been teaching 2 classes in our Homeschool group, but am not teaching the next half. I have also been taking a GREAT class offered at our church called Daughters of Sarah. It is about becoming the wife God has called you to be. We have read several great books and I have grown so much. My DH is thrilled that I've taken it.

In between all of this I've also been homeschooling, doing my regular Bible Study, and participating in our local MOPS group. Oh, and doing laundry, cooking and well, not really cleaning. One of the things I have learned is just how much you CAN get done in such a little amount of time. I've also noticed how many loads of laundry my family of 4 actually create in a week. I do about 3 loads of jeans alone! Which is why we end up doing school like this.

And just for good measure, I had to include this one of my youngest.
I do not know HOW she manages to keep the chair upright.

HERO WORSHIP

What more could a father ask for?

The Keys to the House

I found my house keys. They were in my purse. Down in the bottom of a small pocket. They were there last week. Yeah, when we were locked out.

The Week In Review

This has been quite a week at our house. Beleive me, not much was 'normal'. A friend and I had planned to go pick strawberries one morning last week. But the week just wasn't going to be normal.

It started on Tuesday evening. Around 8:00 pm. The Sirens went off. We turned the TV on, and there were SEVERE storms heading NEAR us, but not AT us. Technically, they weren't even in our county. But the sirens were wailing. We watched the guy on our local weather channel exercise his vast vocabulary (actually, I was impressed with his use of his above average vocabulary) for several hours. Because the sirens kept wailing. DH and I finally decide to go to bed. He hooks up his super duper weather alert thingie that is suppose to be programmable for localized alerts only. HAHAHAHHA

It went off every 10 minutes until DH the blasted thing. It's nice to know what's going on in Grandma's neighborhood. But she lives at least 50 miles away, and if she's having thunderstorms (even severe) I don't need to know at 3:00 AM. >sigh<>

Fast forward to Wednesday evening....(Oh, insert an average trip to the library, if there is such a thing with a 3 & 6 yr old sibling set who are going through a bickering and tattling phase). Daddy needs to go to Wal-Mart. It is dark and ominous outside, but not raining. While in walmart the lights blink. It was MORE Than a flicker. Something like...power out. Generator on. Hmmmmm Then BOOM: Thunder. Then that dreaded roar from DOWNPOURING rain. We're talking ARK downpours. We're talking look out the window and get wet, downpours. We finish our shopping, and stand in the door until the deluge stops. Well, lightens up, anyway. We go home. The power is out. The garage door won't open. We don't have a house key. Oh well, our power is usually never out for long, so we go out for a snack. OK, a second dinner.

We sit in Panera's until they close, calling home periodically to see if our answering machine picks up. It never does. Hmmmm We go home, double checking every window and door. We try to jimmy the sliding door. (Why DID we have to spend so much on the d##n thing and buy such a GOOD one??!?!) Nothing. We try to lift the garage door, bypassing the opener. (Another waste of extra $$) UGH All this time, it is sprinkling. Then Piper announces that she has to poop. I take the girls to the neighbor's house to use their facilities. She is so kind and gracious to us. Wants to offer us some tea, but she can't make it, her power is out too. The kids really want us to give up on trying to get in, cause they want to stay at a hotel. And coveniently, their bathing suits are in the car (it's the extra on to go to granny's...that's why it's in the car).

I suggest to DH that if we can life the garage door a foot, dd6 could slide under it and get in to unlock the front door. We keep trying. The toolbox, of course, is IN the garage. Finally, he takes off to the shed in the backyard. He comes back with 2 pieces of wood. He creates a pivot and lever system. We get it raised just enough. I call DD over and tell her to scoot under (she had already been prepped). She didn't like the dirty floor, so I PUSHED her under despite her protests. She unlocks the door. It is 9:30. >sigh<>

My friend calls the next morning at 7:30. The fields are open do you want to go? I call DH and ask him what he thinks....should I wake the girls? We decide yes. I wake up the girls. They are thrilled to go. But a little grumpy. We get to the farm and dd3 finds her soulmate. The farm has a cat. She LOVES cats. We picked strawberries and today we are canning them. More about that, later. IF we survive.

Wildlife at Home

On Memorial day DH went out to start laying the groundwork for the new pool. We bought a bigger one last fall, on clearance, so he had to make the mudpit a little bigger. Wanna know why our pool STILL isn't up? Because while clearing out the area, he found this.

Even the girls are in agreement that we CANNOT put the pool up until the baby bunnies are gone. I just really really hope they are gone soon. The weather this week is like the middle of July: HOT. With severe thunderstorms mixed in.

In addition to the bunnies, DH looked outside our kitchen window today and saw this. If you look really close in the flowerbed you can see some brown with white spots.

What a cutie!

Wordless Wednesday...Vacation!

10 Days in Yellowstone & Jackson Hole WY with ALMOST no words...

Yeah, we had fun!!

Gold Eagle

Unknown Ducks

We think this is a Kestrel

My Mangy Moose

Pronghorn

This was soo cool! A BLACK Wolf

I LOVE this picture of the the Bald Eagle,

looking down at her babies.

Baby Bison are one of my favorite animals.

Jar Jar Binks does Yellowstone?!?!?

2 Black Bear Cubs, and Mama bear taking off

after another stray adult Black Bear