Tim is Home...Safe and Sound

I haven't posted for the past few days because we were madly cleaning and getting ready for Tim to arrive home. As much as I missed him, ten days went by really quickly and I wanted to finish so much more while he was gone. Oh well, I am just so glad he got home safely.

Tim trying on authentic Turkmenistan clothing...he thinks he is sooo funny!


I can reveal a little more about his trip now. Tim was in Turkmenistan with the Air National Guard teaching them firefighting "stuff". It was a very long trip over (32 hours), but he had a fun time. He was pretty busy, but did have time to go to an outdoor market and they seem to have spent a lot of time "schmoozing" with the high up mucky mucks over there. They are coming here later on this year to learn some more about firefighting. His trip back was a little shorter, but he has decided that the next time we go on a long trip, we should see about upgrading our seats with our mileage. This is so funny because I hve said this for years, but he never listened to me. He just thought I had been spoiled because when I was a kid, my dad flew for the airlines and we flew space available, but got to fly first class quite often. I had told him how much better this was, but he wouldn't ever listen. We do have a mileage credit card and have racked up a ton of miles with building this house so we are looking to make a long "fun" trip sometime soon and now he is even thinking it would be okay to upgrade to business class. Woo hoo!

Our new rug!



Since all of our floors are concrete, we have wanted to get rugs for some of the areas of our house. Tim got this rug for us when he was over there. He had it shipped here and it should be here in a week to ten days. Of course, if it is anything like our blinds, it will be here in....maybe....a month. We are still waiting for those and they are on backorder. I will need to call next week..again...and see where they are and, possibly, get something to "make do" until the wedding is over.

This next week is going to be crazy. I have been weeding at least an hour every day and otherwise working on getting the house ready. Today I waxed the floor in our bedroom and even moved some of the lighter furniture and other stuff. It took quite a while, but I am happy with the results. I figure if I can wax part of it every day I will have it all done by the time of the wedding.

Answering a few questions--

I want to thank all of you who comment or anwer questions on my blog (or by email). I love the little "community" that has developed through blogging, especially with many of my email loopie friends. I appreciate all the support, prayers and just plain fun comments.

Cynthia--Yes, we love our AWANA group at the church. My girls have been involved since our church started it when Alyssa was in kindergarten (was that 12 years ago? my, how time flies).

If you can, I would keep the iPod, but I do understand that it is an expensive toy. I use it all the time while I weed, workout, clean the house, etc. I love reading, but I will never have enough time in my life to read all the books I will want to so I listen to all those books, sermons, etc. that I can. It certainly makes those mundane tasks go by more quickly.

Our seder was at the church. We have a couple that, I think, are Messianic Jews that attend the church and they have been organizing it for the last few years.

Menus are my key to sanity. I don't do well without a plan and tend to eat much less healthy without them.

Dorothy--I am so glad to be using our house for others, but my perfectionist nature has a hard time with it. It is good that Tim is much more "spur of the moment" than me and invites people over all the time. I've somewhat caught the spirit of it and am thoroughly enjoying it as well as inviting people over myself.

Kathy--Dh is a fire captain with the city and after dinner and chores are completed, they get to do "fun" things (kind of like how things should be at home). Dh usually takes the Xbox 360 to work (since we are all "hogging" the Wii at home at the moment) as do several other guys in the department and they connect them somehow and play on several TVs with two to four guys on a TV and have tournaments. We have been there when they are doing it and it is a blast!

Getting Ready for a Wedding

The last two days I have not taken as many pictures as I would like, but I have gotten a lot accomplished. I organized the girls' bathroom (had to get some organizer stuff at Walmart too) and bedrooms and I have been working on weeding the yard. I am optimistically getting out Tara's summer clothes and putting away her winter ones. Of course, one never puts ALL the winter clothes away here because we have been known to have cold snaps and even snow in the middle of summer (not often, but it has happened). Besides, nights do get cool here most of the year. My "Project Weeding" has only involved Tara and me so far because of the girls needing to do school, but I am hoping that this weekend the older girls can help a little more.

We finally got our refrigerator fixed today. Yeah!!!! We have not been able to put produce in our main refrigerator because the water line to the water dispenser was freezing and it would also freeze whatever was in our produce drawer. Now we can get more produce for the week. Woo Hoo! Now if the dishwasher part would only come in.

I also am trying to catch up on "Mount Laundry". After cleaning the bedrooms, we, of course, have a lot of dirty clothes to wash (amazing how they tell me they don't have any clothes, and yet, they have huge piles to wash after cleaning).

Jenna had her last piano lesson of the year. Her teacher would like to work with her a few more times before her recital, however. She gave her some harder songs to work on and Jenna needs to meet with her again.

I am still loving things winding down for the season. No AWANA tomorrow night, but we will meet with friends to watch American Idol. I haven't seen it tonight yet, but I am still thinking I will be voting for Jordin. Of course, my girls may be fighting me for the phone to vote for Blake.

Tomorrow I will clean out the pantry, kitchen, laundry and living room areas (shouldn't take long because we did just move in and put that stuff away a few months ago...let's hope it isn't too bad) and continue with my weeding as well as continuing to work on the windows that need to be cleaned and ready for blinds. Alyssa is supposed to go to the Senior Assembly at school for Color Guard (this position is already taking a lot of extra time) and then will work on school the rest of the day. I also want to get the house cleaned and grocery shop before Tim gets home. I know how much he appreciates coming home to a clean and calm house and I really want to be able to do that for him.

Our Wii and the Influence We Have on Our Neighbors

A couple of months ago some friends of ours came over and brought their Wii. This is Nintendo's newest video game system and we hadn't gotten it because we already had an Xbox 360 and knew that was the best "gaming system" on the market. Tim is very into video games and usually takes his system to work to play. He doesn't play so much at home, but the girls will have friends over to play. I can tend to get addicted to a game and try to play until I finish it (something that started in the early days of the Nintendo Super Mario game, one of my particular weakenesses) so I have pretty much stayed away from most games. Anyway...back to my story. We played the Wii that night and it was a BLAST! What makes it so different is that you have to actually move like you are bowling, playing tennis, etc. So it actually requires some activity. We decided that it would be a fun family thing to have and Tim set out on a quest to find one. Let me tell you that this was not an easy task. They are not widely available and you almost need to "accidentally" find one. One morning at work, Tim happened to see that Circuit City was getting some in and you had to go down and stand in line between 9 and 10am and then come back between 10 and 12n to get one. Well, Tim took the service truck down from work and stood in line and got the coupon and went back a little later and picked it up. My girls have had so much fun with it and even Tara can play it and smokes us all at bowling.

So now our neighbors have come over to play the Wii and have a great time. Their dad and mom decide they would like to get a Wii as well and, of course, can't find one. So, after Tim gives him his best tips, he starts looking for one and finds out Best Buy and Game Stop will be getting them in at the end of the week. He starts going to the store and sees a UPS truck and follows it to the store and waits for the guy to find out if he has any Wiis in his truck. Can this be considered stalking? He has to wait for the guy to unload the Wiis and inventory them so he can finally purchase it. It totally sounds like something Tim would do and so I have to wonder...are we a bad or good influence on our neighbors? Video games can be a lot of fun if they don't take over your time and life and this one, in particular, can provide for a lot of family fun. I hope they have as much fun with it as we have had.

Saturday and Sunday

I forgot to mention that Tim called on Friday morning to let me know that he had arrived in his "undisclosed location". He was exhausted, but they went to an open-air market and he said it was really cool. They were to spend the weekend getting ready to teach their classes on Monday, but, hopefully, they got a little fun in too.


Saturday night Sammy got to have her birthday party. She invited some friends over to play Wii games and watch movies. We had some snacks and then they played games for a while. Jenna babysat at the neighbors and Tara hung out there for a while and then when Tara came home, I got her ready for bed and she got to sleep with me. There were actually a couple more kids than were in this picture, but they were all kind of in and out because they had to work, etc. Two of the girls spent the night with us.

This morning we got up and went to church and then came home to clean up and get a few things done. I got my menu and grocery list done for next week (I'll shop tomorrow). I also need to update Homeschool Tracker for schoolwork and catch up on my book reading and notes for the book discussion we are doing on another blog of one of my cyberfriends. The book is "The Ministry of Motherhood" and I am really enjoying it despite the fact that I haven't done much of the discussion part.

Tara's First Sleepover--Friday and Saturday

We had Tara's first sleepover Friday night. Her friend, Megan, who lives next door, has never had a sleepover either so it was a first for both of them. I was unsure of how it would go because of it being the first time, but I dove in full force. Besides that, Jenna was sleeping in the bedroom with them so I thought if they knew she was there, it would help.













First, Sammy was going to a birthday party sleepover and we needed to get a gift for the party so we went to Bath and Bodyworks and got some bodywash and lotion. The girls got to try on light pink lip gloss and loved it! It was pink lemonade and, actually, smelled really good so I let them both get some. Then we went and picked Jenna up from school because she was the only one who could go with us because Alyssa was working that afternoon.

















Next stop was the movies to see Shrek the Third. We rarely get to go to the movies(because it is so VERY expensive and we really love to watch movies at home). They just opened a new theater at the mall not far from us and I had heard the seats were really comfortable and I wanted to see how it was. We had a lot of fun and the movie was cute.













Then I took the girls and Jenna to dinner at BJs. They had Chicken Nuggets and Pizza (isn't that all kids' favorite fare?). I had fish tacos, which I had never had before there, and they were great! No, not very good for you because they were deep fried, but really good. For dessert we had a Pizzookie, which I didn't get pictures of, but should have. It is a big warm Pizza/Cookie with ice cream on top. So Yummy!















After dinner we ran over to Old Navy to get Jenna some flip flops (can't beat that 2 pair for $5 price)and then came home. The girls got in their pajamas and played and hung out until bedtime. Of course, they didn't want to go to sleep and Jenna had to tell them several times to go to sleep, but in general they did great. The next morning they got up at about 8am (early for Tara) and I made pancakes for them while they watched Charlotte's Web. Then Megan had to go home, but Jenna was babysitting she and her brother later on that evening and Tara was going to hang out with her later.