Mistletoe

After our errands on Tuesday, we turned into our driveway - "Stop Honey, Look" as Mike is trying to pull the car up the drive. "Look at the pretty cat hiding in the grass" Everyone looks out the window and Mike decides to get out to see if it is friendly. She is, and now all the boys want to come pet her. Yes, we are a cat family. Her coat is nice and she doesn't feel like skin and bones so Mike and I figure she's a barn cat from the area (since she still has her claws). Mike pulls up the car to park and the boys and I walk up the driveway to the house. HMMM the cat follows us. Pete begs us to let him feed her and we do. She gobbles food like she hasn't eaten in some time. Pete then gets some old towels and a plastic storage bin, puts them partically under the camper for shelter and in the cat goes. Next morning she is still hanging around. Everytime we go outside she runs over for attention. Pete feeds her dinner again. He is very angry at us when we explain to him, yet again, that we can not keep her, we already have 2 cats who don't get along, we are NOT adding a third one to the mix, let alone the expenses of declawing and fixing her. She is pretty - light gray with white stockings on her feet. I starated to call her Mistletoe (Missy for short), based on the season and her white toes. I know, Honey, we can't keep her.......but she's so nice!!!!

Fa La La La La

Tuesday after the boys get home from school there were a flurry of errands that needed to be run, all before 5, when everything closes in our small town. I had to wait for the boys since they needed to sign checks to deposit in savings accounts and 2 of 3 needed glasses adjusted at the eye Dr. Since the "big" boys don't get off the bus until 4:10, that leaves little time to accomplish things. We decided to divide and conquer. Most items needed to be done in one plaza, however we had documents for the adoption to mail off to the Secretary of State, and the post office is across town. Darling Husband drops me and the kids at the eye Dr, then we will walk across to the bank while he goes to the post office and comes back to pick us up, he can fill the grill's propane tank in the plaza so he can gill out for dinner (yeah, honey!). Step one proceeds as planned, however when we went to the bank the lobby closed at 4:30 (it is now 4:45). UHHHH. Call to Hubby, where are you? Is the post office busy or are you close, we have to go through the bank DT. Luckily he's on the way.....boys pile in the car, I hand out hard surfaces to write on and pens and begin throwing things at boys "You sign this, You sing that...." mom collects everything and through the DT we go - good thing I keep deposit tickets at home and those were ready. I had thought this was just a few simple errands during Christmas week - yeah, right.

Fingerprinting

Yesterday we had our appointment to be fingerprinted by the US Dept of Immigration/Homeland Security. It was for 9 AM and we had about a 2 hour drive to a town we had never been to before. We ran MapQuest the night before and had Lula (the GPS) in the glove box in case we needed her. We left in plenty of time, got to the right town.....and our directions took us off course (we ended up on Blah Blah Court, instead of Blah Blah Plaza). OK, break out Lula, and she takes us to the same place as MapQuest. HHMMM, it says this building is South of "Such and Such Mall", on "Such and Such road"..... Turn around, plug the Mall's name into Lula and off we go again. OOOHHHH, the address they gave is not the name of the road, is is the name of the plaza a strip mall is in. Now, silly me, I expected a large govenment building, maybe something like a Court House. Nope, a store in the stip mall, with the first half of the sign missing so we had to find it by the store address number. What a let down. Our letter of invitation to be fingerprinted had expressly stated no cameras or cell phones would be allowed, so again figuring it would be similar to a Court House experience, we left all knives (just Stanely knives, folks), tools (learned that one when Mike had to run his wire strippers out to the car before we could go into the court house to get a copy of something he needed), and our phones in the car. I was ready for my purse to be searched and to walk through the metal detector. Another let down, there was a security gaurd, but he only checked our ID to our letter and gave us paperwork to fill out. No metal detectors, no bag search, they didn't even question us to whether we were carrying a cell phone. There was no wait, and I think we were in and out of the office in about 10 minutes (counting my potty break before we got back into the car for the 2 hour ride home). Seemed like a long drive for such a quick process. But our eye is on the prize and we are closer to making Zach a permanent member of our family.

Jingle Bells, Jingle All The Way

There are several advantages to living in a small town. One of which are some of the "Norman Rockwellish" scenes of daily life. Now, add to the small town, our heavy Amish population and the storybook pictures come to life. On Tuesday night we had about 6 inches of snow fall, and as a result there was a 2 hour school delay on Wednesday morning. While Zach and I were out at the end of the driveway waiting for the bus, Zach had a ball throwing himself into the snow face first and making snow angels on his belly (don't worry, he was wearing all his snow gear). All of a sudden, I saw something that I thought he just had to see so I called him to my side. Right then, in front of the drive way came a horse, pulling not the usual buggy, but a sleigh with an Amish lady driving. "Look, Zach, it's a "One horse open sleigh!" All she was missing were the sleigh bells.

The Clothes Horse

Well, yesterday after doing a particularly large mound of laundry, then trying to squeeze it into the closet, I told my darling husband it was time to clean out the closet. Actually it was only his closet. I learned very shortley after moving in here, that he had no room to share in his closet. He has about 7 feet of closet rod, and I had to have him give me my own closet last winter. I don't think anyone who knows him would ever imagine he is such a clothes horse, I know I never would have believed it. He usually wears the same 10 shirts all the time and he always wears jeans. I now have a huge pile of shirts in the middle of the bedroom floor I need to go through today to see which are good enough to donate and which to throw away. Even so, not counting his work clothes, which are what he wears 90% of the time (and some shirts he called work shirts just so he didn't have to count them later), he counted 33 short sleeve shirts in his closet, and he didn't bother to count the long sleeve (that number is AFTER he weeded out the stuff to get rid of!). He even gave Pete some things so he didn't have to count them in the number of shirts donated or what he still had in the closet. I then told him (as he is pulling out the "skinny" jeans - that he hasn't been able to wear in 2 years) I bet he has 25 pair of jeans (not counting those skinny jeans). He tells me there is no way he has that many and begins to count to prove me wrong. As he sheepishly got to pair number 23, he conceeded that he had an awful lot of jeans. He also has 2 black winter jackets, his Carhart jacket, his wool dress jacket, his "good" everyday jacket, his red mid-weight jacket......... Then to try to save face at the very end, he says "But when is the last time I went out and bought clothes for myself?" (insert attitude here). I very sweetly said "Well, Honey, does that count the times you tell me you need me to get you shirts for the rally, or more jeans because they are on sale?"
"No" as he walked away.