I experienced an earthquake this morning. I woke up to everything shaking, and Arthur said, "Get up. Get in the doorway." We stood there for about 20 seconds until everything stopped shaking. Then we turned on the news. I was glad that my husband has a calm enough mind to always know what to do in an emergency. He seems always to stay calm and sane and logical. :-) People calling the news station were saying they went to their basements or didn't realize what was happening until it was over or that they thought something had hit the house. Because he'd lived in California for a few years as a child, my husband had the presence of mind, even at 4:30 or 4:40 to know what was happening and what to do. I couldn't believe some of the things other people were doing! Anyways, on the news, they said that it was a 5.4 earthquake and was centered near Evansville, IN, or West Salem, IL, about 200 miles from us, but they say there are a lot of faults in this area, though they are mostly deeply buried. It wasn't anything major, but enough to wake us up, and it lasted long enough that we carried on quite a discussion while it was going on.
Arthur: "Get up. Get in the doorway." Heading to the door.
Me: After we're in the doorway: "What is it?"
A: "It's an earthquake."
M: Pause..."I'm scared... Are you sure it's an earthquake?"
A: "It's not thunder. It's got to be an earthquake. It's bigger than just a tremor. It's still rumbling."
M: "It's got to be an earthquake."
After that, we went outside to look around, while Arthur told me what to do if it happened again after he was gone to work. Needless to say, we got around a little earlier than usual this morning. :-D People on the news were saying that they had thought it was maybe strong winds or something. There was not a moment that I thought it was maybe strong winds. It lasted way too long and rumbled too much for it just to be strong winds, and nothing sounded or felt like wind. I don't know where people get that idea, but I guess most people aren't especially with it at 4:30... imagine that! ;-) They say there was some bridge damage, but not much else, and that was mostly mild-moderate damage to older bridges.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
One more list- For Sarah
Sarah mentioned that she'd have to keep these lists in mind for when she gets married, so here is one more list for her. I'm seeing some registry ideas here! ;-) This list is of tools that everyone needs if they plan on keeping house! Fun!
1. The original Swiffer- this can be acquired at Wal-Mart for about 10 dollars. Unlike the newer versions, such as the "wet-jet," This swiffer has holes on the top corners of the scrubbing pad where the cleaning rags are stuffed in and held in place, so you can easily make your own rags instead of buying theirs. I have cut several rags to fit. When I need to use them, I simply spray them down with a mixture of Pine-Sol and water (but you can use whatever cleaner you wish). This is great for scrubbing linoleum floors. I personally think it works better than most mops, and you don't have the hassle of trying to keep the sponge clean because the rags can just go in your normal wash. It is much less hassle than dragging out a mop bucket and much faster than scrubbing on your hands and knees. I also use this for scrubbing out my tub and the shower walls. It goes soooo fast. :-) When I'm done cleaning, I just pull off the rags and throw them in the hamper. I save a lot of money buy avoiding the expensive wet wipes you buy for the same purpose.
2. Plenty of ratty old tee-shirts to cut up for rags. Cheap and convenient, these can be cut to custom sizes, as above, and reused. When they are worn out, you can throw them away guilt-free, because you'll probably have plenty more t-shirts that are ripped or stained by then.
3. Spray bottles of assorted sizes- These too can be bought at Wal-Mart, usually for less than a dollar. For bigger bottles, check out the cleaning supplies aisle. For smaller bottles, check out the hair and travel accessories. You can fill one with diluted pine-sol, like I do for the floors. I spray it directly onto my cleaning rag, but if you have something tough that may need to soak for a minute, you can spray it straight onto the floor. Sometimes, just for a thorough clean, I spritz down the entire kitchen floor and let it sit for a minute before I scrub it off. It only takes a minute with a large spray bottle to spray the whole floor. The nozzle can be adjusted to spray a wide or narrow stream. I also fill a small one with diluted dish soap. On occasion, I actually get around to doing dishes right after a meal. When I am having lunch at home by myself, it's easy to wash my one plate, fork, and glass. I spray it down with the soap, scrub it, and give it a rinse. I just use a small amount of soap in the bottle and fill the rest up with water. It has enough soap to cut the grease. This allows me to do very few dishes without wasting lots of soap. You could also fill a bottle with vinegar and water for cleaning glass mirror and windows. Vinegar, especially when diluted, is a good deal cheaper then glass cleaner and will clean it just fine.
4. A LARGE bowl, big enough to hold dinner plates- You think you will always do dishes after a meal. You won't. Okay, there are probably a few saintly people who religiously do their dishes right after they eat, but I am not one of them, and I believe statistics would suggest that you probably aren't either. I always intend to, and sometimes I do, but most often, they wait a meal or two. If you have a dishwasher and are faithful about unloading it right away, you can easily rinse your dishes and stick them in there right after a meal, but my dishwasher does not work, and when it did, I was NOT faithful about unloading it. :-D As a result, dirty dishes piled up in my sink and on my counter. I was slightly embarrassed for people to wander in my kitchen and see the mess, and my poor husband was going crazy with all the clutter it caused. You think dirty dishes are just dirty dishes, but they aren't. They are clutter monsters. They take attention away from anything in the kitchen that may actually be clean, making the whole thing look like a mess. They also take up counter space, forcing other things to migrate to other surfaces on the kitchen, like the table, which clutters the whole kitchen. In short, they discourage you from going into the kitchen, which makes it difficult to keep it clean. I finally solved this horrid problem with a large plastic tupperware bowl. I cleaned out one half of my undersink cabinet for my bowl. Whenever I have dirty dishes that I cannot get to right away, I put them in the bowl. It is like a hamper for dishes. No one thinks you should leave your dirty laundry sitting out for all to see until you are ready to wash it, so why should we do that with our dishes? Company comes and my kitchen looks spotlessly clean, even though my breakfast dishes have not yet been washed. What's more, most things will almost self-sort when you use a bowl for dishes, because it's easier to stack plates together, bowls together, etc. so the washing goes quicker. When I am good and ready, usually sometime in the afternoon, I pull the bowl out and do the dishes. At the end of the day, when I am too tired to stand on my feet and do dishes, the supper dishes go into my now-empty bowl for tomorrow afternoon. This is the best tip EVER for those of you without dishwashers!
5. Old socks- I use these to dust. You could use your other rags, but I like socks because I can slip them over my hand and dust away!
6. A handheld cordless wet-dry vacuum- this may be one of the best household tools you can buy. I two of them for wedding gifts. I thought, okay, I can leave one in the car and one in the house, but the one never made it to the car, except for brief excursions. I find it useful to keep one in the living room and one in the kitchen. They are great for when you spill tea on the carpet, which will undoubtedly happen. You can grab the wet-dry vac before it soaks in and suck it right up. I also use mine to clean my couch and recliner. I use it for sucking down spiderwebs too. It's easy to just walk around the corners of the room and suck down the cobwebs. It's quicker and easier than dragging the regular vacuum around the entire perimeter of the room, and it's less messy and more effective than using a broom since it sucks the webs in and they are gone. Also, I have always been a hater of dustpans. You CANNOT get all of the dirt swept up in one. I just sweep my kitchen or bathroom with the broom, and when I get it all in a pile, I suck it up with the handheld vac. It's waaay easier than a dustpan! I also vacuum area rugs with them and spot vacuum crummy spots in the kitchen when I'm not ready to sweep the whole thing or if there was a small spill. When the filters get full, I empty them in the trash, rinse them in the sink, and stick them back in. There's no need to wait for them to dry, because it's wet-dry! Okay, I never thought I'd feel so much enthusiasm over a vacuum. I also use my wet-dry vac's when I clean the cars out. They have a nice little crevice attachment that gets into the small spaces. They are handy to use. I have cleaned out cars with a huge shop vac before, and it does the job, but it's so bulky and cumbersome that it takes forever and discourages people from vacuuming the car very often. With my little handheld, I vacuum my car out about once a month, unless it needs emergency intervention. :-) This regular cleaning keeps me from needing the heavy duty cleaning power of a shop vac. This is a wonderful tool. Mine is a Dust Buster 9.6 volt wet-dry vac and can be found at wal-mart for about 25 or 30 dollars.
7. Scrub brushes of various sizes-also under a dollar at Wal-Mart, These can be used for dishes, floors (they're great for dirt, etc. that gets stuck in the grooves and pits of linoleum) and even tablecloths. I love tablecloths, and I have a small brush I keep just to brush crumbs from my tablecloth.
8. A spare grill brush with a sharp scraper on top-If you have hard water like we do, this brush and scraper combo is great for scraping the hard water buildup from around the sink and brushing it out of shower heads and the sink sprayer!
9. A nice, easy to tote laundry basket- It's important that it be easy to carry. I keep mine in the bedroom. When we get undressed in the evenings, dirty clothes go straight in the laundry basket. When I get up in the morning, the basket goes with me to the bathroom, where it is sorted into the hamper. Husbands are notoriously bad about putting dirty clothes in the hamper, but if you have a laundry basket right there in the bedroom, and they don't even have a hamper lid to open, they are more likely to actually throw their clothes there instead of the floor. If your husband actually carries his laundry to the nearest hamper and deposits it in the proper fashion, please send me his mother's name and address so I can hire her to train my darling husband. :-) He really does a great job with the basket, aside from socks, which land in front of the couch. After you empty the basket into your hamper (I'll get to the hamper in a second), start a load of laundry and put the basket in front of the dryer. IT IS IMPORTANT TO USE THE SAME BASKET IF POSSIBLE! When the clothes have been washed and dry, dump them into the basket. This will encourage you to fold them and put them away ASAP because, you will want the basket to be empty and back in your room by evening to avoid having to pick clothes up off the floor. I usually carry the basket into the living room so I can watch TV or listen to something while I fold.
10. A divided hamper- This is very, very important. If you hear nothing else I say, hear this. I have a hamper with three compartments. I bought it at Target for a reasonable price. It has made my life much easier. I put whites in one compartment, colors in another, and denim articles in the third. (Some people may prefer to put delicate garments in the third, but I don't baby any of my clothes. I abuse them all, so if they won't stand up to the regular wash cycle, I probably don't want it anyway, but suit yourself). This makes it very easy to do daily laundry. When I want to put a load in, the sorting is already done. When I have children, I hope to give each of them a laundry basket for their rooms. When I get more laundry, I will get another divided hamper to accomodate. The plan is, every morning when they head into the bathroom, they will take their basket into the bathroom and deposit their laundry into the appropriate recepticals (I like big words :-)) If this does not happen, somehow, someway, I will make them wish it had. Maybe they can be responsible for everyone's laundry that week or something, bwahahaha! When I am ready to do laundry, it will all be sorted for me! Yay! I would put off laundry forever if I had to sort before running a load. This keeps me on track because it only takes about 30 seconds to stick a load in straight out of the hamper.
11. An organized schedule of chores that need done each day, week, or month and when exactly you plan on doing them- I take back what I said about the hamper. It is important, but if you can only remember one thing, remember this instead. I am a person who desperately needs deadlines. Without a deadline for something to happen, I can put it off indefinitely. It is easier than you think to look at the huge amount of work that needs done in your house and be at a loss for knowing when to start. About a month into my marriage, Arthur and I were at each other's throats about the state of our house. It is one thing to keep your bedroom and even your own bathroom clean, but when you are responsible for a whole house full of other people's messes, it is much harder to stay motivated and on-task. One day, it was just so frustrating, that I decided SOMETHING had to change. If I were getting paid to keep someone else's house, I would not have let it get like that. I decided to approach my own house the same way. I needed to tell myself what I wanted done in my home, how I wanted it done, and how frequently I wanted that to happen. In essence, I hired myself as housekeeper. I got a few sheets of paper and went through each room of the house individually. I wrote down everything I would want to clean in that room if I were going to seriously clean it, like spring cleaning clean. When I had my lists for each room, I went through and determined whether I'd want each task done daily, weekly, or monthly. The daily tasks, I wrote on one sheet of paper under the titles "morning", "afternoon", and "evening", though that schedule is fairly flexible. I included devotions on that list to help me stay on top of them. I look at my task list several times a day, and it helps me remember things that could easily be overlooked. The weekly jobs I put on another sheet of paper. I do the weekly chores for the bedroom on Monday, the spare room on Tuesday, the living room on Wednesday, and so on. For the monthly tasks, I figured that there are usually four weeks in a month, so I wrote "week 1" with lines for Monday through Friday, then "week 2," and so on. I divided the things I wanted done monthly as evenly as possible on those lines. In months with five weeks, I use the time for make up for things that got skipped for some reason or other, projects I've been putting off, such as sewing, just extra relaxation, or personal things that are fun to me, like reading a book, playing the piano, or doing "fun shopping," as opposed to just "grocery shopping," because you've got to take time for yourself once in awhile. Even Jesus tried to find time off to himself sometimes! I have worked to consistently stick to my schedule while still allowing it some flexibility. For instance, some things that I thought I'd want done weekly get done every other week instead, because they don't really need done every week, but I'd like them done more often than once a month. Also, some chores go really fast, because I don't necessarily have to complete them, just check on them. For example, one day a month I check all of the light fixtures. If they need taken down and washed, I will clean them, but most of the time, they are still clean. If you make a schedule and stick to it, it will take you less and less time to finish your chores as the weeks go. The first time I cleaned my kitchen by my new schedule, it took probably 2 hours. Now it takes me 30-45 minutes to get it THOROUGHLY clean. Part of that is because things are already fairly clean, so there is less scrubbing involved, such as inside the fridge and microwave. Also, you get faster at doing it, because you go through the same routine everytime and don't need to think about it as much. You also miss less, because you get a system going. FINALLY, you will not stress much over your house when company comes, and you will not stress when some darling man in your life or a visiting child leaves a room a bit messy, because you have a system for dealing with it. You do not have to drop everything and deal with it right then. There is a day and time scheduled for dealing with that. The whole house will be clean again by Friday! Some may say that this is easy to do if you stay at home as I do, but it's hard if you work. However, I think it's all the more necessary if you work. I never was a fan of heavy scheduling, but this simple tool has taken soo much stress off of me and freed up a lot of my time rather than taken more of it. Afterall, it takes far less time to constantly maintain a clean house than to constantly try to stay caught up with a messy one! If you make your own schedule, you can determine how much you can handle in one day. It is not imperetive that your schedule be as full as mine. The important thing is that you have a plan for when things get done to make sure that they DO get done. You can take as much or as little time as you need. I clean one room a day, but you could spread that out over two or three days and just take 10 or 15 minutes a day tidying up the whole rest of the house if you needed more time to complete the tasks. Either way, a plan saves you constant headache! Maybe you don't need this advice, because you're a bit more organized than I am, but here it is anyways!
I know that this was long, and maybe you didn't read the whole thing, but I hope it has been helpful in some way. I love you, cousin, and wish you the best in your upcoming marriage!
1. The original Swiffer- this can be acquired at Wal-Mart for about 10 dollars. Unlike the newer versions, such as the "wet-jet," This swiffer has holes on the top corners of the scrubbing pad where the cleaning rags are stuffed in and held in place, so you can easily make your own rags instead of buying theirs. I have cut several rags to fit. When I need to use them, I simply spray them down with a mixture of Pine-Sol and water (but you can use whatever cleaner you wish). This is great for scrubbing linoleum floors. I personally think it works better than most mops, and you don't have the hassle of trying to keep the sponge clean because the rags can just go in your normal wash. It is much less hassle than dragging out a mop bucket and much faster than scrubbing on your hands and knees. I also use this for scrubbing out my tub and the shower walls. It goes soooo fast. :-) When I'm done cleaning, I just pull off the rags and throw them in the hamper. I save a lot of money buy avoiding the expensive wet wipes you buy for the same purpose.
2. Plenty of ratty old tee-shirts to cut up for rags. Cheap and convenient, these can be cut to custom sizes, as above, and reused. When they are worn out, you can throw them away guilt-free, because you'll probably have plenty more t-shirts that are ripped or stained by then.
3. Spray bottles of assorted sizes- These too can be bought at Wal-Mart, usually for less than a dollar. For bigger bottles, check out the cleaning supplies aisle. For smaller bottles, check out the hair and travel accessories. You can fill one with diluted pine-sol, like I do for the floors. I spray it directly onto my cleaning rag, but if you have something tough that may need to soak for a minute, you can spray it straight onto the floor. Sometimes, just for a thorough clean, I spritz down the entire kitchen floor and let it sit for a minute before I scrub it off. It only takes a minute with a large spray bottle to spray the whole floor. The nozzle can be adjusted to spray a wide or narrow stream. I also fill a small one with diluted dish soap. On occasion, I actually get around to doing dishes right after a meal. When I am having lunch at home by myself, it's easy to wash my one plate, fork, and glass. I spray it down with the soap, scrub it, and give it a rinse. I just use a small amount of soap in the bottle and fill the rest up with water. It has enough soap to cut the grease. This allows me to do very few dishes without wasting lots of soap. You could also fill a bottle with vinegar and water for cleaning glass mirror and windows. Vinegar, especially when diluted, is a good deal cheaper then glass cleaner and will clean it just fine.
4. A LARGE bowl, big enough to hold dinner plates- You think you will always do dishes after a meal. You won't. Okay, there are probably a few saintly people who religiously do their dishes right after they eat, but I am not one of them, and I believe statistics would suggest that you probably aren't either. I always intend to, and sometimes I do, but most often, they wait a meal or two. If you have a dishwasher and are faithful about unloading it right away, you can easily rinse your dishes and stick them in there right after a meal, but my dishwasher does not work, and when it did, I was NOT faithful about unloading it. :-D As a result, dirty dishes piled up in my sink and on my counter. I was slightly embarrassed for people to wander in my kitchen and see the mess, and my poor husband was going crazy with all the clutter it caused. You think dirty dishes are just dirty dishes, but they aren't. They are clutter monsters. They take attention away from anything in the kitchen that may actually be clean, making the whole thing look like a mess. They also take up counter space, forcing other things to migrate to other surfaces on the kitchen, like the table, which clutters the whole kitchen. In short, they discourage you from going into the kitchen, which makes it difficult to keep it clean. I finally solved this horrid problem with a large plastic tupperware bowl. I cleaned out one half of my undersink cabinet for my bowl. Whenever I have dirty dishes that I cannot get to right away, I put them in the bowl. It is like a hamper for dishes. No one thinks you should leave your dirty laundry sitting out for all to see until you are ready to wash it, so why should we do that with our dishes? Company comes and my kitchen looks spotlessly clean, even though my breakfast dishes have not yet been washed. What's more, most things will almost self-sort when you use a bowl for dishes, because it's easier to stack plates together, bowls together, etc. so the washing goes quicker. When I am good and ready, usually sometime in the afternoon, I pull the bowl out and do the dishes. At the end of the day, when I am too tired to stand on my feet and do dishes, the supper dishes go into my now-empty bowl for tomorrow afternoon. This is the best tip EVER for those of you without dishwashers!
5. Old socks- I use these to dust. You could use your other rags, but I like socks because I can slip them over my hand and dust away!
6. A handheld cordless wet-dry vacuum- this may be one of the best household tools you can buy. I two of them for wedding gifts. I thought, okay, I can leave one in the car and one in the house, but the one never made it to the car, except for brief excursions. I find it useful to keep one in the living room and one in the kitchen. They are great for when you spill tea on the carpet, which will undoubtedly happen. You can grab the wet-dry vac before it soaks in and suck it right up. I also use mine to clean my couch and recliner. I use it for sucking down spiderwebs too. It's easy to just walk around the corners of the room and suck down the cobwebs. It's quicker and easier than dragging the regular vacuum around the entire perimeter of the room, and it's less messy and more effective than using a broom since it sucks the webs in and they are gone. Also, I have always been a hater of dustpans. You CANNOT get all of the dirt swept up in one. I just sweep my kitchen or bathroom with the broom, and when I get it all in a pile, I suck it up with the handheld vac. It's waaay easier than a dustpan! I also vacuum area rugs with them and spot vacuum crummy spots in the kitchen when I'm not ready to sweep the whole thing or if there was a small spill. When the filters get full, I empty them in the trash, rinse them in the sink, and stick them back in. There's no need to wait for them to dry, because it's wet-dry! Okay, I never thought I'd feel so much enthusiasm over a vacuum. I also use my wet-dry vac's when I clean the cars out. They have a nice little crevice attachment that gets into the small spaces. They are handy to use. I have cleaned out cars with a huge shop vac before, and it does the job, but it's so bulky and cumbersome that it takes forever and discourages people from vacuuming the car very often. With my little handheld, I vacuum my car out about once a month, unless it needs emergency intervention. :-) This regular cleaning keeps me from needing the heavy duty cleaning power of a shop vac. This is a wonderful tool. Mine is a Dust Buster 9.6 volt wet-dry vac and can be found at wal-mart for about 25 or 30 dollars.
7. Scrub brushes of various sizes-also under a dollar at Wal-Mart, These can be used for dishes, floors (they're great for dirt, etc. that gets stuck in the grooves and pits of linoleum) and even tablecloths. I love tablecloths, and I have a small brush I keep just to brush crumbs from my tablecloth.
8. A spare grill brush with a sharp scraper on top-If you have hard water like we do, this brush and scraper combo is great for scraping the hard water buildup from around the sink and brushing it out of shower heads and the sink sprayer!
9. A nice, easy to tote laundry basket- It's important that it be easy to carry. I keep mine in the bedroom. When we get undressed in the evenings, dirty clothes go straight in the laundry basket. When I get up in the morning, the basket goes with me to the bathroom, where it is sorted into the hamper. Husbands are notoriously bad about putting dirty clothes in the hamper, but if you have a laundry basket right there in the bedroom, and they don't even have a hamper lid to open, they are more likely to actually throw their clothes there instead of the floor. If your husband actually carries his laundry to the nearest hamper and deposits it in the proper fashion, please send me his mother's name and address so I can hire her to train my darling husband. :-) He really does a great job with the basket, aside from socks, which land in front of the couch. After you empty the basket into your hamper (I'll get to the hamper in a second), start a load of laundry and put the basket in front of the dryer. IT IS IMPORTANT TO USE THE SAME BASKET IF POSSIBLE! When the clothes have been washed and dry, dump them into the basket. This will encourage you to fold them and put them away ASAP because, you will want the basket to be empty and back in your room by evening to avoid having to pick clothes up off the floor. I usually carry the basket into the living room so I can watch TV or listen to something while I fold.
10. A divided hamper- This is very, very important. If you hear nothing else I say, hear this. I have a hamper with three compartments. I bought it at Target for a reasonable price. It has made my life much easier. I put whites in one compartment, colors in another, and denim articles in the third. (Some people may prefer to put delicate garments in the third, but I don't baby any of my clothes. I abuse them all, so if they won't stand up to the regular wash cycle, I probably don't want it anyway, but suit yourself). This makes it very easy to do daily laundry. When I want to put a load in, the sorting is already done. When I have children, I hope to give each of them a laundry basket for their rooms. When I get more laundry, I will get another divided hamper to accomodate. The plan is, every morning when they head into the bathroom, they will take their basket into the bathroom and deposit their laundry into the appropriate recepticals (I like big words :-)) If this does not happen, somehow, someway, I will make them wish it had. Maybe they can be responsible for everyone's laundry that week or something, bwahahaha! When I am ready to do laundry, it will all be sorted for me! Yay! I would put off laundry forever if I had to sort before running a load. This keeps me on track because it only takes about 30 seconds to stick a load in straight out of the hamper.
11. An organized schedule of chores that need done each day, week, or month and when exactly you plan on doing them- I take back what I said about the hamper. It is important, but if you can only remember one thing, remember this instead. I am a person who desperately needs deadlines. Without a deadline for something to happen, I can put it off indefinitely. It is easier than you think to look at the huge amount of work that needs done in your house and be at a loss for knowing when to start. About a month into my marriage, Arthur and I were at each other's throats about the state of our house. It is one thing to keep your bedroom and even your own bathroom clean, but when you are responsible for a whole house full of other people's messes, it is much harder to stay motivated and on-task. One day, it was just so frustrating, that I decided SOMETHING had to change. If I were getting paid to keep someone else's house, I would not have let it get like that. I decided to approach my own house the same way. I needed to tell myself what I wanted done in my home, how I wanted it done, and how frequently I wanted that to happen. In essence, I hired myself as housekeeper. I got a few sheets of paper and went through each room of the house individually. I wrote down everything I would want to clean in that room if I were going to seriously clean it, like spring cleaning clean. When I had my lists for each room, I went through and determined whether I'd want each task done daily, weekly, or monthly. The daily tasks, I wrote on one sheet of paper under the titles "morning", "afternoon", and "evening", though that schedule is fairly flexible. I included devotions on that list to help me stay on top of them. I look at my task list several times a day, and it helps me remember things that could easily be overlooked. The weekly jobs I put on another sheet of paper. I do the weekly chores for the bedroom on Monday, the spare room on Tuesday, the living room on Wednesday, and so on. For the monthly tasks, I figured that there are usually four weeks in a month, so I wrote "week 1" with lines for Monday through Friday, then "week 2," and so on. I divided the things I wanted done monthly as evenly as possible on those lines. In months with five weeks, I use the time for make up for things that got skipped for some reason or other, projects I've been putting off, such as sewing, just extra relaxation, or personal things that are fun to me, like reading a book, playing the piano, or doing "fun shopping," as opposed to just "grocery shopping," because you've got to take time for yourself once in awhile. Even Jesus tried to find time off to himself sometimes! I have worked to consistently stick to my schedule while still allowing it some flexibility. For instance, some things that I thought I'd want done weekly get done every other week instead, because they don't really need done every week, but I'd like them done more often than once a month. Also, some chores go really fast, because I don't necessarily have to complete them, just check on them. For example, one day a month I check all of the light fixtures. If they need taken down and washed, I will clean them, but most of the time, they are still clean. If you make a schedule and stick to it, it will take you less and less time to finish your chores as the weeks go. The first time I cleaned my kitchen by my new schedule, it took probably 2 hours. Now it takes me 30-45 minutes to get it THOROUGHLY clean. Part of that is because things are already fairly clean, so there is less scrubbing involved, such as inside the fridge and microwave. Also, you get faster at doing it, because you go through the same routine everytime and don't need to think about it as much. You also miss less, because you get a system going. FINALLY, you will not stress much over your house when company comes, and you will not stress when some darling man in your life or a visiting child leaves a room a bit messy, because you have a system for dealing with it. You do not have to drop everything and deal with it right then. There is a day and time scheduled for dealing with that. The whole house will be clean again by Friday! Some may say that this is easy to do if you stay at home as I do, but it's hard if you work. However, I think it's all the more necessary if you work. I never was a fan of heavy scheduling, but this simple tool has taken soo much stress off of me and freed up a lot of my time rather than taken more of it. Afterall, it takes far less time to constantly maintain a clean house than to constantly try to stay caught up with a messy one! If you make your own schedule, you can determine how much you can handle in one day. It is not imperetive that your schedule be as full as mine. The important thing is that you have a plan for when things get done to make sure that they DO get done. You can take as much or as little time as you need. I clean one room a day, but you could spread that out over two or three days and just take 10 or 15 minutes a day tidying up the whole rest of the house if you needed more time to complete the tasks. Either way, a plan saves you constant headache! Maybe you don't need this advice, because you're a bit more organized than I am, but here it is anyways!
I know that this was long, and maybe you didn't read the whole thing, but I hope it has been helpful in some way. I love you, cousin, and wish you the best in your upcoming marriage!
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Lists
A few lists have inadvertantly come to my mind lately. I don't know why, but I feel like sharing them for those of you out there that are so painfully bored that you would subject yourselves to them. Here they are:
Things I hate to do: (this list came to mind because I found myself mentioning several things recently on different occasions that I hate more than "cleaning the toilet," which I really don't mind, by the way. Also, these are in no particular order. I just numbered them for fun).
1. Wash dishes- For some reason, this is the most boring job in the world to me. Maybe it would help if there were a window in front of my sink.
2. Put away laundry, especially on hangers. I don't mind folding it, but there is something about hanging it that just seems so tedious to me.
3. Matching socks I know that this goes along with number two, but it deserves a number all its own. Every other item I fold can stand alone and requires no thought. Socks, on the other hand, require that I actually think while folding laundry, which is just wrong. Arthur likes his socks stacked one on the other and folded in half. He says turning them over stretches the elastic. He is right, of course, and I too hate to have slouchy socks. It's annoying to always have to pull them up. However, I'd rather deal with that than have them shuffle around in a drawer and always have to look for the match. Oh well, to each his or her own. I fold his the way he likes them and mine the way I like them. There's no point in fussing over it. Arthur would also like it if I would wash each type of item individually- towels in one load, jeans in another, shirts in another, and so forth. He says it would make it easier to sort and put away, but I say, variety is the spice of life. If I had to do an entire load of socks without any reprieve, I would lose my mind. Actually... it may already be lost. (Anyways, I'd rather sort when I fold since I have to handle every garment at that point anyways. I have a divided hamper, so I sort colors, whites, and denim as things go into the hamper and leave it at that. Any more is just a complication).
4. Packing and Unpacking- I hate them both equally, well, almost. I may hate unpacking slightly more, because it requires that laundry be done. See numbers 2 and 3.
5. Making phone calls- I would much rather deal with any problem either through e-mail or in person. If I deal with it in e-mail, it has the advantage of being able to reread and edit before I send it and the added bonus of avoiding the discomfort of direct confrontation. If I deal with it in person, I get the advantage of seeing the other person's body language and them seeing mine. Also, silences are far less uncomfortable in person than on the phone. There's usually some other distraction nearby. On the phone, if it's a business call I have to make, there are the long periods of waiting before being handed off from one person to the next. If you are so fortunate to finally make it to the person that you need to talk to, and if you are lucky enough to get someone that speaks reasonably good English, they may be able to fix your problem. OR, they may need you to check back with them later, which means starting the whole awful cycle beginning with the person whom you do not understand and who seems to be convinced that they are clearly understanding you.
6. Going back to the store to get the one item that I forgot I needed- I'm something of a tightwad with both my money and my time, and this is a waste of both. I do not enjoy spending time alone in the car, so this seems like the ultimate waste of my time and that 3 something a gallon gas.
7. Waiting for something to load on the computer- see the explanation in number 6
There, that wasn't so bad, was it?
Things that are worth it to buy the name brand:
1. Poptarts- I don't buy these often, because bread and oatmeal are so much cheaper, but when I do, I never, ever, ever buy generic. I like the brown sugar and cinnamon ones, and the name brand is the only one I have found that is really worth eating unless you are exceptionally hungry and there's just nothing else to be had.
2. Shoes- a good pair of shoes is soooo important. I hate achy feet. They can ruin a whole day!
3. Brown Sugar- I WILL NOT bake with the cheap brown sugar. I always buy C&H. The generic brands do not melt well in recipes and just aren't worth buying. You might as well us granulated sugar, because if you put that cheap stuff in a cinnamon roll, it will come out just like granulated. Nothing beats the flavor and texture of good brown sugar.
4. Toilet Paper- One ought not to skinch on toilet paper. One's bottom will not appreciate it. No one likes rough, transparent toilet paper. Do you want to pay for your children's therapy?
5. Tea- Arthur and I drink about a gallon of decaf. tea a day. For pennies more than it would otherwise cost us, we get to enjoy our tea very much. There is no point going through a lifetime of mediocre tea when you can have the good stuff for pennies more a day. I know that, over the course of a lifetime, those pennies add up, but for my three or so dollars a year, I will pay the price to love my tea. Good tea is important to one's sense of well being, especially if one is me. We're talking about quality of life here! One can live without good tea, of course, but if such a simple thing brings joy into your life and the lives of those you love (namely, Arthur), what is a few pennies?
6. Shortening- I have only recently discovered this. Crisco brand shortening is better for you than most generics, because it has no trans fat. Also, my cousin who does cake decorating says it works significantly better in icing.
Things that you are better off buying the cheapo version:
1. Milk- Here in Troy, Aldi's milk is generally considerably cheaper than Wal-Mart's, but it tastes oh so much better! Their cheese is better too, but at most stores, I would recommend buying the name brand cheese over the store brand. Bad cheese is waxy, yuck!
2. Eggs- An egg is an egg is an egg, so unless you are buying organic, what's the point? You will not convince me that the name brand chickens lay better eggs than the poor little generic chickens with the boring looking coop.
3. Butter- similar argument to that above... I have tried several brands of butter (real butter), depending on what was on sale, and they all taste like butter. Margarine, on the other hand, is a different story. Each tub has its own unique taste.
4. Printers- unless you're wanting something really high tech for pictures or something, get whatever has the cheapest ink. Eventually, they all turn on you, so what's the point. My most expensive printer turned on me a lot quicker than my cheapest one!
5. Dogs- The cute little mutt in the parking lot is cheaper, healthier, and just as friendly a companion as that pedigreed pooch. :-)
Things that make me smile:
1. Seeing my husband walk in the house- This most definitely ALWAYS makes me smile. :-)
2. Cookies- Who can argue with that? It makes me especially smiley if the cookies are homemade.
3. Singing in church- I love music and church music especially makes me smile. I love to listen to all the different voices, old and young singing together. There are few if any other places where you can hear so much diversity from one group.
4. Going on a walk on a sunny day.
5. Going on a walk on a rainy day, if it's not to cold.
6. Seeing all of my family.
7. Visiting with old friends.
8. New babies- Wait a second, does anyone know any old babies???
9. Whistling- I don't know why, it just does!
10. Seeing someone else smile almost always makes me more cheerful... So spread some cheer!
Things I hate to do: (this list came to mind because I found myself mentioning several things recently on different occasions that I hate more than "cleaning the toilet," which I really don't mind, by the way. Also, these are in no particular order. I just numbered them for fun).
1. Wash dishes- For some reason, this is the most boring job in the world to me. Maybe it would help if there were a window in front of my sink.
2. Put away laundry, especially on hangers. I don't mind folding it, but there is something about hanging it that just seems so tedious to me.
3. Matching socks I know that this goes along with number two, but it deserves a number all its own. Every other item I fold can stand alone and requires no thought. Socks, on the other hand, require that I actually think while folding laundry, which is just wrong. Arthur likes his socks stacked one on the other and folded in half. He says turning them over stretches the elastic. He is right, of course, and I too hate to have slouchy socks. It's annoying to always have to pull them up. However, I'd rather deal with that than have them shuffle around in a drawer and always have to look for the match. Oh well, to each his or her own. I fold his the way he likes them and mine the way I like them. There's no point in fussing over it. Arthur would also like it if I would wash each type of item individually- towels in one load, jeans in another, shirts in another, and so forth. He says it would make it easier to sort and put away, but I say, variety is the spice of life. If I had to do an entire load of socks without any reprieve, I would lose my mind. Actually... it may already be lost. (Anyways, I'd rather sort when I fold since I have to handle every garment at that point anyways. I have a divided hamper, so I sort colors, whites, and denim as things go into the hamper and leave it at that. Any more is just a complication).
4. Packing and Unpacking- I hate them both equally, well, almost. I may hate unpacking slightly more, because it requires that laundry be done. See numbers 2 and 3.
5. Making phone calls- I would much rather deal with any problem either through e-mail or in person. If I deal with it in e-mail, it has the advantage of being able to reread and edit before I send it and the added bonus of avoiding the discomfort of direct confrontation. If I deal with it in person, I get the advantage of seeing the other person's body language and them seeing mine. Also, silences are far less uncomfortable in person than on the phone. There's usually some other distraction nearby. On the phone, if it's a business call I have to make, there are the long periods of waiting before being handed off from one person to the next. If you are so fortunate to finally make it to the person that you need to talk to, and if you are lucky enough to get someone that speaks reasonably good English, they may be able to fix your problem. OR, they may need you to check back with them later, which means starting the whole awful cycle beginning with the person whom you do not understand and who seems to be convinced that they are clearly understanding you.
6. Going back to the store to get the one item that I forgot I needed- I'm something of a tightwad with both my money and my time, and this is a waste of both. I do not enjoy spending time alone in the car, so this seems like the ultimate waste of my time and that 3 something a gallon gas.
7. Waiting for something to load on the computer- see the explanation in number 6
There, that wasn't so bad, was it?
Things that are worth it to buy the name brand:
1. Poptarts- I don't buy these often, because bread and oatmeal are so much cheaper, but when I do, I never, ever, ever buy generic. I like the brown sugar and cinnamon ones, and the name brand is the only one I have found that is really worth eating unless you are exceptionally hungry and there's just nothing else to be had.
2. Shoes- a good pair of shoes is soooo important. I hate achy feet. They can ruin a whole day!
3. Brown Sugar- I WILL NOT bake with the cheap brown sugar. I always buy C&H. The generic brands do not melt well in recipes and just aren't worth buying. You might as well us granulated sugar, because if you put that cheap stuff in a cinnamon roll, it will come out just like granulated. Nothing beats the flavor and texture of good brown sugar.
4. Toilet Paper- One ought not to skinch on toilet paper. One's bottom will not appreciate it. No one likes rough, transparent toilet paper. Do you want to pay for your children's therapy?
5. Tea- Arthur and I drink about a gallon of decaf. tea a day. For pennies more than it would otherwise cost us, we get to enjoy our tea very much. There is no point going through a lifetime of mediocre tea when you can have the good stuff for pennies more a day. I know that, over the course of a lifetime, those pennies add up, but for my three or so dollars a year, I will pay the price to love my tea. Good tea is important to one's sense of well being, especially if one is me. We're talking about quality of life here! One can live without good tea, of course, but if such a simple thing brings joy into your life and the lives of those you love (namely, Arthur), what is a few pennies?
6. Shortening- I have only recently discovered this. Crisco brand shortening is better for you than most generics, because it has no trans fat. Also, my cousin who does cake decorating says it works significantly better in icing.
Things that you are better off buying the cheapo version:
1. Milk- Here in Troy, Aldi's milk is generally considerably cheaper than Wal-Mart's, but it tastes oh so much better! Their cheese is better too, but at most stores, I would recommend buying the name brand cheese over the store brand. Bad cheese is waxy, yuck!
2. Eggs- An egg is an egg is an egg, so unless you are buying organic, what's the point? You will not convince me that the name brand chickens lay better eggs than the poor little generic chickens with the boring looking coop.
3. Butter- similar argument to that above... I have tried several brands of butter (real butter), depending on what was on sale, and they all taste like butter. Margarine, on the other hand, is a different story. Each tub has its own unique taste.
4. Printers- unless you're wanting something really high tech for pictures or something, get whatever has the cheapest ink. Eventually, they all turn on you, so what's the point. My most expensive printer turned on me a lot quicker than my cheapest one!
5. Dogs- The cute little mutt in the parking lot is cheaper, healthier, and just as friendly a companion as that pedigreed pooch. :-)
Things that make me smile:
1. Seeing my husband walk in the house- This most definitely ALWAYS makes me smile. :-)
2. Cookies- Who can argue with that? It makes me especially smiley if the cookies are homemade.
3. Singing in church- I love music and church music especially makes me smile. I love to listen to all the different voices, old and young singing together. There are few if any other places where you can hear so much diversity from one group.
4. Going on a walk on a sunny day.
5. Going on a walk on a rainy day, if it's not to cold.
6. Seeing all of my family.
7. Visiting with old friends.
8. New babies- Wait a second, does anyone know any old babies???
9. Whistling- I don't know why, it just does!
10. Seeing someone else smile almost always makes me more cheerful... So spread some cheer!
Friday, March 21, 2008
Kristyn's Christmas Cantata
This was the end of Kristyn's performance. This was probably the third or forth time through the song. :-D
At long last... Part II
So sorry... I know calling something "part 1" strongly implies that there is a "part 2," and I intended that there would be. I guess I've just been too busy living my life to stop and write about it, so I will try to briefly (somewhat) catch up now.
We took off from Troy the Friday evening before Christmas. Arthur told his boss that he would be taking Monday (Christmas Eve) off. Apparently, the carpenter's union does not consider Christmas Eve as big of a holiday as Labor Day. Yet another 6 hour drive and we were at mom and dad's house. We opened presents with my parents on Saturday morning. Tony and Brenda and their kids came down to open presents with us. Tony is what I call my "almost brother". He moved in with us when I was 5 and lived with us for about 3 and a half years. He lived nearby and worked for my dad until just a few years ago. Sunday morning we went to church and ate dinner at my Grandma Jane's. The original plan was to have Chrstmas with Arthur's relatives on Monday morning, but there was a change of plans because one of his aunts had to work, so we headed up to his grandparents' in Independence, which was about an hour away. We opened presents with them that night. Tony and Brenda had told us that we could stay at their house if it was too crowded at Arthur's grandparents. There was quite a crowd, so we headed that way. When we got there, the house was dark and empty. They had thought we decided against staying there, so they decided to stay at mom and dad's one more night. :-) I have other relatives in town that probably would have put us up for the night, but it was really late, and we didn't want to wake them. So, we headed back to Arthur's grandparents. We got there just in time to see his mom pulling out. In the few minutes we'd been gone, his grandpa had had an episode with his pacemaker, so they took him to the hospital for the night. They found a place to squeeze us in and we went to bed. The next day, we had Christmas dinner there, then headed back to OK to my grandma Jane's house. Arthur and the guys played paintball at mom and dad's house while we wives sat inside with the babies and chatted. We had Christmas at Grandma's with all my mom's side of the family that Monday night. Of course, it was kicked off with a huge supper. I was sooooo full of yummy Christmas food after two big meals in a row! We had to come back to MO Christmas day, because Arthur had to work the next day. It was kind of weird not to go to my Grandpa Don's house at all. We usually went there the day before Christmas Eve. Most of the family got together with his wife and two daughters on New Year's Eve, but again, Arthur had to work, so we couldn't be there. We did have a nice little New Year's Party here with friends and family.
Anyways, the weekend after Christmas was the big Schaper Christmas- for which we made yet another 6 hour road trip. As long as I can remember, that has been the highlight of my year. I was really looking forward to it this year, since we couldn't go down for Thanksgiving. It's funny, even as a kid, knowing that there would be fewer presents there than anywhere else I went for Christmas, I still looked forward to it all year. It's not that I don't enjoy the other gatherings. I really do, but this gathering is special for a number of reasons. My dad is one of SEVEN children. One of those seven, Uncle Steve, is the dean of a high school dorm. We all gather there every year on the weekend after Christmas (we used to gather at my Aunt Ruth's house, but we outgrew that long ago. The last few times we were there, people slept all kinds of places, scattered on the floor all over the house). Some of my cousins I see a lot of, but other's I only get to see at weddings, funerals, and family gatherings like this. At the family Christmas, we get 2-3 days to do nothing but enjoy each other's company and catch up. There are kids roller skating everywhere, running races, and playing school. (There's usually over 80 people in all). There is food EVERYWHERE! There are basketball games, volleyball games, and football games. There are puzzles, scrabble, rook, monopoly, and catch phrase. Did I mention there's a lot of GREAT food? There is the state of the family address, which is every bit as long as the state of the union address. My grandma used to do every single bit of it, but in recent years, we've mixed it up a bit. Two of my cousins did it a year ago and did it completely in rhyme. That was impressive. This year was really neat. Someone from each of the seven families came up and told about all of their family. You see, the State of the Family Address is where they tell a little bit about what each and every family member has been up to in the past year. It's a way to get a quick update on everyone, even the little bitty guys. This year we heard about successes in school, music classes, plays, birthday parties, new jobs, new boyfriends and girlfriends, new spouses, new babies, and all sorts of other great things.
After that comes another one of my favorite parts. We have our own little Christmas program. All the kids say their parts from their church or school programs or sing a song or share some other talent. For instance, one cousin plays the harmonica. Another is great at guitar. One little cousin, Kristyn, sang Away in a Manger again and again and again. :-) She kept getting lost, so it went something like this, "Away in a Manger no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head, the stars in the sky no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head," and so on. We also exchange presents. Grandma and Grandpa get something for everyone, and everyone gets something for them. Other than that, we each draw a name and buy something for that person, so everyone generally gets about two gifts. Overall, we just really enjoy each other's company. I don't know many other families that spend several full days and nights together a couple of times a year and actually enjoy it thoroughly. It really helps keep us all close. I know I could depend on any of my aunts, uncles or cousins if I ever needed them. We're a family, and that's what it's about.
Brett, Mom, and Dad
Justin, Lindsey, and Brenda
Tony, Brooke, and Sami
Grandma Rogers and Chig
Valerie, Lance, and "Mom Baber"
Uncle Nate always plays the part of "Santa Claus."
He tells all the little kids who to take the presents to, and they deliver them.
Aunt Diane, Grandma, and Aunt Naomi wathcing Dawson move blocks
with his new tractor.
Jenna had too much fun.
Aunt Della holding Megan and telling about her family. Kristyn and Hailey are
showing everyone how much the Albert Schaper branch of the family loves each other. :-)
Nathaniel and Dawson are enjoying their Christmas Dinner
Kyle and Mandy brought baby Ava the day she came home from the hospital.
Here she is, obviously enjoying her very first family Christmas.
Wyatt borrowed his Uncle Brad's paddle to play ping pong with his Papa Nate.
Noah worked hard to pull Nathaniel, Shayla, Kaycee, Kaitlynn, and Kayli on this sheet.
One of many Monopoly games
Dawson, Wyatt, Jenna, Nathaniel, and Noah posing for the camera
Who knew that foosball was a spectator sport?
My Dad and Uncle Steve working on what seemed to be one of the world's hardest puzzles.
One of many Rook games
Jared enjoying his Papa Steve's famous mashed potatoes and gravy
We took off from Troy the Friday evening before Christmas. Arthur told his boss that he would be taking Monday (Christmas Eve) off. Apparently, the carpenter's union does not consider Christmas Eve as big of a holiday as Labor Day. Yet another 6 hour drive and we were at mom and dad's house. We opened presents with my parents on Saturday morning. Tony and Brenda and their kids came down to open presents with us. Tony is what I call my "almost brother". He moved in with us when I was 5 and lived with us for about 3 and a half years. He lived nearby and worked for my dad until just a few years ago. Sunday morning we went to church and ate dinner at my Grandma Jane's. The original plan was to have Chrstmas with Arthur's relatives on Monday morning, but there was a change of plans because one of his aunts had to work, so we headed up to his grandparents' in Independence, which was about an hour away. We opened presents with them that night. Tony and Brenda had told us that we could stay at their house if it was too crowded at Arthur's grandparents. There was quite a crowd, so we headed that way. When we got there, the house was dark and empty. They had thought we decided against staying there, so they decided to stay at mom and dad's one more night. :-) I have other relatives in town that probably would have put us up for the night, but it was really late, and we didn't want to wake them. So, we headed back to Arthur's grandparents. We got there just in time to see his mom pulling out. In the few minutes we'd been gone, his grandpa had had an episode with his pacemaker, so they took him to the hospital for the night. They found a place to squeeze us in and we went to bed. The next day, we had Christmas dinner there, then headed back to OK to my grandma Jane's house. Arthur and the guys played paintball at mom and dad's house while we wives sat inside with the babies and chatted. We had Christmas at Grandma's with all my mom's side of the family that Monday night. Of course, it was kicked off with a huge supper. I was sooooo full of yummy Christmas food after two big meals in a row! We had to come back to MO Christmas day, because Arthur had to work the next day. It was kind of weird not to go to my Grandpa Don's house at all. We usually went there the day before Christmas Eve. Most of the family got together with his wife and two daughters on New Year's Eve, but again, Arthur had to work, so we couldn't be there. We did have a nice little New Year's Party here with friends and family.
Anyways, the weekend after Christmas was the big Schaper Christmas- for which we made yet another 6 hour road trip. As long as I can remember, that has been the highlight of my year. I was really looking forward to it this year, since we couldn't go down for Thanksgiving. It's funny, even as a kid, knowing that there would be fewer presents there than anywhere else I went for Christmas, I still looked forward to it all year. It's not that I don't enjoy the other gatherings. I really do, but this gathering is special for a number of reasons. My dad is one of SEVEN children. One of those seven, Uncle Steve, is the dean of a high school dorm. We all gather there every year on the weekend after Christmas (we used to gather at my Aunt Ruth's house, but we outgrew that long ago. The last few times we were there, people slept all kinds of places, scattered on the floor all over the house). Some of my cousins I see a lot of, but other's I only get to see at weddings, funerals, and family gatherings like this. At the family Christmas, we get 2-3 days to do nothing but enjoy each other's company and catch up. There are kids roller skating everywhere, running races, and playing school. (There's usually over 80 people in all). There is food EVERYWHERE! There are basketball games, volleyball games, and football games. There are puzzles, scrabble, rook, monopoly, and catch phrase. Did I mention there's a lot of GREAT food? There is the state of the family address, which is every bit as long as the state of the union address. My grandma used to do every single bit of it, but in recent years, we've mixed it up a bit. Two of my cousins did it a year ago and did it completely in rhyme. That was impressive. This year was really neat. Someone from each of the seven families came up and told about all of their family. You see, the State of the Family Address is where they tell a little bit about what each and every family member has been up to in the past year. It's a way to get a quick update on everyone, even the little bitty guys. This year we heard about successes in school, music classes, plays, birthday parties, new jobs, new boyfriends and girlfriends, new spouses, new babies, and all sorts of other great things.
After that comes another one of my favorite parts. We have our own little Christmas program. All the kids say their parts from their church or school programs or sing a song or share some other talent. For instance, one cousin plays the harmonica. Another is great at guitar. One little cousin, Kristyn, sang Away in a Manger again and again and again. :-) She kept getting lost, so it went something like this, "Away in a Manger no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head, the stars in the sky no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head," and so on. We also exchange presents. Grandma and Grandpa get something for everyone, and everyone gets something for them. Other than that, we each draw a name and buy something for that person, so everyone generally gets about two gifts. Overall, we just really enjoy each other's company. I don't know many other families that spend several full days and nights together a couple of times a year and actually enjoy it thoroughly. It really helps keep us all close. I know I could depend on any of my aunts, uncles or cousins if I ever needed them. We're a family, and that's what it's about.
Brett, Mom, and Dad Justin, Lindsey, and Brenda Tony, Brooke, and Sami Grandma Rogers and ChigValerie, Lance, and "Mom Baber"
Uncle Nate always plays the part of "Santa Claus."He tells all the little kids who to take the presents to, and they deliver them.
Aunt Diane, Grandma, and Aunt Naomi wathcing Dawson move blockswith his new tractor.
Jenna had too much fun. Aunt Della holding Megan and telling about her family. Kristyn and Hailey areshowing everyone how much the Albert Schaper branch of the family loves each other. :-)
Nathaniel and Dawson are enjoying their Christmas DinnerKyle and Mandy brought baby Ava the day she came home from the hospital.
Here she is, obviously enjoying her very first family Christmas.
Wyatt borrowed his Uncle Brad's paddle to play ping pong with his Papa Nate. Noah worked hard to pull Nathaniel, Shayla, Kaycee, Kaitlynn, and Kayli on this sheet.One of many Monopoly games
Dawson, Wyatt, Jenna, Nathaniel, and Noah posing for the camera
Who knew that foosball was a spectator sport? My Dad and Uncle Steve working on what seemed to be one of the world's hardest puzzles. One of many Rook games Jared enjoying his Papa Steve's famous mashed potatoes and gravy
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
The Quick Christmas Catch-up Pt. 1
Sorry about the long delay on this post. It's harder to keep up with this site than I thought it would be. :-) Anyways, here's a brief rundown of our Christmas. The first part is the hard part to write. The good part will come in my next post.
Some of you may know that my Grandpa Don (on my mom's side) was recently diagnosed with kidney cancer. By the time they caught it, it had already spread to his lungs. He was visiting my uncle in Alaska when he began having problems. The doctor there suspected pneumonia and thought he ought to be sent home where he could go to a hospital. (There's just a clinic where my uncle lives, and the doctor only visits from time to time. Between times, they have semi-trained personel who call for advice when they cannot help the patients). Anyways, he was bad enough that my uncle was afraid for him to travel alone, so he flew with him as far as Seattle, and my mom met him there and travelled with him the rest of the way home. They took him straight to the hospital in Tulsa from the airport, and he was diagnosed with cancer there. Arthur and I were able to make the trip to Oklahoma twice before he passed away. I was glad for the time I got to spend with him, but I wish he'd been awake and alert more when I was there. He passed away about a week and a half before Christmas. He had insisted on going home the day before, so they took him in an ambulance. My mom said in her entire lifetime, she never knew her dad to profess to be a Christian. However, he did a lot of soul searching and praying in the hospital, and before he died, he told her he had gotten saved and was ready to go. It's amazing how God works. His whole life, he was unable to profess Christianity. When he was in Alaska, before he got sick, my uncle told him, "Dad, I just feel like I need to tell you this, and I'm not sure why. You know, you can be saved if you want to. I'm not a preacher, and I don't know a lot of things, but I do know this. You have to trust and obey. If you do those two things, you can be saved. I just felt like I needed to tell you that." My grandpa said, "Don, I'm glad you said that." As far as I know, that was the extent of the conversation. Later, in the hospital, my grandpa asked my uncle if he was still preaching. At first, Uncle Don didn't remember, but when he did, he said, "Trust and obey, Dad." My grandpa was not normally a singer, but while he was drifting in and out mostly asleep, he was singing and saying something about "Hallelujah." Then, just before he left the hospital, he told my mom he was ready. The funeral was on Monday, December 17.
Arthur and I went down for the weekend. Mom and Dad were still out of electricity because of the ice storm. There was a LOT of damage. Fortunately, Dad's old generator for his welder had broken when he loaned it to someone, so he bought a new one just before the snowstorm. He was able to run the entire house on the new generator. He said the old one never would have handled the job. The drawback to generator life: 1. The gas it guzzles is EXPENSIVE right now!!! 2. It gets turned off at night. I guess it's not all bad... I had a good excuse to cuddle for warmth. :-) It was a hard weekend, but I'm glad Arthur was able to get off work to go with me. It was a looong drive back after the funeral on Monday, and Tuesday morning came all too soon! We had one weekend trip over and two more still to go!
Some of you may know that my Grandpa Don (on my mom's side) was recently diagnosed with kidney cancer. By the time they caught it, it had already spread to his lungs. He was visiting my uncle in Alaska when he began having problems. The doctor there suspected pneumonia and thought he ought to be sent home where he could go to a hospital. (There's just a clinic where my uncle lives, and the doctor only visits from time to time. Between times, they have semi-trained personel who call for advice when they cannot help the patients). Anyways, he was bad enough that my uncle was afraid for him to travel alone, so he flew with him as far as Seattle, and my mom met him there and travelled with him the rest of the way home. They took him straight to the hospital in Tulsa from the airport, and he was diagnosed with cancer there. Arthur and I were able to make the trip to Oklahoma twice before he passed away. I was glad for the time I got to spend with him, but I wish he'd been awake and alert more when I was there. He passed away about a week and a half before Christmas. He had insisted on going home the day before, so they took him in an ambulance. My mom said in her entire lifetime, she never knew her dad to profess to be a Christian. However, he did a lot of soul searching and praying in the hospital, and before he died, he told her he had gotten saved and was ready to go. It's amazing how God works. His whole life, he was unable to profess Christianity. When he was in Alaska, before he got sick, my uncle told him, "Dad, I just feel like I need to tell you this, and I'm not sure why. You know, you can be saved if you want to. I'm not a preacher, and I don't know a lot of things, but I do know this. You have to trust and obey. If you do those two things, you can be saved. I just felt like I needed to tell you that." My grandpa said, "Don, I'm glad you said that." As far as I know, that was the extent of the conversation. Later, in the hospital, my grandpa asked my uncle if he was still preaching. At first, Uncle Don didn't remember, but when he did, he said, "Trust and obey, Dad." My grandpa was not normally a singer, but while he was drifting in and out mostly asleep, he was singing and saying something about "Hallelujah." Then, just before he left the hospital, he told my mom he was ready. The funeral was on Monday, December 17.
Arthur and I went down for the weekend. Mom and Dad were still out of electricity because of the ice storm. There was a LOT of damage. Fortunately, Dad's old generator for his welder had broken when he loaned it to someone, so he bought a new one just before the snowstorm. He was able to run the entire house on the new generator. He said the old one never would have handled the job. The drawback to generator life: 1. The gas it guzzles is EXPENSIVE right now!!! 2. It gets turned off at night. I guess it's not all bad... I had a good excuse to cuddle for warmth. :-) It was a hard weekend, but I'm glad Arthur was able to get off work to go with me. It was a looong drive back after the funeral on Monday, and Tuesday morning came all too soon! We had one weekend trip over and two more still to go!
Saturday, January 12, 2008
The Un-Post
Warning: This is not really a post. It is a little blurb informing you that I will try to actually post something later this week. I have lots and lots to write about, some things that are very happy, some things that are not so happy, but there will be a post!
Since you last heard from me, I have lived a very eventful existence. :-) If you know me at all, and I think most of you do, you know I can be prone to somewhat clutzy moments... Okay, I can be VERY clutzy! (As those of you who fished my phone out of the toilet can verify). Since my last post, I burned myself on the oven rack (If there is a hole in a pot holder, I will find it), severely sliced my finger on glass (thought it was paper and grabbed it really firmly), caught a towel on fire (I set it too close to the electric burner. I hate electric burners. I'm ready to get back to a gas stove, though it may be a long time), and glued my finger to a toilet, and that was just in one week! Umm, yes, I did say that I glued my finger to a toilet. It is a sad strange story. Lest you all go crazy with curiousity, I guess I'd better explain that one now.
Our toilet handle was broken. To be more specific, the rod running from the toilet handle to the internal flushing mechanism thingy was broken. Did I just use "mechanism" and "thingy" in the same sentence??? Anyways, while Arthur was at work, I got very tired of dealing with the lid to the tank sitting on the counter, and I was tired of having to stick my hand in the tank to flush. I understand that the tank is filled with only clean water, but I still don't like it. Anyways, I thought, hey I have had to be more creative with scraping together crafty teacher projects at the last minute than this job will require, so I scoured the house for something with which I might temporarily repair the rod until our landlord supplied us with a replacement. I found toothpicks and electrical tape. Seemed like a good idea. It would have been if the break had been on the straight part of the rod, but it was right on the bend where the rod and the handle connect. (If you will lift the lid on your toilet tank, you will see what I mean :-) ) Anyways, the toothpicks and tape did not keep it solid enough. It would bend when I pushed the handle, so it was not going to work. Just then, I remembered that I had some superglue. Again, it seemed like a good idea. It was not. It might have been if I had taken into account that the nice runny superglue runs down hill very quickly and is not very visible on a damp, white, plastic rod. I applied the glue, put the two pieces together, and held them very tightly for a long time to make sure it would stick very well. It did. I had been careful to hold the rod far from where I applied the glue, but as I said, it was very runny. My thumb and first two fingers were stuck VERY tight. I could just barely reach the sink from where I was stuck, and I got the soap and wet a washrag. I spent a full half an hour soaking and gently pulling with my left over toothpicks. I couldn't reach any phones, so I was pretty well on my own. 30 minutes of my day, gone, but boy was I happy to be free to move! I was really happy that I didn't damage much skin too. Just a tiny spot on my thumb. The handle worked really well, though..... for 6 or 8 flushes.
That was a long un-post. In case you were wondering, our landlord came by on Tuesday with our new part, and the toilet flushes better than ever! Yippee! Anyways, hopefully you will hear more from me next week, and I hope to have pictures!
Since you last heard from me, I have lived a very eventful existence. :-) If you know me at all, and I think most of you do, you know I can be prone to somewhat clutzy moments... Okay, I can be VERY clutzy! (As those of you who fished my phone out of the toilet can verify). Since my last post, I burned myself on the oven rack (If there is a hole in a pot holder, I will find it), severely sliced my finger on glass (thought it was paper and grabbed it really firmly), caught a towel on fire (I set it too close to the electric burner. I hate electric burners. I'm ready to get back to a gas stove, though it may be a long time), and glued my finger to a toilet, and that was just in one week! Umm, yes, I did say that I glued my finger to a toilet. It is a sad strange story. Lest you all go crazy with curiousity, I guess I'd better explain that one now.
Our toilet handle was broken. To be more specific, the rod running from the toilet handle to the internal flushing mechanism thingy was broken. Did I just use "mechanism" and "thingy" in the same sentence??? Anyways, while Arthur was at work, I got very tired of dealing with the lid to the tank sitting on the counter, and I was tired of having to stick my hand in the tank to flush. I understand that the tank is filled with only clean water, but I still don't like it. Anyways, I thought, hey I have had to be more creative with scraping together crafty teacher projects at the last minute than this job will require, so I scoured the house for something with which I might temporarily repair the rod until our landlord supplied us with a replacement. I found toothpicks and electrical tape. Seemed like a good idea. It would have been if the break had been on the straight part of the rod, but it was right on the bend where the rod and the handle connect. (If you will lift the lid on your toilet tank, you will see what I mean :-) ) Anyways, the toothpicks and tape did not keep it solid enough. It would bend when I pushed the handle, so it was not going to work. Just then, I remembered that I had some superglue. Again, it seemed like a good idea. It was not. It might have been if I had taken into account that the nice runny superglue runs down hill very quickly and is not very visible on a damp, white, plastic rod. I applied the glue, put the two pieces together, and held them very tightly for a long time to make sure it would stick very well. It did. I had been careful to hold the rod far from where I applied the glue, but as I said, it was very runny. My thumb and first two fingers were stuck VERY tight. I could just barely reach the sink from where I was stuck, and I got the soap and wet a washrag. I spent a full half an hour soaking and gently pulling with my left over toothpicks. I couldn't reach any phones, so I was pretty well on my own. 30 minutes of my day, gone, but boy was I happy to be free to move! I was really happy that I didn't damage much skin too. Just a tiny spot on my thumb. The handle worked really well, though..... for 6 or 8 flushes.
That was a long un-post. In case you were wondering, our landlord came by on Tuesday with our new part, and the toilet flushes better than ever! Yippee! Anyways, hopefully you will hear more from me next week, and I hope to have pictures!
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