I decided to post this in a new discussion, instead of Grammy's Groupies, since I may end up being very verbose (big surprise..LOL).

What a weekend! I feel like I really didn't get one! We had a houseguest stay with us Saturday night, so, when I got home from work Friday, I immediately went to finishing up cleaning the house. Then, Saturday, the kids & I had to leave around 1 pm to help my sister set up for her granddaughter's 3rd birthday party (Candyland themed party). It was an enormous undertaking & my sister & bro-in-law spent MONTHS planning it & more money than I care to think about. I told my sister that I hope that, when God blesses me with grandkids, one day, they will have forgotten about the big shindigs my sister throws for hers. LOL!! I just couldn't compete with her parties!! My brother & I both agree that she's going to make us look like bad grandparents, someday! LOL. I'm still just trying to get used to the reality that my YOUNGER (by 15 months) sister has two grandkids! Anyway, the party was great (I was Jolly, the gumdrop dinosaur! LOL! We were all in costume! My brother was quite the entertainer, as the "evil" Lord Licorice.). I am proud to say I did not put so much as one jellybean in my mouth, the entire time. In fact, God (& the hCG) was very gracious, and I was not only not tempted, but not even the tiniest bit hungry all day. I even almost forgot to eat dinner, because I was chatting with a local friend, on FB, about hCG (she's the one who caused me to look into this, in the first place...she's decided to try the shots, this round & had lots of questions...so the student became the teacher!). I was chatting away & looked at the clock & went, "Crap! It's 10 pm! I forgot to eat!" LOL

My husband & his houseguest (the guy he gets his police k9's from, from Louisiana...a big Cajun fellow) ate dinner at a mutual friend's house, so that made supper easy...I just picked something up for the kids, on the way home from the party. They didn't get in until 3 am! I know, because they woke me, when they came in...LOL.

The kids & I got up & went to church, yesterday. Our preacher loves to use visual aids, so it was no surprise that there were two bed frames up on stage. He used them as props on his message of grace & of the widow's mites. Anyway, I had known that he & his wife had recently purchased one of our closed down, boarded up motels. The motel is an original Route 66 piece of history. What I didn't know was that he was selling all of the beds, mattress sets & other items from the motel at our annual Commancheros de Vega (annual city-wide garage sale), yesterday. My daughter is moving into an apartment, for her senior year of college (cheaper than the dorms, actually), and desperately needs a bed. SO, after the service, I went up to the preacher & asked him how much he was selling the remaining beds for. He gave me the keys to all the motel rooms & said, "You go pick out what you want...NO CHARGE." I was fighting back tears, because he has no idea what a blessing that was. Funds have been EXTREMELY tight, this month, because of various reasons, & I was prepared to pay him in installments or ask if he minded waiting till we got paid. NO CHARGE! I couldn't believe it!

So, hubby & I went to the motel, looked around (it was pretty trashed, from years of neglect). We found a really nice cherry-stained oak set & a mattress set that was in good shape, with the plastic still on it. When we were carrying the mattress out of one of the rooms, I was walking backwards & missed the step & stepped right out of my shoes & scraped about 2 layers of skin off the bottoms of my feet, trying to catch myself!! We loaded it in our beat up old pickup (that we only use for hauling stuff around). I made arrangements with my brother to store the bed & mattresses in his storage building, in Amarillo, & we made plans for me to bring it to him, in a couple of hours. At the time we made the arrangements, there was not a cloud in the sky, so we just left everything in the back of the pickup. I'm sure you know where this is going...yep, I'd only been home 30 minutes, when all of a sudden, big black clouds popped up out of nowhere! I felt like Charlie Brown, with the black cloud over his head!! I was praying, "Oh, God! No, no, no...please...no rain!" It rained...then it poured...sigh.

Oh, and took communion at church, yesterday, too. Surely that one little tiny piece of bread dipped in grape juice (we do communion by "intinction") isn't considered "cheating." LOL.

Thanks, alykay! Actually, I just wish I could do a "do-over" & reclaim some of my weekend! LOL. Yes, they mentioned more storms today. Normally, I would NEVER wish away rain, because our parts normally see so little of it, but we have been hammered with it, lately, and, BECAUSE we rarely see rain, our drainage systems are not the best & the parched ground can only absorb it so quickly. A nice, slow, steady rain is what we really need. These sudden heat-induced downpours just cause a bunch of flash flooding & other problems & don't really get soaked into the ground, like we need. And the farmers aren't too happy with them, either, because they're trying to harvest & have to keep waiting for things to dry out, after one of these intense 15-45 minute downpours.

Angela

Patty, girlfriend...it gets worse...I'm sure you read already, but TOM came to see me today!! LOL. I have decided...I am going to keep my head up, drink water like a man in the Sahara, & pray for no stall/gain. But, if it happens, I'll roll with it, until I see the other side of it. No more stressing for me...LOL.

Sometimes, though, you want to look up to the sky & say, "Honestly????" LOL

I'm really glad we do communion the way we do (intinction). We go up, as families, usually row by row, but it's not exactly organized. We have an unmanned table in front of a large wooden cross that holds the communion elements. Each person tears off their own piece of the loaf of unleavened bread, then dips it carefully in the cup of grape juice, then eats the bread. That way, I can control the size of the piece I get. We do our communion once a month.

Hope you had fun at the back cracker...LOL.
Angela