More Visitors (unwelcomed)

 It was one of those glorious, luxurious nights...the kind where you go to bed just glorying in the fact that the next morning you don't have to get up early and rush around trying to get children out the door to school. It was a Friday night so there were more people reveling in the fact they don't have to get up early the next morning. Loud music pulsated in the distance and people shouted back and forth to each other as the party dragged on into the night. This was becoming almost as common as birds chirping outside my window used to be and I was all but oblivious to the loud noises being carried in on the breeze through my open window. I read a good book till late before snapping off the light. Stretching out luxuriously on my foam mattress I recalled the first night I crawled into this bed and thought I would never be able to sleep on this thin piece of foam. No box springs, just boards held up this pitiful thing called a mattress. The bed was half the size and a quarter as thick as what I was used to sleeping on. It's amazing how fast a body can adjust though, and as I stretched out I thought, you know, this bed is really quite comfortable. I had almost entered dream land when all of a sudden I felt wide awake. I was really rather annoyed because, even if I can sleep later tomorrow, I'm done reading; now I want to sleep. I had dealt with some mild insomnia since we're here and I know the more you try  make yourself sleep, the more you can't. Oh well, whatever, I thought. So be it. I lay there for awhile and was somewhere betwixt reality and dreamland when I heard a few slight noises. Hmmm, I thought, I already had killed an annoying fly so I knew that pest was forever gone...maybe a lizard or a grasshopper? While both creatures are relatively harmless, I didn't exactly relish the thought of them using my head as their stomping grounds while I slept. I groggily rolled over and forced my sleepy eyes open. It took a few seconds for my brain to register what I was actually seeing. No fly. No grasshopper. No lizard, but a long, black arm reaching stealthily past me, mere inches from my head. I often wondered how I would  react to a situation where my instinct would be my first response. I always liked to think I would have perfect clarity of thought and with some quick action end up a hero. Well, now I know. No heroic action, but a scream that erupted from deep down inside of me; from a place I didn't even know existed within me. "AAAARRRRGGG!" I roared. "GET OUT OF HEEEERE!!!" As the dark figure quickly withdrew his hand and took off running, I rose up in my bed and pressed my face against the bars of our window and roared again at the hastily retreating figure, "Get OUT of HEEEEEERE! Leave my family alone!!" Really, I never in all my life, knew I could yell like that. I actually sounded quite manly! I sat back on my hunches, panting. My husband, rudely awakened from his sleep, looked bewilderingly at me, with eyes as big as coconuts. (I think he was trying to figure out if his wife totally lost it for good or if I was having a horrific nightmare.) "There was a man reaching in our window! His arm was inches from my face!" I explained. "It wasn't that I was that scared, I screamed more to get him running," I further explained. (I'm not even sure why I said that because when I got up to check the children my legs were that weak and shaky I could hardly stand on them.) Our headboard is right at the window and Chris didn't like that from day 1. All was quiet in the children's room and, after Chris removed the cement block our visitor used to stand on from outside our bedroom window, I settled in to rehash the events and all the things I could have done differently if I wouldn't have been taken so off guard. Option #1. Reach out and shake his hand and say, "How do you do?" Option #2. Grab his arm and hang on for dear life till Chris gets the gate unlocked and goes out to meet him or till he would call the police, whatever he would decide to do. Option #3. There was nothing on my nightstand to steal except Bible's and Christian books so I should have left him take the whole stack and maybe later under the moonlight he would sit and read his stolen literature and become saved. Maybe he would have become an evangelist and saved many souls and it would have all started with the "mustard seed" he stole off my nightstand.....

 Ok, picture time....

                                The boys helping Chris prop up the benches they use on
                                 the back of the truck.  They prop them up then
                                 Chris backs the truck partially underneath and then we
                                 huff and we puff till we get the whole contraption
                                  loaded the rest of the way up on the truck.

                             Carter was completely unimpressed with his sister's amazing
                                  talent of wearing sunglasses and goggles at the same time.

                                 The truckdriver in my husband couldn't believe this
                                  wide load was headed down the mountain with no
                                 escort and only one chain holding on the load.

                                                   

                            The children play more games together than they ever did.

                                 Chris working on the bike with a friend looking on.
                                 This boy knows he'll get a beating when he goes home
                                  so he tries to prolong the inevitable as long as he can.

                                A boy and his dog...if I ever saw a dog smile, this is it.

                                     The girls hung these self imposed rules in their bedroom.
                                    By the looks of the next two pictures they obviously don't
                                              have consequences for breaking them.....

                                                   By the looks of this room I should
                                            be embarrassed to post these pictures. I am.

                                       Another sign Kaylah made for her bedroom...I think she
                                       lives by this one far more than the one with the rules...

                                             I have learned quickly, the hard way, 
                                                 to not let food out uncovered...

I used to decorate with fake birds...

now I upgraded to the real thing

                                        Limes & LaBorie School's had a cross country
.                                           race/walk.  I went along to help supervise.

                                  Mr. David Fox won first place for his age category!

                                        All little boys like Lego's. These were well worth
                                        every inch of space they took up in a suitcase

A scrapbook made by Kaylah's classmates at Shalom was

a real highlight and day brightener for her! Jeff Brubaker

brought it down when he came down with a work crew.

She keeps this by her bed and looks at it often! 

Many thanks to them for thinking of her!