Catching up on a Sunday....

Well, what a week! There is so much to get done when you try to declutter, have a garage sale, feed children, and sleep! I haven't finished the garage sale stuff....there is so much more to do. I am out of hangers! I still have more to put in from my home. I vacillate between having certain people in need come and "shop" through my stuff and take what they need as a blessing, to having anyone from my church come look and take what they need, to having the sale and using the money to fund a vacation or possibly use it to fund a trip to see a very distinquished doctor in the field of microcephaly to find out what his opinion on Rachel is. This doctor is in Chicago, and is probably very hard to get in to see. What to do??? I am waiting on God's direction, and we still have time before we get all the enormous tables.

I can't believe how much I allowed myself and my family to wallow in. There has to be some psycosis involved as to why I bought soooo much stuff, and then couldn't figure out what to do with it. It's almost as if I enjoyed being surrounded by stuff. It was a shelter to protect me from the outside world, partly, but then I do think there is something to only knowing where an item is when it's all over the place. Brilliant people are often cluttered people. You clean their space, and they can't function. They probably didn't have 8 children though, so I can't use that excuse.

We are getting ready for summer. I want to go camping for the first time in my life. I have never been! Can you believe that? I have either been a working mom with no time, or pregnant, in which case I just didn't feel like camping. Or I had a new baby that just didn't seem like the camping type yet. Or the baby who was crawling everywhere, and didn't like to be held, so I thought said children would be eaten by a snake or fall into a river somewhere. But now!!!! I have zero excuses to use, and we WILL BE GOING CAMPING! Come hell or high water. My children are so excited. We have had everything one could possibly need to camp forever, in anticipation of this. So, now is the time. We will probably be coordinating this with another family in our town, who enjoys noisy children, and likes us. That in itself is odd. We aren't real sought out people around here. People either think we are weird, or contagious. LOL!

I really need to figure out what I am going to do about some birthday parties that certain people are wanting. I let them have a cake and punch at the church with their respective youth/children groups, but that doesn't seem to suffice. Are they greedy and only want presents, or do they just enjoy a smaller gathering? I hope it's the latter, because the former makes me sound like an awful mother. I told myself that when Ashley turned 13, that would be it for the parties, but she is saddened by that idea. I would LOVE to have the kind of party the Jeub family has. A big birthday bash for the whole family, once a year. Cook food for everyone, and just have a big shindig. Except my house would not fit that many people, and what are the logistics of presents? Do you just get one from someone who is around your age? What if they all have the same friends? Surely you dont expect one for each kid from a guest? I just know it would be so much easier to do it all at once, and get it over with. Huge parties are fun....Maybe soon I will start to implement something like it.

We are now the "proud" owners of a handicapped placard for our vehicles. It will make things easier the bigger Rachel gets, being closer to stores and doctors offices, but it will feel corny with all the kiddos piling out of this huge van in the handicapped stalls. I hope people are kind and not stare or ask us which one is the disabled person. That would be tacky and put my children in an embarrassing position.

It's funny, but in closing I just thought of this....Yesterday, my children did their paper routes, and saw a couple of garage sales they wanted to go to. I have taught my children to be frugal and look for good deals, and now we are really concentrating on what we NEED instead of just getting all the good stuff. Lord, I don't want them to be like me when they get out on their own. Anywho....this one they went to had a big sign out front that said "Dave Ramsey made us have this yard sale" Isn't that funny? Well, maybe not if you haven't taken Financial Peace, but to those who know....he advocates selling everything that isn't breathing to get rid of your debt. Don't buy stuff just because...and stay away from credit cards. They kill you!!!! It seems everyone we meet lately is taking Financial Peace. It's a great course, but one that will probably need a repeat time to soak it all in.

Love you Robyn, and JoAnn, and MamaArcher( Kristine) and Jane. If you have read this far, your good friends.

Oh, oh!! One more thing! We got that awesome camera I think I talked about before. Did I talk about a camera? I hope so. Anyway, a customer of my husbands has this awesome Canon 30D SLR camera and he wanted Tony to figure out how to use it and teach him. Well, Tony brought it home and I promptly fell in love with it. He figured out some stuff and took it back. Well the guy said it was too complex, and wondered if we wanted to buy it, and he would buy something else. We asked how much? Its about a 1200.00 dollar camera! He wanted us to make an offer. We prayed and each of us came up with 500.00. We told him, and he agreed. But in the meantime, he wanted to be able to use it for family gatherings until his new one came in. So we were borrowing it for free until then. One day he called and said he had been thinking about the camera and how much it was worth, and would we reconsider? He wanted 650.00 We said we would think about it, and came to the conclusion that we were obviously told by God to spend 500.00 and nothing else. I guess Tony told him that it was above our budget, and that we were sorry. 2 weeks pass and he calls us and tells us that he will sell it for the original price. Either God worked on him to hold to his word, or he just really wanted to sell it for this new one. Either way, we have a blessing! This camera is so awesome!!!! I am usually such a penny pincher that it was a huge deal for me to agree to. However, I love taking pictures of my children, so they are worth it. This is a camera I have seen professionals use, so woohoo!!