Learning Joy

Hopefully this won’t be too long a post. (ha ha ha ha) Since I haven’t posted in a while, I thought I would. A lot of things have been happening, I just didn’t take time to post.
First of all, let me give God praise for His wonderful faithfulness. I told you all about the job Jef has on the 5th of December. Well, last Monday, he got a call from them asking if he could look at the doctors’ laptops, too. They asked if he’d give them a discount, so he did. They scheduled four hours on Monday!!! Praise the Lord!! Oh, and Jef was also able to work for William Dickson last Saturday (a week ago) for six hours. So funds are coming in, and God is God & taking care of us.
What else has been going on? We’ve been busy with school every day and normal stuff like that. We had a quiet Thanksgiving. We didn’t even make turkey, just two chickens that didn’t get done all the way. 🙁 Everyone ate some though, because they didn’t want to be picky!! On Saturday I made a casserole & put the chicken in it, and it got good & cooked!! 🙂 It was a nice Thanksgiving, though. Jef went & got Jim, a client he used to work for, and Kamali & Tina came over. We watched “Joe vs. the Volcano” to end the evening. So Jef & I ended up talking about existentialism until like 2 a.m.!! I could post a whole long post on that topic!!
Friday I helped Tina & Kamali decorate their coffee shop. That was fun. Saturday I was supposed to go help, but I didn’t. Saturday afternoon we all went & got a tree. Kamali & Tina let us use their SUV for the tree. I’ve decided when we get all our debts paid off that I will get a Noble Fir for Christmas one year. They are so pretty. Not the ones with tons of space between the branches, the nice, full ones. 🙂 We got a Douglas Fir this year. It is a good looking tree! I will post a picture later.
Oh, something else … we moved the couch part of our sectional so we could have Thanksgiving dinner in the schoolroom (what would normally be the dining room). We wanted to have the kids with us at the table, and that was the only place to put two tables together. Well ….
I really like the couch moved. I really like how open the living room feels. I really like having the table out of the kitchen.
I want to rearrange the living room.
Jef does not want to rearrange the living room.
He’s game for it, if it doesn’t entail moving bookshelves … but, the only way to make the plan work (and yes, I did a plan, it is to scale, everything was measured, little couches and tables were cut out of paper, etc.) is to move some bookshelves. To make the plan perfect, we’d have to disassemble the bookshelves (there are four put together) and put one by the TV (in its new spot) and three by the fireplace. I don’t think this is going to happen. Jef laughed at me because I was making a plan, and measuring everything and he said, “it’s all going to go back the way it was.” 🙁
I would really like to rearrange the living room.
It’s an innate thing – I always used to rearrange everything. I had two different comforters for my bed when I was growing up because it was a water bed & I couldn’t move it!! So I had to be able to change the “look” of it. 🙂 It was terrible in college because nothing could be rearranged except my knick-knacks!!!
I’d really like to rearrange the living room.

So that is our news. We’re hoping to have our Holiday dinner on the 10th. It is going to be a potluck this year. I can only make the turkey & the gravy. Tina will be bringing pies (she makes such yummy pies!!) My friend Adam is bringing pastellas (these really yummy deep-fried beef-filled pastries) and sweet potatoes. She cooked for us yesterday. We went to her daughter’s 7th birthday party. It was a Barbie party. 🙂 The boys got kicked out of the room for a while because they were playing a dress up game! It was loads of fun!!

I made soup today!! For the very first time, I made soup. Not soup from a can, homemade soup!! Everyone liked it. There are even leftovers for tomorrow. 🙂

Here’s the recipe (it is good for when you have a cold or
are getting sick) –

From matchbookhymnal, 11/14/05
Garlic Soup
Ingredients:

1. 8-10 cloves of garlic
2. a sprits of olive oil
3. 1/16 of a large yellow onion
4. 2 cans chicken broth
5. 2 cups water mixed with 2 chicken bullion cubes
6. 1 1/2 cups water
7. 1 can carrots (I had sliced, canned carrots & I diced them, but you could buy diced canned carrots – the canned ones worked great because they were already soft.)
8. 1 cup diced chicken
9. 1 head of cauliflower, chopped
10. 4 cups cooked rice (I didn’t realize I could’ve put the rice in first, so I cooked it separately and added it at the end)

Directions:
This is a great soup for cold and flu season; garlic boosts the immune system and the chilies (I didn’t use any of these, if you want, you can use 1 green chili or two small chili beans) open up the sinuses. It’s also one of the few foods I can taste when I have a cold.
Peel, then mash, grate, or mince the garlic. (I had garlic already minced) Seed and mince the chilies. Mince the onion. Sauté these three ingredients briefly in olive oil in the bottom of a large soup pot.
Add broth, water, chicken, carrots, cauliflower, and simmer.
Enjoy and get better!

Y.P.R.: The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, Told Entirely in Emoticons

Today was a good day, even though it started out bad. Jef didn’t sleep at all last night (he gets insomnia sometimes – it is really annoying), so I woke up kind of early this morning. I was hoping to sleep in because I had gone to bed late and had lots of things planned for today. I finally went to sleep around 11:45 (this used to be early for me, but not so much anymore! I keep getting really tired around 10:30 at night! It is weird!!).
Anyways, so I woke up around 7:20 this morning. I was tired, Jef was grumpy, and the day did not look promising.
Tina came over at 10 a.m. to help me get my Microsoft Small Business Accounting software set up and ready to go (in other words, everything entered & reconciled to date). We were going to go to an Arbonne party at Louise’s house at 2. With Jef sleeping, I was unable to go. 🙁 Being the worst friend in the world, I didn’t even remember to call!!! Louise called around 2:30 hoping I wasn’t lost. 🙁 So I feel pretty crummy ‘bout that.
Tina & I worked from 10:30 this morning until 10:30 tonight. We stopped to eat supper for about a half hour, and we ate lunch while we worked. When Tina left tonight, all I had to do was enter the receipts for September & October and reconcile those two months! Tina’s amazing!! We got stuck a couple times – one time took us about two hours to figure out this stupid program!! We did learn a lot, however. Learning is good, and it is always good to know the software better.
Kamali came over around five, I think (I really have no idea, as I lost track of time after about 2!). She & Jef ended up taking the boys out to do errands & get some supper. Tina & I were about to go nuts because we couldn’t think because of all the noise. This happened to be the time we were stuck & trying to figure out what was going on & why credits were being applied here, and this customer account was being affected when we hadn’t said to do that … arg … So Jef & Kamali saved the day! They took the kids out and we had peace and quiet. It is amazing how much faster things went. 🙂
So the day ended well. I now know how to enter an invoice, receive a customer payment, make a deposit, record a receipt & reconcile my account. Now Jef & I need to design an invoice template. 🙂 That should be fun. We are thinking of changing the company’s name to Pure Service. What do you think?
All in all, I feel good. I am tired, and want to sleep, but I feel like I know what I am doing now. Before I was scared to even touch the computer or fiddle with anything. Tina is amazing. ( And God is very good. (

God is good. 🙂 I knew that already, but this week reinforced it.

Tuesday I took Nicholas & Daniel to the doctor. Nicholas was going in for his 3 year well-child check up and Daniel was going in because he’s not hearing well. Daniel had also said his ear was hurting really bad the other night.
Nicholas had a good check up. He weighs 32 pounds I think and is 43″ tall, I think. They didn’t write it down for me, so I will have to get it next time I go. Somehow we’d missed his two-year shots, so he had to have a finger poke (iron test – came out good), and three shots! He was NOT a happy camper. Dr. Struthers said he looked good. That was nice. 🙂
Daniel was a different story. His ears are full of fluid again. 🙁 His right ear is also very infected. Daniel is back on all his meds (he was off the Loratadine (generic Claritin) for a bit) plus Amoxicillin for ten days. Hopefully his ears will drain. I don’t want anything to go wrong with him, you know?

Jef went to coffee with our friend Rick Gray on Tuesday. That was encouraging to him. Rick told him about selling and gave him some pointers. Oh, and Tuesday morning Jef had a job with William Dickson, so that was good.

Wednesday Jef went out handing out brochures. My friend Louise came over (she lives across the bridge in Gig Harbor) and we went shopping. 🙂 I showed her all the neat grocery stores in town. 😀 Jef met us around 1 p.m. He’d handed out 32 brochures!! While we were there, Jef received a call. He got a job up in Bellevue – a paying one!!! So he drove up there around 2:30. Jef was gone until about 9:30 p.m. He did the one job, and then helped our friend Adam with her computer. So he got home pretty late.
This morning we slept in, and then Jef had another job with William Dickson. 🙂 Paying jobs are good. 🙂 Tomorrow Jef may have to go to Bellevue again. Another friend of Adam’s needs help with her computer. 🙂 Although it is far away, it is good to get paid.

Friday the kids and I are going shopping with Grandma. 🙂 Saturday, Tina is coming over to help me with Small Business Accounting. Then we are going to go to Gig Harbor to Louise’s Arbonne party. Sunday night we are having dessert with the Grays. There! That is our week!!

Nicholas is still quite happy about his party. Did you all like the photos? I’m going to try and get some pictures taken, but am not sure when.

Tonight Daniel made up his very first real joke. It is a take off from this joke –

Knock! Knock!
Who’s there?
Interrupting cow
Interrup (MOO!)

that was the original joke. Here’s Daniel’s ~

Knock! Knock!
Who’s there?
Ignoring cow.
Ignoring cow who?
………………………… (silence)

Isn’t that great?! We all thought so!!!

Here’s another one. You can see his front a bit better in this one. We’ll take more pictures tomorrow. :o) 11/6/05

Nicholas in his new Spiderman outfit. Sorry the picture is so grainy. Our video camera doesn’t like night-time lighting. 11/6/05

Not a very clear picture, I apologize. This is Nicholas, sitting very nicely, holding one of the puzzles from Grandma, wearing his new Spiderman outfit from Granny & Grandfather, and his new Elmo & Cookie Monster shoes from Aunt Tina & Aunt Kamali. 11/6/05

Today is just a day of posts!
Tina & I went to return the Elmo & Cookie Monster shoes this afternoon. The size nines didn’t fit. We went to Target, and I figured I would see if they had anything I could get Nicholas with the gift certificate too. The shoes were on sale today. So we picked up size 9.5 and then went to look at clothes. We found a steal! We found a Spiderman outfit, on clearance!!! It is a two-piece warm outfit. The shirt is yellow with long sleeves and “Spiderman” written down one sleeve. The pants are dark blue overalls with Spiderman on the chest & spiders on the buttons. The pants have like flannel inside them, so they will keep Nicholas warm this winter. 🙂 God is so good! I was able to get the shoes & the outfit & only spend $2 of my own money!!! 🙂 Nicholas just loves the outfit. I said, “It fits perfectly!” to which he replied, “and the elmo & cookie monster shoes fit perfectly, too!” (Nicholas is become quite the conversationalist) 😀