*Assault & Pepper* by Tamar Myers

This book in the continuing Penn Dutch Inn series included several surprises. In fact, there were so many surprises that I thought maybe she was ending the series. It appears not as there is another book recently published.

I have gotten a kick over the year from Magdalena's comments about her church and such. In this book I began to wonder if she'd gone from "good clean fun observations" to maybe mocking the church. That I don't find funny.

I LOVE the comments that she throws into her books that poke fun at her being an author or growing up as an MK.

Off and Running....

Things are, well, off and running! {g}

I woke up BEFORE Zander and Stacia. I had time in the Word and also walked a couple of miles. It's actually nippy outside this a.m. I came back and grabbed a light jacket. It is supposed to get to 88* today...but this MORNING it reminds me of fall.

I finally faced the fact that the vacation/deployment weight is NOT going to magically drop off so I made a new ticker to reflect that I gained 10 lbs - well I've lost 2 of it this week - so 8 lbs.

I made my goal of being in bed by 11:00 p.m. last night. I did read a bit...but once I fell asleep Stacia only woke me up once!!!! Yippee! Sometime during the night Zander climbed in bed with me.

It's been 7 weeks now...only however many more. Maybe I should go ahead and figure that up. Maybe a new ticker is in order.

I'm going to go WAKE UP Zander and Stacia.....the others are up and about and doing table school. I think we'll tackle one of the models today, alas no photos until I get my computer fixed. I may have to call Computer Geeks and be done with it. One of my children thinks that would be really lame - after all "WE" can handle anything...yeah if DAD is here to fix it. :::snort:::

Dad Update

My dad is NOT having surgery on Tuesday a.m. He had a root canal last week and got an infection. They will not do a bone surgery (don't think they'd do any surgery) while you have any sort of infection. He is scheduled for next Tuesday at 5 a.m. He sounds more upbeat today.

They did find a lawyer that seems to be reputable and ethical.

Prayer requests:
1. His spirits to be buoyed
2. Protection for the one lone broken screw in the next week
3. Continued healing of the bone
4. All the Workman's Comp stuff

MONDAY

As Mondays go - it was a good one. We plan Mondays and Tuesdays to be our HEAVY school days. We got a late start today because I was EXHAUSTED.

I had been studying I John and was determined to lead a more disciplined life. I may write more about that later.....but time is of the essence here. I'd been thinking and praying about that for over a week. I had even told some friends that I needed to be more disciplined in my time management (eating, exercising and such too - basically I'm a MESS with Mike gone...weee...live for the moment :::snort:::). I found it ironic that *my* computer crashed. That certainly helped me with computer time management. I don't remember enough blog addresses to visit the blogs I tend to visit after the kids are in bed, email is a pain and so I'm doing little, I set all lists to no-mail....wow I have time again.

SO...armed with new-found determination, and no TV or computer time available, I headed to the kitchen table with my Bible and notebook. I had a great couple of hours and was just heading for bed when I heard Stacia cry. Zander had woken her up. ::::Grrrrrr:::: It took me a full hour to get her back down. It was now 11 p.m. and I wasn't in bed. I got to bed and laid there....good prayer time, however. Finally drifted off at about midnight. Stacia woke up at 1 a.m. and would NOT go back down until 4:30 a.m. I left a note on the table telling the kids not to wake me up at 6 but to try to get started on table school. I woke up at about 8 and they had done well.

I went to Netflix to reserve movies. We have 5 of them that we want for school for this week and next. I went ahead and upgraded how many movies we can have out at a time while we are needing so many for school. It certainly is cheaper than renting or buying them.

I decided that I will not go into depth with WW 1 for Arielle and Nolan. With Mike deployed, I don't think this is a good idea. We read War Games last week and we all cried ....and they've had many questions. I decided to spend this week focusing on other events in the same time period...briefly explaining WW1 - and they'll see the movies...but not dwelling solely on that. We finished up "Looking For a Home" (Orphan Train book) and may begin the second one. I had bought DK's 20th Century for children...and Jared prefers "The Century for Young People". I was glad to have it though, because I simply pulled it open - went through some pages with the younger two and we picked out some events to cover. I plan to cover the San Francisco Earthquake, Building Mt Rushmore, Wright Brothers and the Titanic. I have another DK type WW1 book that I'll pick and choose some things out of for them.

After school Zander, Arielle and Nolan and I tried to head to the library and Hobby Lobby while Stacia napped. She only napped 30 minutes. {sigh} We did go to Hobby Lobby and found a model of the Wright plane, the Titanic and an electrical car that is supposed to "go". We'll see. I'm not sure that the three of us can put them together...and it is quite apparent that the older three boys are skeptical...but it's SCHOOL so maybe if we work at it a bit...we'll succeed. :::snort:::

I came home and made Enchiladas, rice, corn, salad, fruit plate.....and Arielle and Nolan thought I was terribly mean because I gave them each 1/4 of an enchilada, 3 corn kernels and 5 grains of rice and told them to eat it. They kept saying, "is that enough" and I kept saying "Don't ask me - are you finished?". They are slowly working on earning their tickets but at this rate it will take them much more than the 3 - 6 months I anticipated to earn their goals. It gets discouraging to cook for folks when they are to busy to eat or picky to eat what you fix. At least STACIA will eat anything....including food from the garbage. UGH.

We read 40 pages in Pinocchio - we are really enjoying this book and getting quite a lot of laughs over the discrepancies between the original and Disney.

Well - that's the day. Hopefully, I'll have my computer back "soon" and be able to visit you all. I did remember Jodi, Kelly's and Lisa's blog URL. LOL

Sunday - guess I'll keep blogging while my computer is possessed...shouldn't be able to infect other computers via a blog....and this way I will be able to copy this to word on my hard drive when I have access to it again.

Today was a typical Sunday. Nothing else to say.

OH - I had to run by Mike's office to pick up a couple things for him. I took Stacia and Zander with me. We opened the door and Zander said, "Where is he? Are we taking him home now?" :::gulp::: I guess he's figured Mike was at work all this time...which may be why he doesn't like to talk to Mike very often.

We had a rainy day today. Jamin, Jared, Arielle, Stacia and I took a mile long walk in it...fun. The weather changing may be a bit of the reason that the younger boys have been "off" today - fighting and such.

Life must go on even with computer stupidity so here's our menu for the week:

Enchiladas (which we didn't eat last week after all), rice, salad
Baked Penne/Zitti, garlic pull apart bread, salad
"Shake and Bake" chicken, corn, rolls
Taco/nachos/taco salad type night
Encore Presentation
Pizza

Tortellini if needed to fill in gaps somewhere....

WARNING

If you get an out of character, bizarre or lewd email from me it is NOT from me....

Don't worry if you don't hear from me for a bit. I don't plan to send emails until a pro looks at my computer.

ARGH - my computer has gone crazy!!!!

It was frozen and wouldn't do a thing. I tried the soft start and then hard crash thing. Finally Igot it to shut down but when I restarted it.....everything is gone. My tool bar is gone.

I did find the documents on the hard drive.

Outlook says "there are no current identities". It doesn't give me any old ones to click on. I can't access any of my outlook files, emails for orders that I'm trying to compile for today, newsletters I was working on etc. Also no email addresses.

When I use explorer, it has no favorites,my home page is gone etc. In fact now it says it can't establish a connection with Verizon...but the computer next to it can.

In other words all my settings seem to be gone. Does anyone have a clue what I should do? I have two projects I was working on today (a spice order and a co-op newsletter). I have a zillion emails waiting to be answered.

It appears to me that somehow it got messed up and logged on as some "generic user" rather than me...but in the start up screen I put in my old password to get it to load....I have no clue what to do or how to find my old outlook and explorer files....

help?