You open the door!  LOL 

This afternoon we decided to go to the local thrift store and guess what we came away with?  A buffet for my dining room!!!!!!  Yep!  Opportunity came a knocking and we answered!!!  It looks to be a mahogany buffet with the dovetail drawers and everything. My mother-in-law has one just like it.  It is the kind that looks to be a dresser with 4 drawers in the center and two small drawers on each side of the middle drawers and then the doors that cover the storage areas also on each side of the center drawers.  There are a few of the drawer pulls missing but I am not concerned.  We can probably find some replacements on Ebay or at an antique store across town we like to frequent.  I will need to do a re-finish because it has several scratches, but it is in good condition other wise.  I am thrilled. 

We had a great 4th of July.  I ended up staying busy all day with the smoker and grill and ice cream maker.  I attempted the 2nd time in over 12 years of using a smoker.  I liked using it, but did find out that we can order an electric attachment to make it an electric one.  Yay!  We'll do that soon.  Either that or I won't use charcoal but some of the yummy smelling wood we already have dried around here for our fireplace (hickory, oak, etc).  I smoked two pork shoulders (aka Boston Butts) and then grilled three slabs of ribs.  Actually, two of the slabs I pre-cooked in the oven and then did the final cooking on the gas grill and then the 3rd I cooked all the way on the grill.  Very yummy!

I made ice cream too.  Thursday night I made a delicious recipe of vanilla ice cream that I found on Foodnetwork.com.  It was a "Paula Deen".  I adjusted it by replacing half-n-half and heavy cream for the cans of evaporated milk it called for.  It was a delicious and creamy texture but I want to cut some of the sugar next time I make it.  It called for 2 cups plus a can of sweetened condensed milk.  I think maybe a cup and a half or even a cup of sugar might be enough, but we'll see.  It was still yummy!

The other kind of ice cream I stirred up was a simple chocolate ice cream recipe using a half gallon of chocolate milk, a container of cool whip, a can of sweetened condensed milk and chocolate syrup.  For some reason my ice cream freezer bowls decided not to freeze all the way even though I froze them for 12 hours between recipes.  I attempted twice to freeze the chocolate ice cream and neither time worked.  I took half the recipe and put it in a plastic container with a lid and every 30 minutes I took it out and stirred it around.  It turned out pretty good, just some ice crystals formed due to it not being churned but it was still very creamy.  Jeff said the taste made him think of a fudgesicle or a Wendy's Frosty and I agreed.

Jeff's parents dropped by for a little while yesterday morning.  We had a good visit and just sat around chatting.  They were going to stay home the rest of the day and cook out there.  My parents came over and ate with us that evening.  They also stayed for our 1st annual neighborhood fireworks ice cream social.  Jeff and a couple of the other guys bought a good deal of fireworks, some of which were very pretty and like the "real thing".  We had ice cream and desserts and just had fun watching the guys shoot off their "money".    It was fun and I am glad we did that.  I think the kids enjoyed it and that was what I wanted. 

It is raining here now and I am awaiting patiently for my girls to return from their shopping venture.  I don't like it when all my "chickens" are not accounted for when it is raining and they are out in it.   I want them here where I can touch them and make sure they are safe.  Of course I know I can't really keep them safe myself, but it is a mama's heart that wants them close to her.  It will feel good to have them home with me in any case.  Hopefully it will be soon!

So, I guess I have nothing much more to write so I can get off from here and maybe move some of the buffet drawers down into the basement so I can begin work on them.  Yippee!!!

It is deliriously beautiful here today!  The weather is absolutely perfect with no real humidity which makes the heat bearable, plus the breeze is amazing.  I got out this morning and worked a tad in the yard.  I really just wanted to lay down in the grass and gaze at the sky but I held back.   I got started back to spraying my weeds with the vinegar solution.  In the last couple of weeks I have ignored them, and unlike other things, if you ignore weeds, they just make themselves even more comfortable.  There is something here in the front that they love, but I don't know enough about gardening to know what that might be.  There are so many varieties and places, but I chose a few different spots to spray and I'll go back out tomorrow and then again either Thursday or Friday to spray again.  Hopefully by then they'll be dead enough to discard and then those areas will be much more manageable.

My vinegar solution, which I found on-line, is 1 gallon of vinegar, to 1 cup of salt, to 1 tablespoon of dish liquid. I mix it up in a big container and then pour it into a spray bottle.  The vinegar and salt kill the leaves of the weeds and the soap helps it to stick.  If it gets on other plants it won't kill them and is also "green" which is good since we live right next to a body of water that flows into another one and so on and so on. It may kill the leaves on things you want but it is better to use that where you may have some things you don't want to die but don't mind losing a few leaves than the truly deadly stuff. If you use one of the products that kills it to the root and it got on something you wanted to keep, you'd kill the good stuff too.   The thing with the weeds is that if I keep at them then the plant itself will eventually die out and not grow more leaves.  It will use all of its stored energy to grow new leaves so that it depletes the energy and then dies. 

When I was looking for this solution recipe I came upon some other things about natural weed killers.  I read that cornmeal gluten will keep the seeds from germinating.  I have not found any cornmeal gluten but I want to find some.  This stuff may be the solution to my problem here.  I don't know where these seeds come from but good grief, do the weeds love my flower beds.  I have not been able to come up with a regular routine of yard work so that I can get after those things more diligently.  It sounded like a good plan to get out maybe once a day or so for an hour but that has not happened.  Maybe soon.  With the great temperatures this week and with no big projects in store it may be a good thing to start trying. 

As far as daily chores I have otherwise been busy.  Today I have oiled the wood on the bench on the front porch, cut back some of the bushes along the walkway and up the steps to the front porch, sprayed for weeds, pulled up a few weeds, two loads of laundry, loaded and run the dishwasher and sat on the deck and talked to a neighbor.  Is it time for a nap?    I do need to dust my bedroom, and vacuum all the floors today, but that won't take long, so maybe a nap is in store.  I feel so sleepy. 

In other news, a kitten has taken up residence here but she has a home, we just don't know where it is just yet.  She is the cutest thing and so playful, but someone loves her enough to have bought her a pretty blue collar with "stud" diamonds (well, glass anyway) and a cute bell.  She showed up here yesterday.  She came into the garage last night but someone was able to get her out.  Still she didn't leave.  Jeff went out this morning around 7'ish and she was sleeping under one of our cars.  She ran right back into the garage as he left and she is still there.  She'll follow us around the yard and play "hide and seek" and hides whenever a car passes by.  I joked with J.D. that she was hiding from her mommy because she didn't want to go home yet.  LOL She will have to go home, WE CANNOT KEEP HER!  She may visit as often as she likes, but no more cats here.  Our Whinnie is enough and the last. 

Last night I had such fun with Amanda acting silly.  She just bought herself a new I-pod and has been busy putting songs on it.  You would think a 16 year old would want to fill it up with rock groups and such but not her.  She bought two Louis Armstrong songs, a couple songs sung by Peggy Lee and her signature song, "Come On Get Happy", sung by Judy Garland.  She knows all the words to that one.  We sat on the sofa last night, each sharing an earplug and singing along.  Jeff was sitting across from us acting like he was ignoring us but I know he was amused.....or scared might be a better adjective.   She has other songs on it as well, one that I love that is a Christian song called "Embracing Accusation" by Shane and Shane.  It is awesome.  There are many others that she has and one of her classical tunes called "Claire de Lune" which I also love.  I told her last night that whenever I hear that song I long to be able to play the piano and play it.  It is too pretty. 

Okay, well, I have wasted enough time on this contraption.  I suppose I need to dust the bedroom and vacuum and skip the nap.  If I nap then I won't be able to sleep tonight and I am on such a good routine lately.  This is the first summer where I have not slipped into staying up late and sleeping in schedule.  I have been up most mornings lately by 7am, if not by 6am.  I am really loving these early mornings.  Have a wonderful day!  I must go now, and switch over some laundry and get busy. 

We have been ever so busy around here, as usual.  I am looking forward to a week of normalcy with cleaning house, maybe doing something fun with J.D. and enjoying the 4th of July with my family this weekend. 

What have we been up to?

Let's start with Friday.  Friday morning started off a bit chaotic.  Samantha's car windows would not roll up.  She had come home from work on Thursday evening and had rolled them down to get the hot air out of the car.  They wouldn't come back up for some reason, so she and Jeff headed to the auto parts store to see what the deal was and also to change out a front headlight.  Jeff couldn't get them to come back up either so on Friday morning it was the big question mark as to when to take the car to our mechanic and when it would be fixed, how much might it cost, etc.  Samantha and I headed over to take it and leave it and then I had to instruct her how to drive my big SUV that she would need to use to go to work and back.  She has not been driving long and has only driven one car, hers and so that was a scary thought.  She did fine though!  It ends up a switch went bad in the car but Jeff is going to find one somewhere instead of letting the mechanic fix it.  They got the windows up and they'll go up and down, I think, but one of the switches is bad and needs replacing. 

J.D. had also jammed his finger last week and I was wondering whether to go and have it checked out.  We opted not to and decided to keep alternating wrapping it with tape, icing it and putting the finger brace on it.  It is looking better now, still sore, still slightly swollen but he can bend it some and almost make a fist.  So that is a good thing. 

After getting Samantha's car tended to and me finally making a decision to go on down, Jeff, J.D. and I headed down to visit with my great aunt, and I do mean she is great, for her 99th birthday.  Yes, 99!  Can you believe it?  She is the most amazing woman I believe I have ever met in my life.  She is 99 years old, yet she can still keep up with her enormous family and knows each one of us as well as crack jokes which is a sign of a great mind still at work.  We love her so and want her to continue to be with us for as long as possible, maybe even making it to the big 100 year mark, but my mom said that sometimes in their conversations she talks about "leaving" and wondering when she will, and why she has been alive for this long.  She loves living and has always lived life to the fullest, but I suppose when you are 99 you wonder about those kinds of things. You know that you won't live forever and that many of those you loved have now left, so why are you still here and for how much longer.  I like how she puts that because the word die is such a permanent word, but if she leaves, that indicates clearly that we'll be seeing her again, and we will.  We are not ready for her to "leave" by any means.  She brings such joy to all our lives.  I would love a book of memories from all the relatives and people whom she affected in life.  It would likely come to the size of a novel. 

I have my own memories that I cherish of her.  When we were little sometimes we'd go down to where she and Aunt Myrtle lived and spend the night.  My brother and I would sleep in the bed with her and I remember she'd sing to us and tell us a bedtime story.  She has the most soothing voice and I can still "hear" it in my mind when I think about those special "slumber parties".   We'd wake up when it seemed like it was still dark and hear Aunt Thelma and Aunt Myrtle working hard in the kitchen cooking breakfast.  Breakfast was always a special treat that family members would use as bragging rights that they had been there and had eaten one of their biscuits.  Their biscuits melted in your mouth and of course you couldn't have one with store bought jelly or preserves, they had to be served with the spoils of their massive yard and garden.  They might have peach or apple, or plum, whatever was open at the time.  My mouth waters at the thought. 

Oh, for clarification, these aunts are sisters to my grandfather, my mother's father to be exact.  They were never married, either one of them, and so never had children of their own, yet they tended to the children of their siblings as if they were their own.  Aunt Myrtle died several years ago, but as long as I remember she lived in the house with Aunt Thelma, the same one she still lives in today.  This house is one that was built by them on land that Aunt Thelma bought, I believe.  If you ever need to see an example of a Proverbs 31 wife, she is a living example, although she never married.  Aunt Myrtle was too.  These ladies never had idle hands.  They had the most well-kept yard and home I can ever remember.  It was nothing at all for us to wake up on a Saturday or Sunday morning and for my parents to decide that we were heading down to see them.  My parents would call and either after church, if it was Sunday, or late morning, if it was Saturday, we'd be there in just a couple hours.   This house was always immaculate and the yard was always "swept clean".  When we pulled up in their yard they would be bounding out of the house to greet us, so happy we were there and had decided to come.  Hospitality was one of their many beautiful attributes. 

Their garden was immense and they could almost eat for the year on just what they grew.  I remember them having tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, beans of many varieties, okra, corn, squash, onions, potatoes, radishes, carrots, cucumbers and more.  If you visited them and it was harvest time, you went home with a basket of goodies from their garden.  If you were a child and you were there when it was time to dig up potatoes or carrots or radishes, they'd let you do it and it was so much fun to dig up that treasure from the ground.  They made the most wonderful soup you have ever tasted from the spoils of their garden.  I have never tasted vegetable soup that delicious in all my life. 

Okay, here I go again and my memories involve food.  Why is that?    No matter what side of the family I am talking about, my good memories involve food somehow.   Is this the same for everyone else?  I think this is funny, but maybe it is normal.  LOL

So, I could write more about my great aunt and I likely will, but want to continue with the rest of the weekend.  Oh, I must not forget that my mom's sister was there Friday along with one of her daughters, her daughter's children, and her son's daughter.  All three children are very young, the two youngest being 2 and then the older one being 5, I think, or 6.  I can't remember.  We all had a good visit and I so much enjoyed watching Aunt Thelma enjoy the young children, even laughing out loud at their silliness. 

After we got home on Friday afternoon, all of our kids went and met with friends to see a movie together.  It was the brother and sister pair of friends of my kids.  They went to a late showing and met at a sandwich shop near the theater.  Jeff and I took the opportunity to have a night out ourselves but being so tired from a long work week for Jeff and a busy week of painting for me, we stayed close to home and ate at a local Mexican place.  It was good and we shared their platter for two, which is way too much food for even two people.  It was fun to share the platter though and good to have my hubby all to myself.  We had a good time talking and laughing and enjoying dinner together. 

On Saturday I got up and got busy painting to put the final coat on the walls.  I still see a couple places that I need to put a touch up on, but it just means a tad of paint and a paint brush.  I started taking the tape off an hour after I finished the last section of paint and it looks so good and hardly any paint got past the tape.  I am so thrilled.  What little did get past is easily removed and I will likely get to that today, as well as getting the room back to normal with furniture and such.  I still have the step-ladder and big ladder in there that need to be put away.  Pictures later! 

Saturday evening, after the busy morning and early afternoon painting and then cleaning up some, I cooked chicken out on the grill and roasted some potatoes, cut the watermelon and tossed some salad for a delicious summer meal.   I was exhausted but wanted to do this for my family so they would see how much I loved them.  I could paint all day and still cook them a yummy meal!!!  Just a note, always dash that pride whenever it shows itself.  Around 8pm I headed to my big bathtub and ran some hot, hot water and bubbles for a bubble bath and had the most relaxing bath you can imagine.  I got myself all cleaned up and shaved and such and ready for bed.  My bed never looked better! It was 8:30pm by then and I had one place in mind.  Bed!!!  Then it happened......

I was walking through the den towards the kitchen to take some of my medicine, and next to the love seat, I happened to notice one of the cans of paint was laying over on it's side.  I thought to myself, "Why is that 'empty' can of paint over on this side of the room, I left it on the other side of the room?".  Then I remembered that the can of paint I was thinking about was still on the other side of the room but that this can of paint was the one I had last used and had forgotten to hammer down the lid on.  OOOPS!!!   There was a puddle of paint on the back foot of my loveseat and the carpet under it.  Oh man!!!!!  This is not what I wanted to see at this point in this day!

I went to work scooping up paint with the only things I could think of that were quickly available, a paint deflector shield and a drywall scraper.  Jeff walked into the room and happily said, "Hey mom, what are you doing down there?" and I quickly said, "You don't want to know."  He walked over to where I was sitting in the floor and looked down and shook his head and walked away.  He came back in a few minutes later and asked to help me, but I am certain he walked out of the room to laugh.  We got busy with soapy water getting the paint out of the carpet.  This would have been a great time to have available a carpet cleaner but we did not.  I kept sending the bucket of soapy water to be dumped and replaced and then sent all the kids on a search for our other bucket so I could have a rinse bucket and a soapy one.

I finally got the visible paint out of the carpet and then needed to rinse out the soap.  If you leave soap on the carpet it makes it sticky and attracts dirt........ughhh, why do I have to know these things.  So, I started filling up my rags with clear water and cleaning up the soap until the carpet was saturated in that spot.  When I felt like I had gotten it all out, I started pressing down with the wrung out rag and that is when my dearest oldest daughter walked upstairs to tell me to please "Stop!" because water was dripping from her ceiling in the basement.  Could it have gotten worse than that?  At that point I had to get the water from the carpet so she and my husband are opting what to do about the dripping paint-filled water (apparently not all the paint came out and there will be a big spot of paint on the sub-floor when we end up replacing the carpet) when hubby comes up to ask what he can clean it with.  I am done by then.  I cannot think anymore, my brain has shut down and all I can say to him is to just do something, that I didn't care what he used at that point,  that I had had it.  I didn't have anything left to give in my brain anymore, I couldn't think, I was too tired to continue with this day, and I had "punched the clock" two hours before.  It was after 10pm by then.  We put towels down to soak up the remaining water and I headed to bed. 

I was feeling very sorry for myself until I flipped the TV on in the bedroom and saw "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" and they were building a house for a young family whose mama was battling cancer.  I immediately thought that if I ended up with a spot in my floor because of my own mistake, it was not the end of the world, because I am not having to live with the threat of cancer like this young mama with young children was, who was yet to reach the age of 30.  Paint on my carpet seemed very insignificant at that point.  I went straight to sleep and didn't worry about one more minute!

After I had gone to bed, Jeff had gotten something to firmly lay on the towels and then placed the loveseat back in it's place in order to put weight on the spot to help get water back out of the carpet.  On Sunday morning we took up the towels and you cannot tell there is paint, so "Thank you Lord!".  We left the big fan on it all day Sunday to help with the drying process.  We can replace ceiling tiles, and we can replace flooring, but we can't replace people.  I learned something on Saturday night.  I am such a brat sometimes!

We headed to church early on Sunday morning and dove right into the word with our pastor teaching us.  Our pastor has been preaching some very hard sermons lately and I feel impelled to pray for him.  He is not preaching what the world likes to hear these days.  This is alright, because we are not "of the world", we are just in it.  Still there are so many in the church who are both of the world and in it that when they hear the word spoken, even if it is the word of God, they don't like it and don't want to hear it and so many want their ears tickled that when they aren't tickled they tend to come against the man who handles the Word of God with proficiency as our pastor does.  I want to pray for him and his family in the coming days because the topic of yesterday's sermon is one of much discussion lately in the media. 

I am realizing how much our culture is swayed by media that I am seriously thinking of governing myself and at least my children in the line of what we watch.  I know there are some shows that my children watch that I would likely not approve of the content in line of what Dr. P said yesterday,  that if we say we are opposed to "this" and yet watch shows that glorify certain lifestyles, or adultery and fornication, that we are just as guilty and have a log in our own eyes and that we should not attempt to remove the speck from our brother's until our own log is removed.  I take that to heart quite personally and want to be very cognizant of even the slightest sign of those things, even on television channels that are supposed to offer family and children worthy television. 

Well, let's see, back to our weekend.  After we left church we stopped for a coffee (or coffee drink) and a danish and headed home.  I decided on our way home to head back down to my great aunt's house where extended family would be gathering for a formal birthday celebration for her.  My original plan had been to send the girls with my parents since I had been with J.D. and Jeff on Friday, but I thought it would be good for me to take all three kids and go again.  J.D. had the opportunity to play with cousins he has never met and some he rarely gets to see.  This is good for him, I think.  We were amazed at the number of boys ages 6-12 there were in the extended family.  They all had fun and were all sweaty and stinky from playing hard and climbing in Aunt Thelma's big tall magnolia tree out front.  The girls enjoyed taking pictures around the house and seeing people they haven't seen. 

I got to spend some good time catching up with one of my cousins that is dear to my heart, Christy.  I love being with her, she has such a joi de vivre (joy of life) that is infectious when you are around her.  My precious cousin has not been blessed with biological children of her own but she is "mama" to two of her precious nephews.  They live with her and her husband and I cannot imagine a better mama than she is.   She is wonderful! 

We left from my great aunt's house late in the afternoon and drove through the rain almost all the way home.  It was a little unnerving but we made it safely home.  My oldest sat in the front and we had some good talking time.  I am going to miss that next year.  I hope we can have some good phone talking time when she is gone to college, although I suspect she'll be busy, but maybe not too busy to talk to her mama. 

We had a quiet evening at home, just snacking for supper and "chilling out".  Is it still cool to say that?  I am so not cool!!!

Today is going to be spent cleaning up, doing laundry and getting the house back to a normal state of cleanliness and neatness.  I need to clean the bathrooms and get the den back into order.  Maybe pictures later this week!!!