It's Not Christmas Without The Messiah

Yesterday we spent the day with my family for our Christmas celebration. Since Christmas came on Sunday this year and since there are several pastors in the family who live several hours apart, it wasn't possible to get everyone together on Christmas Day this year. Instead, we decided to wait until the Thursday after Christmas to get together. Besides the food and presents, the highlight of our family's Christmas is to sing from Handel's Messiah.

My family has been singing the Messiah since I was ten years old. My mom taught us to sing "For Unto Us a Child is Born" for our church's Christmas Eve service that year. My mom sang soprano, my dad sang bass, I sang tenor, and my younger sister sang alto. It was a hit, and we've been learning new songs since, adding siblings as they grew old enough to learn the parts. A few years ago we put on a Christmas concert and went to three churches to sing seventeen songs from the Messiah. That was the first year that all of my siblings (plus one sister-in-law) sang together.

I have had such wonderful times singing with my family. I sang in several other choirs when I was growing up such as homeschool choir, church choir, and the 4-H chorus, but singing with my parents and siblings will always be something I cherish. So yesterday, after the food and before the presents, my mom passed around the books and popped in the accompaniment CD, and we sang until we were hoarse.

I wanted to share this video of one of the songs we sang yesterday called "And the Glory of the Lord." In this video, my parents, siblings, husband, in-laws, future in-laws, children, nieces, and nephews are all crowded into the living room at my parents' house. We are packed so tightly in there that many have to sit on the floor, but nobody minds. Not everybody sings, but anyone who wants to is welcome to join in. We are a close-knit family who loves to be together and to sing together, and even though we haven't sang together since last Christmas, we still know how to make beautiful music together as we worship God. After all, what would Christmas be without the Messiah?

Christmas Day

This was the best Christmas I think we've ever had, or at least it's up there somewhere in the top three. :) We went all out and bought iPod Touches for all six of the kids. They had all wanted one, even Timothy. When we had them make their wish lists this year, they all put one on the top (except for Jay, who asked for a Zune instead). They weren't really expecting one, though.

We had so much fun making it impossible for the kids to guess what they were getting. We wrapped them each differently in different sizes and shapes of packages. I wrapped a bag of lentils around one and it felt like a bag of sand. Another I packed inside a box of old books. One was in an oatmeal container, another inside a box of macaroni. Some of them made noise when shaken, others did not.

We also got them each a unique cover so they would be able to tell them apart. I put the covers in gift bags wrapped in tissue. They were so lightweight that some of the kids questioned whether there was anything in them at all!

Last night we allowed them to each unwrap one present--a pair of pajamas--but the had to wait until today to get their iPods. They were so excited and they've spent all day playing with them.

I didn't used to realize what iPods were. I thought they were just music players with a touch screen. With all the things that they can do, we didn't just give our kids music players. We gave them each a gaming system along with dozens of games, a camera, a video recorder, a TV, a flashlight, a Bible, lots of books, a phone with the ability to text, a computer, toys, musical instruments, a pedometer, an alarm clock, a calender, and I don't even know how much more! There are tons of free apps to download.

The first thing we did, though, was to set parental controls and take away the web browser. They don't really need to have Internet access all the time--we like to have adult supervision for that. But they can still access anything that has an app, like Facebook. That means we'll have to make sure they don't play on their iPods when we are having school.

We did let them take them to church but they have been strictly warned that if they are using their iPods, they'd better be using the Bible app or taking notes with it! We had a beautiful Christmas morning service, btw. We took communion with a loaf of French bread and sparkling grape juice in goblets to make it special. I know that Jesus actually would have used unleavened bread, but the French bread just looked so pretty. There were candles everywhere in the church, although we didn't light the ones in the windows because we didn't want to catch the curtains on fire.

We played Christmas carols and sang some specials. I was going to sing "Every Valley" but I've had a cold lately. After leading worship my voice wasn't strong enough to sing a difficult song like that.

I took a nap when we got home and then made a delicious pecan pie to go with our Christmas dinner. I also made a sugar-free jello dessert for Erick. He's not sticking entirely to his diet right now, but he is still watching what he eats.

I got to use every one of my Christmas presents today--a Ninja blender (to turn some pecans to dust), my toaster (because the bread for the sandwiches we had for lunch was still in the freezer), a set of Eggies (for egg salad), and a stock pot (for the sweet potatoes).

Erick hasn't had a chance to use his new Garmin GPS system yet. We haven't been anywhere yet, except for church, and we know how to get there. We've named it Judy because the female voice that tells you where to turn sounds like a Judy.

Christmas isn't entirely over for us, though--later this week we're going to visit our families. I can't wait!

Christmas break

Today is the first day of Christmas break. I don't have a lot planned for this week, but we do have some cleaning to catch up. Of course, that's nothing different--it seems we always have cleaning to catch up on.

I really don't have that much else going on. I'm only posting in my blog because I haven't posted in it much lately. I've made more posts to my Greene County Daily World blog than I have this one lately. I've even posted to my dream blog more than I have this one! I never thought I would be posting to three different blogs.

I think I'll go clean my room.

The future of online content

This semester, I have really been wondering what will happen with Internet content in the future. So far, media technologies are still fairly new. All throughout my textbook for my Intro to Journalism class I've looked at timelimes that have shown the progression of different inventions and technologicial discoveries, from Nikola Tesla and his radio coils to LePrince's motion pictures to Zuckerburg's Facebook. A hundred years ago the world looked very different. Even fifty years or fifteen years ago, things looked very different. I have a photo album of pictures of my mother when she was a little girl, and they were all in black and white. There are home videos of me as a little girl, and they are all on big giant reels in my parents' attic. They are silent videos because home video cameras back then apparently didn't have audio capabilities. In comparison, my kids have hundreds of digital photos and videos of them on my blog and on Facebook.

My dad loves genealogy. When I was a kid we would hunt for photos of relatives and read through old letters that gave us a glimpse into their lives. Those were real treasures to us because they were rare.

If my grandkids want to know about me, they won't have to rely on stories handed down through my kids or by finding my box of love letters (which I really hope they don't find!) They could read my blog or notes I have written on Facebook. But what about the next generation or the generation after that? What will happen to my online content when I am dead?

I would love to be able to look back at my great-great-great-grandmother's Facebook page or read her blog or wach digital videos of my ancestors as they played in the hose when they were children. Will that information still be around a hundred years from now? A thousand?

What will happen to all of the pictures and posts that I've uploaded in my lifetime? If they are still available, we will have a rich world. We will be able to pass our knowlege and insights down to generations in a way that has never been possible in the past. The stories of our lives will be around forever rather than fading into oblivion, assuming they don't get dumped.

That's my fear--that eventually all of the old data will get dumped in order to make way for new generations to upload their stuff. Will my blog still be around a thousand years after I've stopped posting in it for my descendents to discover (assuming this world lasts another thousand years!), or will somebody out there decide it's no longer necessary?

I've actually checked into this on Facebook. They say that when you die, your family can set your page as a memorial and only your friends can see your page. I would guess you can't approve more friends, though, so any descendents I might have after I died would be out of luck.

Laundry!

Yesterday we finally got a dryer. Ours went out a few days ago. It was taking longer and longer to dry a load of clothes. At one point I was having to run the dryer three whole cycles just to dry one load of clothes. Finally, it just quit heating up altogether.

Erick tried to fix it. Some of my Facebook friends suggested that replacing a heating coil was an easy fix. Erick is pretty handy about fixing things, but one thing he hasn't had any experience fixing is dryers. That may be because his parents dried their clothes on a clothesline when he was growing up and he didn't get the chance to learn how to fix one.

He gave it a good try, though. He looked it up on the Internet and took it all apart, but when he was done with it, it didn't work at all. Our neighbor came over and looked at it, too, and I guess neither of them could figure it out.

So we bought a used one last night. Our neighbor had told us about a Facebook group that posted classified ads in our area and we found a used one for $75. It's nothing fancy, but it dries clothes, and we are waaaay behind right now. I haven't seen stacks of laundry like this since we lived in the trailer and I had to take my laundry to my in-law's house each weekend. That was back when we only had two babies. By spring, we'd literally have laundry stacked to the ceiling. (Remember, they didn't have a dryer!) In the winter, we'd take home baskets of wet laundry after washing it all load by load in their wringer washer, and we'd put it on the front porch so it would stay fresh-smelling until we could get it all dried. Then we'd bring each load in, one at a time, and let it thaw. We'd drape them over chairs and drying racks and cabinet doors until they dried, and then bring in another load to thaw. Our clothes were always stiff back then.

We have come such a long way since then. This new dryer might not be top-of-the-line, but at least I can dry a load of clothes in a reasonable amount of time. By the end of the day I except to have a mountain of clean laundry instead of a mountain of dirty laundry.

Fall break

This week is fall break for me. The kids had their fall break weeks ago when the co-op took their fall break, but I had to wait until this week, even though there is only just a few weeks left until the end of the semester. Since I don't have school to do, I decided to take a break from bookwork for the girls so they could finish the quilts and curtains they started last summer.

Joy and Sarah are making quilts with zebra print zigzags and matching curtains. Abby and Rachel didn't need quilts because they already had nice comforters, but they needed some good curtains. I had bought the material for it but never had time to help them make them. So this was sort of a "home ec" week. We are almost finished, too--Sarah just has to finish up her quilt and then we still have to make the zebra curtains.

We also bought a new van today--a twelve passenger. Our mini-van had eight seats, but the kids keep growing taller (imagine that) and plus they always want to take their friends places. People used to ask us why we had six kids and one of my favorite answers was to say that if we had more than that, we'd have to supersize everything. I didn't think we'd be supersizing anyway! I guess I'll have to think up another answer to that question.

Anyway, this van was a very good deal. It's a Chevy Express 3500 (and yes, I had to ask my husband because I had no idea) and it's green. It's very pretty on the outside, and very plain on the inside, but there's lots of room. It doesn't have any fancy features, like cruise control or a cassette/CD player, but at least the air conditioning works. It also doesn't have power locks or windows. Timothy thinks it's so cool that you can roll down the windows without even putting in the key!

We are looking forward to taking this van on vacation next year. Lord willing, we're going to go out west and see the Grand Canyon and go to Yellowstone and all of the other neat places that are out that way. We've been north and south and east, but not west, at least no farther than Missouri. It's so big that way. I hope we get to go. I also hope I can handle the Grand Canyon, since I'm terrified of heights. The last time we went on the sky ride at Indiana Beach I spent the whole time clinging tightly to my daughter and telling her to not look down. That's the best way to convince others that you're not scared--pretend like you are trying to keep someone else from being scared. It works fairly well.

I know this blog post was a bit rambly (is rambly a word?), but hey--it's fall break. I'm resting my mind and that means taking a break from being organized. You should feel lucky I posted at all.

Happy birthday to me!

Today I am 33 years old. My family "surprised" me this morning with breakfast in bed and showered me with gifts and handmade cards. Timothy (age 7), Rachel (age 8), and Abby (age 10) all made handmade cards that said things like, "Mom, I love you, Mom. Mom, you are the best Mom ever. I love Mom. Mom loves me." (I think they like to use the word "Mom" a lot because it's easy to spell).

Rachel also gave me a present--a beautiful tea set that I had bought at a yard sale last year. It was in a gift bag wrapped up in a piece of purple cloth, an apron, and an African costume we had made for school several years ago (since obviously we didn't have any tissue paper handy).

Sarah (age 12) gave me a necklace, although Joy (age 13) said she was actually the one who had made it. Either way, it was very pretty and I wore it to church this morning. They also gave me a gift bag with some body wash and a hair clip. Sarah said, "Don't tell her the story about the hair clip." I still don't know what that is about.

Jay (age 14) gave me the most unique gift of them all. He translated "The Lord's Prayer" into Elvish and framed it. He's taught himself how to read it and has a whole dictionary of Elvish words that he's been printing out a little at a time from the Internet. I don't know if there is any practical use for knowing Elvish languages, but if there ever is a demand for an expert in the field, Jay might be the right person. I think it's cool, though, that he has shown the initiative to learn something on his own. I just wish I could give him a high school credit for it.

Erick gave me some chocolate and another hair clip, and I also received some gifts at church including fuzzy blue and green striped socks which I immediately put on. My girls are afraid that I will wear them to the Community Thanksgiving Service tonight with my dress clothes and are imploring me not to because they will "die of embarrassment." They said I'm too old to act crazy.

I've had a lovely birthday so far, and soon I will eat my pineapple upside down birthday cake that Jay made for me. I was going to make it myself but I decided I shouldn't have to make my own birthday cake.

Here is "The Lord's Prayer" in Elvish. I, for one, am glad to know that there are Christian elves.

A tough lesson

Sunday night I woke up at 2:00 a.m. to use the restroom. Upon discovering there was no toilet paper in the upstairs bathroom, I went downstairs. While headed towards the bathroom to retrieve a pack of toilet paper, I ran into a tall, shadowy form--that of my 14-year old son, Jay. He was just coming out the bathroom. At first I assumed he was there for the same reason I was, until I switched on the light and saw his schoolwork spread out over the bathroom floor. Then I understood.

See, Jay is a freshman in high school this year, and I'm doing things differently with him than I have in past years. Before, I printed out a school schedule for him like I do with my younger children, detailing what subjects he was to do each day. Way before school ever starts I look through the curriculum and figure out how many times a week each child needs to do each subject to get through their books by the end of the year.

But I didn't do that with Jay this year. I want him to learn how to be responsible and set his own schedule. I want him to be able to set his own goals, plan out what he needs to do to accomplish those goals, and follow through with those plans. And I want him to learn to do that while he's still living at home, instead of when he's away at college without the benefit of me there to breathe down his neck all day.

So this semester I gave him weekly work instead of daily. His schedule is more like a course calendar, detailing what work is due to be turned in each Monday (so that he is allowed to do work on the weekends if he so chooses). For example, he has four Algebra lessons and a test to complete each week, but it's up to him when to do those. If he wants to do a lesson every day for the first four days and then the test on Friday, I would definitely call that a wise idea. However, if he wants to do them all at the last minute, that's up to him, too--although his grades will most certainly reflect it.

I want to clarify that I do make him do school every day. After all, homeschooling law in Indiana is 180 days. If he did all of his schoolwork on Saturdays that would only be, oh, about 36 days. That's not practical nor is it legal, so we spread it out to 180. So he's not allowed to do things like get on Facebook until he's done with the school that he's planned out to do that day.

Anyway, Sunday night he was behind, and he stayed up until the wee hours of the morning finishing up his schoolwork. When he apologized for getting behind, I told him that he's the one that pays the consequences for that, not me, so he didn't need to apologize to me. When he explained that we had a busy week with our church's fall festival, I reminded him that I'm also a student and that I had all of my schoolwork turned in by Friday. I also reminded him that he spent quite a bit of time on Facebook last week.

I left him doing his school in the bathroom and went back to bed, but I was so proud of him. He could have just left his school undone and tried to bargain for extra time (not that it would have worked). He could have just not cared about his grades. But he did care--he sacrificed sleep in order to get his schoolwork done in time. A difficult lesson, to be sure, but a good one. He made a childish decision to wait until the last minute, but a very grown-up one to stay up and get it done. To me, that's what homeschooling is about--raising my children to be responsible adults who will be successful in a tough world. I love my kids so much, and I know they will do well in life.

Fall Festival--Candyland theme

We just got back from our church's annual fall festival. This year we centered it around a Candyland theme. We traced the characters from the classic Milton-Bradley boardgame onto pieces of styrofoam, cut them out with a hot knife, and painted them. We strung a grid of fishingline up high in the gym and hung all of the characters on them. We made the squares on the board out of construction paper and decorated around each of the characters. We added special touches to each one, like tying peanuts to the fake plants that decorate the sanctuary platform and putting them on each side of Grandma Nut for her nut garden. We had goodies that the children could win, such as a sandwich baggie full of DumDums for landing on Princess Lolly. The winner of each game received a bag full of candy, but all of the kids got something. We had other candy-themed games, too, like a marshmallow toss and a game where you had to throw Smarties into pop bottles (it was really hard.) We had two big bounce houses outside, and the weather was perfect. Betty did candy crafts with the kids, making cute little houses and trains out of graham crackers. We had about twenty kids that came and they really enjoyed it. I made a video of the game so you can see it. We put a lot of work into it and I was really happy with the way it turned out. We have to take it down in the next couple of days to set up for our Thankgiving dinner next Sunday, but I think I'm going to put all of the characters and decorations on the walls of the family center. They are just too beautiful to throw away.

Teaching Timothy to read

I am almost finished teaching all six of my children to read. I have used the same phonics book for my six kids that my mom used to teach me and all seven of my siblings. Professor Phonics Gives Sound Advice is a simple little book, but it's become quite a fixture at our house. We are actually on our second copy of it, as the first one disentegrated after the first two or three children.

Now that I'm on my last time through it, I'm starting to feel a little nostalgic about being finished. While I've always enjoyed the cozy times of sitting next to my kids while we sounded out words together, I'm taking care to treasure this last time as I teach phonics to my youngest son, Timothy. He's seven, and he's a smart little guy who is in 1st grade this year. He's funny, too. He loves to linger over each word and talk about it. Sometimes he takes what seems like forever and I have to prod him to just read the word and move on to the next!

Today we've been doing "Hard and Soft 'C', Mixed." This is just a glimpse how it went.

"Since--I know that word! That's like how much money you have."

"Corpse--What's a corpse? A dead body? Is it like the whole body or just the bones? Is it just one dead body? 'Cause if it is, why would it have an 's' on the end? Shouldn't that be more than one dead body?

"Cellar--Those are the people that sell stuff to people. Like in the stores, they have lots of sellers that bring stuff so that other people can buy it."

"Carpet--Why does it have a 'pit' in it? It sounds like "armpit."

"Cyclone--Hey, if you take off the 'cy' you have clone, which is what men wear!"

"Princess--If you take off the 'ss' then you have prince! Wait, is prince and princess spelled the same except for the 'ss'? Wow, that information could come in handy!"

"Cistern--if you take the 'n' off the end, you have 'sister'! Okay, well then, if you take the 'n' off the end and then take the 'c' off the beginning and stick an 's' on the beginning instead, where the 'c' used to be, then you have 'sister'!"

"Cyclops--What's a Cyclops? So he's just like a regular guy except he has an eye in his forehead? Mom, there's no such thing as monsters. He would have to be a legend."

Why homeschooling is like making chili

I love a hot bowl of chili on a cold fall day. Topped with cheese and sour cream, it warms me up like nothing else can. I like my chili with lots of hamburger and onions, chili beans, mushrooms, and a good dose of cayenne pepper.

A friend of mine thinks it is strange that I put mushrooms in my chili. Another friend of mine thinks it is strange that I don't put macaroni in my chili.

Attend any chili cook-off and you will discover more varieties of chili than you knew existed! I know one man that puts coffee in his chili and boasts about how many contests he's won with his secret ingredient. I know another that puts a warning label on his chili--it is so hot, he calls it "X-rated chili." And of course, there's white chili, which doesn't seem like it should be called "chili" at all!

I read a story a long time ago about a mother who was making chili for her family. Each family member made a special request to leave out a certain ingredient. One child didn't like beans. Another didn't like onions, and so on. At the end of the day, the mother served up a hot, steaming pot of water to her family, because there were no ingredients left that her family could agree on.

There are a lot of similarities to chili and homeschooling. There are as many "recipes" to a successful homeschool as there are recipes for chili. Sometimes when people try to define what a homeschooling family is, they think of a stay-at-home mother (in a denim jumper, of course) with five or six children sitting around the kitchen table together, or maybe at desks in the family room. Depending on the level of contact that people have with actual homeschoolers, their views of homeschooling can be fuzzy and vague ("Do they have any friends?") or at best, limited.

So what do homeschools have in common? Well, they usually have at least one teacher. Many times it's the mother, and many times she does stay at home. Other mothers (like me) work a job and homeschool. In those cases, the fathers are often involved. Homeschool teachers can also be grandparents, siblings, friends, tutors, and more. Some students, especially older ones, are self-taught.

Most homeschools do the bulk of their schooling at home (which would make sense given that it's called "homeschooling"), but not all meet at home. Some meet in churches or buildings with other homeschoolers, either daily or weekly. Some do their work at a parent's place of employment. Some prominent politicians have homeschooled their children while on the campaign trail in order to keep their family together.

Some kids do their work at desks or the kitchen table, others while sitting on the couch or lying on the floor. Some stay in their room and do their school while others (like mine) are not allowed to. When I was a kid being homeschooled, I liked to do my schoolwork while sitting up high in the  maple tree in our backyard.

Some families use a boxed curriculum. Others use no curriculum at all. Some are involved in sports and other extra-curricular activities. Others prefer to stay at home. Some homeschool for religious reasons. Others homeschool for academic or practical reasons. Some are partially involved in the public schools. Others stay as far away from the public schools as possible. Some buy computers for all their children. Others do not own a computer or even a TV.

Even amongst homeschoolers, sometimes we quibble over the definition of homeschooling. Recently, public schools have begun to offer "cyber schooling," which is public schooling at home, through the computer. Is that homeschooling or public schooling? People disagree. Maybe cyber schooling is like white chili--it just seems out of place somehow.

My recipe for homeschooling has changed slightly over the years, and will probably continue to change as my kids get older. On the other hand, my recipe for chili is likely to stay the same, because it's perfect the way it is!

Chili

Brown one pound of hamburger with onions. Drain. Add one can of tomato juice, one can diced tomatoes, one can of mushrooms, and two cans of chili beans. Add chili powder, garlic powder, salt, cumin, and cayenne pepper to taste. Simmer for as long as you want. Serve hot with sour cream, cheese, tortilla chips, and green onions.

Skinning stuffed animals--it's educational!

Today I helped eight 2nd and 3rd grade homeschooled children kill their stuffed animals and tan their hides. It was a pretty messy experience, but they enjoyed it.

My kids are part of a co-op group that meets every Thursday for classes. The parents are the teachers, and we each sign up to teach classes that are in our area of expertise each semester. This year the board voted to plan the classes around a Way Out West theme. This made it a little tricky for me, since I was planning on teaching ballet. Cowboys in tutus just didn't seem like a good idea. So I decided to teach a class called "Working With Leather." I'm not a leather expert, by any means, but I do have some limited experience. My dad is a book binder by trade, and I did skin a rabbit for the 4-H Tanning project years ago. So I did some research and prepared enough lessons for a six-week class covering the uses of leather, how leather is made, leather crafts, and leather care.

I didn't think the seven- and eight-year-olds in my class would want to actually skin live animals, so I cooked up the brilliant idea of using stuffed animals. We tied yarn around the legs of their teddy bears, stuffed dogs, and even a frog, hung them upside-down from a coat peg, and then used scissors to slaughter them. We cut the heads off first, so the "blood" could drain out, and then slit them down the belly and up the legs, cutting out the feet. We scraped the skin with butterknives and then soaked them in a bucket of water, salt, and alum. We stirred the skins with wooden spoons while I explained the process of tanning to them. Then we tacked up the hides on pieces of cardboard and styrofoam for display.

The funny thing was that we had a photographer today at our co-op to take school pictures earlier in the day. She had her equipment set up in my classroom, and was just packing it up when we started whacking off the teddy bears' heads. I think she was just a little bit disturbed at first. She said, "This is a very interesting class. What are you teaching the children?" I explained to her what we were doing, and she just laughed, saying that she had always thought homeschooled children were nice!

I guess we are nice, but Teddy had better look out!

New homeschool group

Today I received the new member packet from our new homeschool group. We've been a part of our old one, GRACE, for the past three and a half years, ever since we moved to Southern Indiana. We've enjoyed that group very much and our children have made many close friends there, but we are going to try a new group this spring. The reason for this is financial--we aren't able to afford the fees for our old co-op group anymore.

Not long after we joined our old group, a family purchased a building and donated it to the co-op. The board voted to use it and pay for the utilities with fundraisers. I felt at the time that it was a bad idea, but being new to the group, I didn't say anything. It was nice having our own building. We could put up our own posters in the classrooms, fix lunch in the kitchen, and not have to worry about our group being in the way at a church's building. It needed a lot of work, and the families all worked together to fix it up. We had yard sales and other fundraisers, solicited donations from philanthropic groups, and made and sold our own lunches to ourselves to raise money. It still wasn't enough. Some of the members even gave their tithes to the building, something I personally had some reservations about.

At the beginning of this school year, the board voted to raise the costs of co-op registration by $100 per family per semester to cover expenses, explaining that it still wasn't going to be enough to cover everything. This is on top of co-op fees. If we kept attending this co-op group, we would be paying close to $200 twice a year just to be able to attend co-op. Erick and I talked about it and decided to look for another group. There is a group in Clay County called FISH, and it's been around since the mid-nineties. It's bigger and cheaper, since it still meets in a church like most homeschool groups do. The fees there are only $20 per family, plus class fees (although even those seem cheaper). It will be a longer drive, but we're going to give it a try and see if the kids like it. If not, we haven't burned any bridges. We'll just have to see how it all works out.

I did it--478 posts moved over to my new blog.

Well, it took nearly two weeks, but I've moved over all 478 posts and close to eight years worth of posts and pictures to my new blog here. I've enjoyed looking over my old posts and tweaking a few things I found along the way. One thing I'm really going to like about this new format is the ability to post videos. Before, I had to post links to Facebook when I wanted to share a video. Now I can upload them directly or embed them. I added the videos to my blog as I went along. I also have an opportunity to be a community blogger for the Greene County Daily World. I interviewed the general manager there for a school assigment, and he asked if I'd like to do that. I most definitely am interested, but I'm not sure whether to use this blog or start a new one. This one is so huge--I'm sure he doesn't want this many posts right off the bat. I'd like to write more, but it's already 10:15 and I haven't started school yet. I really need to get busy on my day!

October 16, 2011--Last post

I can't believe tomorrow is the last day for forums. It just doesn't seem possible. I've spent eleven years of my life here--at times I was absolutely addicted to it. I've moderated here, I've made real life friends here, I've wreaked havoc here, and I've been blessed here. This is the place that I've had to really work out what I've believed on issues. I've had my viewpoints challenged and over the years I've even changed some of my opinions because after doing the research, I found my opinions needed to be adjusted. I've made a fool out of myself a time or two, but despite it all I've always felt this was my home. It's been my homepage, my blog home, and the place that comes up over and over when I Google my own name. I'm going to miss Crosswalk a.k.a. Faith Community Network, which to me is forums. Without forums, I don't have much of a reason to visit Crosswalk anymore. I will always treasure the times I've had here. It's the end of a great era. I'm glad that many of the friends I've made here are friends on Facebook, although I won't be joining the groups at this time. I guess from now on I'll have to argue my opinions by myself on my blog and hope someone out there will set me straight if I'm wrong. So, goodbye forums! You will be missed.

October 9, 2011--Moving to Blogspot

Since these forums are going to be moving to Facebook, I'm going to have to begin the process of moving all of my posts to Blogspot. It might take awhile, but I want to save all of the work I've put into this blog. I don't want to lose it. If anyone wants to follow me, my address is lisaluper.blogspot.com.

September 26, 2011--Blonde

I dyed my hair yesterday before church. It didn't look very good. I was inspired to dye my hair Saturday because I was working in the health and beauty section, putting hair dye on the shelf. I got to looking at it and thinking about it, and thought, "Hmmm, I should go blonde again." I was blonde several years ago and thought it was fun, although I had really messed it up when I tried it myself. Actually, I've messed it up just about every time I've tried dying my own hair, but silly me, I thought I'd try again. I guess I thought maybe my trouble was that I bought the cheap kind and if I bought the $10 box it might work out better than the $3 box.

Like I said, I dyed it right before church. It was so uneven and patchy I borrowed Abby's bandana headband to wear over it. Besides having dark patches, it was also a really bad color of blonde--more of a yellow. Because I didn't want to look like that longer than I had to, I went to the Smart Style in my Walmart that afternoon and got it fixed. I also had it cut while I was at it. Three hours and $70 later, I looked a lot better. My hair is now a very light blonde, and it's short. It's actually shorter in the back than in the front and slopes down at an angle. I really like it. I only have one picture so far that I took on my webcam, because I'm having camera issues again. (One is lost and the flash won't work and the other has a broken battery compartment door.)

So here's the "new me." It looks like my eyes are really dark but they aren't. The contrast isn't quite as dramatic as it looks in the picture, but this is the best I can do on the webcam.

September 22, 2011--Locked out!

Last Saturday night I got locked out of the house. We were getting ready to go on a mini-vacation to stay at a cabin on a lake at the campground for our denomination, and Erick and the kids had been getting ready to go. I had to work until 11:00 p.m. that night. I had lost my set of keys, so I took the spare set. It has the key to the blue van and a couple of house keys on it. During my lunch hour, Erick came to switch vans so he could get the one I had taken cleaned out and packed up for our trip. Since I didn't have my regular set of keys, he went and had a key made for the gold van so I could get home. After all, I'd hate to get stranded at Walmart.

All went well until I got home. Usually, Erick leaves the door unlocked when I work late so I don't have to mess with finding the right key in the dark. That night, he had locked it. I tried to unlock it with my spare keys, and lo and behold, none of them fit. Apparently they were the keys to our last house. I called Erick on my cell phone and got his voice mail. I called the house phone and no one answered. I knocked and rang the doorbell and no one heard me.

Now, most of the time, if I'm not home in a reasonable amount of time, Erick will wake up and notice I'm not in bed and he'll call me. I figured that he's get up soon and notice he had some missed calls and texts and come out and let me in. So I figured I'd wait in the van for him. Since there were blankets packed up for our trip, I made myself a little place to sleep on the back seat and tried to sleep, but I was lonely and had a hard time sleeping. After an hour he still hadn't come out, so I got up and tried calling and knocking and everything again, but to no avail. I went and laid down again. Finally, at nearly two in the morning, I was starting to get desperate. I wanted in and I wanted in now! I decided to break in. I pried the screen off of one of the windows that we keep open a lot and then stood on an upside-down trash can so I could try to pry it open. It wouldn't budge. I found out later that Erick had put the security locks on since we were getting ready to leave on our mini-vacation. I put my mouth up to the crack and screamed and yelled as loud as I could, but not even the dog responded. I went around to Jay's window and threw rocks at it, hoping to wake him up. I finally started body slamming the front door, intending to break it if I had to. I was beginning to imagine that someone had broken in, murdered my family, and then locked the door on the way out. I knew I couldn't go back to sleep with that thought running through my head.

Finally, Jay came down and let me in. I was in tears. I went upstairs and flipped on the light and said to Erick, "What are you doing sleeping?" He jumped up and said, "It's in the middle of the night--what do you think I'm doing?" I was a wreck. He felt terrible about it. It took me awhile to calm down. The next day it seemed a l ot funnier, but boy it sure wasn't funny at the time!

September 16, 2011--Cute things my kids wrote

I'm really trying to get back into blogging more regularly. Sometimes I tend to post things that I would have posted here in the past on Facebook instead, but I guess it doesn't hurt to post them in both places. I posted the following poem I found that Abby had written as a status update, but it won't be on people's news feed forever. I'd like to put it here so I can read it years down the road, too.

Love is good.
I love love.
So love pepal.
Pepal rock.
So dos Jesus.
Jesus rocks.
So remeber Jesus rocks and so do you.
And tell nest time,
Good bey.
--Love you ~Abby

August 31, 2011--Political ad

I got to do something really fun today. I got to be in a campaign commercial! One of our friends is also our State Representative, and he asked if our family would be in his commercial. Erick had to go to work, so he didn't get to be in it, and Jay wouldn't cooperate, so it was just me and the rest of the kids. Basically, it was Bruce Borders and I talking with the kids playing on playground equipment at the park behind us. (I guess Jay thought he was too cool to slide down the slide over and over on cue.) There won't be any audio of us talking, so we just talked about whatever, including discussing jobs we'd had and Tim Hawkins jokes.

It felt a bit awkward, since they had us standing so close together. No personal bubbles for us! The camera people would tell us every so often to nod or smile or look serious, but other than they just wanted us to carry on a conversation with each other. They also called out directions for the kids and how they should play--such as when they needed to down the slide or whether they needed to go faster or slower. After they had filmed for probably a good twenty minutes, they decided they wanted me to take my glasses off so they had to do all the shots over again.

I really enjoyed the experience. The kids said they never knew that people in the background in commercials were told to do things a certain way. It was definitely a learning experience for all of us, and I'm so glad I got to do it. I've always wanted to be in a political ad.

August 13, 201--Praising God! (new job)

Here I haven't posted all summer, and now I'm posting three times in the last week!

We just found out yesterday that Erick got the bank job he'd applied for. We are so excited! It had been three months since he had applied for it, but we just felt like this was the one God had for him. It's perfect. It's in the same town as our church so he can build relationships with people, and the hours are perfect. At a bank, we don't have to worry about it conflicting with church hours, since banks are never open on Sundays or Wednesday nights. It's days, so it won't conflict with my schedule. It's not going to hurt his elbow. It's the right amount of hours--not too many, and not too few. Trying to find a job like this was so difficult, because there are very few businesses in that town. There's an IGA, a Dollar General, an A&W and a couple of gas stations, a few small family owned restaurants, used car lots, and other small businesses, but that's about it. The bank was really the only place that wouldn't require him to work odd shifts. We are just praising God that He opened the doors so Erick could get this job.

August 12, 2011--A wee little political rant

Recently, Congress passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for promises that spending would be cut. Anyone who has paid any attention to the debate knows it was pretty intense. Tossed about were fears that senior citizens would not get their Social Security checks this months and that the government would go into default if those in Washington didn't act quickly. As lawmakers battled it out over whether to raise taxes, cut spending, or both, the political rhetoric became as ugly as I've ever seen it.

A common word I've seen used over and over is "moron." As in, "Those bunch of morons in Washington." Others have described them as juveniles--spoiled children insisting on their own way. The enlightened public seems to think that every elected official is a stupid, lying, crooked moron who doesn't know how to lead and doesn't care about anyone else. And I'm getting a little weary of that attitude.

First of all, this country is in a real pickle. We can blame and point fingers all we want over whose fault that is, but fault-finding doesn't fix the problem. And the real problem is that there might not be a way to fix the problem. There is no shortage of ideas out there, but I'm convinced that all of the proposed fixes would be very painful for the economy. Raise taxes on corporations? That will lead to lay-offs and price hikes. Slash unnecessary government spending? The government now supports so many people, either by entitlements or by employment, that a slash in those services will also lead to more people without work. Say we did away with superfluous government agencies that happen to employ 50,000 people. That's 50,000 people now looking for a job in an economy that is already low on good jobs.

So there's no easy fix. There might not even be a fix at all. We very well could be doomed. That's not very positive, I know, but it could be the truth. The easiest thing to do would be to close our eyes and stick our fingers in our ears and pretend that borrowing trillions of dollars every year that we don't have isn't going to cause any long term problems. We all know it will, but since we don't know exactly what that will look like, denial seems like as plausible an option as the others.

Now, as for the enlightened public who wants to call those in Washington a bunch of morons, I'd like to ask, what solution would you propose? Keep in mind, these elected officials probably at the least graduated from college, which would be a rather difficult feat for a moron. Beyond that, they've had enough intelligence to manage to get elected to a public office. Usually to get elected to a public office, especially as far up there as Congress, you have to demonstrate that you can successfully be in charge of something first. So I think it would be safe to say that most politicians probably do have more intelligence than the average bear (although I think the average bear out there probably isn't all that smart.)

Well, you may ask, if they are so intelligent, then why can't they all agree and come up with a reasonable solution like adults? Because they have very different ideologies. Their unwillingness to compromise isn't because they are stupid or childish. It's because a compromise would be completely worthless to either of them. It's like one group thinks chili soup would solve the worlds problems and the other group thinks key lime pie is the answer. You can't come up with a compromise on something that's so completely different or it's going to taste terrible. Like mixing an acid with a base, you end up with neither, something that's completely worthless.

And it's not like they can take turns trying out their ideologies to see which one actually solves all our country's problems. So then we see the struggle for the chance to implement the ideologies of two highly intelligent, but very different groups.

Anybody can sit back and criticize and say what they feel the solution should be. I guarantee that if any of the people I know who are satisfied with finger pointing and name calling were in the position that our lawmakers are in, they wouldn't fare any better. I don't envy their job at all--it's a difficult and thankless one.

August 8, 2011--Catching up

I know I've been terribly lax on my blog. I haven't posted since May! I'll try to catch up a bit on what I've been doing the last couple of months.

For the most part I've been busy with school. I took three classes over the summer again. I hadn't planned on it, but I looked at my transfer options and realized that I had nearly maxed out how many credits I could transfer over to IU East. There were a few more Gen Ed classes I needed, so I decided to go ahead and do them at Ivy Tech this summer so I could transfer this fall. I had put off the science classes until last, because they all had math prerequisites which I didn't get finished until this spring. So this summer I took a chemistry class, a biology class, and another math class. It about killed me. I am happy to say I still managed A's in all them, but it was a ton of work trying to stay caught up. I'm still unwinding from the stress of it all.

We didn't do very much in 4-H this year. I let the kids decide if they wanted to do it or not, but I told them they were going to have to take initiative to get it done themselves. I didn't have the time to stand over them and make sure they got their work done. Joy didn't do any projects, but the others did one each. Jay is the only one who earned a champion this year. He made a beautiful lamp out of a lighthouse bird feeder and it's at the state fair now. We'll go see it next week.

Erick took a job for a few weeks at Fed Ex as a package handler, but it bothered his elbow too much to continue. We didn't want to undo the progress he's made from his surgery and waste everything he's gone through, so he quit that. School will be starting back up again soon so he can go back to substitute teaching, but what we are really praying for is a job as a teller that he's applied for. It's in the same town as our church and we've felt for quite some time that he should work in the community in which he pastors. He's had two interviews for it, but we don't know yet if he'll get it.

Of course we don't know how long our church is going to survive, either. It's been really hard to keep people. We've had visitors who have actually come back, but they end up going somewhere else where more is happening. When there are so many other good, thriving churches in town, it's hard to keep people in a church with a handful of elderly people. We're not quite ready to give up on it yet, but I don't know what God's plan is for this church at this time.

I can't think of anything else really important to post about. Oh, we did get some new furniture the other day. Well, new to us, anyway. Our couches were all torn up, so we bought some overstuffed leather couches from Craigslist. They are really nice! We also got a couple of dressers. We put our old couches out on the curb and someone else took them who didn't have any furniture and were happy to take our old ones. We were just going to throw them out. I feel kind of bad that someone is so bad off they are happy to take our trash.

I'll try to stay more caught up on my blog. I'm only taking four classes this fall, so it shouldn't be as difficult. They are all journalism-type classes, too, so no more math or science! Woohoo! Well, eventually I will have one more I need to take, but not this semester. I also will need one more semester of Spanish.

Today I'm going to be working on getting together the school schedule for the kids. I've already done Jay's. He's in high school this year. It's hard to believe I have a high schooler now. All of the kids are school age now, from 1st to 9th grade. This week he's up at my mom and dad's house working on their barn. They got a lot of money when my great-grandpa died and so they are doing a lot of remodeling. They are paying him $7.50 an hour to re-side the barn, which is a pretty good deal for a 14 year old.

I guess I'll go for now. I know this is a jumbled mess of thoughts, but at least I finally got around to posting.

May 22, 2011--Puerto Rican Vacation

This year, on May 29th, Erick and I will celebrate our 15th anniversary. To celebrate, we went on a four-day, three night stay vacation in Puerto Rico. I have Puerto Rican ancestors, so I've always wanted to visit. Erick went on a missions trip there ten years ago, but I didn't get to go.

We planned our trip so we would leave right after District Council. We were gone for a total of a week, so my parents watched the kids for the first half and Erick's family watched them for the other half. We flew out on Wednesday from Indianapolis and came back on Saturday.

The hotel we reserved was in Ponce, named for Ponce de Leon. We got lost every time we tried to get back to our hotel, which was downtown. The map and directions we had printed out from Google Maps wasn't even close. We ended up having to call the hotel and have the receptionist help us get there. The biggest problem was the lack of signs. There were very few street signs, and the ones they had were hard to see. Most of them (we finally discovered) were actually on the sides of the buildings. It took me awhile to remember that "calle" is "street" in Spanish, so that didn't help, either. Most of the streets were one-way, and several of the streets downtown were blocked off for some sort of festival. And the few street signs that they actually had no one even followed. Most intersections did not have a stop sign--people just went whenever they found a spot. It was crazy. Here is a picture of our hotel, and also a picture of Ponce taken from one of the balconies in our room.

On Thursday we went to see the Camuy cavern. There is a 4-lane highway from Ponce up to the cavern, but it isn't quite finished. There was maybe 25 miles through the mountains and rain forest that was little more than a one-land road. It was so curvy it made the roads in West Virginia look straight! When semis came around the bend, they would lay on the horn so other cars would know they were coming. We managed to get lost in one of the towns we went through, too. It probably took us an hour and a half to go 25 miles. The cavern was amazing. The tour guide, like most Puerto Ricans, was bilingual. Spanish and English are both the official languages of Puerto Rico, and most people can speak them both but primarily speak Spanish. When we were in the rural parts, people assumed we spoke Spanish and would speak to us in Spanish. In San Juan and the more touristy areas, people would assume we spoke English.

Here are a couple of pictures of the cavern:

That evening we went to Old San Juan. Again, we got lost, but we finally found the fort. We didn't get to go in, because it had closed before we found it, but we did walk around the outside of the old wall that used to completely surround Old San Juan. I discovered that there are hundreds of cats living in the rocks by the ocean around the wall. They all seem healthy looking and don't seem to be mean. Every few yards there was another cat, sunning itself on the rocks, sleeping on the grass, or wandering around on the path. It seems that Puerto Ricans are a lot more tolerant of animals being around than we are around here. It was not uncommon to see horses wandering down the side of the road, or cats begging food at an outdoor restaurant. Cattle would graze by the highway without a fence. I wondered how they knew not to get on the road. The outdoors were almost a part of the indoors, actually. It's not unusual to see architecture with open courtyards. Even at our hotel, the pool area was out in the open. There were TVs on the walls, which I don't know how they keep from getting wet when it rains (which it does pretty much every day).

Here are some of the pictures of the Old San Juan Fort and the cats that live by it.

This next picture shows something else interesting about the walls by the fort. If you look closely at the bushes on the top, you can see kites stuck in the branches. There are dozens of stuck kites along the edges of the fort. I guess people must think flying kites there is a good idea. Maybe they see the stuck kites and think, "Kite flying! What a great idea!"

Here is the front of the fort. Yes, that's a kite string in the grass in the foreground of the picture. I guess people like to fly kites on this side of the fort, too.

On Friday, we went to the beach in Ponce, but it was too rocky to swim. So we watched sand crabs crawl in and out of their holes and played in the sand. We took some pictures of some really weird trees and then made a sandcastle of sorts.

We went back to our hotel to change after that, since we had gotten all wet and sandy. We took a walk around town and got some pictures. Here are some of the sights from near our hotel. The first is a mango tree that we saw from our balcony. We weren't sure what it was at first, because I didn't know that mangoes were purple.

So we decided to walk to it and get a closer look. Underneath it were lots of mangoes that fell to the ground and smashed open. It was odd seeing all that expensive fruit going to waste on the ground.

We also saw this cool sand art. (Although Erick and I agreed that our sand art at the beach was just as good!)

This picture is of the old Ponce fire station. It is now a museum. This is one of the few structures that we saw that was made out of wood. Most of the buildings are brightly painted cement.

After we walked around Ponce for awhile, we decided to find a better swimming beach. We drove to a place called Baqueron on the Southwest side of the island and went swimming. It was sprinkling, but we swam anyway. There were a ton of mosquitoes there, though. They didn't bother us in the water, but when we got out they attacked. We ran to our car and got in, soaking wet and still in our bathing suits, and used our beach towels to smash all the mosquitoes that followed us into the car. Then we drove back to Ponce, stopping on the way to eat at a seafood restaurant by the ocean. I just pulled my jeans on over my bathing suit, but we didn't care that we were soaked. I ordered mofongo with red snapper, made from mashed plantains. It was delicious!



May 3, 2011-Thoughts on Osama Bin Ladin's death

A couple of days ago, Osama Bin Laden, mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, was killed. Since then I've followed the news and read the comments of dozens of people regarding his death. I have not commented myself, because I hadn't really sorted out what I was feeling. My emotions have been so mixed about this: Disbelief--could this really have happened, now after all this time? Relief--that we've finally caught the killer and brought him to justice. Sadness--because I know where he is now, and what remorse he must be feeling too late. Pride--that the military was smart enough to capture him. All together it adds into almost an emotional numbness that refuses to feel any one emotion very strongly.

I was listening to Glenn Beck yesterday in my car, and he replayed a montage of sound clips from 9/11 that brought back all of the emotions from ten years ago. I was weeping by the time I reached work. The thought that I had then was that the death of one man cannot make up for all the carnage he caused. Only God can truly bring justice.

Today, most of the comments I have been reading for others are berating others for posting their own thoughts. It seems everyone wants to tell everyone else how they should or should not be feeling. I think that all of those feelings--joy, sorrow, disbelief, apathy, patriotism--have their places. I feel them all in me, and I can understand why those beliefs would be reflected in the posts of other people. There's no right or wrong way to feel about this. Let's just allow people to work through their own emotional mix on this, without casting judgment on those emotions.

April 21, 2011--Passover

Sunday night we went up to my parents' church for Passover. I know I've posted here before about it, but I just wanted to post a few of my favorite pictures.

We also did a really nice dance. My sister choreographed it and recorded it and posted it on Facebook so the kids and I could learn it before we got there. It was really different. We had three boys in the dance (my brother, my son, and my sister's boyfriend) who at one point danced in the middle in a circle going the opposite way from everyone else. There were other girls from my family's church in the dance, too. Altogether, I think there were about fifteen dancers. I don't have a picture of the dance, but I do have a video. I don't have a way to post it here, * but if you are my Facebook friend it's on my profile.

  *(On this new blog, I can actually post it, so here it is!)

April 16, 2011--My camera

Guess what. The kids finally found my camera. I knew that if we broke down and bought another one, it would turn up.

April 16, 2011--Shadow and Joy's spa party

I guess I should update my blog. It actually went to the second page!

We did get a dog. He's a border terrier, beagle mix and his name is Shadow. He's about two years old and we bought him from the shelter. He's hyper and loves to play, and he's housebroken (although he will have an accident if someone doesn't take him out.) He's a sweet little dog and a lot of fun. He loves to go hiking with us. Here is the picture we took of him on the way home from the shelter. It was on the cell phone camera and he was moving a lot, so it's kind of blurry.

I think part of the reason I haven't blogged much is because I lost my camera. We've looked everywhere for it. I finally did break down and get a new one a couple of days ago.

Erick's surgery went well and he's pretty much recovered from it already. He hasn't been released to go back from work, as he has to do strengthening exercises and everything with it still, but he's out of his sling and braces and all that stuff. Yesterday he had a wisdom tooth pulled, so now he's got to recover from that.

In other news, I got promoted at work to CSM. That's short for Customer Service Manager. I'll be one of the people at front with the clipboards making sure the cashiers are all getting their breaks on time, giving them their change orders, helping them with overrides and things like that. I got a .90 cent raise and I'll be starting training in about a week, I think. It was official yesterday. I was surprised to get the job, actually, because the other two who interviewed both had experience and I didn't.

Three days ago, Joy had her thirteenth birthday. It doesn't seem possible that I am the mother of two teenagers now. She had a spa party and invited a bunch of girls over. We made a foot scrub from a recipe I found online with coconut milk, corn meal, olive oil, honey, espom salts, and rosemary. We bought a tube of cucumber clay mask and gave everyone facials. We also let everyone give themselves manicures, pedicures, and facials. We decorated the livingroom to look like a spa by draping everything with sheets, decorating with flowers and candles, and playing soothing music with lots of ocean sounds in the background. Everyone had a lot of fun. Here are some of the pictures we took (with my new camera!)

March 9, 2011--Surgery, pets, and more

Last Wednesday Erick had surgery on his right elbow to repair the tendons he has damaged in his years of swinging a hammer. From what I understand, they removed the tendon from the bone, cut off the part with the scar tissue, and then roughed the bone up so the tendon would reattach itself. They wrapped up his arm and put it in a sling. It's not a cast, but it's big enough it might as well be. He's starting to get used to having to use his left hand, but it's still tricky for him. The kids have really been helping out a lot--cooking meals, cleaning, etc. I had midterms this last week on top of that, so I've been busy with schoolwork and haven't been able to help out much, either. Then, over the last couple of days, I left for the Ministry's Wives Retreat (which was wonderful and refreshing!) so the kids still had to do everything.

So today we're giving the kids a day off. They deserve it for all the help they've been. I'm on spring break now, so I'm not so busy. Erick isn't working right now (except for at the church) because of his surgery, so he's here to help out as much as he can. We are also going to get the kids something they've been wanting for a long time--a pet. Today we're going to go visit the human society and see what they have available. I don't know if we'll be able to bring home one today or not, but we hope so. We'd like to find a small house dog. We want one that's a little older and has grown out of the puppy stage, and that's already housebroken. We've been looking online, but it's really hard to tell much from a picture, so we're going to head out here soon and go see what they have.

February 28, 2011--Vehicle list, reposted

I decided to repost and update the list of all of the vehicles we have ever owned, now that Erick is 33 and he's always managed to own one vehicle for every year he's been alive. (He said it's a personal goal of his.)

$100--Chevy Citation, ’82, red and rust
$50--’84 Renault Alliance, red
$100--’72 Ford pick-up, blue
$0--Tan Dodge D50 with wooden homemade bed, ’82 or ‘84 (This had an unique feature--the passenger side door didn't close right. We nearly lost our chaperone a few times when we were out courting.)
$500--’79 gold Chevy pickup
$100 plus trade--’79 White Caprice (This is the car we had when we got married)
$1000--’87 Chevy S10, 2 tone gray
$0--Blue Chevette, ‘88 (This is the car we had when Jay was born)
$1000--Gray Ford Tempo, ’87 (first loan)
$500--’76 Chevy Crew Cab, red
$3000--’87 Oldsmobile, Delta 88, blue (second loan) We gave this one to Erick's sister after she helped us for six weeks when Erick was in the hospital.
$100--plus trade (he traded the red Chevy Crew Cab--one of the worst deals we ever made!) 78 Ford F100, sea green
$0--Brown Chevy Van, ’87 (we never actually drove this one--Dad gave it to us, but we never came and got it so he gave it to someone else.)
$50--Red Dodge with no engine, ’84 or ‘85 (Erick tried and tried to fix it but finally gave up.)
$0--Pontiac Parnesian? (We fixed it up and gave it to a single mother who needed a car.)
$500--Ford Ranger, ’84, black
$800--Burgandy Chevy Van that we got in Decatar, ‘87
$500--Tan Dodge Van from Erick's parents, ‘86. (I'm not sure if we actually paid them for it, though. I think we finally just gave it back to them because we couldn't come up with the $500.)
$1000--White Jeep Wagoneer, 4X4, ’79, (The back window kept falling out. He bought this when he had his newspaper route.)
$0--’77 Ford F150 Extended Cab, Long bed, bad blue and black paint job.
$0--Brown ’75 Ford Crew Cab. This was given to us by a friend, but he couldn't find the title. Erick parked it down by his Mom and Dad's house before we moved to Missouri, and Erick’s family eventually got tired of having it around and got rid of it.
$8500--’98 gold Ford Windstar. Third and biggest loan. Sold it for way too little. First vehicle we bought when we moved to Missouri. We wished we would have kept it. It was nice.
$1200--’87 Mazda 323, gold, dependable until the wheel fell off.
$2200--’87 Suburban, blue. This is what we bought for the family when we sold the Winstar.
$1000--'88 Ford Ranger. This was his grandpa's truck. I just added this in because we forgot to list it earlier.
$500--’89 Pontiac Safari Station Wagon, rust in abundance.
$1000--’94 blue Buick Skylark. Died the day we moved.
$0--Blue ’84 Ford Van, given to us by a homeschool family.
$1650--Mecury Grand Marquis, white, ‘92
$800--Dodge Ram B150, white, ‘94
$4200--Dodge Grand Caravan, blue, 2004. We still own this one and are still driving it. It seats eight. We paid it off, the transmission went out, we took out another loan to put a new transmission in, and just recently paid it off again.
$2600--Ford Ranger, gold, 2000. Erick wrecked this truck after owning it for not even a year. Someone rear-ended him.
$4250--Dodge Dakota, maroon, 2001. Paid for this truck with the insurance money from Erick's wreck. And now he's about to trade this one even for number 32--
Chrysler Town and Country mini van, gold, '99.

We also have a gold Honda Goldwing '85 that I don't know if I should include in this list or not. It's not running and he put in a fence in exchange for it. It's sort of a vehicle, although it's of the two-wheeled variety. If I count that one then it makes 34 vehicles that my husband has owned.

So now that makes 33 vehicles not counting the motorcycle! I guess that means he can't buy one when he's 34.

February 11, 2011--Update

Erick didn't get the chaplaincy job. He was the second choice, but they hired a retired minister who had a certification that Erick didn't have. They did say they really liked Erick and requested to keep his information in case the first guy didn't work out. In the meantime, he's thinking of going ahead and getting the surgery on his elbow, now that it looks like he'll have the time to recover. Workman's Comp should pay for the surgery and give him money to live on while he's doing that, and then we can decide what to do next.

I also wanted to share a kind of amusing story from work. I was in the break room, and one of my co-workers said, "Well, Lisa, I think I'm going to buy me a Dr. Pepper. I usually get Coke, but my dentist said I need to stop drinking them. They have too much sugar and they are giving me cavities. Those Cokes--they are really bad for you!"

I said, "Okay, but Dr. Pepper has sugar in it, too."

He stopped and looked at me in amazement. "Really?" he said. Then he sighed, walked back to the other machine, and said, "I guess I'll just get the Coke then."



True story.

February 3, 2011--Snow storm

We had a huge ice storm blow through the last couple of days. At work on Monday, it was crazy busy. It was like Black Friday--everyone was in stocking up on food, flashlights, candles, blankets, fire logs, etc. They asked me to stay longer, and I could only stay an extra hour because I was supposed to have had class that night. When I got home, though, I found that my Monday night class had been cancelled. We decided that we'd better go back to Walmart and buy a few things ourselves. We wanted to get an oil lamp, but they were out, so we got some candles. We also bought the last box of fire logs, since we didn't have any firewood for our fireplace left. It was the last box.

It started raining and freezing that night. By morning we had a thin coating of ice on everything, but it wasn't very bad yet. I was scheduled to work 6:30 to 11 Tuesday evening, but by 4:00 it was freezing rain again. I called into work because the roads were just a sheet of ice. Two of the neighbor kids spent the night, since their parents were worried about the house getting too cold if their power went out and since we had a fireplace. When the power did go out, one family came over for awhile, but after an hour and a half they went back home. We stayed nice and cozy with our fireplace. It was kind of fun, all being in the same room together with the fireplace and candles.

That night the power blinked off and on a couple of times, but it stayed on finally. Yesterday they salted down the main roads enough and they were dry, so I was able to go to work. It was still a little slow at work, but we had lots of people calling the service desk asking if we had kerosene heaters. There are still thousands of people in the area without power, so we feel very blessed to have power.

Erick hasn't worked much this week, since school has been cancelled almost every day. He's been enjoying substitute teaching. He has an interview next Tuesday for a chaplaincy position at the hospital. Please pray with us about this. This would be a wonderful opportunity. He's one of three that they are considering--he actually sent in his resume for that before Christmas on a whim, and we hadn't heard anything so we had pretty much forgotten about it. Pray for God's will to be done.

January 13, 2011--Tendonitis

So lately, we've been looking at a transition in our lives, in Erick's work. He's been working construction for the past year and a half, and his elbows have been bothering him for several months now. For the last few months we've also really felt that we need to find a way to be more involved in the community in which we are pastoring. One of the options we'd been thinking seriously about was having Erick quit his construction job and get a job at one of the small businesses in town. Well, it seems like God has been nudging us along in that direction. Recently, he was laid off temporarily from his job because they ran out of work. So he put in an application to be a substitute teacher at the schools up in that area. The kids were rather shocked that he'd want to teach at a public school. Today he received his substitute teacher's license, so the way is clear for that. He's still looking at other jobs, though, such as working at the IGA or Dollar General. He really needs to be more careful with his elbow. The doctor is talking about surgery if it doesn't get any better. He has another appointment in a month and they will decide then if he should get surgery or not. In the meantime, he's laid off anyway so maybe this will be a good time for him to heal, if he can restrain from doing things like shoveling snow and chopping firewood for awhile.

In other news, I started back to school again this week. I have one class this semester I have to take on campus--Fundamentals of Algebra. I didn't do so well on the COMPASS entrance exam on the algebra part. I had forgotten everything I'd learned in high school about algebra, so just selected random questions. It didn't help that it was the last part of the COMPASS exam and that I'd been there for four hours already, not to mention I had a headache and was hungry because I hadn't eaten lunch. I did really well on the English portions and even pretty good on general math, just not algebra. So I have to take this class before I can take college level math courses.

Anyway, besides co-op classes and a few other similar type things, this was really my first time in a brick-and-mortal school classroom. As you all know, I've been homeschooled all my life. So I was interested to see what it would be like. All I can say is I hope that things get more interesting as the class goes along, because I felt like I had wasted two and a half hours of my life. It took the teacher an hour and a half to explain the syllabus! I could have read it myself in five minutes. In fact, I could have learned everything that we did that night by myself in about ten minutes. It's going to be a bit different not being able to do this at my own pace.

So that's what's been going on lately with me. I haven't had very many hours at work because it's always slow after the holidays. They have too many cashiers and not enough hours to go around. Oh, and I also found out that my great-grandpa passed away today. He was ninety-five years old this last Christmas.

December 29, 2010--An experience at work

Yesterday was an interesting day at work, to say the least. Most of my customers are really wonderful, and although I've had a handful of rude ones, it was nothing I couldn't ignore. Until yesterday.

A customer was purchasing beer, and I asked to see his ID. He held out his wallet to me, so I could see his driver's license through the little plastic window. I asked him to please take it out of the wallet for me. It's store policy, although not everyone at our store follows it. I do, because it's really impossible to inspect it to see if it's valid without holding it. I'm also near-sighted and having it close to my face helps. We're not supposed to be holding customers' billfolds either, lest they accuse us of stealing from it.

I've had some customers be irritated that they had to take it out, but they always comply. This man started to, and then he said, "No! You can read it through the plastic! That's what it's there for--no one else ever asks me to take it out!" Of course, that wasn't quite the way he said it. He used profanity every other word. I informed him it was store policy, and he finally took it out and practically threw it at me. He continued to cuss me out, calling me every name under the sun. There was a small hat behind the beer, and I wasn't sure if it was part of his order or the man's behind him, so I asked if it was his, too. "Of course it is, you (insert bad word here) idiot! That's why it's up there!" he replied. Then he threw it at me and I had to pick it up off the floor.

At that point I had had enough. I told him that he couldn't talk to me that way. He yelled at me and said that was the way he talked and that I'd better get used to it. I told him that next time, he needed to go through someone else's line.

After he left, I was shaking. I turned my light off and talked to a CSM to make sure I wasn't going to get in trouble for telling off a customer. She said no, I wasn't going to get in trouble, that I did fine. In fact she said that customers are not allowed to abuse the cashiers, and that if it happens again to refuse the sale and call management and they would kick him out of the store. I wish I had know that I could have done that, because I probably would have!