Here I sit in my new house, surrounded by plenty of boxes yet. John got the Internet hooked up late last night. I was too tired to try to get on. We would have had it up sooner but the house has no grounded outlets and we had to wait until we bought some grounded adapters for the place. I think I am REALLY going to like it here. We have tons to do yet and it will probably be a month before I'm entirely settled. I've spent the past few days tearing 1970s shelf paper out of the cupboards, washing them down and relining them with blue shelf liners. I still have quite a few to go.

The landlord of our old apartment was "extremely impressed" at how well we cleaned up the apartment. I blame it on being raised in the military where you did not get to clear quarters unless you left it spotless. Unfortunately, I bust my butt cleaning up the place I'm moving out of and then I usually end up having to bust it moving into the new place as well. This is no exception as there are cupboards and closets that still contain items from the previous owner. After his death, his kids have worked on getting things cleaned up and out, but there are lots of things still here. My covered porch is full of furniture they are going to be picking up. The garage is still full of stuff too, so much that we can't yet park in it. They promise to have it cleaned out by winter so we can park in there to keep the snow off the vehicle. Good enough for me.

What I really love about this house is the bathroom. They cleaned it up really nicely and painted it with a lovely lavender paint for us. It looks fantastic with my Raphael angel shower curtain and my tan and purple towels.

I will post pictures once we get everything in it's proper place, I promise. I just don't know how long it will be before everything finds it's proper place, especially with work picking up so heavy. I have three interviews to do on Monday. Now that we are opening another store, I really need to hire at least two more people, preferrably three.

I do like my new Internet. We went with cable when we moved. We were on fiber optic and we thought that was fast (at least it was faster than DSL) but now we have an even faster connection. Woohoo!!!

Love and miss you all. I need to go prepare for Sunday school. The other Sunday school teacher and his pianist wife quit the church last night. I should've left weeks ago, but something keeps holding me here. I don't know what it is, but I keep feeling like I just cannot leave yet. So, I'm teaching Sunday school every Sunday now AND doing the bulletin again. I loved doing the bulletin, but I'm not sure I want these responsibilities at this time. We shall see if we have anyone show up for Sunday school this coming week. There have been three faithful attendees of Sunday school - the two who just quit and myself. Others come on and off, but have been more off lately. I think I'll let this Sunday be my sign if I should move on. If no one shows up for Sunday school, if I am the sole person there, then it will be my sign that it's time to find another church. If God lays it on the hearts of others to come to Sunday school, I'll trust that he still has a purpose for me in this little congregation.

The computer will probably be coming down either tonight or tomorrow morning. I thought I'd post a quick one before it does.

It's moving weekend. The house is full of boxes but there are still quite a few more that need packing. I'm running out of boxes. I may have to run to the grocery store and hope they still have some they haven't crushed. I gave up packing up the old man's stuff for now. I have to be out of this house by midnight Monday. John keeps telling me if we don't get everything packed by the time the movers come tomorrow it will be alright, so long as they get the big stuff out. We can move little stuff in our Jimmy. I just feel like I've hit the deadline. The movers come tomorrow. The carpet cleaner will be here at 8 a.m. Monday. I have to get the carpets vacuumed sometime between the movers getting furniture out and the carpet cleaner arriving.

I also noticed the blinds seriously need cleaning. I have no idea how to clean them, other than maybe soak them in hot, soapy bleach water in the bathtub.

Hope everyone has a great weekend. I hope mine doesn' t kill me. I just need to keep focused on how awesome it will be in that new (old) house. It has such warmth and charm to it.

Until next week....

I sit surrounded by boxes, but not nearly enough. We've packed a lot up but are not nearly finished. I should be packing more but I am so tired and know I just need to go to bed.

The cable guy came (really cute one this time) and ran our cables today. He laughed at John and I as we argued (ahem, discussed) where we were going to have it run in the bedroom. It's hard to tell before I have my furniture in place to know what I want to do. He comes back on Friday to test things out. We are supposed to bring our little TV and a laptop so he can make sure all the connections are working properly.

I'll be getting a new e-mail address next week as I once again switch carriers. I probably should just go out and get a Hotmail account and use it so it won't matter when I switch carriers, but you get so much junk mail with those free accounts. Maybe I'll set up a personal e-mail address through the store.

Speaking of stores, we will be opening another store in another town next month. I am very excited about this and hope and pray I can find the right help to pull this off. A representative from the security company is coming tomorrow to give us a quote on what it will cost to re-activate the system that's already in place at the new store. I'm guessing they are going to come up with some lame excuse to have to install a new one, but I'm not sure. From what I've seen about ADT, the equipment is pretty cheap to get installed. It's the monitoring service that you pay for - over $400 a year for the basic stuff. But then I think that's only $30 a month.

I'm off to bed. Hopefully I'll get a good night's rest, but I'm dealing with acid reflux at the moment and don't know how long it will take for the medicine to kick in. I should have known better than to eat Mexican for supper after 7 p.m.

Definitely feeling much better today. The foot and knee are barely hurting at all now.

Today we had a great time acting like the owners of the business instead of like employees. We went in to work, paid some bills, then went out of town to look at some retail locations elsewhere. We came back, relieved the employee for lunch, then went to lunch ourselves with John's parents. It was extremely nice. Then I came back to work and sold about $4,000 worth of computer equipment to someone. WooHoo!!!

I have to work tomorrow. It's the first and that's always a busy time with the cell phone stuff at work. There are two clerks tomorrow where I have only been having one on Saturdays. We are growing to the point of needing two most Saturdays, but particularly the first Saturday of the month.

Then it's a 3-day weekend for the store. We are all looking forward to it. John expects us to get caught up on some things and finish a software conversion we've been working on for months. I am hoping to get most of the packing finished up here at the apartment. I still have a little more to do at the house, too, in helping clean out the previous owner's possessions. One thing I am going to do for sure is sleep as late as I want on Monday and Tuesday. Sunday I have to teach Sunday School, so no lazy mornings there, but I'm going to have at least one laaaaazzzy morning this week.

For those of you heading out of town for a long weekend, please stay safe. I offer the same for those of you staying in town for a long weekend, too. Fireworks and fire crackers are dangerous. Use caution.

You Can Hang With the Guys and the Girls

You've struck a good balance between girlie and laid back. You can keep it casual but when you dress up, you are as girly as the next girl.

The new house is coming along. I went by yesterday to help the owners move some of the patron's stuff out of the cupboards. I only got a box and a half packed before I ran out of newspaper.

Tonight, I'm worn out. I woke up sore this morning. I practically crawled to the bathroom. I already have one bum ankle that gives me fits in the morning and with having sprained the other, it was definitely tough to walk. I think I twisted the right knee, too, so getting up and down the stairs to the apartment is a booger. Tonight, I decided to stay put instead of going down to the house and helping pack more. I'll get a couple more boxes done here instead.

Looks like I'll be working over the long weekend instead of getting to work on moving like I thought. John has determined that we should get caught up where we are behind this weekend. He is going to be generous enough to allow me to sleep in as late as I want on Monday and Tuesday. He figures I'll be up by 7 a.m. I figure I'm going to try to stay in bed until 9 a.m.

We have some really great potential to expand our business that we'll be looking into this weekend, too. Keep us in your prayers over this. I can't say what it is just yet, but it's a very exciting prospect.

New house, new opportunity for the business, I can't help but be excited.

I am a klutz. My husband says I cannot talk and walk at the same time. This morning, I was hurrying to the back of the store for something, and fell down the two little risers that separate the very back of the store from the rest. My ankle just turned and I went down hard. I thought I had broken my other ankle this time.

John, bless his heart, comes running to me asking me if it's the same ankle, gently looks at my ankle and tells me it looks like I just bruised it good. I ask if we should wrap it and he hurries for the first aid kit, cussing because it's in such an inconvenient location in the break room. There is not Ace bangade in it, and by this time I'm back on my feet. It hurts but is not unbearable. I check out my knee on my other leg and see that I took the skin clean off the patella. Nice big round circle of angry red flesh. John insists that I should put a bandage on it so my pants don't keep irritating it during the day. He digs out the bandage and the tape, and HANDS IT TO ME. Here I thought he was being all sweet and taking care of me - I was expecting him to bandage my poor knee. He was acting all sweet up to that point and he had to go and ruin it. LOL.

This happened a few hours ago. I just had to go dig some aspirin out of the cabinet because it's starting to really hurt on the top side of my foot now. Not really swelling up or anything, not even really showing any bruising yet, but man is it painful. Right after it happened I would have given the pain a 4 or 5, but now I'm saying it's a 7 or 8.

I got to be an expert at the number system for pain over the past 5 years with the cancer appointments. They always ask if you are feeling any pain and if so what number would you give it with a 0 being no pain and a 10 being pain that would bring you to tears.

As an adult, I can only remember once ever being in so much physical pain it would bring me to tears. I've been close, but only once did I hurt so badly I cried, and that was when I had a bad stomach bug one time with cramps that literally had me curled up in a ball. Not even my broken ankle had me in tears. Of course, they gave me morphine before the shock wore off.

I can remember a LOT more time I was in emotional pain to the point of bawling.

Back to work and enough whining.

Just got back from an ice cream social at the historical society. Tonight we were entertained by a bluegrass band called Banjoy. They were fantastic. If ever you are in the Midwest and you get to hear Banjoy play, go see them. I can't stop gushing over how fantastic they were. We got lots of compliments on how good they were. They sang some bluegrass, they sang some gospel, both original stuff and songs that everyone knew. Seriously, listen to them if you get a chance.

Today we celebrate 14 years as husband and wife.

During those years, we’ve been through some wonderful highs and some dreadful lows.

We’ve each been caregivers to the other as we battled life-threatening diseases. We have made each other laugh, and we’ve made each other cry.We have definitely put our wedding vows to the test – for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.

I want you to know, John, that I would not trade any of it, not a minute, if it meant I had to trade you with it. God has truly blessed me with you as my husband. While we sometimes seem like we are completely different from each other, those differences complete me.

Thank you for being my lover, my friend, my partner, my soul mate, till death do us part. I love you.

We had a nice Father's Day around here today. Daughter #2 called at 6 a.m. to wish her father a happy Father's Day. She was on break at work (overnight job) and has been calling me around that time a lot since I am normally up at that hour during the week. Daughter #1 called this afternoon while I was taking a nap. We are still waiting to hear from the son.

I went to church where we had a wonderful Sunday School lesson about worry and a fantastic sermon about God's rag-tag army. It talked about how we have to know hurt in order to be able to help others who are hurting, and referred to some scripture in Hebrews that said as much. Knowing what it's like to have fallen and to be broken helps us to witness to others in those positions. Our pains may be different, but it's still pain.

The funny thing is (if you can call it funny) is that the person who gave the sermon is the drunken pastor the church fired a little over a year ago. He supposedly is cleaned up now, going to AA and trying to fix his life. Some people in church are talking about maybe bringing him back permanently again. I am not in favor of this. I do think he is on his way to recovery, and I do believe in forgiveness, but I just don't think he should be given back his old job. If they want to use him for pulpit supply occassionaly, I guess I can live with that. He does give extremely good sermons when he's sober. I just question whether he has his life back together enough to lead a congregation again. I believe if we hold him up to the qualifications laid out in Titus and Timothy, he is not. But enough of that...

I came home from church to fix lunch for my in-laws. I bought some stuffed pork chops and invited them over for a Father's Day lunch. We had a nice lettuce salad, pork chops, green beans, and angel food cake with strawberries for dessert. My MIL doesn't cook hardly at all anymore, so it was a treat to them to have a home-cooked meal.

Truth is, I don't cook much anymore either. We do a lot of fast prep stuff anymore because of all the hours we work. It was nice to have a good home-cooked meal ourselves. I still have a few dishes left to do over that, plus I am in the middle of doing laundry for the week. Between John and I, we've gotten a few boxes packed today. I have someone coming over to look at the apartment this evening. It's someone we know, so I don't mind showing them.

I discovered a really neat program for laying out rooms at www.nebraskafurnituremart.com. I need to get the actual measurements of our new house and then I can plan out where I'm going to set all the furniture before we ever move into it.

I stopped by the new house today. The carpet layers showed up to lay a new steel-gray carpet in one of the rooms, but it turned out to have a big flaw in one end of it. It was an end piece, so I guess that's expected. They will come back next week to fix it. I also took a couple of the towels from our bathroom over to a friend who is going to paint the bathroom to match. She is excellent at this decorating stuff. I am so excited because I will have rooms with colored walls - not white ones like in the rentals or military quarters I've been living in most of my life. The kitchen has a nice sunny yellow paint. I think I want to decorate it with bluebonnets to honor my Texas heritage. I'll have to get the stuff for that off the Internet or enlist the aid of my daughter in Texas with that. You can't just run to the store in Iowa and buy stuff with bluebonnets on it.

Back to work. I'm going to try to catch a bit of SIR this evening, too. I'm so far behind. Things are just so busy around here.

The kids go home today. This visit has been way too short. I'm sad to see them go.

Here is a photo of them at our company picnic last weekend. Micah is supposed to be dressed as Gilligan and GF is Mary Ann. As I mentioned in an earlier post, GF won the best Gilligan's Island character contest.

They are a really cute couple and she has been pleasant to be around. Please pray for their safe journey home.

Daughter Shannon called me at  6 a.m. today. She lives in Arizona so is 2 hours earlier than we are so I was shocked. I am normally out of bed at 6 a.m. on a weekday but today I was laying in bed cuddling. She is working a night shift and was on break. It was good to talk to her where I didn't feel like I had to push her off. She usually calls me when I'm at work and I don't feel I can talk. I'm proud of her for taking this night job to help out with her family finances.

I drove by the garden center last night on my way home from Dollar Tree and saw where they have rose bushes on sale buy two get one free. I soooo want to buy rose bushes to put in my new yard, but I suppose I should wait until we actually get moved in. We should probably spend this summer getting the yard that's there cleaned up and then plant the pretty flowers next spring. The house was occupied by a 98-year-old man so the plants have kind of gone wild. His kids did plant some tomatoes in the back yard though. I'm excited about having fresh tomatoes when we move in. There will be plenty to share with them, I'm sure, as we only go through 3-4 tomatoes a week on a normal basis. I'm so excited about getting a yard again. I also saw a cute little bistro set at Aldi last night. It was only $90 but again I told myself we need to get our stuff moved in first before I start buying more stuff. John would have a cow if he knew I was thinking about spending money on new things for the house before we even get our clutter from the current place in. But that bistro set would look so cute on the enclosed porch!