Five on Friday

1. I’m having router difficulties.

Well, I’m not sure if that’s what it is because I am seriously non-technical but it’s the only thing computery that I know to say and sound like I know what I’m talking about.

2. I fell yesterday while I was wearing those new cute shoes I blogged about last week. The heel got caught in a crack in the sidewalk and flipped me forward and I ripped a hole in the knee of my work pants and scraped the polish off my toes.

On the bright side, that means I get to go shopping and have a pedicure today.

3. Mom, if you’re reading this, I’ve been trying to call your cell phone and it won’t let me leave a message because you haven’t set up voice mail yet.

Brothers, if you’re reading this, can you help her? *grin*

4. I was reminded yesterday how a simple meal shared with a friend can bring encouragement to both.

5. Have a nice day.

In which we camp

I’m not much of what you’d call a “camper.”  I very much appreciate the great outdoors but enjoy doing so from a beach chair holding a fruity umbrella drink or reading  a book in the cool evening breeze on the deck of a cabin high in the mountains.  I’m not into skeeters and snakes and being unprotected in an environment where I am NOT at the top of the food chain but the kids had been asking to go close to nature and when my friend Emily offered the use of her lake house, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to be outdoors and still be able to retreat to a real bed with sturdy walls to protect me from nefarious varmints.

And I know some of you think that because we weren’t in a tent, we didn’t camp but, people, THERE WAS NO INTERNET, do you hear?

NO INTERNET.

Well, except for a very weak signal from someone’s unsecured Wi-fi but it kept going in and out and I felt a little ridiculous wandering around the property holding my iPhone up in the air trying to get two bars so I gave up after six hours fifteen minutes.

Isn’t that a pretty lake?  The boys were excited to head down there and try out their new fishing poles and it took everything in me to encourage it because as much as I’m not a camper, I’m a worse fisherman.  Don’t get me wrong, I love to cast the line into the water and reel it in but I don’t care one whit about catching anything on the hook because I’m squeamish about touching wiggly things and I end up feeling HORRIBLE that the fish can’t breathe while I stand jumping around and screaming for someone else to do something about getting them off the hook.

It’s relaxing for my companions.

ANYWAY, I did everything in my power to make sure that the boys wouldn’t catch anything by putting that optic green fake twirly bait on the line and telling them to cast in the middle of the lake instead of by the edges where the fish might actually be and for several hours that worked well.

But then Craig was a good parent and actually told them to do everything the opposite of what their mama told them….

and within minutes, JJ had caught his very first fish.

I tried to take another picture without Craig’s hand in the way but the fish wiggled mightily and JJ dropped the pole and ran.

He is his mother’s son.

And, just like that, a fisherman was born.  He only left the water to eat two bites of supper and then had to be dragged in at dark.

And the next morning?  Up at 6:30, dressed and standing by the door with his pole, begging his Daddy to go to the dock with him.  And you’ll have to imagine the delight on his face when he reeled in this three-pound catfish because when he saw those whiskers break the surface of the water, he ’bout near freaked out and ran for the hills.

And a great time was had by all -

Until I came home and found out I had a tick on my leg and reaffirmed my decision to stay inside for the rest of my life.

Have a nice day.

Tending to my people’s people

My in-laws are visiting which means no post for today since I am playing hostess.

And by playing hostess I mean we’re hopping in the car and going to the outlet mall to go shopping all day.   I love to shop with my mother-in-law – her motto is “You can run out of money but you can’t run out of plastic.”

My father-in-law is ditching us in favor of hanging out at Barnes and Noble for the morning.  He has also volunteered to pull weeds and set out some annuals, and yes, I’m a lucky girl.

I’ll be back tomorrow for a Tuesday installment of Monday Musings.

Have a nice day, and may the shopping gods be with you.

And also  with me.

 

Thankful Thursday

Today I’m thankful …..

1. That I see little bits of sunshine peeking through gray clouds.

2.  That I saw my cat carrying the dead mouse before he was able to bring it in the back door.

3.  That my DVR finally has something to record.

4.  That I remembered to serve lemonade at last night’s Bible study instead of red Kool-Aid.

5.  That I have friends who know and love me well and send me J. Jill gift cards in the mail.

6.  That the x-rays came back and Tommy’s pneumonia is not as serious as we thought.

7.  That I ran around the block this morning and my foot didn’t hurt.

8.  That I have good relationships with my sisters-in-laws.

9.  That I cleared the 1,000 unread posts from Google Reader.

10.  That I have fun plans for the weekend.

Have a nice day.

In which I never made it to work but at least I was wearing cute shoes

So, remember how I was going to skeddadle to work yesterday?

Yeah, never happened.

I had every intention of making it to work and even dressed quasi-professionally so I’d have an excuse to wear my new Anne Klein shoes and I left the house and went to the eye doctor’s appointment where it took over an hour because apparently I have really finicky eyes that can’t see the broadside of a barn OR read the fine print and I was in an ambiguous mood and couldn’t decide if my options of 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 looked better.

And don’t get me started on why I paid $100 just to give someone my opinion on how well I see.  They’re the professionals – aren’t they supposed to tell me?

Moving on.

Turns out that my gravy train may have left the station because the doctor said that he though it was time to put me in a rigid lens and since I’d never worn anything other than soft lenses, he was going to have to help me put them in.

And by help me put them in I mean placing a solution-filled hard piece of plastic onto the end of a short stick and jabbing it square into my eyeball.

Repeatedly.

Because I kept blinking.

Because SOMEONE WAS JABBING A STICK IN MY EYE.

It was relaxing.

And in the middle of this delightful exercise,  my cell phone kept ringing off the hook and I had to excuse myself to answer the call because clearly it was urgent and, sure enough, it was poor Tommy telling me that he just couldn’t make it another minute at school.

He was feeling a little  yukky at breakfast but, you know, I’d spent the better part of the last three weeks with someone at home sick and whether or not he was ready to go back to school, I was certainly ready and that decision was clearly coming back to bite me in the butt so I told him I would get there as soon as I could.

So I headed back to pick him up, dropped him off at home and got him to bed, grabbed a bite of lunch, then headed back to school to pick up the other two, then came home, settled them in front of the tv and then took Tommy to the doctor where I learned that the last ten days of antibiotics had done absolutely nothing for him except allow his pneumonia to spread to both lungs and also gave him time to develop a double ear infection.

Mother.

Of.

The.

Year.

So I called Craig and asked him to head home early and then I spent the next four hours doing nebulizer treatments, going to the pharmacy, and then heading to the hospital to get x-rays done to see exactly what we were dealing with and got home around 8:00 and Craig said, “Hey, I like those shoes.  Did you wear them to work today?”

And I said, “Yes.  Yes, I did.”

Have a nice day.

Not enough coffee to have a title

I have ten minutes to type this morning because I have to scoot to work because OH MY WORD am I behind after spending the last three weeks at home playing Florence Nightingale to two kids with pneumonia.

I was pleased to see that my keycard worked when I swiped it at the campus gate yesterday.

I was also really pleased to see that I still had a shoebox where my trashcan used to live.

*sigh*

On the agenda for the day is a trip to the the eye doctor because I can’t see diddly squat when I try to read and, yes, I need bifocals.  Actually, I already have bifocal contacts but they haven’t worked well for a year but did I go in and have the problem corrected?  No, I have spent a year squinting and holding the book at arm’s length or alternatively taking out my contacts and holding reading material six inches from my nose.

My mother is shaking her head right now.  Yes, she taught me better. In my defense, I’ve been a little busy.

So it ought to be fun to sit up close and personal with the eye doctor and letting him see the pores in my face that are big enough to sink a battleship and hopefully I’ll have some news to report tomorrow.

Oh, look, my time for today is up and I haven’t said anything of real consequence.

Not that it’s different from any other day of the week.

Gotta’ scoot and deal with the crazy people.  Anything (in)consequential about your life today?

Do tell.

Have a nice day.

 

Five on Friday

1.  We had a very fun night at the Chick last night with approximately 436,582,534 of our closest friends.    The moms were happy they didn’t have to cook supper, the dads were happy the moms were happy, and the kids were happy that everyone seemed to be in the mood to spring for ice cream cones and milkshakes.

It was for Jesus.  How could I say “no”?

2.  Tommy’s still not feeling great.  He tried going to school yesterday for the first time this week and only made in a couple of hours before calling me to come pick him up.  I had a feeling that might happen and had instructed him to bring home schoolwork and when he got in the car he told me that he had a science project that needed working on and he had selected “Build a 3D model depicting continental drift”.   After six minutes of working on it, he declared his original plan to build it with Legos a bust and asked me to do it for him looked to me for guidance  and I thought that paper mache might be the answer but given the complete and utter mess it might make our time constraints, we might just stick to aluminum foil.

3.  I finally made it to the new Big Lots that recently opened on Capital and will be back despite the fact they had Christmas stuff out in the middle of September.

I did find a couple of things that made it into the cart such as our favorite soap at half the grocery store price.

And Guatemalan coffee that was very tasty.

And I’ll have to go back because the boys were disappointed in the toy aisle and needed to eject after 10 minutes.

4.  I was browsing through the pattern book at Hancock’s the other day and may have found my next sewing project.

You know, for those MC Hammer sort of days.

5. And to end the week on a funny note, I lovingly and cheekily dedicate this video to my mom and dad.

Have a nice day.

Today is Thursday. The 15th.

It may shock many of you that I am not always aware of the current date.

This coming from the woman who still needs to consult the directions on the back of a box of mac and cheese every time I make it but let’s all pretend for the sake of this blog post that you’re stunned.

I’m usually pretty solid on the day unless it’s a holiday weekend and the kids were off on Monday which throws me off-kilter for the rest of the week but,  honestly, the date really doesn’t matter much to me because time keeps on slipping, slipping, into the future when you have school-aged kids anyway so what’s the point.

Well, the point is that I didn’t realize that TODAY was the fifteenth and I had it in my head that TOMORROW was the fifteenth even though I had just blogged about Laura and Dave’s Chick-fil-A dinner that was to be held on Thursday the 15th and it just so happens that yesterday morning when I sat down to check the statuses/stati/general well-being of my Facebook friends, I noticed that a lot of my Guatemalan peeps were talking about getting ready to celebrate Independence Day on Thursday in Guatemala.

And I remembered that Guatemalan Independence Day is the 15th.

Which meant Thursday.

Which meant that the GINORMOUS project that I thought was due on Friday would, in fact, be due on Thursday.

And I was nowhere near ready.

So I’ve basically spent the better part of the last twenty-four hours pulling the equivalent of a college all-nighter getting that thing done.

And being exceptionally fun to be around.

I shall now stop blogging in one sentence paragraphs.

You’re welcome.

The good news is that I managed to finish it late, late, late last night and all that’s left is to spend about thirty minutes making everything pretty and tidy this morning and emailing the file to my boss and then I’m going to collapse in a big heap in the middle of the couch and suck my thumb.

Or go shopping in celebration of all the extra hours I billed.

Have a nice Thursday.

PS – If you’re local, don’t forget to bring your flyer and eat at Chick-fil-A tonight.  Whimzie generously offered to buy a local reader’s supper to help the cause so if anyone wants to take her up on it, let me know.  Otherwise, the person behind me in line gets to be random-act-of-kindnessed.

Let’s all hope they’re not ordering for the soccer team.

 

Of course it’s about Chick-fil-A

Every once in a while I sit back at my desk and stare at a blank computer screen and wonder what sort of random words I can type that will hopefully make someone smile.

Or in the case of my brothers, shake their head.

Today, though, I’m honored to talk about something really important and life-changing and that makes me all kinds of happy and redeems every single day of light, fluffy and inconsequential drivel that I’ve written.

Most of you know that I was adopted as an infant.  If I may ever so humbly say, it was the best decision my parents ever made. I was given the opportunity to grow up in a stable, loving home with a mom and dad who fed, clothed, and loved me, and brothers who bugged the ever-lovin’ life out of me and who also had my back.  I learned about Jesus and was nurtured in a rich, Christian environment that sought to honor Him.  I was brought into a family that gave me phenomenal life experiences that I wouldn’t have otherwise had.

It’s safe to say adoption changed my life and today I get to help my sweet friends Dave and Laura as they make that life-altering decision to bring a baby into their lives through adoption.

Dave and Laura are in my Sunday School class at church.  They have a healthy marriage, a strong faith, and three beautiful children that keep them on their toes.  They love to laugh, live to serve, and are just a delight to be around.  You will never meet a more humble, steadfast, gentle-spirited couple in your life.

And as an aside, you will never taste better baked goods, either.

Laura IS Betty Crocker.

Whenever we schedule class socials, we do it around her calendar because it’s guaranteed she’s going to bring the best food of the evening. 

But I digress.

Dave and Laura have felt for some time now that their family was not complete and through a series of events have felt the call to adopt as a way of expanding their family.  As they explored the kind of adoption the Lord wanted for them, a lot of doors kept opening and closing, and the picture became very clear that God wanted them to journey to Ethiopia.  But this journey isn’t just about travel to a distant land to redeem an orphan child from a life of famine, disease, and premature death.  This journey is also a faith journey – to see how He would provide and how He would enable and how He would equip those He had called.

And part of that faith journey would also be to show them how others would step in to encourage them along the way and today I’m thrilled to be a part of that encouragement.

You know something about adoption?  It ain’t cheap.

Adopting from Ethiopia?

Ain’t cheaper.

But guess what?  We can help Dave and Laura financially get closer to bringing their daughter home in the easiest way possible.  It involves, wait for it, eating dinner this Thursday night at CHICK-FIL-A.

Seriously.

Twist my arm.

The only thing you need to do is bring the flyer with you (paste the pic into a word document and print) and either go through the drive-through or walk in the door at CFA Falls Village (6701 Falls of Neuse Road) between the hours of 5-8 pm and order dinner.

That’s it.

A sandwich and fries in the name of love for a friend.

If you do have  minute to come inside, Laura will have all sorts of other fun stuff going on that you won’t want to miss.

I’ve got my eye on the silent auction for the beach condo vacation.

If you’re local or within driving distance, please come love on Dave and Laura this Thursday night (BRING YOUR FLYER) and encourage them on their journey.

I thank you.

They thank you.

But more importantly, a little girl in Ethiopia thanks you.

Have a nice day.

Monday Musings

We had a fun weekend at Casa de Carpool.  The boys had a friend in the house for a sleepover Friday night and they ate pizza, watched a movie, played Pokemon, and generally ignored me for twenty-four hours so I decided to return the favor and I had a girlfriend over on Saturday night to watch Pride & Prejudice for the millionth time, eat snacks, and generally ignore the kids while they ran like banshees through the house playing Sniper Nerf.

It’s not hard to ignore screaming banshees when Mr. Darcy is on the screen.

Not hard at all.

After church on Sunday we settled in for an afternoon of football but really it turned into an afternoon of crying at every single commercial that honored the memory of 9/11 and finally I just had to leave the house and take the kids to the pool and focus on all that was good and right instead of all that was lost on that horrible, horrible day.

In other news, I had great and mighty plans to run errands this morning but it looks as though my first order of business will be a visit to the doctor’s office because Tommy is sick.  I have a sneaky suspicion that he caught JJ’s pneumonia bug from a couple of weeks ago.  He has the same tight, hacking cough and fever and he looks a little gray around the gills, so we’re going to pop in to have a listen to his lungs and make sure we nip it in the bud.

And on a happy note, the red Kool-Aid came out of the couch as did the bloody handprint that followed the next day when one of the boys had a nosebleed and he decided that wiping his fingers on the sofa would be a wise thing to do.

*sigh*

On another happy note, I’m starting my fourth week being sugar-free and not only haven’t I killed anyone but I’m also feeling pretty sporty about dropping a pound or two and fitting into clothes that I couldn’t button were a little snug.

And on a THIRD happy note, I went walking yesterday for the first time in eight months because I think my foot is healed enough to start easing into weight-bearing exercise again.  I stretched the daylights out of it before and after walking and only had a little twinge.  If I’m careful, I think I’ll be running again within a couple of weeks.

And that makes me happy.

Hope your weekend was full of happy, too.

Have a nice day.