Sibling Rivalry

Okay, I know they fight...

at the table...

in the car...

on the couch...

but I never thought it had gone this far:


Apparently, even their clothes fight when they're not wearing them.

I pulled clothes out of the drier yesterday morning, expecting to see only El's, which I had put in the wash the night before. Em had come along right behind me and added some of hers, then put them all in the drier after I had gone to bed. It looks like El's clothes took issue with Em's clothes crowding them in the machine. This cami of Em's was the only casualty I found. Who would have thought that a 7th grader's clothes could be so violent!

Zoom Zoom

Now that I'm a legal driver, I can tell the story of our auto shopping adventure!

We've had a minivan for about 6 years now and it was just what our family of 5 needed. But now that our eldest is in college with only 2 years left, we don't need all that room. Added to that is the fact that certain dash warning lights wouldn't go out, even after a trip to the dealership, and strange noises were starting to make themselves heard. It was time for our family truckster to retire.

We looked at several cars: a couple of offerings by Volkswagen, a Ford Fusion, a Honda Civic, but the one that spoke to me was this one: Mazda Speed 3.

That's the short version of the story.

Here's the longer version:

Saturday morning, we (all 4 of us that are still at our house on a regular basis) headed to Mobile to go car shopping. I had suggested that we look at the Honda Civic. We had driven several different VWs and and a Ford already. Mr. H wanted to check out the Mazda dealership, too, so we had our plan. He figured I'd go for the Honda, so we went to the Mazda place first.

There were several Mazda 3s in the lot. We prefer a manual transmission, so that put us looking at the Speed 3. They had one that was a color called Liquid Silver. I call it dark gray. Have I ever mentioned that gray is my favorite color? Odd, I know, but that's the way it is.

Mr. H reached for his wallet to let the salesman make a copy of his driver's license. No wallet! Boy, was he shocked! No test driving for him. So I figured, it's going to be my car anyway, I'll do the test driving. The salesman made a copy of my license and we all climbed in for the ride.

The dealership is right on the interstate in Mobile, so after navigating the frontage road, I was on the highway.

Wow!

That's about all I can say.

That car moved...very quickly. In and out of traffic. No problems.

Wow!

I think I was hooked by the time I got it into 6th gear. We made it back to the dealership and said we had one more stop to make before we made our decision. (The salesman offered to drive us to the Honda dealership in the 3, but we declined!)

Up the frontage road to the Honda place we went. We found a new Honda Civic with a manual transmission. It was red. I'm not partial to red cars, but I suppose I could have been persuaded in a pinch. I sat in the driver's seat and was most impressed by the way it fit. It wrapped around the hips and lower back area in a way I'd never seen before. I liked it!

...until I got the seat close enough to reach pedals and shifter. I was too short!! If my shoulders had been 3 inches higher, I'd have fit perfectly. As it was, my arm jammed into the edge of that comfy seat every time I shifted. The other obstacle was the rear visibility. The back seats have head rests that I couldn't see over. It made me nervous about changing lanes and reversing because I couldn't see very well out the back.

Mr. H was stunned. He was sure that we be coming home with another Honda. (That's what our eldest has.) We decided to have lunch at McAlister's and talk it over. I hadn't paid much attention to rear visibility on the Mazda. (Now I know it's because it wasn't an issue. I could see fine and that's why I didn't notice anything.) We went back to the Mazda dealership to finalize the deal.

As we were filling out papers, one of the gentlemen brought me the copy they had made of my license. He asked me to check the expiration date. I did. It expired 3 1/2 months ago!! We had NO legal drivers with us! I couldn't believe it. Well, apparently that happens quite frequently at car dealerships. How often do you check the expiration date on your license? (You might want to do that now.) They let us get the car anyway.

Yesterday, I went down to Pascagoula and renewed my driver's license. Mr. H will probably never be caught without his again in his life.

Hanani or Hananiah

I was reading this morning in Nehemiah, chapter 7.

Nehemiah was in charge of rebuilding Jerusalem in the midst of local opposition. Some people wanted the work to stop, so he was setting up security.

This is verse 2:

I put in charge of Jerusalem my brother Hanani, along with Hananiah the commander of the citadel, because he was a man of integrity and feared God more than most men do.

Those 2 names are so similar. In fact, to most of us native English speakers, if reading aloud, we might even assign the same pronounciation to both.

But would you rather be given a job because you are the boss' brother, or would you rather it be because you have a reputation for integrity and love for the Lord?

Wow.

How Green Is This?

What was once mildly annoying has now become downright irritating.

It was bad enough that my receipts from Walmart were sometimes twice as long as they needed to be.

Now they have attachments.

If no one was responding to their survey attempts, maybe it's NOT because they didn't notice the extra 5 inches of paper in their pocket or purse. Maybe it's because they don't care to take the time or don't want to risk being flooded by e-mail. Do they actually think that attaching these tags and stickers to my receipt is going to entice me to respond?

They are sadly mistaken and are wasting their resources.

And irritating me!

Benbot

Okay, I know what you're thinking:

'Where have I seen that face?'

It's right there on the edge of my memory...

I can see him...



Okay, how about I tell you his name?

Lobot

Does that help?

I thought not.

How about a little more description?

He worked for Lando Calrissian in Cloud City.

Now you remember.

From a Pain in the Neck to a Warm Globe

Last night at church I had a really bad headache. It was one of those that keeps you from processing thoughts and therefore odd stuff comes out, instead of your well-reasoned, intelligent responses. In addition to the headache, my neck, shoulder, back and tailbone hurt, too. My best remedy for all that was a warm bath.

So that's where I was after church last night. My favorite smelly bath salts had been used up by one (or several) of my daughters. As a next-best substitute for aromatherapy, I squeezed some of the shower gel that came with my favorite perfume (Green Tea, by Elizabeth Arden) into the water. Not bad, considering I'm not fond of bubbles. I usually bring a book with me, but my head hurt and I didn't think "The Devil's Punchbowl" set the proper tone of relaxation that I was trying to achieve. So I just closed my eyes and hoped that I didn't fall asleep and drown.

So, now you get to make another trip down my stream of consciousness. I started out with a pain in my neck and ended up with a Warm Globe, as our Creator intended it. I even diagrammed it later that evening so I'd remember the connections.


As I was lying in the water, I was thinking how nice Green Tea smells and how lovely floating is. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to float all the time. Ideally, the water should be salt water, to provide more buoyancy, but most oceans are a bit too chilly to stay in permanently and the wave action might wash over your head and that could be unpleasant, too. Maybe one of those floating lounge chairs would work. But not an inflatable one. I wouldn't want to risk a puncture, loosing the air that's keeping me afloat. Maybe something made of foam. What did they use in that Kevin Costner movie with the floating cities? And where did all that water come from anyway? That could never happen...wait, that DID happen once! So, where DID all that water come from? Well a good bit of that water came from the heavens, the atmosphere. Had to be a pretty think atmosphere to provide rain for a solid 40 days. A thick atmosphere, kind of like in a green house. Hey! That sounds like God created the earth with lots of green house gasses and a warm atmosphere. And we lived longer when the earth was like that... and the ocean was probably warm and I wouldn't have to worry about hypothermia while I was floating in my nifty foam chair in the salty water.

And I bet it smelled nice, too.

*sigh*

I love it when a thought process comes together to show us how much God loved us from the beginning.

A Sweater for My Tunes

I decided to use my time wisely on the trip up to Starkville yesterday. I knitted a sweater for my mp3 player.

Pretty knifty, huh?

Doubt or Forgetfulness

Mark asked a question last night in church that got me thinking:

"Have you ever doubted that God loves you?"

I don't think I've ever actively doubted it. I don't think the thought "God doesn't love me" has ever crossed my mind.

BUT...

I do think there have been times that I just didn't think about Him loving me ... times when I forgot to turn to Him ... times when I forgot He loves me.

Isn't that worse?

Early Riser

I got up early this morning to try and catch some of the Perseids meteor shower. It was a bit overcast this morning, not solid, though. Directly overhead was clear, but that's where the moon was shining brightly enough to cast a distinct shadow.

I did see a couple of meteors, streaking to the south. I think I saw a satellite, too, but it drifted behind cloud cover before I could determine for sure.

There must be a thunderstorm happening out in the Gulf somewhere. I could tell there was lightening but I couldn't see it directly. It was more like a distant light show that flashed that part of the sky every now and then. That was pretty cool itself.

Tomorrow, maybe the clouds will cooperate and we might be able to catch a few on the tail end.

More Vacation pictures

El doesn't really have a outlet for her pictures: no facebook account yet! So I always save her pictures into a folder with her name on it, so she'll know which ones she took (or at least were taken with her camera!)

I don't think she realized that we were going to the mountains until we got there. This is her first trip (that she remembers) that involves mountains.

Here's her first glimpse of white water.

We took a side trip to Fontana Dam. This is the view from the top of the spillway.

Mr. H took this picture of all the girls. We appear to be posing for some other camera, but really the sun was in our eyes, so we decided to look off in another direction. (Our eldest has been taller than me since she was in the fifth grade. I'm hoping that Em and El grow a bit more because I'm still a little taller than both of them.)

I imagine that if a troll lives under this bridge, this is his front door.
This is an island on the lake side of the dam. When we were here 2 years ago, the water level was quite a bit lower. At that time, this island rose a lot higher from the surface of the water and had a wide edge of red mud around it.
Here's Mr. H sporting his Famous Maroon Alumni Band shirt.
I rather like this picture of the girls.

Whitewater Vacation

After a 19 year break, we took the family camping again. Honestly, I think the eldest was 18 months old the last time we had a family camp out. We decided early this summer that it was time. We bought Mr. H a tent for Father's Day to prove we were serious. The location was pretty self-evident. Em went white water rafting on the church youth camp trip this summer and the rest of us wanted to do it, too. Mr. H and I had been in this area a few years ago when we went on our first bike trip. We knew we'd eventually bring the girls back here.

The Nantahala at Patton's Run.

The temperature of this water is about 54 degrees! Brrrr!

I found links to a couple of pictures of us on the river: guided and unguided. (Okay, I've discovered that these links change randomly. But I think they take you to the correct pages. Look for img #915 for our guided ride on 8/3/09 and img #444 for the unguided ride on 8/4/09.)

Em, The Eldest, Mr. H, and El

Turkey Creek right beside our campsite.

Our home for the next 3 nights. (no shoes allowed inside)

We were about 3/4 of a mile from Fontana Lake. The trail to the lake was through the woods and took us right above our campsite.

We had the lakefront all to ourselves. It was great. And not nearly as cold as the Nantahala!

I'm glad the girls had the time to spend together.