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The first two weekends in January were spent traveling. The first weekend we traveled to Mitchell NE to share what has been going on here. Chris had the opportunity to preach 3 times in 2 days.
The next weekend we traveled all the way to Marysville KS which is about an 8-1/2 hour drive ... one way. We also shared there and Chris preached again - although only once. While on our way back from KS, we stopped at the geographic center of the of the 48 contiguous states. It really means nothing except that it was a good place to stop and stretch our legs during an extremely long trip!
This year Toree turned 7 years old. Our yearly tradition is to go to PF Changs for lunch. Since her birthday fell on a Saturday and we had plans to be out of town on Saturday, we went to lunch on Friday.
Also in yearly tradition, several people went to visit our Toree on her birthday. One of those people is my friend Karan who left a beautiful angel. She also took her son Kyle and his friend Caleb with her. She said that after they put the angel on Toree's grave, the boys took it upon themselves to go around to other baby graves around hers and clean off the headstones. I thought that was such a sweet sweet thing to do!
Elianna talks so much about her sister that Chris was worried the other day that people might think she was crazy. I'm thankful (as is Chris) that she loves her sister and knows and talks about her!
Hi! Remember me?!?? Oh boy! Remember those Best Laid Plans I talked about back about a month ago? Yeah ... de-railed! Here we are back again.
When you are so far behind sometimes it's hard to figure out where to start. The plan is to start at the New Year and go from there. When things get boring around here (ha! When does that happen?!?) I'll try to catch up on Christmas.
This New Year I decided to start something new. In the past past (as in NJ), we, of course, were always at a teen New Year's Eve party. Since we've moved here, one year we went to our neighbors house and I can't remember the others (we've probably just went to bed) so it was time for a new tradition!
New Year's Eve Day Elianna and I went to Party City (remind me to find some alternative to that problem) and picked up 8 balloons. We rolled up a piece of paper with a poem, verse, or topic to talk about and placed it in the balloon. Beginning at 6 o'clock (pm of course), we popped one balloon at the top of each hour and did or read whatever was inside.
We also had our traditional "Snacky Meal" which is one of my favorite meals since it gives me the opportunity to each all night long and not feel too guilty! Some of my favorites that we had were Glazed Kielbasa Pineapple Bites, Pull Apart Party Loaf, and Candy Cotton Fizz. There was lots more but those were the fun ones I enjoyed making.
At 9pm, Elianna headed to bed and so Chris and I along with the boys stayed up and watched movies until the new year. At about 10pm or so I was ready for bed but felt obligated to stay up since it was my grand idea to pop a balloon each hour. It was cute though because the boys set alarms and would run upstairs each hour to pop the balloon and see what was inside. I think they were more excited than I was (especially those last 2 hours!).
Sometimes the best laid plans simply do not work. The plan was to keep up to date on our Advent Calendar happenings (yes, I still have to post about last year's (2013) Christmas Eve and Christmas still). For the first 10 days we were right on schedule and then.... and then the computer crashed and we had not backed up any of our files in oh say 2 years. Yes, you read that correctly - 2 years. Never again!
After talking with Apple on the phone for several hours hoping that the problem was an easy fix, we took it into the Apple store where they told us the hard drive had crashed and needed replaced. But then came the problem of all our 2 years of data that was on said hard drive - we needed it! After asking around, one of Chris' workout campers took all the information off the hard drive for us. That was week 1. Week 2 we took it back to the Apple store for the quick fix of getting a new hard drive. At some point they said they called and left us a message (no message here) saying it also had water damage and needed to be sent out to the water damage repair place. End of week 3 they had basically replaced our entire computer and it is now as good as new which explains the price.
Friday night of Week 3 we picked up the computer. Sunday night it was sitting on the kitchen table and Elianna spills her entire cup of hot tea all over the table. My sweater has never been sacrificed faster than it did that night. So far so good and we're all back up!
Drama doesn't end there though. As soon as the computer is back and fixed and plans are again laid out to catch up, the flu hits me and hits me hard. For an entire week, I laid on the couch and did almost nothing. I had a fever of up to 102 along with the chills, sweating and a throat that felt like I had swallowed a bunch of pins. Thankfully, I'm feeling much better and did not end up sharing with others so all is again (for the moment) right again. Last week was spent playing catch up on cleaning, laundry and grocery shopping with the intent to get back to it this coming week. Best laid plans, we'll see how you work out this week.
Basically, be prepared to read all about Christmas here at the middle to end of January. But then again, what's so different about that from every other year, right? Sigh.... There's always next year!
