TRICKIN' & TREATIN'

Abby posin' at Project Pumpkin

Abby, Shelby, and Mike (the soda jerk)

Shelby and Abby at Trunk-n-Treat at church Sunday night.

We had a blast tonight at Project Pumpkin. The college kids do a real good job every year setting up games and lots of fun stuff for kids to do.

Trevor missed it this year because he had to work and oh, by the way, he DROVE himself to work today. He just called to let me know that he is on his way home. It is exciting to seeing his metamorphosis into manhood.

Hope everyone had a great Halloween. It is late and I am tired from this pleasant day.

Have a humdinger of a weekend. We're going to try our best to achieve one:~)

WEEKEND UPDATE

We have had a really good weekend.

Mike and Trev were on Fall Break from the college and they took time off from work. We were going to go camping but it rained all day on Friday and although we LOVE to camp there are a couple of guidelines we live by:

• we can handle cold weather camping (one year we camped in the Smoky Mtns., in Nov., in thirty degree temps., the kind of cold where when you touch something you can't tell if it is cold or wet~in a tent.)
• we can handle wet (one year we camped in the Smoky Mtns. in April, it rained the entire time we were there, our tent collapsed on all our stuff and drenched everything, we rolled with it and had a great time.
• we have a hard time tenting camping in the rain AND cold with kids it's unpleasant for us and them so we decided to have a staycation. You know where you take time off but stay at home. It was relaxing and refreshing. I recommend it.

We were a wee bit disappointed that we didn't get to camp one more time this year but we still had a good time.

I worked on the girl's costumes and got them done. I can't believe I did it. Woo-hoo! I'll post pictures later.

Our Trunk-N-Treat was tonight and the kids had a ball. There were lots of games and a bouncy thing. We had a pie and chili contest. The kids were great and we had visitors come and participate.

BICYCLE, BICYCLE, BICYCLE

Guess who's learn to ride her bicycle?????????

She's doing better than me~~I didn't learn to ride til I was in the 5th grade. Seriously.

Stop laughing. I was into self preservation back then so I certainly didn't want to fall off a thing with two wheels and hurt myself!!

Laugh if you want but my Dad tried and tried to teach me but I didn't want to do it. Finally, I just got outside and decided to teach myself. I tried and tried and tried and I taught myself on a yellow sunshine bike with a rainbow banana seat.

It was groovy. Really. Groovy.

Peace and love ya'll, peace and love.

RAINY DAYS AND MONDAYS ALWAYS GET ME DOWN

Not really. Not usually.

How can I be down when I look out the window and see this precious sight???

They wanted to go outside in the rain and I obliged.

When the rain started getting harder and it started getting cold they decided they were done.

Tonight is my book study and as much as I love it, I would rather stay home, eat the chili I put on earlier, and snuggle up with my hubby on this cool, rainy evening.

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not."~~~Emerson

TODAY

Today is the National Day of Remembrance for pregnancy and infant loss.

Angie has a post about it and I was going to write something here about our loss.

But I can't. Without crying.

So~

Lost 4th child Nov. 12, 2007 to miscarriage

Lost 5th child April 14, 2008 to miscarriage

"In my distress I called to the Lord, and He answered me." Psalm 120:1 (ESV)

SENSATIONAL SATURDAY

Our weather was beautiful today! It was a perfect day for doing things outside.

We cleaned some in the garage.

Mike stained a desk we've had forever. It looks like he brought it back to life. I love it!

He painted an old plastic urn that I found at the church Wednesday night. See, our Sunday School class had a table in it with junk on it AND a hideous plastic tablecloth.

When I went to Goodwill a few weeks ago I found a "tablecloth" that would look perfect on that table. The reason tablecloth is in quotes is it's original life was a shower curtain.

So what!! It was the perfect color to accent our chocolate walls. Well, actually they are beige on top and half way down they are chocolate with a border around it.

Anyhoo, then I found some other things at Goodwill to spruce up the table to make it look better.

Can everyone say Goodwill is our friend?

The urn was just UGLY so Mike painted it black for me and I bought some eucalyptus and wooden thingys at Michaels to go in it. It turned out perfect!!

I used my 40% off coupon.(Love those things!) So, basically between Goodwill and coupons we spiffed up our SS room for around $10.

Now I don't have to stare at that tablecloth on Sunday mornings,willing it to disappear. Especially when we have visitors.

I always think~they probably think we LIKE that hideous thing!!

I'll try to take pictures tomorrow so you can see how pretty it is. Unless we have visitors~~I don't want them to think I'm weird or something~not on their first Sunday anyway:~)

Too bad I don't have before pictures so you can see for yourself the ugliness I've had to endure.

Oh the humanity!

Goodnight all!
Have a great Sunday.

FABULOUS FRIDAY

These pictures are from last summer. Abby looks so cute in the bathtub and I love the picture of them at Chuck E Cheeses. They look so tan and summery:~)

We passed a fender bender today on the way home from Target. Abby said,"Look that car got it's face smashed in!" There you have it, folks!! Hope your weekend rocks!!!

CONFESSION TIME

I may or may not have:

• stayed in my pjs till 5 o'clock yesterday.
• had every intention of cooking supper until I got out of the shower at 5 o'clock and went straight to Bojangles for an 8 piece meal deal.
• let the kids pick what they wanted to do for school yesterday and they picked well~games, reading with Abby on the computer, drawing, "playing school" in their room, Shelby reading a whole chapter book in one day.
• cleaned out from under my kitchen sink.
• straightened our food shelves and rearranged them.
• ordered a couple of books on Amazon for Mike and threw one in for me for good measure;~)
• lost my cool with a certain teenage and took his iphone for a WHOLE day. (oh the tragedy~his attitude did improve though)
• finished decorating the house for fall. (Have I mentioned I LOVE fall!!

Wednesday was good~pjs and all!!

INTERSTING, VERY INTERESTING

I love Voddie Baucham. Not that way, silly!! Although, he is rather cute~not as cute as my hubby (love you, babe) but he is cute~~okay I'm stopping now!!! From the wonderful Bible Study I did over two years ago , The Ever-Loving Truth, he captured my attention.

I read this article and thought I would share it with you all. It is long but very poignant and it is unfolding before our eyes. Please take a moment and read it.

I know, I know~~you are sick and tired of all the dooms day news that has been reported non stop for the last few weeks. I am too!! But, this is relevant to the times we are living in and the public school system.

I'm done now~~get back to work, people!!!

AND THE RAIN KEEPS COMIN' DOWN

###update~I took the music off because it was driving my husband crazy when he gets on at work:~) I will put it back after a hiatus:~))) Also~~we purchased another vehicle so we are back on track with schedules. My brother will be happy to know that we bought a Chevy:~)He loves that bowtie ;~)


We have had blissful rain yesterday and today. It it glorious. We needed it so bad. It has been a long time since we have had any.

That last bullet point from yesterday~I was actually able to pull that off!! After supper the kids cleaned up and I crashed on the couch. When they finished, Shelby and I played checkers and Mike and Abby played Dominoes.

I love to play games but I don't make it enough of a priority to do it. I need too!! We have educational games that we could play as part of school but I am sad to say that I don't work them in as much as I should.

I was telling my SIL about an article I read a couple of months ago and decided to put the link here so you could read it to. Go here and read about being a status symbol if you stay at home. This article talks about women with no kids but I say it applies to us women that are moms too!!

How is it that if you stay at home with no kids it's a status symbol but if you stay at home with kids it's degrading??? I will admit that staying home AND loving it took a while because of the ideas society pushes on girls at a young age. Let's face it Homemakers are not on the list at a Job Fair. They are not in textbooks and they are NOT promoted at school as an option for your future.

I have a friend who said that when she was in school she was asked by a teacher what she wanted to be when she grew up. My friend replied that she wanted to be a wife and mother. The teacher proceeded to tell her that on top of being a wife and mother she needed a career. My friend could have taken away from that conversation that being a wife and mother was not enough~but thankfully her mother taught her differently at home.

Today I am dwelling on the goodness of staying at home and serving my husband and my children.

TODAY'S SCHEDULE

Today's schedule was fairly simple:

• leave home at 8 am for tutorial
• get home at 1pm and grab some lunch
• leave home at 2 pm for Trevor's class
• get home at 4:30 pm and start throwing stuff around for supper
• crash from exhaustion after giving orders for the kids to clean up

The last bullet point hasn't happened yet but I am going to try my best to make it happen:~)

A PSA

Please go read this post over at Baby Bangs. This is Amanda, Beth Moore's daughter.

She really nailed it and I have been really thinking about what she said all week long.

WOW. That about sums it up for me.