Courageous Joy

SATURDAY

The day began with Mike helping John and Melody with their move. I made some waffles for the kids and then took Josiah to work. Jamin was out doing a lawn. When he returned home I drove him over to Mike and Charly’s to weed their flower bed. He made $100 in the last two days. Yippee…he’s almost earned ½ of his trip. I’m so very proud of the way the boys have tackled this. We really thought we’d end up paying for their missions trip since we don’t have a “church” backing us. Back at home, we tackled a few jobs around here. Jared had been mowing the yard – his first time solo. Mike and he then trimmed some tree branches that were scratching on the roof.

Another mystery book showed up in my mailbox.

I had a host of goals for the kitchen today…didn’t reach them all but did keep busy. I got 4 more “waffle mixes” made for next week. I froze another tray of grapes. Frozen Grapes are an awesome summer treat. They are 100% natural popsicles. I also throw them into smoothies. We got a load of apples drying and threw some kiwis in too. I made 3 kinds of salad dressing and a double batch of granola. Jamin ended up watching over this as I ran to the store. Mike came in and suggested a trip to the pool.

You got it – we bought our family pass and spent a couple of hours at the pool. I thought it would be very crowded but it wasn’t bad at all. In fact during the last hour it was just us and one other family in the pool. {G} We chuckled when one of the female lifeguards said, “Alex, I remember you!” Another pool funny… a little girl who looked to be about 9 years old was fascinated with Stacia. She asked, “Can I touch her?” I figured that would be o.k. Then she said, “Is she real?” after touching her. THEN she asked, “Are you her grandmother?” THIS is why I dye my hair and don’t care if it is blonde. :::snort::: BTW contrary to Adrienne’s dire predictions my hair has not turned green yet…but I’m just waiting for it to do so. LOL

Alex (Zander) had a great day today. He’s been “clean” for 6 days now and has been steadily getting more and more “fun, loving and disciplined”. He began it by climbing into our bed for cuddling. He told us he loved us. When we drove Cy to work he told Cy he loved him. He didn’t have meltdowns. He worked the apple peeler/corer/slicer and was proud of the trays of apples. He patiently waited at the pool for me to show up with the passes. He listened and obeyed well at the pool. He PLAYED WITH a new friend, Lilly, in the kiddie pool. I wish I could capture the day.

We rounded out the evening by watching “March of the Penguins” which we got from Netflix. We tried to watch it last night but it kept stopping. Mike discovered it worked fine on our $30 player and so he brought that out and hooked it up to the projector so we could watch the movie. We are really enjoying being able to order movies from Netflix. Last week we watched “Newsies” – a wonderful movie. We have quite few movies in our que.