Living Room Make Over

We have gotten most of our furniture now. Pauline has been making the curtains and the recliner could be here as soon as this weekend. We are very pleased with how the room looks. Vicki looked at it and said, “You know, I feel kind of like a grown-up now.”

WHAT’S HEAVEN LIKE? Jenna was asking Vicki about this the other day. After Vicki answered the best she could Jenna thought for a moment and asked, “Do you think we’ll be able to spell any word we want there?” After Vicki said she thought we would Jenna replied, “Good! I want to be able to spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” (Of course, said backwards that’s “dociousaliexpiistic-fragilcalirupus”--um diddle diddle diddle, um diddle ay....)

THE COLLECTOR. We went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant before visiting Aunt Helen last weekend. After opening our fortune cookies, Jenna asked Vicki for her fortune since she was collecting them. Vicki said, “Oh really? How many are in your collection?” Glancing down at the table Jenna sheepishly replied, “One.”

BIG THOUGHT FROM A LITTLE BOY. The YMCA has its own version of fortune cookies in the form of "spiritual vitamins." Members are encouraged to pick up a colorful slip from a basket and contemplate the scripture verse or other quotation. Benton and Nate always grab one as they leave the Y and Vicki reads it to them after they’re buckled up in the van. One day Benton’s quote was ,“Your children will become who you are, so be who you want them to be.” This struck him as profound and he encouraged Vicki to keep it so she would know how to “deal with him better” . . . out of the mouths of babes!

Benton has a mind of his own, unfortunately for us this can make parenting him a challenge. We pray it will serve him well one day (the sooner the better). We are proud of his progress and are encouraged to see him thinking more and being more considerate of others. We are so glad we gave him an extra year to mature before starting kindergarten. He will definitely be ready come August.

INHERITED THE “ANNE GENE.” Vicki and Nate went to White House to pick up our new carpet on Friday. Vicki said Nate talked her ears off for the entire 20 minute journey there and back. He rarely paused to even give her a fair chance to jump in with a comment of her own. Most of his conversation revolved around the kind of cake he wanted for his birthday (Bob the Builder). He was disappointed to learn he has to wait 2 more weeks.

We advertised our old furniture in the local trade paper and some folks came by the house to see the goods. Nate was the gracious host and welcomed them in with an enthusiastic, “See my beautiful home?” This embarrassed Vicki, but the lady agreed with our personable little boy. Nate sold our couch and threw in the love seat to this nice lady.

DILIGENCE OR OBSESSION? I mentioned back in the fall that I was beginning to convert our home movies from video tape to DVD. I’ve worked pretty steadily on this and feel like I have run a marathon as there are now 28 DVDs on our shelf (Vicki accuses me of being obsessed). The only editing I’ve done is placing chapter markers at the beginning of different events to aide in navigation. Whenever you come to visit we’ll be more than happy to entertain/bore you with over 40 hours of home movies.

One thing I failed to report a few weeks ago is that we had a screening at church for one of my DVDs. In doing all this I assembled a DVD showing the progress of the church construction project in 2000-2001. The end result was a 65 minute film that was shown on the evening of January 8. We served coke and popcorn and I think everyone that came really enjoyed it.

THE SPORTS SECTION. Last week’s game wore me out--but then sitting on the sidelines trying to keep two boys from wandering onto the court will do that. Jenna made her usual two goals and she was right on target with both as there was nothing but net as the ball went in. I had to laugh after the game as I heard some of the girls ask their coach if they could challenge the boys to a scrimmage game.

PLEASE PRAY for Marijo Combs, a cousin of mine. She is in the CCU at NorthCrest with some respiratory issues. I know she has improved since being admitted and she is being kept unconscious.

Joe

The Mid-Winter Doldrums

It has been pretty quiet over the last 12 days. And, whenever you paint a room it seems to affect the rest of the house.

OUR WEATHER has been something else. We started last week out cool and it got colder. It began to snow a little on Tuesday night. Schools were closed on Wednesday due to less than an inch. By evening very little snow was left and the next two days brought temps warm enough to leave my jacket in the truck until evening. I was talking about this with an older gentleman who works as a day porter at one of our schools. He is also a Robertson County native and said to me, “When I was a boy the ground froze in November and didn’t thaw out until April.” Our climate isn’t what it used to be. (This is the warmest January since 1950). And all the rain we had yesterday had me and Jenna saying, “If it were only 10 degrees colder!”

REDECORATING. One thing Vicki has wished we could do for many years is redecorate our living room. Our love seat has been with Vicki since college. (It was a rental!) The couch was purchased before we got married and the recliner came a few years later. They have seen better days. Vicki is now getting to realize this dream as we have ordered new furniture for the whole room. Most of it should be here this week. We spent all last weekend painting in preparation for this change. Wednesday Vicki and Pauline went shopping for curtain material. After we get this done our next two projects will be our bedroom and the foyer.

BASKETBALL UPDATE. I have two games to report on since I last wrote. Last Saturday Jenna played well and scored two goals. One thing she has to learn is that it is okay to pass the ball when she doesn’t have a good shot. She is learning though as she did steal the ball a couple of times.

Jenna scored two more goals in Saturday’s game. I think all the players are getting more comfortable with basketball as there were quite a few turnovers and fouls this time.

MARCH OF THE PENGUINS. We highly recommend this film. The story focuses on the emperor penguin and its journey to breed its young. Like salmon, these birds return to their original breeding grounds to mate. The particular colony that was filmed hikes about 70 miles inland to do this. Once the females lay their eggs they leave the eggs in the care of the males and hike back out for food. The fathers spend the roughest part of the Antarctic winter with their egg balanced on top of their feet and tucked under a fold of skin to keep it from freezing. By the time the mothers return from feeding they have gone 120+ days without a meal. We all found this very fascinating. Jenna was disturbed with the inevitable tragedies, but Ben was so taken that he has already watched the movie again. I think he will be really sad when we have to return it to the video store.

Joe

The Last Harrah of Christmas

The middle of January is here and the weather has rebounded back to warmer temperatures. Uncle Bob and Aunt Linda have been in for a visit on their way back home from New Jersey and are now back in Florida. While they were here we wound up our holiday festivities and, well, just read on...

IS THIS ALL THERE IS? I failed to mention this last week. It was late when I got to the newsletter then and with our vacation being over it was sort of hard to focus on what needed to be written. Lori’s little sister, Holly, got married on New Year’s Eve. It was a really pretty wedding. Since I do sound at church I have the opportunity to see several weddings. They were one of the few couples brave enough to face the audience as they said their vows (Bro. Bill stood on the floor in front of the first pew). It’s such a nice touch for the friends and family.

We were running a slide show on the screens during the pre-wedding music. After sitting there for about 10 or 15 minutes Ben asked Vicki, “Mommy, is this all we’re going to do... just look at pictures?”

UPWARD BASKETBALL. Jenna had her first Upward basketball game on Saturday and I must say I am really impressed with this program. It is very organized. The game started with all the players being named over the PA system. Then the refs, coaches and players got in a circle and had an opening prayer. The games are played in six, six minute periods without stopping the clock for fouls and no score is kept. Jenna made three goals. After one attempt the ref stopped and gave her a quick piece of friendly advice. This experience is much better than when she played two years ago. I’m hoping there is an Upward soccer league in our area as well.

THE FEAST. Saturday evening we went to Ashland City for our Christmas dinner with the Bradleys and Dees. We had a great visit but the food dominates my memory of the occasion. It was to be a coordinated, covered dish affair. We needed to feed 14 but we had enough to feed 41. We literally had a problem finding enough space to set up the buffet line. The menu included, but was not limited to, honey baked ham, smoked ribs, chicken, hash brown casserole, green beans, mashed potatoes, carrots, lima beans, green peas, macaroni and cheese, deviled eggs, stuffed mushrooms, squash dressing, congealed salad, rolls, slaw, broccoli cornbread, corn, tomatoes, pickles, olives, pecan pie, carrot cake, brownies, cherry cobbler, peach cobbler, Rolo turtles, pound cake, boiled custard and ice cream. I am not making this up. We really should have started inviting people in off the street to eat with us.

Judy cooked the majority of it and I think her intention was to make sure Mom and Aunt Mar went home with plenty of leftovers. I’m figuring that was the case as she brought a stack of those disposable plastic containers. We brought three BIG bags of leftovers home as well as three pans of meat. The pots still appeared to overflow after all this. It reminded me of the story of Elijah and the Widow at Zarephath (see 1 Kings 17).

SICK BOYS. Nate has had a cold he just can’t shake. He missed “the dinner” on Saturday (Pauline kept him) and it has been up and down with him all week. Ben has also shown signs of not feeling well. Vicki took the both to the doctor today. Hopefully they’ll be well in a few days.

Vicki was holding Nate one evening when he wasn’t feeling good and she was singing the old hymn “Softly and Tenderly” to him. At one point the lyrics go, “come home, come home, ye who are weary come home.” This caught Nate’s attention. He raised up and forcefully said, “Momma, you are home! Momma, you are home! You’re home!”

BEN’S PRAYER. Vicki and I enjoyed the prayer Ben prayed tonight before going to bed so I will close with a quotation of it.

Dear God,

Thank you so much for my Mom and Dad. I love them very, very much because... I don’t know why. And sometimes they’re a little mean, but that’s okay... I guess.

Amen.

Back to Life, Back to Reality

Today brought the close of one of the nicest, most relaxing Christmas breaks we have had in a long time. It is never easy to get up the next morning to go to work and with the weather forecast I’ll admit I am sort of hoping for enough snow to give us a three day weekend. What’s so strange is that it was Monday that the weather was warm enough for us to open the windows and enjoy the fresh air.

TAKEN LITERALLY. I guess it just takes a while for kids to figure out how to understand figurative speech. One afternoon Vicki discovered Jenna sitting in the boys’ room reading a book. The boys had been playing in there a lot that day so the room was all messed up. Vicki took one look at the room and said, “Jenna, how can you stand to read in here with all this mess?” Jenna’s reply: “I’m not, I’m sitting!”

Then there is Nate who really looks up to his big brother. The bad thing is that sometimes Ben will say “boring” about something that doesn’t meet his standard of fun. Nate is beginning this but he doesn’t understand the meaning. The first time I heard it was at the supper table. After Nate called something boring I looked at Vicki and commented, “I wonder where he got that from!?!” Nate, who was holding a toy, happily answered, “I got it for Kissmas!”

SUPER HERO FEVER. With all the viewings of The Incredibles Nate has been “flying” around the house. His inheriting Ben’s old Super Man pajamas (complete with cape) has helped this a lot. Now we hear Nate get at one end of the hall and shout, “Super On!” Then we hear little feet running to the other end. His flight usually ends with “Super off!” and “WUHOO!” or “Ride ‘em cowboy!” (a little Toy Story thrown in the mix there). I’ve wondered if taping his mouth where he couldn’t say “Super On!” would be like kryptonite for our little hero.

LATE NIGHT TECH SUPPORT. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had begun converting our home movies from tape to DVD. I have made about 20 DVDs now and am about two thirds done. With these discs in mind we thought it would be a neat idea to give Mom and Aunt Mar a DVD player for Christmas. I’d say that gift has been a hit as they have thoroughly enjoyed watching our DVDs. The problem is that neither of them is very tech savvy. They called for several nights, several times a night because they couldn’t figure out how to turn the player on or eject the disc or navigate to the scene selection menu to pick up where they had left off the night before. Our phone has been less busy the last few evenings. Either they are getting the hang of it or have been too tired to watch much TV.

NARNIA FAN. Jenna had been wanting to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and we told her that she would have to finish reading the book first. She finally finished it this week so we held up our end of the bargain (which wasn’t hard to do). She was so impressed with the movie that she began reading Prince Caspian the next day. I'd say she's a Narnia fan now!

IN FOR A VISIT. Uncle Bob and Aunt Linda arrived at Aunt Mar’s tonight. They have been visiting the Yerglers for the last week and a half. We are looking forward to spending time with them while they are here.

Joe