“but it rings and I rise”

Last week was vacation bible school for me and I think I’m just about to recuperate! It’s always fun but I’m usually tired by the end of the week. Most days I might get up around sixish but I don’t have to get out somewhere every morning. This year I might have been a bit more tired because I had a visitor with me……Katelyn came up to see me and attend bible school with me!
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“the tender times we’ll hold in our hearts forever”

Last week Ava Clair had her pre-k graduation and today she turns five! Where does the time go? We didn’t get to be there for the event but my DIL shared some pictures on facebook so I snagged some to use!
She was very excited and proud she got an award……and she was ready to turn five too, today’s the day.

Pretty fun stuff for us to see her smiling face!

When my kids were little they belonged to something called The Best Book Club Ever; every month we got quite a few of these square paperback books. They loved them getting them and read them often at bedtime. Hubby and I read our fair share of them out loud too. Katelyn and Sam visited recently and one day Katelyn picked one out specifically that she wanted me to read to her before she went to sleep. It was called The Wolf and the Seven Kids, not a book I remembered at all. The story was about a mother goat with 7 children; she left them at home one day to go get food at the market but told them not to open the door so the wolf wouldn’t get them. But of course when the wolf came calling the kids were eventually tricked into opening the door. The seven kid goats all hid but the wolf found and ate 6 of them! The mom came home to find one baby goat still hiding so they went to the woods looking for the wolf. They found him sleeping but his stomach was moving around. So she got her sewing kit to cut his stomach open, pulled out her kids, then they put rocks back in his stomach and sewed him back up! When he woke up, the wolf went to the river for a drink but was so heavy he fell in and drowned.
This is a kid’s book?!! I must have read this to my kids but I don’t really remember it. Has it been too long ago? Did having 4 kids fry my brain? Did I pay attention to what they were doing, did I read them anything and never gave it a second thought? Am I a bad parent?
The more I read this one to Katelyn, the more uncomfortable I got; I was unsure whether to sort of change it up as I went along or read it like it was. She didn’t seem to have a problem with it but I felt like a heel for reading it to her! Later when I looked it up, I found it was based on a Grimm’s fairy tale and when I think about it, those all seem to have some of those same characteristics about them. Most kids know those stories and do ok I guess; Ava Clair and Grayson went through a phase of wanting me to tell them the Three Little Pigs story every time I saw them.

I discreetly put the book away and later we did stuff like this:

I hope I didn’t ruin my kids or her reading her that book! I might need to read the other books around here and decide whether to keep them or toss them.
Tents in the dining room, chasing the train, popsicles outside, going to the park…..all that makes up for reading a story like that doesn’t it? I sure hope so!

Easter weekend was baby Henry’s first birthday…..I can’t believe it’s been a year since he was born! We drove to Houston for the party and to celebrate Easter with them as well. Hubby and I picked up David in Jackson so he could go with us; he’s not been to Texas to see his brother in quite a while plus we were thrilled to get a visit in with him too. Friday we played some and even flew kites for a while. Saturday was party day and getting ready…..we had a fun time and the food was all good.

Here’s the birthday boy with his daddy.

Click through if you like for the rest of the pictures.
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Late last week I had a visit from a sweet little three year old! Her daddy (my son in law) was out of town working so my daughter and I decided at the last minute that Katelyn could come visit me for a few days. She’d been asking her mom to go to my house, which makes me feel good but I bet she asks to go lots of other places too! I picked her up from her day care one afternoon and we came back to the boonies where there’s not much to do for fun. I’ve discovered however that it doesn’t take much to satisfy a three year old!

I can hear the train whistle from my house, so we jumped in the car to look for/chase the train, easy entertainment. We saw it sitting on the tracks waiting to load up and then when it started moving again we would follow it for a bit. We played with lots of old toys around my house (that probably need tossing soon) but the marble works run was a big hit this time. We walked to the bayou to look for ducks, played outside with balls and chalk and went to the park 3 days.

Two mornings she asked me to make pancakes for her and she gobbled them up. She ate most everything I fixed her and she loves corn on the cob!

One day she saw something taped to the inside of my cabinet door and asked me about it; years ago I saved a jello brochure about making jigglers. That was on the door to remind me that there are egg shaped molds way in the back of the cabinet so we pulled those out. We made jello eggs 2 different days and she loved doing that. I had forgotten that I actually kinda like jello!

Oops, we ate most of them.

I did a little sewing while she was here; things her mama “hired” me to make for baby gifts and mended a gown for Katelyn. She has given up her afternoon nap unfortunately but she does have to stay in the room and rest/read for a while. I must have worn her out though because on the way home to meet her mama I was talking to her, getting no response and turned to find this:

Katelyn was exhausted but happy to see her mommy!

I’ve been a little scarce while I had company and now I’m in recovery mode. That was my spring break for the most part…different than the ski trips we used to do every year but still loads of fun for me!

“all I wanna do is have some fun, I got a feeling I’m not the only one”

Went to take my son last week for his laser eye surgery…..they let hubby go in to watch it all happen and he found to be interesting. Ewww, is all I can say to that, I couldn’t have done it! They said everything went ok. He slept most of Friday; drove himself back for a checkup on Saturday morning. He had 20/25 vision that day, a big improvement over no glasses but not as good as he was seeing with his glasses. But from what we understand the vision improves over time as the eyes heal from the surgery. A flap is cut into the cornea so I would think that does take time to get better (and just writing that makes me twitchy!) So we think he’s doing pretty good and are hopeful that in a month or two his vision will be even better!
Thanks for your prayers.

My youngest son David has been wearing contacts since he was a teenager. A few years ago he developed a problem with his eyes and hasn’t been able to wear contacts; giant papillary conjunctivitis, an allergic reaction to the lens. It’s very annoying to him and he’s wanted to get his eyes corrected ever since then. Last month he told us he had decided to have surgery. He checked it out, arranged everything and we drove him to his appointment for the laser surgery……right before they took him in, the machine hesitated so they postponed him until this month. Today is the day! He’s going in early Friday morning to get lasik on his eyes and I sure hope they have their machine fixed.

We’re praying for everything to go smoothly and that he won’t have any side effects with light sensitivity or other things.
I hope to have a good report later and some updated pictures!

It was so easy having daughter Elizabeth home for the summer and fall. She took a class here, then finished up 2 reading hours she had left at Alabama and subbed at our school when she could. She kept me company while hubby worked long hours, made coffee every morning and watched girl movies with me…..she even watched a few reality shows with me that Don gave up on! The last couple of months she helped me clean out some things around here and get a few closets organized. I’ve still got lots to go but maybe it helped get me going. Liz got the rest of her stuff moved out last week, well at least the rest of what she planned to take. Just when I was used to having her around she goes and moves out on me!

BUT…..I have the house back for just the two of us, we can eat fish whenever we want (she hates it), her bathroom will be clean, my dvr won’t fill up so fast and I won’t have to buy cokes anymore. She was more than ready to be in bigger place with more to do! I’m glad she was able to move in with her old roommate. It was time!
Now if we could just figure out a place to store all the “stuff” they keep leaving here!

“bells in the streets were ringing, whatever happened to the singing, the songs we used to know”

So much has happened since I last posted! My Christmas party went well, all the shopping/wrapping, etc. got done, the kids have come and some have gone. I’m kinda sorta still alive and we had a wonderful time!
1. A few days before Christmas my laptop died, the one I got last Christmas…..the hard drive has gone out and I feel lost without it. Can’t find recipes I saved, email has to be checked upstairs and I still don’t know if I’ve lost a years worth of pictures. I think a box is coming today for me to ship it back and get a new drive put in. I’ll only be on the computer sporadically until it gets fixed. Hmm, running up and down the stairs all day to use the computer upstairs, that could be a good thing?!!
3. Hubby is going today to see if he gets to have his cast off and do a splint for a while or have to get recasted again; we’re hoping for the first thing.
4. We celebrated a birthday or 2 this month and now have 2 more coming up in the next couple of weeks…more gifts to shop for.
5. I haven’t started taking down Christmas things yet; we’ll have some friends over this week so I might wait until after Wednesday.
6. Several of you tagged me for a few memes right before Christmas and I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to get to them! With a broken down computer and house full of people I just couldn’t get to it….if I remember correctly they were mostly Christmas related so I probably won’t go back and do those. I do apologize and didn’t mean to ignore you, things were quite hectic!

My Christmas card this year: (edited to add: I forgot to say until Stacy’s comment, yes sis Stacy took this great picture for us! Thanks Stace)

Hope you had a merry, merry wonderful Christmas! What are you doing New Year’s Eve?

How can it be this close to Christmas! It seems like I should have more things done by now. There is a sunday school party at my house tomorrow night, for 25 or so people…..my house so does not look like having people over right now! Cards need to be finished, wrapping done, and a few more things bought.
I had a sweet visitor for about five days; she arranged and rearranged the Christmas tree a few times! The lights on my tree have a switch to turn on so they’ll play music… she loved it and was easily entertained with the lights!
I snapped this right before church yesterday, she looks good with my tree!

Her parents were out of town on a little trip; I only had Katelyn this time and not Sam….I missed him. She went home late yesterday afternoon and for some reason I’m tired now! But I’ve got to start moving at warp speed if I’m going to get through with everything!

It has been a busy week here for me….what about for you? Shopping and decorating are on the list now. Hubby got a cast on his arm/wrist and has had it x-rayed again to make sure it’s still in line (it is). It has to stay on at least 3 more weeks; doing things one-handed will be old by then. I’ve got a bad cold/sinus thing that is making me feel miserable. We also took our youngest to get laser eye surgery on Friday. He was next in line when they came and told us the laser had hesitated on the last patient as they were making the cut on the eye, yikes! So they decided to cancel everyone else for the day and reschedule after the first. I know he was ready to have his eyes fixed but we were thankful that they were cautious! We went out of town on Sunday for a yearly family party with hubby’s close friends from childhood. I’m copping out a bit today by posting a few pics!
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“don’t leave me in all this pain”

We had a full and fun weekend! All the kids came in on Wednesday and other family members on Thursday for dinner. We got some good visits in, ate too much food and enjoyed playing with the little ones a lot. It was good to have everyone together just hanging out.
You know, I don’t think I took a single picture on my camera the whole time and I’m just sick about that. Sis Stacy took a lot for me so I’ll have to get her to send me some to use.

I’m waiting on a phone call right now and don’t have much time but this seems to have been the only damper on the whole weekend……….

That would be my hubby’s hand, which is broken now! His wrist to be more specific; he broke 2 bones in a freak accident, trying to start the four wheeler. It backfired, ripped the pull cord out of his hand and snapped his wrist! He has been in tremendous pain but knocked out with shots they gave him in the ER and a pain prescription. We are trying to see a specialist today to get it set and in a cast, hopefully with no surgery involved. I feel really bad for him and I think it’s going to make things difficult for a while.
Gotta hurry and get started on some major clean up around here, and with a little luck we’ll get a doctor appointment today also!
How was your Thanksgiving weekend?

If it was me, I would be crying because I don’t like critters of any sort! But Katelyn doesn’t seem to mind them, in fact she seems to love playing with them. I’ve not quite understood this interest she has…we’ve dug up worms for her, I’ve seen her chase bugs around and I believe she would hold just about anything. Maybe I’ve just forgotten what it’s like to be little or to have little ones around.
I took this picture recently when I was visiting for Sam’s birthday but to me it’s just icky in about 22 different ways!

No crying for her, just playing with that lizard. Get her a toy is what I say!
To each his own….I’m thinking these grandbabies will probably be better off than me when they’re grown!

This weekend our kids/grandkids in Texas sent us some pictures from their Halloween fun! The little ones looked like they had a good time.

There was Jack Sparrow………..savvy?

A pretty Dorothy……there’s no place like home.

And a sweet baby owl!

I wonder if he’s saying…… “Stop blowing holes in my ship!”

I guess you better not mess with Captain Jack Sparrow!

We had some trick or treaters and gave out our candy in about an hour’s time. Then we watched a movie and hung around the rest of the weekend. How was your Halloween?

This weekend my daughter visited here with her two little ones; we squeezed in a visit to the local pumpkin farm/patch on Saturday morning. The weather was glorious, perfect for being outside. I think the kids had fun too! Pumpkins, animals, hayride, snacks; all pretty standard activities for the pumpkin patch I do believe………
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