July Notes

I got one more section of the house painted and it started to pour again! I'm thinking maybe I ought to give up on that for today...

Will is gone this week at camp again, working. He will come home Friday afternoon and then leave again next Mon. for Sr. High Camp. Then, he's finished with camp for the summer. I'm glad - things just aren't as fun without him around! Although, he's going to be tied up for quite a bit the next few months with football. Such it is with teenagers...

Sam has had a couple of splinters in the recent weeks. It's pretty traumatic for him since he won't patiently let us dig with needles and tweezers to get out the offending piece of material. He had a nasty one in his finger a week ago that Paul and I just could not get. Sam was bellowing and fisting up his hand so we couldn't get to it. So, we just put a bandaid on it and figured we'd have to get it later. Well, last Monday while I went shopping with Ben and David, Will managed to get Sam's splinter out by himself. He told me he practically had to sit on Sam, but he managed! So, last Thurs. I had all the boys with me when we went to Ben's nutrition appointment. She had a children's doctor set in the room and Sam immediately began to play with it. The boys started making a racket, so I had to turn to them to see what was going on. Well, Sam had this oversized tweezers and he was pinching Will with them, saying, "You got spinter, Will - I get out!" I think that's called revenge!

Paul called me a little bit ago. Between Friday and Sunday he put in 40 hours - most of which are double time pay. Yay! It's remembering times like this that keeps me sane during the weeks with fewer hours. This business is just so unpredictable.

I ordered a book for Will in response to the current family situation I alluded to a few posts back. I shouldn't say it's only because of that. But it was what prompted me to do so. It's called Every Young Man's Battle by Fred Stoeker and Steven Arterburn. I'm currently going through it before I begin assigning its reading to Will as part of his schoolwork. Wow! What an amazing book. The authors are men who, at one time were heavily involved in pornography, premarital sex, and one's girlfriend even aborted his child. But yet, they escaped all that. And they teach young men how to train their minds and about the importance of staying pure. I went to Fred Stoeker's (who happens to live in the Des Moines area, incidentally) website and found that I can download questions for each chapter. I am so grateful for this book. I really think it is a must read for every single teenaged/college aged young man.

Will dragged me to a garage sale last Friday. I'm not much of a garage sale person, honestly. I like going to them when a whole group of houses or a city is having them at one time. But to stop for one - not so much. But he was driving home from football and saw this from the highway. So he came home and made me take him. I should mention here that I was pretty much a zombie. I had not gotten to sleep until almost 3am the previous morning. Reasons for that, I'll explain later! But I went. We did find some good bargains. I think my favorite were two jerseys - Hawkeye and a Packers one for Ben. The boys were pretty thrilled with those and I only paid $1 each. Just the night before I had been perusing through some sale racks at Harrison's Sports and on sale, their NFL jerseys were $80!

I need to go eat some lunch and David is bugging me for the computer. I have actually started looking around for a laptop computer. We just can't get by with one household computer any more. I've never owned or even used a laptop before so I'm not really sure what to look for. I'm seeing that they really range in price. Best Buy has them from $300 - $1300. But I'm thinking that needs to happen by the end of this year. And it would be nice for times like now - I wouldn't have to share with David, who thinks playing Madden football ought to trump Mom blogging!