Shhh, don't tell my kids...

...that I was wearing socks with my crocs. I know it's a big "no, no" but I was in my own home with no plans to go anywhere. Crocs have to be some of the ugliest shoes ever but I love them. They are so comfortable. Anyone else wear socks with their crocs?

Nothing much going on here. We're just hanging out...
...chillin'.
And willing the human with the camera to go away. Cats are so good at ignoring you.

Just relaxin'.

Hello, a little privacy please! I'm trying to veg out.

A few pics

Well, we heard from the g'parents and they are fine. They just had a little rain. Things are fine at the O too. They had a lot of rain and some wind but everything is okay. The boys were playing in the rain so it must not have been too bad. Thanks for praying. I hope and pray Gustav doesn't hit the US with a vengeance.

Here are a few pics for you. R and her bf got new laptops for college. T has one too and here they were all sitting in the living room with their laptops. The funniest part is that they were doing a 3-way Skype call with each other while they were sitting there. Bunch of geeks.

Yes, I know that the cats get the lion's share of pic exposure on here. They're so funny though. This is Dexter sitting in the sink while he's getting a sink drink. Usually they stand on the edge but he sat right in the sink this time. That's A's hand as she was snapping a pic too.

This is Sanomae behind my back. We're sitting in the office chair. For the record, I was there first and she wormed her way in there. Cats are so bendable. That's her back foot up by her face. She used to do this all the time and hadn't for a while. Now she's doing it again. I don't mind it except I have to keep checking my backside for cat hair.

Same scenario only this time she's laid out and falling asleep.

Remember how much this cat loves to root around and cuddle up in clean, warm laundry? Well, I took one thing out of the dryer and left the other things in there for a minute and when I came back this is what I found.

If the laundry pile doesn't come to Sanomae, Sanomae goes to the laundry pile.

Gustav

As we are appreciating the remnants of Fay bringing us some much needed rain, another storm, Gustav, is gaining strength and heading straight towards Port-au-Prince. The O director said they are prepared for the storm with supplies and are on pretty high ground but she asked prayers for safety for them and all the people of Haiti. I haven't heard from the G'parents yet.

Update, I did hear from G'parents and they are fine and don't expect much more than rain. Yay! Also, before Sunday's rain we had not had rain in about a month. The ground was dry and cracked, even in creek and river beds. Now we are in a flash flood watch. Go figure.

"The Remains of the 'Fay'"

Fay, Fay, come our way
We need some rain today.

I guess the rain we got yesterday and what we may get over the next couple of days are the remains of Fay. We are to get the scattered variety of rain but we're so dry here that what little we got yesterday made a noticeable difference. Maybe it just washed the dust off of things but they do look a little greener. We're hoping for some good rain out of this.

No real news

I don't have any real news (adoption stuff) to share so you'll have to settle for this stuff. Let's see. My baby turned 18 this week and next week she starts college. Wait, college?!? When did that happen? If you have little ones, enjoy every moment because they grow up fast. We all went out to eat and then shopping. R got a camera with her birthday money. I love you and I'm proud of you R. You go, girl!

My brother, nephew and a friend drove in a 4-wheel drive competition this week. Nephew was the 4th one to drive and he was in first place for a long time. They kept getting hung up in the same spot. My niece wondered aloud if her dad would let P keep the lead. I looked at her and said, "Your dad? No way." and she agreed that he probably wouldn't. My brother was the 13th one to drive and he took the lead. The friend got hung up in that same spot that a lot of people had trouble. He had to be towed off. Someone else came along and got ahead of P, so they placed first and third. Then my brother, competitive thing that he is, convinced his son to drive with him in the next class for those with the really huge tires. They should have quit while they were ahead. P bent the tie rod on his vehicle and had to be towed off and my brother did okay until he flipped his vehicle and it started on fire. Thankfully us ladies were not around to see that but T said once he knew my brother was okay it was really cool to see. My dad, being the technological dweeb he is, taped over the fire. We got to see the flip but not the fire. Can you say redneck?

The girls have been working backstage at the current play at the local theater. If they aren't in them, they are working backstage. They love theater. Anyway, T and I worked last night too. It was a good play.

Today we had an appreciation dinner for our interim pastor. We are close to calling a new pastor but our interim had some other commitments so we had to say good-bye for now. He was great and we'll miss him.

So, we've had a pretty busy week. Oh, it's actually raining here for the first time since sometime in July. Yes, July was our last rain. It's not coming very hard but it sounds wonderful.

Nothing much

No adoption news. We don't even know if our newest paper is in legalization yet. Maybe Wed. is what the lawyer said on Monday. Huge sigh...

This Sunday is our interim pastor's last Sunday with us. We don't have a replacement yet but are getting close. S.H., we love you man. He has been a real blessing to us and we will miss him.

A is back to school and driving Elvis there every morning. T says her driving has improved already. I've been praying for some improvement. Oh, did I mention that Elvis is getting 28 mpg right now. That's nearly double what the Jeep was getting. Oh, and R's bf bought the Jeep. How funny is that? Yep, T will be repairing the Jeep for the rest of it's life, barring any break-ups, that is.

We desperately need some rain here. We are on a "water alert" of some sort. Here that means Bubba can't wash the monster truck. It hasn't rained in several weeks. Everything is a brownish color, including the back of Flannery Vandango. When you close the back gate a puff of dust rises up.

We still can't decide if our dogs are hunters or gatherers. We know they raid bunny nests sometimes and that's how we end up with orphaned bunnies. The other night they had a big bunny. A big dead bunny. I suspect that they found it like that. They were still proud of themselves.

Like I said in the title, nothing much is going on right now.

Or...

...maybe this is the 200th post. Either way, it happened today. LOL

#200

Wow, this is my 200th post. I never dreamed I'd still be waiting for J to come home by my 200th post, but here I am. Waiting.

The dentist appointment was not so bad. There is definitely a crack in the tooth but it's not even where I thought it was. I have a few things to try for now and as long as it doesn't get worse, I don't have to do anything major to it. That's an answer to prayer as we don't have dental ins. right now, but we are looking into it.

I wish there was something exciting to tell you for my 200th post, but even though it's busy around here, it's life as usual. I did get to talk to J today. He was smiling a lot but not very talkative. I played piano for him this time. I don't know how much he saw/heard but I tried. He was holding his hand up to the webcam so I held mine up too and we did a 1500 mile high five. That's kind of cool.

Life

No new adoption news. The last we heard the lawyer had gotten the rest of the needed papers and was having them legalized. Only God knows how long that might take. Keep praying.

My best friend called last night. She said, "Guess where I've been?" I guessed the right town but couldn't guess where. She finally told me she'd been in the ER. She broke her wrist...while pumping gas. How do you do that? you might ask. You have to understand that this is the person who has had her hair started on fire 3 times. She's accidently killed a bird with her car antenna. She has gotten herself stuck in a dress in a fitting room in a store and had to be cut out of it. Weird things happen to her, okay? Anyway, she was in the hot sun and went to the back of her car to get out of it but she's fairly tall so she propped her foot up on the bumper to rest her elbow on it and get her head out of the sun. When she stood back up either her shoe or her pant leg got caught on the hitch and she fell backward. She said one second she was standing there and the next she was sitting on the ground trying to figure out what happened. The little girl in the station came out and asked her if she was okay. She said, "No. I'm pretty sure I just broke my wrist." This was spoken from her sitting position on the ground, squinting up at the girl. The good; the girl helped her up. The bad; said girl made her pay for the ice to put on her wrist. Friend was supposed to be meeting her hubby for dinner but they met for a nice evening in the ER instead.

Have you been watching the Olympics? I've watched some of it. The opening ceremony was pretty cool. I like to watch the gymnastics the best.

The dreaded dentist appointment is tomorrow. I'm praying that it's nothing major and will not take a major chunk of change to fix it. I'll keep you posted.

Ok. Now for some pics of life at our house. This is a nice still life A took of some produce from the garden.

Yeah, the cats get a lot of pics on the blog. They're just so darn cute, though. Here is Dexter hanging out on the steps. I hope J likes the steps half as much as the cats do.

This is Sanome with the glowing green eyes. Weird huh? The weirdest part is her eyes are actually yellow.
Oh, us three girls got our hair cut last week. I just got a trim. R got some deeper layers and a trim and A got sweeping bangs.

Apparently Misty did something bad and put herself in jail.

Yeah, I don't know about this one either. T got some seat covers for his truck for his birthday. This is one of the headrest thingys. He doesn't have headrests. Why is it on his head? We're not sure but we decided to call it his Spiderman 3 impersonation.

The cats love it when I put the ironing board up. They love to sleep on it. Aww, isn't she cute?

They like to groom each other on it.

And this one doesn't show up well but I was trying to capture the claw marks in it. You see, Misty was on it but got too close to the edge. I heard some noise and turned in time to see her back end swinging off the side of the ironing board. Her eyes and tail were huge and she was hanging on for dear life. She tried to swing her back legs up and regain the board but apparently there was too much junk in her trunk and she couldn't do it. Then she let herself slip some and her little back toes were stretched out as far as they could go, trying to find the floor. She finally let herself drop and she was only a couple inches off the floor. She hasn't been back on it since. I'm sure she'll try it out again the next time I get it out.

That's it for now.

Not much

Not much going on here. I'm getting really close to my 200th post. I thought I'd be telling the good news that J was coming home back at the 100th post. Ha! The 200th isn't looking good either. Sigh...

The stupid tooth is still sensitive. I have an appointment on Friday to have it looked at. Actually, it's a cleaning and check-up but I'm sure the tooth will be mentioned. I wouldn't worry much about a tooth but I can see a little line just above the gum line. I'm not very excited about this.

I had mentioned some time ago that Flannery Vandango is coming up on 200K miles and predicted that it might be late summer or early fall. That was when we thought J might actually be home this summer and we would take a trip to WI. But, J didn't come home and we didn't take a trip. Flannery is at just over 195K and so far, so good. Well, apart from the water pump incident.

I don't know why the name Elvis has stuck for the cheap car, but it really has. T and R can't even remember what kind of car he really is. A was backing the van up in the driveway and R yelled, don't turn now, you're going to hit Elvis!

Oh, we had a watermelon, or wallermelum as one of the kids used to call them, from our garden. It was soooo gooood. We picked two more and I hope they are as good as the first one.

Like I said, not much going on here.