Hazy, Hot, Humid..........Downpours

With the weather unseasonably hot and humid and no real signs of relief even after the rains......not a lot is getting accomplished. I am unable to walk in this heat, despite the fact that Matty goes to the door several times a day, pounds on it and keeps repeating, "go, go". Today, however, Wm. did get most of the front porch painted/stained before the torrential rains.

Susan and I took Matty and went to BJ's. We did not renew our card when it expired. Wm. was not sure we got enough there to make it worth it. Susan has one as that is where she gets the diapers, etc. On the way there, we were driving in a thunder and lightning storm. Parts of the city lost power. (Stephanie had invited us all over for cake and ice cream to celebrate Michael's birthday and Jay (her brother and his fiance were coming from Burlington) She was one of homes to loose power.

Matthew will turn one on Thurs. It is so hard for me to believe this is the same little 5# baby that was born 5 weeks early. Now he weighs more than 25# and is over 29" tall. He is such a blessing and was well worth the wait of close to 15 yr. I do miss the north country and the life we had there, but I am not sure I can even imagine my life without him.

Because of Matty's birthday, Josh and Jackie will bring the girls down. Susan is so looking forward to seeing them......ha, like I'm not! They are back from vacation now and I can not wait to hear all about it from the girls.

The church was packed last week. Now it is smaller because of the construction for the viewing nursery but in all fairness, a lot of people were there for the healing. I do not know how many received healings.
Speaking of the church, here is something you may not be aware of. Eric Trelease and his wife, Jen, have been coming to Faith Chapel. They are living in Marcellus and Eric is working at Handheld in Skaneateles.

Sit and Spin

:: Sit and spin has become a new favorite for Matthew of late. I am sure you are conjuring up pictures of him sitting on the sit and spin and laughing as he spins round and round. Well, you would be half right. He giggles as he sits and spins but he just sits and spins on his bottom on the floor or porch or wherever he might be when he decides to do it. I must admit, I have never seen a child do this before, but it does make me laugh to watch him. We thought once about getting him a sit and spin for his birthday, but why? Obviously, he has just as much fun without one.

:: Saturday has become the only day I have to get groceries, and check out the stores around here. Last week, I told Wm. that I wanted to go to the tent sale. So, he drove to the Syroco plant tent sale. I have always wanted to go to this. It is only one weekend a yr. that they have their tent sale. We got there in the afternoon and all the tan Adirondack chairs like what we had on our porch were gone. They had a lot of other colors and styles though. I ended up getting 3 Bentwood chairs in the same tan color with 2 side tables to match. Now for the best part.......the chairs were $7 each and the tables were $4 each. I was not done with tent sales and after we loaded the car, we ventured on to the tent sale at the Syracuse China factory outlet. Now the prices at the outlet are excellent but the tent sale is unbelievable.....I got some glasses to replace some that we broke in the move for 25 and 49 cents each (depending on the size). If you love hunting for what you want and don't mind picking through a ton of boxes before you find what you are looking for, then this is the sale for you. Their sale is actually the whole month of July.

:: Well, I am very disappointed not to be attending CFC tomorrow when Andrew, Kathy and John Eastmond will be there. I love them and we have been friends since we lived in Pulaski and they stayed with us. I thought that we may be able to see them when they were in Syracuse but just learned that this year they are not scheduled to be here. :-(

:: Faith Chapel is having a healing service with Mark Swiger tomorrow. He is an Evangelist who has served as missionary to India for many years. More on that later.

Dinner at Gramma's

I made lasagna yesterday (because it is always better the next day). Tom, Susan and Matty stayed and ate with us tonight. Actually, Tom's favorite is my lasagna and I guess from the looks of the picture, Matty kinda likes it too.
I was not the one to give him whipped cream (in my defense, it was light) but he loved that too. After all if you can't do it at Gramma's, you can't do it.

Yesterday after church, we had a book signing by Rob Vanderwerf who wrote and illustrated the book "THE CRAFTSMAN" (a picture book teaching God's plan of salvation). The book was written for children 5-8 but I got one for the girls and for Matty. (eventually they will be that age).

Speaking of Faith Chapel, we have begun our construction project. We are building a new "viewing nursery" and a new foyer. We are doing this without borrowing any money and with the church family doing the work. They built the church 6 yr. ago in this same way.

We met the Ashleys and the Regans at Red Lobster in Watertown yesterday evening to celebrate Debbie's birthday. She told everyone she was 25. Well, they say the mind is the first to go! We had a fabulous dinner, however all Debbie could talk about was Carina's performance as well as repeating Louise's lines. :-)

How high's the water?????

Well, it started raining last night, and rained the entire day. Not only did it mean we could not walk but it rained so hard that parts of the city were flooded. Actually, I looked out the back door at 2 and it was raining quite hard. When I looked out again at 4, the back yard was flooded. It was almost like an island where the house was and there was water running down both sides of the yard and out into the street. Some of the streets in Seneca Knolls were flooded, (as well as the 690 off ramp near our house) not ours but there was enough water in them that the teenage boys in the neighborhood were hydroplaning their cars. By the time we got back for dinner, the water in and around our yard had subsided.

Because of all the water, we decided to just go to Kirby's to celebrate our anniversary. We had an excellent dinner and a good time just talking. We will be meeting the Regans and Ashleys at Red Lobster in Watertown on Sunday afternoon for Deb's birthday. I mentioned that because Wm. is not that fond of seafood so even if I did not have it today, I can have it Sunday.

The pictures of Matthew and Morrigan were great (spoken like a true gramma, eh) I am having some difficulties scanning them into the computer .

Please pray for Donna. She is working a lot , working harder and with this baby she is not feeling the best.

More Ramblings.........

Wednesday will be our anniversary; 32 yr. just in case you were wondering. I am very blessed to be celebrating such a milestone with the man God intended for me.

On a lighter note, Wednesday is also the day that Susan gets the pictures we had taken of Matthew and Morrigan at Wal*Mart. Susan had some taken of Matthew alone before we got there with Morrigan. Jon and Donna did get some taken of Morrigan alone too. That was not the plan when we started out; but the sales girl was very persuasive and in all the fairness, the pictures were just so darn cute. This was Matty's first formal sitting. Now anyone who knows our family knows that Susan is the family photographer for all the birthdays and holidays and just whenever the family gets together. She takes her camera bags with her and is prepared for anything!

Not much news here for this post; funny all day I had been thinking about things I could write about and now that I sit down, my mind has gone blank.

Perfect ending

Well, I started last week with Morrigan still here, had Matthew all week long and on Saturday, Lael called and asked us to meet them in Watertown; making a perfect ending to the week. Anytime I can see all four of my grandchildren in one week, it is terrific. Uncle Roy came over to go to breakfast with Wm. so he went along with us. It had been a while since he had seen the girls. He was recovering from surgery to his knee at Lael's birthday and didn't go.

We had lunch in the mall and then did a little shopping. We found some Little House cups at Gander Mt. What are Little House cups you ask? Why enamelware cups like what Mary and Laura used in Little House series.
We also found some cute shirts for the girls at Old Navy. We weren't quite shopped out so we left the mall and made our way to Kohls.

News from Matthew.com : Today Matty was 11 mo. old. He is walking a lot more. He walks holding on to things but then lets go and walks a few steps, stops and realizes what he is doing and gets down and crawls. His new favorite thing is to go into the bathroom and hold his head over the vent and let the air conditioning blow his hair. He can be playing away and once he hears the air come on, he crawls as fast as he can into the bathroom. We have a lot of others but he seems to have some fascination with the one in the bathroom.

Weather here has been very hot and humid. Even though it has rained periodically, it has done little for the humidity. We did not even walk today. The humidity was 93% before 9am. I opted to stay inside where it was cool.