First Sleepovers. Lots More Insects.

Last Thursday was an exciting day at our house. Before I had crawled out of bed, Andrew came in my room and wanted to know, "Is today when I spend the night with Caleb?" Yep, it was his first sleepover. Around 10 am, he again asked, "How long until art lessons?" See, after art lessons was when I was going to drop him off at Caleb's. We ended up leaving ten minutes before we needed to go to art lessons because Andrew was ready! I mean he had his bag zipped and loaded in the van and he was in there already buckled. LOL

That evening Wade, Elizabeth and I went canvassing for Neighborhood Bible Time (that's our Bible school). We had some others go with us to an apartment complex that is in the projects. Elizabeth brought her pet cricket, Bella, she still had from the Fourth. (I didn't mention that Rick at helped Elizabeth catch a cricket and it was our latest "pet".) That cricket was a hit with the kids while we were out. Elizabeth made two little friends, Nyah and Tosha. We're hoping they come tonight to NBT. It was good for Elizabeth to see how some unfortunate children live and to see how the Lord has blessed us! Jody and Phillip led someone to Christ while we were out trying to sign kids up to come to Bible school. It was wonderful! They had rode with us so we got to hear the story on the way back to the church. The Lord was definitely already working just during our canvassing!

I can't forget to mention that July 5th was my FIL, Tom's, birthday. He turned 67 if I am correct.

Before bedtime, I had to call my friend Ferissa to check on Andrew. I also wanted to double-check the time I was to pick him up on Friday. (But I reeeeeally wanted to know how my boy was doing! ;))

Elizabeth and I got up on Friday and ran a few places before it was time to get Andrew. I worked out (hard!) and we ran to Toys R Us (to buy THREE birthday presents - yes, I am broke now!), Michael's and Bear N Friends Toy Shoppe. Oh, we stopped by Chick-fil-a for lunch before getting Andrew.

Almost as soon as I was parked at Caleb's house, the garage door opened, and Andrew came walking out and got straight in the van. He does this every time he spends the night with my parents. He'll be excited to go but boy, when it's been done, he's ready to go home. He's our home body. You could be at the circus, beach or zoo, and when he's over it, he's ready to go home. (And I've heard, "I'm ready to go home" at all of the mentioned places.) But he did say he had a great time and was excited about his first sleepover. He went to sleep fine but said they didn't sing a song to him (Daddy always sings "Victory in Jesus" for him) and "they didn't have a CD player to listen to while I went to sleep." LOL

We ran home and then went to Nana's to "swim." Andrew is still afraid of water, mainly inground pools so he hasn't been in deep enough water to learn water safety. I was going to do swim lessons but he assured me that he would learn to doggie paddle by the end of this summer. It didn't go that well though. He screamed when I just walked around the pool in 3 feet of water, holding him. I bribed too. I offered him a dollar for each step he would sit on and $5 if he would stand in the shallow end (as I said, only 3 feet deep and he's 3'10" tall). He got only a dollar out of the deal for sitting on the first step. Again, he says if Daddy will take him there that he'll do better. We'll see!

That night we went to Applebee's for dinner. Later, we drove around in some "upscale" neighborhoods to look at the back of their houses. Yes, we were looking at the back of them. At their decks. It's a long ways off, but we were interested in how people had closed in decks and open decks. We hope to eventually tear our decks off and re-do them - have a nice closed in one (as in screened in like it is but much nicer) and have the opened one but made nicer - brick columns, arched areas underneath and we want to brick in the underneath of the closed in deck to give Wade a bigger workshop. (We plan to turn his current workshop into a work-out/weight room.) This has all been put on hold since we bought the beach house last year.

That night, we caught another cricket to be friends with Bella. It's name was Bell. She found the name "Bella" on the internet. She purposefully went online to find a name for her cricket. She's all "into" the internet and it's possibilities. I recently taught her how to google images and copy and paste them into Word. She was wanting pictures of dogs, fish and birds for her animal scrapbook.

Saturday morning I had to wake up to an alarm. That is just not right for a Saturday, is it? I've been having some very lazy mornings this summer though, getting to sleep in until 8:30 and even 9 a few times. I had bought tickets to take the kids to the Barter Theater to see Cinderella. It was a cute play. We had invited my friend, Lorrie, and her daughter, Abbie. She and Elizabeth have been friends since they were around 15 months old taking Kindermusik together. Andrew tried to cancel on me the night before when he heard Wade was going to be working in the yard that morning but he ended up having a good time and they all enjoyed it.

Elizabeth's friend, Josie, had a birthday on Saturday. She turned seven on 7-7-07. That's pretty cool! Josie loves Little House on the Prairie so they had that theme party at the fairgrounds. All the girls got bonnets, the boys got coon-skinned hats and they had a wagon ride. They had homemade ice cream, rock candy, beef jerky, some type of apple cake that was period related and other neat stuff. We dropped her off at that party because we had a NBT meeting at the same time. When we went to pick her up afterwards, she wasn't ready to go home. They hadn't done the hay ride yet and still had to bob for apples. So we went home and they called us when it was almost over.

We are keeping the two evangelists that came to do NBT at our church. They came on Saturday. Mr. Glenn from Mountain City (which is up the road a bit) and Mr. Justin from the suburbs of Chicago. They have already shown to be great with the kids. Mine love them, that's for sure! (Or are entertained by them anyways!)

Yesterday, we had church as is our usual routine. Church in the morning, go to Daddy and Mom's for lunch, come home, rest and then go back to church for the evening service.

We went to Walmart this morning to get groceries. I bought a new blender hoping to start drinking smoothies a lot to help with hunger and trying to get rid of my little gut. Yes, it really bothers me. I bought a booklet last Thursday while checking out that's by Prevention magazine. It has an Ab Diet and workout program in it. I think I may have Wade talked into letting me get a tummy tuck in the next few years but I'd rather do it this way. It's cheaper plus I don't want to wait five years until my 35th b-day like we sort of agreed on. ;) LOL I'm supposed to be starting the diet and workout this week but it really may need to wait until next week until after NBT. I did make a strawberry-banana smoothie today for lunch (followed almost two hours later by a slice of leftover pizza from Saturday). Ugh!

Andrew is going to have his first sleepover here now. Caleb is over here today and will go to NBT with us this evening and spend the night. They seem to be playing great together. Elizabeth is even playing with them.

Back to Walmart though, Andrew and Elizabeth are back on doing their chore charts after several weeks of a break. They asked to start back. They enjoy getting that money to spend after two weeks. They spent their money this morning they earned.

We let Bella and Bell go this morning. Something we learned late Saturday night that I don't ever remember learning about in school - crickets shed their exoskeletons. Elizabeth came into our bedroom, sort of upset and holding her bug cage away from her. She and I both thought Bell was dying because it's body was elongated and it wasn't moving right. I was about to make her take them outside and dump them out. I don't care to step on them if they're loose in my house but have one as "pet" and I can't stand the thought of us mistreating one. Ha! But then I realized the cricket was pushing its skin off. It was a normal black cricket but was brown after its shedding. The next morning, it was black again! Pretty interesting stuff! :)

My dear daughter has spent hours watching these crickets the last few days so I don't think it's the end of insects in our house. She has taken them everywhere I've let her. Oh, yeah, Andrew caught a black butterfly all by himself on Saturday. He let it go this morning also. (P.S. He named his butterfly "Andrew.")

How we could tell Bella and Bell apart? Bella was bigger, Bell was little. I'm sad to say that I think Bella was almost dead this morning when we let them go. She was trying to shed her exoskeleton and I'm not sure she made it through the ordeal for some reason. :( BTW, crickets eat chopped up veggies and to give them water, you wet a papertowel and put it on something like a lid so they can suck the water from it.