October 13, 2013

So, what we do on our weekends off:  go for walks.  And it's starting to get a little cooler here, so the leaves are *just* starting to change.  (It's still mostly green...really green.)  But, what has changed looks really pretty, and makes us even more excited for it to change. One of the things we said when we first moved here, was "man, I bet it's really pretty when the leaves all change and everything in the fall," so it's exciting to see how that goes. :)

And then we came back on duty, and had one of the busiest weeks of house-parenting I've experienced yet.  The day after we came back duty, we had a boy who had a left for a short stint, come back.  Of course, his behavior showed that the reason he had left in the first place was still an issue, so, he left two days later, which was the double-edged sword:  it was stressful to have him back here, but it was stressful to have him gone too.  (But on a more serious note, pray for him).  But then on top of that, the next two days after he got back, all us houseparents went to a marriage seminar, from 8am to 3 pm (and with travel time, that goes from about 7:20 am to about 3:40 pm).  Which more importantly, means no time to go talk to office people about issues, no time to plan meals or get the food for them, any of the paper work we need to do during the day, or (probably most importantly) no time to process what we talked about at the seminar.  So in short, that was a very long two days in itself.  But, they treated us to a very nice dinner after the second day, so that was nice (and I still have leftovers. :D ).

But, we've had a good weekend.  We took advantage of the nice weather, and went down to the creek last Friday night.  We roasted hot dogs, and made s'mores, and it was even nice enough that the boys could go swimming a little bit.  It seems like the boys had a good time (and I know they had a better time than the other cottage that went camping, and then got rained out and had to come back in the middle of the night).  We also got to take all our boys to Wal-mart so they could spend their allowances, so they're all jazzed about their new Nerf guns and everything.  So, as usual, ups and downs, but overall good. :)

October 4, 2013

oops, guess it was another long one.  And to be fair, we have been on for pretty much the entire time between our last post and this one. This picture is the only exception to that; it was from our last weekend off (actually, on the same day as my last post).  We went for a walk, and these were just some pretty flowers along the road as we walked.  And so...there's a picture. :)

And that was pretty much the end of our time off; we didn't do anything particularly exciting.  Just slept a lot and got our house cleaned up.  (This time around, I got it cleaned up right before we went off. :) ).  Our time on was pretty exciting too; family visits for some of the kids, parent-teacher conferences (which took forever).  One of our kids also had to leave rather unexpectedly.  As hard as that was, it was really kinda see God teach us through that.  I was rather moved, because the morning that happened, I went to a Bible study about how God is outside of time and controls everything, and so I thought it was really cool to see not only that we can trust him through everything that happened that day, but also that God knew that I needed that reminder that morning.  Nathan got a good glimpse of that too; he said that his Bible reading that morning was about God telling people that "I'm going to take you away for a while, and it's gonna be really hard and not fun at all, but it's for the best," and that was just a really good reminder for us too.  So as we've said, God is good, even when life is hard.

But yeah, that were pretty much the highlights of this week.  Oh, nope one more.  I had felt a little rough over the weekend, but the high (or low...) point of that was Saturday night when I actually got sick, which then meant I couldn't really do anything the next day.  I felt bad leaving Nathan by himself for the next day, but it was nice to have some extra time to relax, and I had to erase this:

All month, I've been systematically using colors to make a pattern as I crossed out dates on our calendar.  Of course, what I didn't really think about when I started this, was that it wouldn't really show up until it was time to erase it.  so...I took a picture of it right before I erased it.  And as Nathan points out, the blue, purple, and black, are almost indistinguishable from each other, so that whole pattern idea might have been a flop.  (Which is why it's a checkerboard this month. :) )



And the last big deal (or at least the last thing I remembered to take a picture of), is the fly.  When we first moved up here, there were a TON of flies, EVERYwhere.  Literally, we put people on "fly patrol", where they just walked around with a fly-swatter and tried to kill as many flies as they could.  Anyways, we noticed...maybe a month ago, so that the flies got a lot better (more scarce).  as in, we didn't really have any.  And then about two days ago, we found another one.  and not even just a normal fly....a HUGE one.  and it just flew around the house, and buzzed around my ear while I was trying to nap, and basically I vowed to kill it.

Well, tonight we made it happen.  I got serious about getting it, and ran around our living room for about 15 minutes, and then finally Nathan got it.  Of course, we didn't think he got it, so we just stood guard in the room for about another 5 minutes, before we finally found where it had just landed after he had smacked it.  And I'm telling you it was a big one.  Here's the fly near my thumb:



And...I guess that's all I really have to say.  Except...maybe I'll be back sooner this time?  We'll see. :)