Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Itunes, anyone?

It is 8:00 on Christmas morning. I am all alone in the living room. All the gifts have already been opened and the trash has all been cleaned up. Amazing how quickly the kids can open the gifts that I spent 2 months shopping for. Kevin and Steve have gone in search of breakfast. I'm not expecting them back anytime soon.

Nathan and Katie were the only one to receive toys this year and most of their gifts did not fall into that category. Lots of Wii games, Cd's, DVD's, and jewelry were under the tree--just another sign I'm getting old in parenting years. But, by far the most popular gift this year--(drumroll)--Itunes gift cards. We somehow amassed a total of $205 of itunes downloads. That should be enough to last us until this time next year, but with 3 ipods and 1 mp3 player in the house, maybe not!

I'm not going to include pictures of the gift-opening since I don't think the kids would appreciate being seen by the world in their pajamas and they might decide to return the favor. Here's one of them in front of the Christmas tree last night.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

A Blog Christmas Card for you!

Hope your Christmas is like this...



And not like this...


Merry Christmas from all of us!

Monday, December 17, 2007

Labels

I tend to avoid labels. Labels for individuals, labels for people groups, and especially labels on clothing or accessories. I feel sorry for people who feel they have to purchase things with a flag symbol, a little horse, or alligator on them to feel they have value or in an effort to make other people think they're important. I'm not saying you're a bad person if you do buy those brands; I'm just saying we shouldn't get our value from the status they represent. Since those designer labels are usually 4 times the price of regular stuff, I in my thriftiness could never justify a purchase just to get a particular brand.

Being a pastor's wife, I also tend to be self-conscious about how others perceive how I spend God's money--money they've given to the church to pay our salary. I shouldn't be concerned about it, but I am. I know I'm only accountable to God, just like everyone else, but I feel the need to head off misconceptions before they start. I recently purchased a sterling silver, 3 stone (cubic zirconia) ring for $7 because I thought it was pretty, but I find myself not wearing it to church because I don't want anyone to think we're spending $5000 on a ring. Isn't that silly?

So knowing this detail about me, imagine my surprise when my boss (and friend) gave me a Coach purse for a Christmas gift. I have never even entertained the thought of owning a Coach purse. In fact, I think the most I have ever paid for a purse is somewhere around the $25 mark and that was a splurge. I usually purchase the $3 clearance purses at Walmart. Now I find myself with a purse I'm actually worried about someone stealing. Oddly enough, I've decided just to use it on Sundays so I don't trash it while lugging it everywhere during the week. I decided that if anyone was nosy enough to notice I was carrying a Coach purse would probably also notice my other two friends and fellow co-workers also received the same gift.

Channel 2 works for you

That really is their slogan. I'd hate to watch the news that was against me, as a comedian once said. Had I lived in our area a little longer, I might have even heard of the news anchors and weathermen who gave us our tour, but we had fun anyway. All of us except Alyssa. She decided to tag along because the previously blogged trip to the mall was before the field trip. After arriving, she was disappointed to learn that she was the oldest one there and surrounded by kids at an average age of 8. The green screen was a hit with Nate although I do hope he doesn't grow up to be a weatherman. His choice for a future career tends to vary with our latest outings. He wanted be a policeman after our academy tour and before that it was an architect. Okay, it was really the guy who drives the backhoe on construction jobs, but I convinced him that designing the buildings was way cooler.

Sorry if the picture of the sign in the bathroom offends anyone, but Alyssa and I found it hilarious thanks to the small print at the bottom of the sign. Hope it makes you smile too!

Thursday, December 13, 2007

And there was light...

We have electricity again!!!!!! Woo Hoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The front half of my neighborhood is still dark so I am very thankful to be in the light again. I hope we do not have to repeat this experience ever again. Life just seems to have stopped this week as we were handicapped with no power. All of the school districts in the area closed for the whole week and don't know if they'll open next week since some still don't have power. They also lost all their food supplies and don't know if they'll be able to get shipments in before Monday. Zac may have the longest Christmas break in the history of public school!

Two funnies from the week:
"I changed my mind, I want a generator for Christmas." --Nathan on day 2 of the blackout

"Ooooooooo, I get to be pretty tomorrow!" --Alyssa when she found out she could stay the night with a friend who had electricity

Now I just have to make a really long grocery list to replace everything we lost.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Oh, the weather outside is frightful.....

If you've watched any national news in the past few days, you know that OK is experiencing it's worst ice storm/electric outages ever. Yes, unfortunately, we are one of the 200,000+ homes with no power--not since Sunday! The church finally has power today, so we are camped out in Kevin's office for a few hours to avoid being in our 53 degree house. The kids lucked out and were able to spend the night at someone's house last night, whereas Kevin and I have toughed it out under piles of covers every night. I think if I could figure out how to get my nose warm and still be able to breathe, I might could get some sleep. As it is, I feel like I haven't slept in 4 days, I'm sick of being cold, and just in case you can't hear the tone in my typing, I'm starting to get a little crabby. Pray for us to have power soon! We are being told it could be up to another week. Personally, I'd prefer to stop our record setting for number of consecutive days without electricity at 4.

Friday, December 7, 2007

Shopping with Boys

An inadvertent dynamic of Zac being in school every day is that Nathan is left at home with 3 girls. I've always tried to take care of my shopping errands during the day which means Nathan has tagged along on quite a few shopping expeditions this semester. His original reaction to my revealing plans for shopping on a particular day usually involved whining and complaining. Then, being the smart kid that he is, he started trying to turn it to his advantage, i.e. asking what he was going to get on the trip. I found that he was a happier shopper if we at least walked through the boys section and if we could find something less than $5 on the clearance rack, preferably in green, he was actually excited about the trip. This has lead, unfortunately I think, to a 7 yr. old who always wants to buy new clothes. What kind of effect this will have in his teen years remains to be seen. Hopefully, he'll care enough about his clothes to at least wear clean ones everyday which cannot be said for the other teen boy who lives in this house.

All that background information to tell you a funny story that happened this week. We were driving to the mall to make a quick trip into JC Penney in our never ending quest to find jeans that fit Katie. (If you know where to buy pants that are a size 12 length with a size 7 waist, please let me know!) We were limited on time because we were on our way to a field trip at the television station (more on that later) so we were plotting out our attack on how to accomplish everything we needed in a short amount of time. We decided we would hit the girls dept. first, then head to jr. dresses for Alyssa when Nathan, who had been riding quietly up to this point, piped up from the backseat. "Hellloooo, does anyone remember I'm here?" We did venture through the boys dept. and found what Kevin would call a "cool dude jacket".
Here is in his new jacket and his gangsta hat.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

O Christmas Tree


I LOVE my Christmas tree--not because it's expertly decorated or lavish in any way, but because every ornament has a history. Each year, each kid gets to pick a new ornament, and each year as we get out all of the boxes of Christmas decorations, each child excitedly looks for their ornaments and gets to place them on the tree, anywhere they want. You would think as they got older, the excitement of this activity would wane, but it doesn't. Zac tried to act like he didn't want to participate this year, but it didn't take much encouragement for him to add his collection to the branches including the Darth Vader M&M ornament he picked out yesterday. Nathan added another train for the 7th year in a row and Alyssa chose a cute shoe for her fetish for fashion. Katie is still undecided, but hopefully she'll have one by the end of the week. Nathan is always sad that he doesn't have as many as everyone else, but letting him hang Kevin's ornaments on the tree seems to make him happier.

My ornaments always come from places we've visited, so there's a few from Disney plus a San Francisco cable car, a Boston ship, Statue of Liberty, the White House, etc. and now a few from India that Kevin bought for me--the perfect gift! These join a few cross stitched and smocked ornaments that I made "way back when" during my days with one child and visions of grandeur of having a tree with all homemade ornaments on it. I'm glad I didn't stick with that plan because we would have missed out on a lot of fun family memories.

A Cheater's Thanksgiving

I cheated and ordered our Thanksgiving dinner from a caterer. Kevin spent the first part of the week in Baton Rouge with Steve playing golf. I knew I was going to be by myself with the kids for the week and that we had several appointments on Wednesday and really didn't think I would have time to cook. I've never been a big fan of one person having to cook for 2 days so that everyone can devour all your hard work in 20 min. To me a holiday means getting to be lazy and read a book or watch cheesy hallmark movies. Not once did I second guess my decision to "cheat", especially since Kevin didn't make it back at his scheduled time Wed. night. His original flight was cancelled due to weather. Thankfully he was able to get on Steve's flight Thursday morning and they made it here Thurs. right at lunch time. And for the record, this will make the 4th trip in a row that Kevin has arrived at the airport without his luggage accompanying him on the flight. I did redeem myself a little by making the famous Grandma Maybelle Mac n cheese and two chocolate meringue pies that didn't last till Friday.

Friday morning, after hitting a few sales, Kevin and I left for Beaver Lake for the rest of the weekend. A family in our church offered us their lakehouse for the weekend. It was so nice just to relax and not worry about a schedule of any kind for a few days. We spent Sat. in Eureka Springs, enjoying the scenery and doing a little Christmas shopping. We're hoping we'll have the opportunity to go as a family this summer to the lakehouse again. It has plenty of room, complete with a pool table and Ms. Pac Man video game on which I have the current high score. Here's our view from the deck.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Police Academy...

the field trip, not the movie. It was a little strange going on a field trip with just Nathan, Katie and I; and quite honestly, if Katie had been given the choice she probably would have stayed at home. Being a 7 yr. old boy, Nathan loved the police academy especially since the swat team was training with live ammunition and explosives. It's a strange feeling being that close to automatic weapons being shot and not being the least bit scared.

Here's a few pictures from our day. When we first pulled in the parking lot and Nathan saw the row of police cars, he said, "If we were robbers I don't think now would be a good time to do it."