Our company is gone. It was a really nice visit.
I missed out on Frugal Friday this week, but hope to be back at it again next week.Our guest is due in the afternoon, so it may be the end of the week before I get the chance to make a proper post.
I hope everyone has a blessed week.
If anyone is paying attention to my new to-do list over in the sidebar, you'll see that I've not been able to get everything done every day. You know this because the same thing shows up day after day.
I try to get it done. But sometimes other things come up. Sometimes nothing more than my girls needing some quality talk-time with Mama. Sometimes (like with the Pastor's meal) I'm hashing it out with DH, as he'll be the one eating with him and he's changing him mind all the time. ;)
I'd love to be able to strike it all out, but the reality of it is that I just can't do it all every day. Sometimes my ambition is bigger than my ability.
So it stays there until I get it done.
Finally, a day at home! We have been literally out of the house most of the day from Sunday thru yesterday! And my house shows it. Ugh.
Yesterday was just one of those days that was so crazy that it was silly.
Julia had co-op at 10:45 so we had to be out of the house by 10:15. We took cupcakes to her class for Valentines so that was an extra step. Then I stopped by the grocery store to pick up the sale circular, then quickly home to homeschool my little one.
Before I could even get home, my cell is ringing. The other mom that I'm doing GirlScout cookies with this year just got back from Italy and we have all the minute' details to coordinate for the cookie pickup. So I finally get all that taken care of and I'm at home now, trying to get all of my homeschool stuff together for Jillian. I throw a load of laundry that I'd run before I left home in the dryer. And my phone rings. It's my oldest, she's *broken her drivers license.
Yes, broken.
And what should she do? So I hang up with her and after many phone calls find out what she should do, call her back and let her know. Then I have to dig out her birth certificate. I do, and she's off to get this taken care of. By now, it's past lunch time and I prepare lunch. We eat. Then I start to get the homeschooling stuff started with Jillian, and I get a phone call.
My oldest needs the *original* birth certificate. I had given her a copy. Which I found incredulous because she had her license, snapped neatly into two pieces. Easy to see who she was and all of her info. She had her SS card. She had her college ID. AND a copy of her birth certificate. And that wasn't good enough.
I digress.
So I look again through our stuff and sure enough, I find the original. I call her back and let her know. Now it's time to get the bread going for supper.
As soon as I get the bread going, oldest comes in and gets the paperwork. While she's talking, I start to get supper prepped. Then she leaves and the dryer dings. It's stuff I have to attend to right then (of course).
I give Jillian some reading to do and start to concentrate on the house. I have literally like an hour before I have to leave to pick up Julia. In that hour I unloaded the dishwasher (that I'd ran sometime in the middle of this chaos), load the dishwasher, do more laundry, shape the bread into rolls and bake them, get supper cooked, straighten the house, get all the food together that I have to take with me, and we hit the door.
We pick up Julia AND her two friends. I take them all to grab some fast food and then to the neighboring church where I take part of the homemade supper in for me and my friend. (My girls would have loved the homemade food, but her girls wouldn't have eaten it.)
We eat a quick supper and then she and I start setting up for the Valentine party.
Long story ... well ... still long, we get home around 8pm. I heat DH's supper and he eats. Then we change the sheets on the bed together and pretty much fall into it.
Hopefully, today will be a make-up day. And I can get all the stuff done that I didn't get the chance to do EVERY OTHER DAY THIS WEEK.
If my daughter can keep from breaking some other important, official document, that is.
*How the heck do you break a license? I mean really, have YOU ever broken your license? Me neither. She said she was holding it be each end in one hand and it just snapped.
:D
I've seen others put their "To-Do" list on their blogs, so I decided to give it a try as well.
Note that this is not all that I will do today. ;) I have my regular schedule that I follow each day of the week (which I fully intend to post at some point). This is the "extra" stuff that I need to get done today.
I normally have a list here (on sticky paper) of the extra things that need to be done on a given day (the routine things, I'm pretty familiar with and don't need a list anymore). This just makes me a bit more accountable with it posted I suppose!
Since Ash Wednesday is only 9 days away, I've been thinking about Lent a bit these last few days. Our church is having an Ash Wednesday service, and I really want to go, but I'm not sure we're gonna be able to make it. That is right in the middle of our company coming from out of town.
But whether we get to go or not, I want this time of year to be recognized. I think the girls are definitely old enough now to participate in a meaningful way.
I'd love your thought or ideas on how you observe Lent.
My pastor is amazing to me. I thought for a while that it was only me feeling this way, but it's not. When we discuss the sermon after church with friends, I'm still, after a year, shocked. The man truly has a gift. It's not like anything that could come of this earth.
We all hear him differently. Every week. I hear something that strikes a nerve with me. DH hears something with just the vaguest difference that allows it to strike a nerve with him. Our friends ask, but didn't you hear XYZ? That strikes a nerve with them.
And the fact is, of course I heard what they heard. But my heart interpreted it for my own life. Just as everyone seems to be doing.
And he's so humble, that it's, ... well ... humbling.
I can't tell you what a blessing it is to have this man in our lives.
Things are coming along here. But you know how mussed up everything is when you're in the middle of moving things around and doing major cleaning? Well, that's where I'm at right now. It will get better though. And I can see some parts of it starting to shape up.
Thank goodness.
I just wanted to quickly touch on a point that's been on my mind all day. Yesterday I caught a piece of Dr. Phil. It was about these 3 couples who were on the verge of divorce. As you can imagine, there was lots of drama. These men were not very nice to say the least. The wives definitely had their issues as well. And when I saw the (bleeped out) cursing and yelling that went on within earshot of the children, I just cringed.
Anyway, there was this particular couple on there that I'm talking about in this post. The woman, a stripper by trade, was having an affair. The guy, by his own admission, didn't treat her well before he found out about the affair, and now he sees what he's about to lose and his attitude (he says) has changed.
So Dr. Phil was asking her how this affair made her feel. She said that she had no idea why she even did it. Dr. Phil isn't screaming or cursing of course, but he has this dead serious look on his face and he tells her that he's going to help them to build their marriage from the ground up, and then he looks her square in the eye and says that he wants this man to go. She agrees with him. And he said that he's not just wanting her to tell him that this man is gone. He wants the man to go. He is going to bring him in and she is to tell the man that he is gone. Period.
This young woman looks at him with tears in her eyes and says, "Yes Sir".
Now, time will tell how this plays out obviously, but it was amazing to me how easily he got her to at least, and with great respect, vocalize agreement with what he was saying. She absolutely listened to whom she perceived to be in authority.
She alone is responsible for her actions. But she seemed so willing to obey authority that I wonder if she's ever had any authority in her life. And it made me really sad for her.
She just seemed lost to me.
Like so many women in marriage today. Stumbling around with no idea how to behave or treat their spouse. No idea what marriage means. Almost like no idea of right and wrong.
And that is truly scary to me.
(And before it's pointed out, I *know* the men were even more the focus of this show. I'm simply talking about one subtle thing that I thought was screamingly telling.)
They had told me when I made this dentist appointment that it wouldn't take 10 minutes. And it literally didn't! I couldn't believe it. Who goes into the dentist for 8 minutes? So with all the time left over, I made a monster trip to Sam's which is right next door to my dentist.
Anyway, on my way home, I heard this song that reminded me of the conversation going on over at Stephanie's Blog.
My husband is a Mr. Command Man if ever there was one. And this song *really* reminds me of him.
You enjoy it while I get back to my maniacal cleaning. ;)
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DH told me last night that a friend of his is coming up from FL for a few days, in a couple of weeks. Our guest room is so *not* ready. (Who am I kidding? We don't really have a guest room. We have a room that we are trying to make look like a guest room when we have guests, and a formal living room when we don't. Wish us luck with that one.) So the next couple of weeks will be super busy here.
I was all set to start tackling the tasks, but then remembered that I have a dental appt. this morning. So they will have to wait until the afternoon at best.
And I also have all these blog posts floating around in my head. Hopefully they'll marinate there and become better once I can get them all out. 'Cause you know, if I had all the time in the world, I wouldn't have a thing I could think to post about.
My kids are just *not* good at sleepovers. The somehow don't get the "sleep" part. At all. Now I understand staying up late and watching TV, eating a bit too much, but eventually you're supposed to sleep a little, right?
Friday night they went, after much agonizing on my part. I *know* it's not a good idea. I *know* it will ruin the whole weekend. But they want to go so badly. And I really don't allow them to do it often. Their older sister was in their corner. And when Dad spoke up that he thought I should maybe lighten up a little, it was settled.
And BOY, have we paid for it. They are *still* cranky. And lounging around. And just can't seem to feel rested enough to have any type of motivation.
And I'm keeping my "I told you so" attitude to myself. For the most part.
Oh, and the best part? We were informed that our girls were the *only* ones that didn't sleep a wink.
The only ones.
Makes a Mama proud I tell you.
UGH!
In other news, DH and I watched the Superbowl together yesterday! I made many snacks and it was a lot of fun! Being from TN we had to root for the Colts (Peyton Manning was from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville).
Off to get this day started!
I've wanted to start doing "frugal Friday's", but it seems this isn't the week either.
This has been an absolutely insane week. Insane I tell you! DH has been busy literally from darkthirty in the morning until 10ish every single day. He even had things that had to get done on this past Sunday, and ended up busy 3/4 of the day!
And we all know that when our husbands are busy, usually the same goes for the wives. I've been up early with him (though not always as early as he is) and then trying to make things as easy on him as possible, while working my crazy schedule as well.
Last night we got more furniture moved. The furniture in the girls room was poor quality and old, old, old. A friend gave us some furniture they had no space for, and it happened to be perfect! I thought changing out the dressers and chests...how hard could it be?
The question is, how silly could *I* be?
It took us (all of us) about 5-6 hours (we stopped and ate in the middle, so I'm not sure exactly how long) to get it all done. And there is still things that have to be reorganized in their room. And there is still a desk that needs to be moved upstairs and some computer stuff, but other than that...we're done!
And it looks so lovely. I'm so grateful
We have a busy day today. Homeschool stuff and then the girls have a sleepover and we need to make some munchies for that.
And because I'm gettin' things done, here is a picture of the Christmas picture (I snapped a digital image of the 35mm Christmas picture that we sent out with our cards, excuse the poor quality) that I never blogged. Better late than never, right?
(We have another dog, but he's old and cantankerous and wasn't in the mood.)
Okay, I know it's not a huge deal to most of you, but it's a *big deal* for us to get some snow. They were calling for snow last night, but it wasn't supposed to start until around 3am. So my youngest set her alarm (I'm not kidding) and was up before 6! My middle daughter slept with her nightgown turned inside out (??) for (snow) luck? And this is what we see well before the sun was up!
Just the first thing I snapped from my covered porch.
This is something you don't see often, a pool surrounded by snow!
A close-up of snow on the railing to show how much we got!
There is a plant under all that. That little blob in the middle? It was green yesterday.
Our magnolia tree. I brightened this picture. It was made when it was still pretty dark.
My poor strawberries.
My youngest who played on the deck for at least 30 minutes first thing this morning. She was so excited! To tell the truth we all were!
