Our blessed family!

Thurs July 24 Summer day 53

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:55:55 GMT

I'm back!!!!!!!!!

As it turns out, we had ELEVEN viruses that killed our computer. Thankfully, our AWESOME FRIEND, Dillon Timmons was able to 'save' it for us. He cleaned off the viruses, installed a new virus software for us, even upgraded our very low RAM (we needed it!) and got everything up & running for us again! YAHOO! I am soooo glad, too. The withdrawals were killer. ha ha!

On the upside, you got a short reprieve from my summer blogging (grin) and got to miss me being a little sappy on a couple of these past few nights without my baby boy at home. I sure do miss him and am soo ready to see him come home tomorrow afternoon!

Computer Crash!!!

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:23:09 GMT

It's worse than detox. It's worse than a bad 12 step class. You know it...internet/email withdrawals. Late last night, our computer crashed. A friend is going to take a look at it & see if they can figure out what the problem is, but ultimately we can't afford to pay much of anything to get it repaired, so we may be without a computer short term. I am desperately hoping that our hard drive is not fried. That would mean TONS of pictures, lots of my school stuff & so much more....is GONE. Please say a prayer that it's nothing serious & can be fixed. Otherwise, I'll be crying on the corner, holding out a cup for computer repair donations. LOL

For now, I'll come to Larry's office 1-2x/week & do a quick email check. (That's where I am now.)

If you need us, give us a call or email Larry at work. He has his computer/internet access there, and can relay messages to me.

The 50th Day of Summer! Mon July 21

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:39:10 GMT

NEWS! NEWS! NEWS! Larry's dad was released from the hospital an hour or so ago. The doctor checked on him & decided that he was stable enough to go home. They're going to do an outpatient stress test later this week, but for now, the medicines they've given him are enough to keep him stable. We'll be driving over tonight to check on him.

Also--- Samuel is off to his first week of camp (ever!). He was excited to leave this morning, but still a little apprehensive. I'm nervous too, but I know he's going to have fun! Here's my little camper, all packed up & ready to go!

One last prayer with the group before they left. There are about 45 kids from our church going to camp! (I don't have a wide angle lens, so I'm missing some of the kids in this pic.)

And off they go.......

Havea good week baby boy! I love you!

Sunday July 20, Summer Day 49

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 03:17:59 GMT

First, an update on Jim---

Larry spent the morning with his dad & came home around 1:00. His dad is stable for now & the docs are just sort of buying time til tomorrow when his regular cardiologist can come see him & figure out what course of treatment they'll take. He has a leaky valve in his heart (he's had it for a while). Between that and the million other health problems he has, he developed Congestive Heart Failure. Larry said he didn't really get a "feel" from the docs & nurses who came in while he was there as to the severity of the condition, but for now, they're keeping him in the hospital for more tests & just to watch him. I guess we'll know more tomorrow after his regular cardiologist comes in to visit him. Keep him in your prayers.

As to the rest of our day... the kids & I went to church this morning. I talked to Larry during what is our normal Sunday School hour & felt comfortable leaving the house at that point, so we went to the worship service. My younger 2 kids go to children's church & Savannah and I snuck into the balcony at church, then ducked out as soon as it was over so we could get home & call Larry for an update. By that time, he was headed home already. We all took a short nap this afternoon before getting up & heading back out. Larry went to the church to work on some things that he missed doing this morning & he stayed for the evening church service. The kids & I went to Walmart to pick up the last few things that Samuel needed for camp. He leaves in the morning for church camp with our children's department. By the time we got done picking up the things we needed, it was past church time, so we stayed home tonight.

Samuel is all packed up now & ready for camp! This is his first time to go to camp & while he's very excited, he's also a little nervous. Please pray for him this week -- to not get homesick or scared. I'm on the fence about him going to camp. I know he'll love it, but I've never been away from him for this long, so it's going to be hard to say goodbye in the morning. I suspect there will be tears shed (me, not him). I can't do that until after the bus pulls away, though. If he sees me cry, it'll upset him. So pray that I hold it together til after the bus leaves. :)

If you know us personally & would like to see the camp where he's going, email me. I will send you the camp website to peek at. On the site, you can send him an email while he's there. He'd love to get lots of messages while he's gone, so let me know if you want to send him one.

Sunday July 20--7:55am

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 13:04:04 GMT

Larry's cell rang at 1am last night. He said the number on the Caller ID said it was a private number, so he didn't answer it. The person didn't leave a message, so we figured if it was an emergency, they'd call back or call our house phone. No one called back in either place, so we blew it off as a fluke thing & went back to sleep. We know now who that phone call most likely came from.

At 6:45am, the house phone rang. It was Larry's grandmother. During the night, Larry's dad went into congestive heart failure. He called her (she lives across the street) to take him to the hospital because he was feeling bad. That alone is major because this man does not go to the hospital. He's even told us of times when he was home alone & "had a little heart attack". He pops a pill under his tongue & waits for the pain to subside, then goes back to what he was doing. (Yes, I'm serious.)

Larry's father is an alcoholic & has a thousand other health problems aside from his heart troubles, so congestive heart failure is not good. Larry said that in his paramedic days, he remembers some patients who lived with CHF for years. Others did not. I'm not sure where in that spectrum Jim falls.

Please pray for my father in law this morning. Jim is not a believer, and that is our ultimate concern. Everything else is just fluff. Pray for his health too, but his eternal home is much more important than anything else.

Larry has gone to the town where he lives to check on him. He asked that the kids & I not go with him for now. We'll wait to see how he is when Larry gets there. If he's going to be released, there's no reason for all of us to rush over there. But if it looks bad, he'll call us to join him at the hospital. For now, we're at home waiting. If everything is OK we'll go on to church for the worship service later this morning.

I'll update later when I know more, but for now, join me in praying.

Fri July 18 & Sat July 19 (Summer days 47 & 48)

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 05:30:25 GMT

Oops! I missed a day of posting. I know, I know...for all my readers, I'm sure you were dreadfully concerned about me. (ha ha...that's a joke in case you missed it) Seriously, I love writing in my blog. I'm a writer geek ya know? I love my job but if I could get paid for the time it would take to sit down & write books instead, I'd do it. Unfortunately, hubby & I have not figured out how to make that work, so one day when we win the lottery, I'll try to work that out. (note to self: buy a lottery ticket...if I'm gonna win, I must buy a ticket)

Ok, so Friday rocked. Samuel had his last day of day camp at Discovery Science Place. Feel free to check it out. It's a really neat local kids' science museum. Their website is www.discoveryscienceplace.com. Our kids have each attended day camp there at some point in the past 5 or 6 years, each one really enjoying it. The kids get to pick a topic from a list of choices and attend a 1/2 day camp based on that. Samuel went to a cooking class last summer & LOVED it, so when the topic list came out this year & there was one titled "Cookin' Up Science", he wanted to do that one! The girls didn't find anything they were interested in trying this year, so he was our only science museum day camper this summer. He had a lot of fun making different things with his class each day. If you live locally, I highly recommend their day camps. They're fun, educational, cheap (as compared to all the other camps & day camps around here) and the kids get to play at the museum as part of their camp time. Unfortunately, with gas prices continually climbing, I'm afraid that this summer may have been our last to do this. The museum is about a 25-30 minute drive from our house and once you make that drive round trip 2x/day for 5 days, well, that's a lot of gas. On top of that, I think we may have exhausted the list of possible class topics that the kids would enjoy. It seems like the class lists are pretty similar from year to year and I think our kids have each done all the classes they're interested in. I guess we'll see next year when the camp topic list comes out. But if we do go next summer, the gas prices are going to have to drop drastically...or we'll be carpooling or something!

When we picked Samuel up from his day camp that afternoon, we dropped off Savannah at a friend's slumber party. Afterwards, Larry & I took the other kids to my sister's house so we could have a date night! Earlier this summer, Larry & I decided that we'd try to pull off 1 date night per month during the summer. I called my sister & asked her to exchange babysitting with me so that she & her husband could also get a couple dates this summer. She agreed that it was a great idea, wrote my 2 date nights on the calendar & promised to find 2 dates that she and her husband could also go out. (To date, they've never picked a time...but I'm doing my best to bug her about it, so I am hope she figures out a date soon. The summer is 1/2 way over, after all! When school starts, it's way harder for either of us to get a night away.)

Larry & I went to Fazoli's first. (http://fazolis.com/home/) We joke about the place because when they first opened, it was billed as "Italian fast food". Larry said, at the time, "So what does that mean? Spaghetti on a stick?" We've come to enjoy going there now & then since that time.

After eating, we walked to the theater nearby (the entire parking lot was FULL due to the new Batman movie opening). We saw Get Smart. It was really cute! After picking up the kids at my sister's house and heading home and getting them to bed, it was 10:30. While I did get online to check my emails, I completely zoned out on blogging. Hopefully you can forgive me.

Today (Saturday) was a day for catching up with housework & such. Larry went and picked up Savannah from the slumber party while I fed the other two kids & got everyone started on chores. The majority of my day was spent getting sweaty doing work around the house. That's ok, though. That's what Saturdays were made for, right? I folded a bunch of laundry & organized my closet. See?

Hey, mom...you might be interested in this picture. Recognize anything? (hint: there are actually 2 things you might be interested in seeing)

And yes, that's my laundry area just beyond the back of my closet.

Larry worked outside all day long doing various & assorted yard & car maintenance projects. Way to go honey! Thank you for doing all the back breaking hard work so that I can stay inside where the air conditioner is. I love you for it.

As our day draws to a close, I wanted to share these sweet pictures of my sleeping babies. I just took the pictures a few minutes ago. It's always so much fun to watch them sleep.

My big girl, Savannah. 90% of the time this is how I find her--on top of her covers, covered only by a tiny little fleece blanket, with either a book or her gameboy or Nintendo DS by her side. Silly goose.

And my sweet boy, Samuel. During the summer, they all love to sleep in the same room. Some nights they get to watch a movie for a while til they all konk out. Tonight was a Kim Possible DVD night. He doesn't mind sleeping on the floor at all. I, on the other hand, would not be able to stand up by morning if I slept on the hard floor like that. (Aunt Cindy...do you see what he's laying on? It's still one of his favorites!)

My sweet Sarah. She zonks out 5 seconds after her head hits the pillow. Sweet baby girl!

Saturday is over. It's late & I need to hit the pillows. Tomorrow will be full. We'll go to church and then finish getting Samuel packed up for camp---his first time ever to go to overnight camp!! He's going to have a BLAST! Email me privately if you'd like to send him a message (via the camp website) while he's there. He'd get a kick out of getting lots of emails each night at mail call! :::yawn::: The bed is calling my name. Goodnight.

The Big Read

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 02:15:26 GMT

The Big Read
I saw this today at a friend's blog (http://bouffard11.blogspot.com/), and I found it pretty interesting. According to The Big Read, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on this list.

How many have you read?

Look at the list.

Bold those you have read.

Italicize those you intend to read.

Underline the books you LOVE.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4. Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling

5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6. The Bible

7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8. 1984 - George Orwell

9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare

15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20. Middlemarch - George Eliot

21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchel

22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

(note: I can't get #27-29 to change colors, so I'm sorry that they're reddish on here...there is no significant reason for them to be that way)

27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy3

32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34. Emma - Jane Austen

35. Persuasion - Jane Austen

36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (actually I watched the movie, but I'm counting it!)

37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41. Animal Farm - George Orwell

42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50. Atonement - Ian McEwan

51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52. Dune - Frank Herbert

53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding (yep, this one was the movie too ha ha)

69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72. Dracula - Bram Stoker

73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75. Ulysses - James Joyce

76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal - Emile Zola

79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80. Possession - AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White

88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (not sure if I actually intend to read it...but it sounds interesting)

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94. Watership Down - Richard Adams

95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

He is so very faithful!

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:44:13 GMT

Someone emailed me last night & asked me to re-post this. So here ya go. Sit back & really soak it all in. He is so very faithful to us. :)

In times of pain, He loves me.

In times of joy, He loves me.

In moments of fear, He loves me.

In seasons of grief, He loves me.

In times of celebration & excitement, He loves me.

In the times of happiness when life is good & I barely acknowledge Him at all, He loves me.

When I mess up, He loves me.

When I do well, He loves me.

When I fall down, He loves me.

When I lose a friend to cancer and I cry & ask WHY, He loves me.

Worse--when a friend loses their child to cancer & I ask again, WHY, He loves me.

Worse yet -- when more than one friend loses their child to cancer & I ask WHY, He still loves me.

When I stand in church with my arms outstretched in worship, He loves me.

When my children give me reason to scream, He loves me.

When my children give me a reason to CHEER, He loves me.

His love for me is not conditional. It is not bound by my feelings on that day or my circumstances at that moment. He loved me when He formed the earth. He loved me when He created man. He loved me when He walked on the earth. He loved me when He died for me. He loved me when He ascended to Heaven. He loved me when my mother was born. He loves me now, He loved me then, He loved me before I was even formed in my mother's womb. His love is truely EVERLASTING, constant, eternal.

He is faithful to me when I am faithless. He is faithful to me when I ask Him "WHY". He is faithful to me when I need Him, and faithful to me when I don't think I need Him. He is faithful. He doesn't sway, He doesn't blow with the breeze. He is faithful to me when I screw up. He is faithful to me when I am laughing. He is faithful to me when I cry. He is God, He is EVERLASTING.

When I am sick, He is God.

When my child is hurting, He is God.

When I ache & mourn, He is God.

When family members die, He is God.

When a child is born, He is God.

When I lay down at night to rest and when I rise in the morning, He is God.

When I honor Him and when I don't, He is God.

He is the beginning and the end, the first and the last. The everlasting Father, the Holy, righteous, blameless, pure spotless sacrifice for MY blunders...for MY faults...for MY sins.

Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! He is FAITHFUL.

(partial lyrics to the song that inspired this are below--I included the parts that really slap me in the face & throw me across the room to recognize how wild I am about Jesus--and maybe part of the worship experience is the actual music itself, so if you haven't heard this song, you ought to!)

Everlasting God Lyrics
Artist(Band):Chris Tomlin

Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord

Our God, You reign forever
Our hope, our Strong Deliverer

Chorus: You are the everlasting God
The everlasting God
You do not faint
You won't grow weary
You're the defender of the weak
You comfort those in need
You lift us up on wings like eagles

Wed & Thur July 16 & 17 -- Summer days 45 & 46

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 06:05:49 GMT

Whoops! Someone forgot to post yesterday. Interestingly enough, I don't really have much to say for either day. ha! No wonder I forgot to post.

Instead, I'll leave you with a couple of my (current) favorite youtube videos. Enjoy!

Note to ALL readers!!

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:59:27 GMT

Ok, who all is out there? About once a year I like to see who is reading this blog. Even if you only post a quick "I'm here" sort of comment, please take a second to post a quick comment & tell me how you found me.

Some of you have mentioned not being able to post comments because you don't have an account with AOL. One new poster recently told me that it's fairly simple. It's like any other website, you just create a username & password. If you can't figure it out or just don't want to create another username for yet another website, email me your comment & let me know you're here. You can send it to Lizreeves2@aol.com

Thanks guys!!!