February

Well, it's definitely been a while.  And my last post was rather pathetic-- a "filler" I would say. Much has come to pass in the past month. I can easily say that February has kept me very active.  A dear family friend (Mrs. Patty- I asked for prayer for her a few months ago) had been battling cancer for, I think, two and a half years, but we thought these past few months were going well... very green pastures. Unknown to us, or Mrs. Patty, two tumors were quickly developing in her brain. She was admitted into the hospital (in KY) the first week in Feb., so my mom went down to KY to help out with grandkids, cleaning, cooking, etc., and my dad was working with a Heart Cry conference in Tennessee. This left me with my four younger brothers for 4 to 5 days.  Every time my parents leave I'm always very exuberant and enthusiastic about how wonderfully well everything will go in their absence.  "I will cook this, and we will do that, and watch this movie, and get this room in order, and, hey!, we'll clean the WHOLE house!"  This mindset doesn't last very long. One reason being that the boys never shared my enthusiasm and never planned on spending their "days of freedom" doing anything beside leisurely activities. They envisioned mountains of junk-food and hours of TV and games.  So, when outnumbered 4 to 1 one must succumb (given it's not a moral issue, of course) to the desire of the many. I lost.

Eventually, after watching TV, eating junk, and playing games to their hearts content they came to me to be entertained. What should I do but create a list! Lists are very fabulous. A few of my ideas are as follows:

-Reading hour

-having a Mandarin class

-origami

-Wii (as soon as we got the other controller from the neighbors)

-create businesses (didn't go quite as planned)

Things stayed pretty well-in-hand as long as I constantly called for "five minute pick-ups" (a lovely little invention).

Anyway, Mom and Dad came back on the 4th or 5th day, but Mom--after being home a day--really wanted to go back and be with Mrs. Patty and the family these last few days.  The very next morning Dad, Dozier (3), and myself drove Mom back to KY and returned home the same day.

Even when one parent is gone, things are still unbalanced. I still took care of the boys during the day, but Dad came home around 5:30, which made things very much on the easy side.

Mom stayed in KY a little over a week. Mrs. Patty left for her Home of Splendor Feb. 7 and Mom came home that afternoon so as to have some time with us before going back for the funeral.

In the meantime, our friends, the Beardens, came up from TX for the week.  Their oldest daughter Sarah, my very delightful friend, spent most of the week with us that Mom and Dad were away for the funeral.

This post seems pretty jumbled, but this past month has been very jumbled.  With experiencing the loss of such a friend in Mrs. Patty, I gained a new little friend when my friends Bethany and Andrew's little one, Adeline, arrived Jan. 30.  Quite a reminder of how He gives and takes away, eh?