Deuteronomy 32:2

I am going to pray this for myself daily.

I was going to tag along with dh to Seattle when he was going down for work.  So, we used a mileage ticket, got good deals on a nice hotel and rental car through Expedia, and were all set when dh called from work one day and said that his trip had been cancelled!  Ack!  BUT, his boss gave him the days off!  So, now his work won't be reimbursing any of the trip, and we had to change my flights to ones with 2 mileage seats available, but now we have 4 days in Seattle just the three of us!  M will be going with us (of course!) but my parents are keeping two of the kids and the other two are going to stay with a large homeschooling family from church!

The kids are really excited about staying with grandparents and friends.  We are excited about getting away for a few days!  We are going to do touristy things one day, drive to Portland on Sunday for church and visiting with friends, one day shopping, and one day doing whatever suits our fancies. 😉  I am really looking forward to having dh all to myself (for the most part) for that long.  I am hoping we get some good conversations going, and just enjoy each other!

Well, I better go get the kids to bed and finish packing.  Tomorrow will probably prove to be hectic, and I don't want to lose my temper…sigh….

I will have to give an update with we return…or maybe while we are there, if I get bored!  We will have dh's laptop with us, and the hotel has highspeed internet. 😉

I am SO in the mood for Christmas already!  I already have my wrapping paper, some presents, and am ancy to decorate!  I am thinking about hanging lights outside tomorrow or Friday.  Dh is gone for a few days, and my brother is supposed to be showing up sometime late tonight, so with my brother's help, I could suprise my dh and have it done when he gets home.  I think I may break out some of the garlands and general “winter” decorations.

Maybe it is because we had snow today!  Unfortunately I had to drive in it, but the Lord was with me and we made it to town and home safely.  Well, I was just wondering if I am the only one in the Christmas mood already!?

I really enjoy photography, but the only time that I make the time to focus on it is each fall when I take “school” pictures of my children.  I love the way their pictures turn out so much  better than taking them to a “professional” at Sears or Walmart.

Some day, I would like to offer my services to area homeschoolers.  I have taken pictures for two of my friends in recent years, as well as Senior pictures for my SIL, one of which she used for the slide show at her graduation.

Anyway, here are my “students.”

I picked up a couple of paper airplane books at garage sales the last two summers, and they were one of my best buys!  The boys (all three older ones) have been spending just about every day this week folding and flying their paper airplanes.  They even made up a bunch of simple ones and put them up at the mailboxes with a sign saying “Take one!”  I was so impressed.

They also took them all outside and had a contest  for distance and accuracy.  All of this was done on their own.  I just love “summer school!”

So, if you ever see Paper Airplane books at garage sales, SNATCH them up!  If you don't want them, send them to me!! 😉

I have been frusterated with the kids not taking care of their books and toys that they take in the van with them when we go places.  It seems like we are always on the road, so there is constantly a mess in the van.  Yesterday, even though we had about 2.5 hours rt in the van, I decided that they kids were not allowed to take books, because I keep finding them on the floor.  It was amazing the fun we had on the way to town!  We played a couple of different games: Find the Flag, where everyone looks for flags and gets a point for each one found; Milepost, where you get a point for each milepost sign you see first; and the most popular one was the Alphabet game, where we took turns finding the next letter in the alphabet.  Some of the letters are a *LOT* harder to find than others!  I think we had the most fun with that one because we were all working together to find them instead of it being competition.  I am not one of those who proclaims that “Everyone is a winner!” at everything!  I think that competition is good, but sometimes it is nice a really good family relationship building time when we work together to accomplish something so simple. 😉

Sunday was my 32nd birthday.  It started out with quite a bang!  We arrived at the airport at 12:01am!  Whee!  Dh was supposed to arrive around 12:30am, but silly me forgot to bring the paper with the actual flight information on it.  How hard could it be, right?  Oh, if only I had known!  There were five flights coming in from midnight-2am!  I will never make that mistake again!  To make a really long, boring story short, his flight came in about an hour late (1:15am) and to make matters worse, there was some mix-up with the luggage, so we were at the airport, with five tired children, until 2:30am!  This isn't even giving the saga justice, as the whole 2.5 hours at the airport was riddled with mini-adventures, from trying to track down what flight dh was on (never did figure it out until he showed up!), to taking the wrong escalator by myself with the infant car seat with M in it and the two other youngest so-tired-they-were-falling-down children in tow trying to retrieve the van while dh and the older two ran between luggage carousels tracking down dh’s luggage.  I think maybe you get the gist of the early morning hours of my birthday.  But, I GOT MY DH HOME!!!!  I didn't have to fall asleep alone!

After church, we went out to dinner with my parents, who paid for dinner and gave me “mad-money”, and my brother bought me a beautiful bouquet of lilies, that are blooming beautifully and smelling up the house!

Monday night, my in-laws had us over to have an ice cream cake and my MIL gave me a really nice fleece jacket, and my FIL gave me a vase of cut roses.

I feel so special!

On Saturday, as we were playing around in town, I decided to take the kids south of Anchorage for a bit of a drive.  I had been wanting to go down there, as it has been years since I had ventured that direction.  I checked the gas, and since we had half a tank, I didn't fill up before leaving town.  We meandered down the Seward highway, stopping at pull-outs to view the ocean.  We didn't stop at Bird Point, as I was being thrifty, and didn't want to pay the $5 parking fee to satisfy our curiosity as to why you had to pay to park there, so on to Girdwood we went.

I drove around Girdwood for a little while, trying to find the chalet that dh and I had spent our first wedded weekend together, and not finding it, we started to leave the little village of Girdwood.  Just as we were pulling out of the neighborhood where I thought the chalet had been, my gas light came on.  That's strange, I thought.  I didn't think I had driven the van that much!  Oh, well, I guess I will put a little gas in at the turn-off.

I stopped and put just $5 of gas into the van, taking about 5 minutes to do so, and off we headed back to Anchorage.  I figured we would have a couple of hours to unwind where we were staying before we needed to leave for the airport to pick up dh.

As we passed Bird Point, I noticed that there was a rescue truck there.  Hmm, I thought, I am glad we didn't stop.

We got about halfway back to town, when we came to a dead standstill.  Traffic was completely stopped.  Just up ahead, there had been a head-on collision.  One woman was dead and one man was air-lifted to the hospital.  There was debris all over the road.

I fully believe that if I hadn't stopped to get gas, we would have been right in the middle of that accident.  Even if that wasn't the accident that God was protecting me from, I wouldn't have had enough gas to make it back to Anchorage since we sat for over 2.5 hours, waiting for the troopers to clean up the mess.

Also, while we were sitting in traffic, several rescue vehicles, including a diver rescue team, passed us, on the way back toward Bird Point.  Who knows what we might have encountered there.

Praise God for his tender mercies to my family.  Praise God that we are all healthy and happy.  Praise God for His Holy Spirit's promptings.

It was about 3pm, and I was just about ready to head into town to spend the weekend playing with my kids before picking up my husband at the airport, when there was a firm knock on my front door.  For those of you who don't know me well, it is actually my only door at the moment, but that is beside the point.  The point is that there was a man at my door, and my first thought was, “Oh, now what has happened!”  (That actually, wasn't my first thought.  My first thought was, “Thank goodness I finished getting dressed out of my pj's a few minutes ago!)  I obviously wasn't expecting company, and I had heard a car so I thought maybe my kids were misbehaving or some uncommon occurrence such as that.

It was my neighbor, but it wasn't the kids who were in trouble, it was the purebred Golden Retriever puppy that we just had mostly trained!  She had gotten a wild hair and decided to chase his pickup, but did not come away unscathed.  “I hit your dog.” the man said.

Ceva lying in the road not moving was the first thing that flashed before my eyes, but that wasn't so.  She was just sitting under the house on her rump!  Again, you have to know my house.  Anyway, I thought, how hurt can she be?  She isn't yelping, or licking, or even…hmm…she isn't moving.  I tried calling her to get her to come to me to no avail.  Of course, the bugs are horrendous out right now, so mosquitoes are buzzing all around us, biting at our arms, neck, face, any exposed skin, and all over Ceva's nose.  She won't even try to come to me. 

I instruct the boys to retrieve her treats from the house, and I know things must be pretty grim if treats won't even entice her out.  I reach under the house and grab her collar and practically have to drag her out.  I finally manage to drag her far enough out to scoop her up, all 80 pounds of her or so, and putting one hand under her neck, and one under her hips, I struggle to stand up.  All this time, the man is squatting there next to me, telling me about how she ran out in front of him, chasing his front tire.  I merely respond that it isn't his fault, that she has to learn that she will never win against a large rapidly moving piece of metal and rubber! ( I didn't really say it quite so eloquently as that, but that is what I would have said, if I could think as well as I can later write!  LOL!) And I am thinking, “Why isn't he helping me carry her into the house?!?”

One of my young impressionable young men states that, “At least she won't die.”

To which my unthinking neighbor responds, “Well, I don't know.  It is the back leg!”

Oh, great!  I think to myself.  “What does *THAT* mean?!?!”

Oh, and of course Craig is on the other side of the country!!   It can't happen when he is home to deal with it!

Unbeknownst to me, after I have her in the house and the neighbor is gone, and while I am trying to ascertain what is wrong with her, one of my thoughtful children has extracted M, my 5 month old, from his secure rocker, and placed him on my armchair.  I glance up and see him sitting there, with three of his siblings all crowded around him trying to make him laugh (a very common occurrence lately in this household, as M has the most adorable laugh!) and think, “Oh, he is safe, they are so crowded around him, surely he won't fall.”

A minute later, I hear a loud thump and a second after that a baby starts screaming!  I look up to see the chair completely abandoned, and yes, I mean completely.  Even M has left the scene.  “****!!” I scream into the phone at my friend who is trying to help me diagnose my damaged canine.  I run over to the chair, and find M flat on his face.  I scoop him up, apologize to my very conservative Christian friend (the best kind to have, btw!) for swearing, rush into the bathroom to try to find the Arnica cream I so recently acquired, find the MelaGel first and smear it on his forehead, keep searching for the cream, finally find it hiding under a towel on the bathroom counter, smear it over the top of the MelaGel, and plunk down in my armchair to console the crying infant with his favorite comfort food (no, ladies, not chocolate): warm milk.

Well, I will have to finish this story another time (oh, yes, there is more, much more…), as my eyelids are refusing to be propped into the upright position anymore.

Oh, and the baby appears to be fine.  The verdict is still out on the dog.