CO pics

Ok, here they are. They are in chronological order. This is Misty on A's bed the morning we left. She says, I don't care where you're going just don't bother me.

We had a good flight on Frontier airlines and were sitting all together. The people at the counter were great. Coming home, they had us all over the plane with J sitting by himself several rows away. What were they thinking? Three of us managed to get pretty close together and there was a lady traveling by herself and she offered to move so I could sit by J. Anyway...

When we got in to Denver we rented a car and drove to R's. This is a shot of the Mt.'s from the car window. CO is a beautiful state. J kept thinking we were in a different country. Too funny.
This is from the church parking lot Sunday morning.

We went to a mall after church and J tried on this silly hat.

Monday morning we took the cog railway up Pike's Peak. We could only go 6 of the 9 miles because of snow but it was a beautiful day and beautiful trip. A lot of the pics this day had reflections in them because we took them through glass.

The Three Musketeers.

This is the train we rode on.

That afternoon we went to the Cheyenne Mt. Zoo. I'll spare you pics of the animals. You can be "up close and personal" and feed the giraffes (who have very long tongues), the bears were hilarious and there were a few overlooks to climb. This is Colorado Springs from the zoo.

On Tuesday we went to Garden of the Gods and back to Manitou Springs at the base of Pike's Peak. It's a cute little town. Garden of the Gods is really rugged and beautiful.

The guys holding up the rock.

And the girls holding up the rock.

The 5 of us. I have no idea why J isn't smiling. I guess he would have rather been running around.

More Garden of the Gods pics.

On Wed. we woke up to 8-10 inches of snow and went sledding at a park down the road. We used pool floaties to sled on since that was all we could find. That evening we went to "The Thorn" at R's church. Awesome production! On Thursday we went to Focus on the Family and did a little shopping. Friday we pretty much hung out around the apt., played games, and packed. Here's a pic of the Rocky Mt.'s somewhere along the way.

This is Tonka, R's newest cat. He's a little guy at only 6 1/2 pounds and the vet says he's full grown, has all his big boy teeth and everything. He's 6 1/2 pounds of personality. He fetches toys when you throw them and plays so hard that he regularly runs into chair legs and falls off beds. He spends a lot of time in "attack mode" and as J puts it, "He put hole in my skin." We all had claw marks compliments of Tonka.

And this is what it was doing the morning we left. We had to drive to Denver in this and there were lots of wrecks. It took extra time but we got there safely.

That's it for now.

We're baaaaack

We are back. We had a wonderful time, fairly good travels and it's great to be home. We all hated leaving R but we have great memories of time spent together. All the animals were fine and happy to have us home again. There was lots of laundry to do and mail to go through. We're all kind of taking it easy today and will hit the ground running tomorrow. It'll be nice to be back in a routine. I will post pics when I can, maybe Tuesday.

Hello from CO

We are at R's and having a great time together as a family. We've done Pikes Peak via the cog railway and also visited the zoo. We drove and walked through Garden of the Gods and spent time in Manitou Springs. It's supposed to snow tonight. We'll see. I'll post pics when I can.

Hmmm...

...we are going to visit our adult, married daughter next week, at her house. How weird is that? J came home with a cold today. That ought to make flying real fun. Benadryl anyone? Maybe we'll all take some. Please keep JT in your prayers as he is in Afghanistan. R seems excited about us coming but I'm sure her mind is in Afghanistan a lot of the time. My mom sent J a congrats card and ten dollars in the mail. I told him that he got something in the mail and he squealed like a ... I don't know what. Leave it to Nanny for the simple joys in life. Helium balloons, cards with money in the mail. Ahhhh.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I recently read how Patrick was captured by pirates and taken to Ireland. He escaped a year later and fled to France where he became a Christian and then returned to Ireland to preach the Gospel. That was in 432 A.D. We tried to explain to J that he should wear green today to keep from being pinched. He said he would pinch them back if anyone pinched him. Of course he wanted to know why he had to wear green. He finally figured out that it was a holiday of sorts and wanted to know if we were going to celebrate tonight "wif beau-te-ful food?". Anything that might become a party is good in his book. We found some green on his shoes and he chanced it with that. We told him to point it out to people that he had green on. It will be interesting to hear his take on things when he gets home.

Things were a little confusing at the court house on Monday morning. I brought the camera but wasn't allowed to take my purse into the court room. So, instead of a pic with the judge we got a pic with the law student who helped us out. Thanks N N!

Dexter likes to go out at night. If we don't put him out before bed he usually wakes us up in the middle of the night to let him out. Then, he's almost always at the door wanting to come in for his canned food first thing in the morning. He wasn't at the door this morning. It scared me a bit because he's getting old. He's not sick or anything, just getting older. I called and called and he finally came in. I guess he's not used to the time change yet. I'm just grateful the "old man cat" came in and was fine. He loves to get into my lap when I sit in the recliner. Loves it. Here is a pic where he jumped up on the side of the chair and didn't quite get into my lap before he fell asleep. His hind quarters are on the arm of the chair and his front paws are stretched out. I love it when he stretches his paws out like that.


When R first took Sanna with her, Dexter spent a lot of time "calling" for her. Now he's used to her being gone and Dexter and Misty are best buds. Aren't they cute?

A drew a pic for her French class. She had to depict certain words so she drew a castle with knights, a king and queen, a princess, cooks, wizards and dragons. I remember R doing something like this. They never cease to amaze us. Not the best pics of her pic but I wanted to try. It turned out really well.


Have you read any good books lately? I read "Home Another Way" which was okay and "Though Waters Roar" which was pretty good. I'm reading "Extravagant Worship" for my class and I really like it. What are you reading?

It is finished

J is a brand new US citizen. There was a little mix up as to where we needed to be and running from the basement to the second floor, back to the first to get rid of the purse and cell phones, then back up to the second floor but we got it done. Hallelujah! This has been such a difficult 4.5 years that it surprised the heck out of us when something went close to the plan. We are glad it's done.

Lost in translation

Wow, I've posted three days in a row. Lucky you. Tomorrow morning we go to the local court house and have the adoption finalized. We will do the name change (just an addition, really) and J will become a citizen. Woot! That's if all goes well anyway. Things have had a way of jumping up and biting us in the butt throughout this process. I will be so glad to have "the process" finished.

A couple weeks ago J came home from school saying, "I on a roll. I on a roll." We were like, okay. Good for you. I'm glad you're on a roll. He repeated it a few more times and we replied the same. Then he gets out his report card and honor roll certificate. Ah, he was on the honor roll. Duh for us.

Just this morning we got into T's jeep and J was saying, "Look (which sounds like Luke), dog tay. Dere's dog tay." He picked it up to show us and T said, "No, that's duct tape."

J really likes to dress up and he loves to wear a tie. Weirdo. Anyway, we were walking in to church and someone told him he looked spiffy this morning. He said, "What?! De dog want to sniff me?!"

Well, I've gone back through the blog back to when J first came home and have labeled all of the posts that I put "J'isms" or "lost in translation" things with "lost in translation". You should be able to click on that label and bring them all up. It was quite entertaining to look back at all of those. Have fun.

No real title

JT called me not long after I finished yesterday's post. He was about 5 hours from Afghanistan, in a place that started with a K and ended in stan. He is in Afganistan now. Please keep him and R in your prayers.

It's still rainy today. Sigh...we don't really need the rain right now.

I got two chapters done on my worship course yesterday. I like being able to work at my own pace and I'm enjoying the material.

I guess that's it for now.

Still, still here

That was the name of the last post, almost a week ago. Sigh...going through some things here. Trying to work through it. The family is fine, just "other" struggles.

R took the dog back. I guess there was a 14 day trial time and it just wasn't working out with Sanomae and with the dog pooping on the floor. R would take her out for 20 minutes and she would just sniff around then come in the house and go on the floor. JT was in Ireland last time R talked to him and was doing well. He should be in Afghanistan this weekend, I think.

J has had a good week. He was upset with us for grounding him from the tv for 24 hours but he got over it quickly. He also made the decision to go to bed about 30 minutes later and go "by himself". His desire to stay up later was greater than his desire to be read to. Hmmm. He's doing so much better with his reading. He got an A on his booklet report on deer mice. And he won 3rd place in 4H for his biscuits. He really did make them himself, from scratch, with minimal help from me.

A and I had a great day on Wednesday. She was off school because everyone else was off on Tuesday except for the juniors who had to do ACTs. So Wed. she and I went shopping and had a good time, good conversations.

Painting Elvis didn't turn out so great. It's okay, but not like we had wanted it to be. We had trouble with the clear coat and ended up sanding the hood down again and now you can see the marks on it. Plus, even though it was in the barn it got bird poop all over it. Plus, a moth landed in the wet paint on the hood the other night. Sigh...it is what it is.

We woke up to thunderstorms this morning and lots of rain.

I haven't done a thankful list in a while. Maybe I should do one. Let's see, I'm thankful for family. I'm thankful that J is doing as well as he is. I'm thankful for jobs, cars and dark chocolate. I'm thankful for God and His love.

Still here

Hey, we're still here just busy like always. JT is getting ready to deploy tomorrow. Well, can you ever really be ready for that? Please keep him (and her) in your prayers. They got a dog to help protect R while he's gone. It's a beagle named Selah. Sanomae is not impressed with the dog but they are getting used to each other. We'll be heading that way in a couple weeks.

J asked me to cut his hair again. He wanted it short on the sides. It's shorter on the sides than I would have liked for the length of the top but I like it okay. It really makes him look different, older. There was some interesting stuff hiding down inside his hair, mostly lint. Hmm. This morning he was brushing his hair and he said, "Look. I have a dot on de side of my head." I had seen it before and said, "It's just a mole or something." He said, "Ah, my head is getting moley?!?"

We tried to paint Elvis (car A drives) this weekend. It was looking really good until we got to the clear coat. I think we didn't wait long enough for the paint to cure well. Sigh...A will be riding with her friend, E this week. She still doesn't have any job prospects.

We saw Dr. Kevin Leman this morning at church. He's a lot of fun to listen to. We are going back Monday night for a seminar called "Have a New Husband by Friday" which is about the marriage relationship and relationships in general.

I guess that's it for now.

3/3/10

T was putting J to bed tonight and he called out to me asking what the date was. I thought for a minute and said it's the third. J said, "Yeah, it's de tird. Oh, I know de date. I know it. It's tree and a line, tree and a line and ten!" 3/3/10. Smart boy.

And then he broke the toilet

We've lived in this house for 7 years. We built it ourselves so everything was new when we moved in. J has lived here for 6 months and he broke the toilet. See the crack in the tank?Yeah, that comes from slamming the seat up against it. Over and over and over. We had to buy a new toilet last night after our adoption support group meeting (loving those, btw, and J loves it too). I hope this one has a plastic seat. If it doesn't, we'll change it out. Gently, son. Lift it and lower it gently. Or just sit, that would help.

See these? Those are dirty cat paw prints in my shower. Dexter likes to drink the water off the floor and then he leaves his paw prints. He leaves them on the white bath mat too. Sigh...
This is what it looked like yesterday morning. Huge feathery flakes of snow were falling. Have I mentioned how tired we are of snow? Thankfully the kids were already at school when it started collecting on the ground and it melted by afternoon. Yay! No snow day. Oh, last week was the first full week of school in 11 weeks. I'm ready for spring.
R and JT's stuff arrived finally. All except the bed rails. At least they can sleep on their mattress instead of sleeping bags. They are gearing up for his departure on Tues. Pray for them.

A has not found a job yet. There really isn't much around here. She is enjoying her economics class and thinking of ways she could go into business for herself. You go, girl!

T and I took a leave of absence from our church ministry roles in Dec. We have really enjoyed the time off. We've looked at how other churches, large and small, do things and have learned a lot. I also acquired a keyboard just like the one at church. I really like that thing. We also acquired electronic drums with the intention to use them in church at some point. These things are so fun. I had no idea how much we'd all like them. And you can use headphones to practice with, which is a great blessing to those around you. Especially if you're like us and no one really knows how to play.

So, here's to drums, toilets and paw prints in the shower. And snow. Don't forget the snow. Have I mentioned how tired we are of the snow?