One of the Best Men EVER!

Howard M is truly a hero. He's been a pastor for a million years and was a seminary professor for a brief time when we had the privilege of meeting him and his wife Nancy. You know when you just "click" with someone? I came home from a small group meeting of seminary wives hosted by Nancy and told my husband, "I met a woman tonight I could be really good friends with. Funny thing is, she's old enough to be my mom!" Well, we did, thankfully, become really good friends. My family spent hours on their deck and in their kitchen. Nancy took care of my kids the night we found out that we couldn't bring my youngest home from the hospital because he had some breathing issues and had to go into the NICU. They hosted my husband's surprise 40th birthday party. She taught me how to garden and dry flowers and make pesto. I was able to visit them recently and I burst into tears upon entering their home.  Even though it's a different home than when we first knew each other, so many memories came flooding back. All sweet.

But back to Howard. You see, he has a lung condition that causes scar tissue to form every time he gets an infection or a cough. Something about a missing enzyme. He has been on oxygen for awhile now and was awaiting a lung transplant.  Funny thing, waiting for a transplant. You are, in reality, waiting for someone else to die. You don't wish them to die, of course. You just hope and pray that if they do, their dna will match yours closely enough so that you can use the organs they no longer need. And Howard needed an "extra long" lung. Who knew you could order sizes?

Well, Howard got his lung. He is doing well. In fact, he was breaking records right and left in ICU, getting off the ventilator quickly and blowing impressive scores on all his breathing tests. So this is just a shout out to Howard and most importantly a thank you to God for his tender mercies and for literally breathing new life into this incredible man.

Laundry

Several years ago I felt I was drowning in laundry.  There is always more laundry to do. It is never finished.  And since my campaign to get my family to not wear clothes (and not eat for that matter) had failed, I decided I needed to get a handle on these piles of clothing taking over my life.

I used to do the "load a day" method. But the downside of that is that you feel like you're always doing laundry because, well, you're always doing laundry.  So I switched to a real, honest to goodness laundry day.  I try to stay home on Monday and not schedule anything like appointments, volunteering to drive for the school field trip, lunches with friends, etc. I use Mondays to restore order and sort of recover from the weekend. (I once shared that with a single college student and I loved the quizzical look as she said, "recover from the weekend?"  Just you wait till you have three teenagers going three different directions every weekend, sweetie!!!)

But I digress.  Back to laundry.  So, I thought if I'm focusing on my home on Mondays, why not do ALL the laundry on that one day. Get it finished and folded and delivered to the kids' rooms (they put it away) and be done with it.  So that's what I have done for about 5 years now.  But being the second-guessing ninny that I am, now I'm wondering if I should go back to the load a day, or load every other day method.  Then it's not so overwhelming and it works if I can't be home all day on Monday for one reason or another.

Hmmm....to laundry day or not laundry day. That is the question!  Any thoughts?

A Little Before & After

This summer when my oldest son was away on a mission trip I took a good hard look around his room.  He has high shelves running across two walls in his room. A great idea for kids' rooms btw! But the poor kid still had teddy bears up there and he was 17 years old!  And letmetellya I'm not a big one for cleaning things I can't reach or don't notice often so everything up there was dusty and gross.

So I got out the vacuum and some rags and went to work.  Everything came off the shelves, got cleaned and de-grossed, and I took a good hard look at all the stuff  before I put select items back.  I tried to de-clutter and keep sentimental things at the same time.  Here are the Afters....what do you think?  A little more fitting for a senior in high school?

The Right Shade of Green

We've been working on our kitchen for 8 years.  I am not exaggerating!  When we moved in it had the obligatory flowery and viney wallpaper below the chair rail and textured yellow (kind of bright) on top.  I knew I wanted it a soft buttery yellow and I would hang my collection of blue and white plates.

But over the (8) years this project has been underway I changed my mind.  I started thinking green.  I saw green and blue combinations and thought the plates could still work. I got some green paint from a friend and painted a few sample patches.  Not quite right.  I looked at colors at the paint store but I just couldn't find the right one.

And then in Illinois I walked into Suzanne's kitchen.  I knew immediately that color was what I wanted!  So we painted a white piece of paper for me to take home and wrote the name and number of the paint on it.  I marched into the Benjamin Moore Store and said I wanted Seedling Green.  They mixed it, shook it, handed it to me and I left.  Why in the world I didn't look at it or have them paint a little on top of the can I'll never know.  It was most definitely the wrong color.  Sort of a yellow with a green tinge with a hint of flourescent quallity to it. Not What I Was Looking For.

So I went back.  The Benjamin Moore paint guys are my heroes because they found the color I wanted, refunded my money and mixed me new paint even though the mistake was my fault.  The color I wanted was "Seedling" not "Seedling Green." Oh.  So happily I skipped home with my new paint.

I started painting.  Hmmm.  It was close, but not the same. Too blue. Or something.  I stopped painting and let the patch dry.  My daughter came home and commented, "It's a little seafoam, isn't it?"  Now letmetellya....I got married in 1987.  I've done Seafoam. All my friends have done Seafoam. I am NOT doing Seafoam again! Back I went to my new home away from home, the 

paint store.  Here's the deal.  Every once in awhile they change something in the base of their paints. When they do this, they have to change the color formula so it will come out the "same" as before. But this time it didn't. Not even close.  But those great paint guys looked at the formula they had used and they looked at the formula that Suzanne read me off of the side of her paint can in Illinois and they fiddled with it.  We made little swatches on the edges of the original sheet of paper that we painted at Suzanne's.  Eventually, we got pretty dern close.   I brought it home, painted it on the walls, hung my blue and white plates. And I love it!

The only thing left to do now is get cabinet doors and drawer fronts.  Maybe by 2009???