Monday, March 30, 2009

What is that fluffy white stuff coming out of the sky, anyway?

This Saturday Sir D, myself, Will and two of his teammates got up at the horrid hour of 5am. 5 AM! and drove 5 hours north to Tulsa. For those of you living under a rock last weekend, there was a bit of a weather event going on in Tulsa and points north thereof.

We drove north in the rain. We toured the college in the rain (cold rain). Then the boys met up with the soccer team from the university and they began their scrimmage. The point of this is for the coach to watch the recruits play. (my son is totally a recruit!) Then, because these boys are so totally amazing at soccer, he's going to offer them all 100% scholarships for the entirety of their college careers...or something.

The thing is, by the time they got around to playing the game it was no longer raining it was snowing...sideways. I believe those from up north were these types of weather events are common, refer to this as a blizzard. I am not sure how much the coach was actually able to see of the boys playing, but play they did.

Sir D and I sat in the car with the heater on watching and feeling really bad for the boys, but not bad enough to go sit on the bleachers to see them better. We felt bad, not crazy.

Once they were done, we high tailed it out of town trying to get ahead of the storm. The boys turned the heater in the back up so high Sir D and I were burning up. They finally got warm, ate copious amounts of snack foods, then promptly fell asleep. They slept most of the way back. Sir D was a bit nervous that the road might get shut down and we'd be stuck in The-Middle-of-Nowhere Oklahoma for the night.

But we finally started getting ahead of the storm and the 32 degree temperatures began to inch up and the snow turned back to rain.

By the time we got back to DFW, it was 7 pm at night and it was 55 degrees and sunny. When we left Tulsa at 3 in the afternoon it was 32 degrees and white out conditions.

I love Texas/

I will also love Oklahoma if my son is attending college there for free in case you were wondering.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Generational Corruption

A strange thing has happened since we got back from our camping trip…I can’t get my girls to stop playing cards. Seriously. I get them started on their school work, leave the room for a moment to do something vastly important like laundry or interneting, and suddenly, I hear the distinct sound of the shuffling of a deck of cards. The minute they are done with the current assignment the cards come out. They used to read; now they play cards.

They have started playing Oh Heck! which is really just a fancy (or hillbilly) name for spades. I am starting to get a little worried. These girls are good. They’re regular little card sharks! And just as an aside and because I’m a word nerd…did you know that ‘cardsharp’ is actually an official term for someone who regularly cheats at cards, and ‘Card Sharks’ was a game show back in the late 70’s? Both, however have become acceptable, popular culture terms for someone who is proficient at playing cards. There you go…a little semantic history for your day.

Now back to my cardsharp daughters. I wonder if I should I be worried. I mean a few generations back they would have been excommunicated from the church. A few more generations back they might have been burned at the stake and go back even further and they might have been banned from the realm. Cards have not always been an acceptable pastime for young ladies. And yet as I type this I can hear the distinct sound of cards being shuffled. My Eve is good at shuffling. She can even do that bridge thing at the end. She learned it from me. I learned it from my grandma. My grandma and I used to play gin rummy for hours when I was Eve’s age.

It’s taken generations to achieve this level of corruption.


Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Not Liking This Plan

I spent my entire morning sitting next to The Teenager, helping him fill out forms.

He was asked to attend a tryout/scrimmage and take a campus tour of a small Baptist college in Oklahoma. He needed to get some more information from the coach and fill out an application for the college.

He also needed to fill out the reams of forms (can it still be reams if it’s online?) to sign up to take the SAT and the ACT, and pay them a large sum of money and tell them all his earthly secrets.

I don’t remember getting into college being so difficult. That may have something to do with the fact that I sort of didn’t attend college, except for the few classes I took at Community College, but I’m totally claiming that. It means I can select the ‘some college’ in all those demographic questionnaires instead of ‘high school’ and that totally makes the hours I spent in those dingy classrooms learning I know now what, worth it.

It looks like Sir D, myself, and The Teenager will be driving back up to OK this Saturday. We were just there last weekend! We camped in a state park (in Arkansas) no more than 30 minutes from this college. Little did we know we’d be back there so soon.

Honestly, I don’t think I like the idea of this college being so far away. 4 to 5 hours? Yeah, that does not sound right. Who is gonna do his laundry? Who is going to feed him? Who is going to make sure he goes to bed on time? He gets sick if he does not get enough sleep! Nope. There is a perfectly good college down the street. That is where he needs to go!

Remember that book Love You Forever where the Mama keeps rocking her son to sleep, no matter how old he gets? Yeah, I’m well on my way to becoming that creepy old lady who crawls into her grown son’s bedroom in the middle of the night to rock him to sleep.


Sunday, March 22, 2009

We brought the smell home with us.

We’re home from Arkansas. I have so many stories to tell you I hardly know where to start. We had a blast; we saw cliffs, we hiked, we drove to the top of a mountain, pulling a 30 foot RV in fog so thick you couldn’t see 20 feet in front of you. Did I mention the winding mountain roads? We had great food, we had great fellowship, we ate a lot and slept a little. I loved it.

I don’t have time for much writing today though, because we have much cleaning to do. We’ve emptied the contents of the borrowed RV into the house and scrubbed the fire out of that thing. We vacuumed, we mopped, we fabreezed. Now it looks like the RV vomited into the house. There is a pile of stinkin’ laundry the size of a small car in my living room. Why the living room you ask. Because it is the only room big enough to separate the laundry into piles to wash it. Imagine a huge pile of sweaty, dirty, slightly damp clothing that has been mere feet from a campfire for 7 days. My house smells like KOA meets the Locker room. It ain’t pretty folks. I’m just glad it’s nice enough to day to keep the windows open. Even still, I think my house may never smell the same again.

I better get back to the cleaning, but I’ll leave you with this new discovery.

The Best S’Mores EVEAH!

Take the graham cracker and place a reeses peanut butter cup on it.

Then place that ever so gently somewhere near the fire so it will melt slightly.

Roast your marshmallow to your desired crispiness.

Now smush the marshmallow on the now soft reeses peanut butter cup.

Cover with the other graham cracker

Enjoy!

Lawsey Mercy people! I think I undid every good thing I did to my body in the 21 day nutritional cleanse by eating a boatload of these!

Friday, March 13, 2009

Not quite the answer I was looking for, but clear none-the-less.

This is not the post I thought I’d be writing today. Today’s post was supposed to be filled with photos of our brand-spankin’-new RV sitting in our driveway. Sadly, our brand-spankin’-new RV is not actually ours and is not sitting in our driveway, but instead, still on the dealer’s lot in Houston.

Here’s the story…

Let me start by saying that there seemed to be several small road blocks to getting ready to go get the RV. First the bank was being a little cranky about when they would let us have our money from our account (HELLO! OUR MONEY!). Then, once we got our money, the Dealer said the RV would actually not be dealer prepped by Saturday, when Sir D was going to get it. Hummm. They only knew we were coming for a couple of weeks, but okay.

In the days leading up to the pickup, Sir D started to feel more and more apprehensive about this decision. Should we really be spending the $? I mean all you have to do is watch the news to see that perhaps we should not buy an RV but hide all our earthly possessions under our bed or something. (in case you’re a burglar, we did not, in fact, choose this option) Also, things at Sir D’s work have been a little tight for the overall branch…profits are down…concern is high…the thing is we’ve been preparing for almost two years for this. We sold our old RV two years ago and have been diligently waiting and preparing for this new one. This one in Houston is THE ONE that Sir D wants.

But he felt it in his Spirit. Something… We didn’t know what to do. We don’t want to be foolish, and we don’t want to make decisions based on fear…so what do we do?

Well, we decided to put out a fleece. We asked the Lord to cause Sir D to find something wrong with the camper if He did not want us to purchase it at this time.

Down here in Texas it has not rained for a sweet forever but this week? Noting but rain. Sir D drove all the way down to Houston with the boys in the driving rain. He got out and walked all the way down the lot to the RV in the driving rain. He examined the inside and the outside of the RV in the driving rain…and found a water leak.

This water leak would have been undetectable on bright sunshiny Saturday. Also, for various reasons we are aware of and okay with, this RV does not have a warranty so if we’d purchased it on Saturday, we’d be totally financially responsible for fixing the water leak. Sir D felt sad, but resigned. This is the one he wants. But clearly, now was not the time. He showed them the leak and told them he couldn’t purchase it at this time. There was much sadness.

They are going to fix the leak and call us in a month or so. The thing is in a month or so we’ll have a better idea of the financial outlook of Sir D’s branch. Also, the RV will have had the leak fixed and a good once-over from the repair shop. Still, we were sad.

Sir D stopped by his friends house on the way home from Houston to pick up the RV they are loaning us. It is a very generous thing to loan someone your RV and we are extremely grateful. We would not be able to go on this trip if not for their generosity. And while I don’t want to sound ungrateful, the floor plan in this RV is not very conducive to the comfortable sleeping of 5 adult size humans and one little girl. So it’s going to be a little tricky, but we’ll figure it out.

When Sir D and the boys finally got home after a long, wet and somewhat depressing day, they found the ceiling leaking in the girls’ room. Sigh. I think perhaps we know where some of the RV money is going. A new roof. We knew it was coming but we thought we had a little more time before we needed to replace it.

I don’t know what the Lord has planned. I know He answered our prayer. It was clear. It is just really hard to hear ‘No’ from God when we really wanted to year ‘Yes’. We’re praying that it was not so much a ‘No’, but at ‘Not yet’, and when the RV is fixed all will be right with the economy and our roof and we can snatch it up. We serve a big God, he can do that right?


Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Never too many skirts...

I saw this tutorial on Randi’s blog and decided I needed to make some for my Ann. She is my girly girl and loves to wear skirts. I have several pieces of cloth sitting around my house just itching to me made into these cute skirts!



Last night (okay, all stinkin’ day yesterday!) I cleaned out the girls’ drawers and closet. Holy Clothes Horse, Batman! there were a lot of clothes in there! And this does not include the two boxes of summer clothes still in the attic. I know many of the summer clothes have migrated down to their closet already as usually happens in Tx when you can start having 80 degree days in January.

Back to the skirts…

After cleaning out her closets and getting rid of tons of outgrown clothing, I realized that Ann has 15 skirts. Yes that is correct. 15. And I did not count her dresses. How did this happen? Good grief, it’s nuts!

So, I don’t think I’ll be making Ann any skirts. Maybe I can talk Eve into letting me make her a skirt? Maybe if I let her pick the fabric? She only has 4 skirts. Yes, that’s it. Eve is getting a skirt weather she likes it or not!


Monday, March 9, 2009

So I have this thing called a blog where sometimes I write some stuff.

Wow. Wednesday was the last time I posted. That’s so unlike me. I am usually so filled with average and mildly interesting things to tell the world. I think Ye Olde Bloggie has been quiet due to all the many, many things swimming around in my head. So much to say, so little ability to mentally organize it.

We’re getting our new RV on Thursday and I could not be more excited. I feel like a little kid before Christmas! I keep looking at the photos and thinking about what to put where. We have huge Rubbermaid bins full of stuff that came out of our last RV that we sold almost two years ago. I can hardly remember what we have in there. We get the new RV on Thursday night, pack Friday, leave Saturday. That should be fun. Or not.

I started feeling stressed yesterday because I realized that I had all these ‘don’t forget to do ____’ or ‘don’t forget to get ______’ thoughts running through my head and I was afraid I was going to lose them. So I did this really cool and novel thing. I wrote them down in this fancy list format!

Turns out I had so much floating around up there that I needed sub categories and eventually I ended up with 5 lists. I need a list of my lists. Though, it felt good to get all that stuff out of my head. I think I lost a few pounds when I was able to let all those thoughts go!

And speaking of losing a few pounds, I am nervous about seeing the Nutritionists on Thursday. I feel like I have done very well overall but this last week was harder. Twice we went out to eat at someone’s house and I ate the dinner that was served to me. You can’t very well have someone slave in the kitchen for a family of 6 then show up and say “Sorry! I can only eat lettuce!” (That is of course an exaggeration, I can have celery too). So I ate. I ate small portions, but almost none of it was on the list of okay foods.

But really, it is about making wise choices. I did the best I could but I really wanted to do this 21 day thing RIGHT and I had to cheat some. We’ll see what the numbers say on Thursday.

Now I am off to educate my kids, or pack, whichever…


Wednesday, March 4, 2009

It is all becoming clear...

I had to show you some of the photos my boys posted on their Facebook.

It is starting to become apparent to me why it takes them so long to get their school done.


Both boys being goofs...



Bob striking a pose...



Will and his freakishly blue eyes...



You may now roam about the Internet.


Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Can't we just dip all the health food in chocolate?

I want chocolate.

I am eating Kiwi and some almonds for a snack and really I want chocolate and a Coke Zero. And some ice cream. I want ice cream too.

Darn stinkin' healthy food!

Monday, March 2, 2009

The Blog, she is a changing...

So I thought it was time for a new look here on the Hilltop. If you read this blog on a feed pop on over here and tell me what you think. Too busy? Off center?

I think I like it, but tell me what you think.

I've also spruced up the Homeschool Review Blog, pop on over there next and tell me what you think.


Sunday, March 1, 2009

Crazy Hat Night at AWANA




This is what my crazy husband and daughters chose to wear on Crazy Hat Night.

I'd say they nailed it.