Painting and Decorating

Last Wed we began a rather HUGE project, we began to re-decorate the girls'(Hannah, Rachel, Caroline & Sarah) room. I honestly thought that it would only take a couple of days and that by Sunday we'd be finished and back together.... boy, was I wrong. We began by unloading everything from the girls' room, except for the bunk beds, into the family room and kitchen. We took down the curtains and mini-blinds and began painting. There was one problem I didn't count on: my allergies. My allergies have been causing me problems for a couple of weeks, and every time I went to bend over while painting, my head began to spin and I nearly fell over. I'm sure I looked quite comical. :D Though it did allow Hannah and Caroline to learn to paint; Rachel was unable to help because her allergies were also acting up. Because of the size of the room and having the beds in it we had to paint 1/2 at a time. We primed and painted the first two walls Fri and the second two walls Sat. This worked well because Gene was at work and then out witnessing Fri night, and he went to Galveston to witness at Mardi Gras on Saturday.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have been getting a lot of really good ideas from Cat's blog, which caused me to decide to declutter and minimize the girls' things. Our youngest, Caroline, will be 10 next week and the girls are reaching that age where they are outgrowing a lot of their toys, which makes this is a great time to minimize. My desire to not take things back into their room that we don't want is making the project take longer than I anticipated.

Another thing making this project take longer has been my health. I am rarely sick, but I had to go to the doctor again today. As I said, my allergies have been acting up, and beginning Sat. I had really severe headaches lasting most of the day and night. I also began to feel a little swelling in my lower left jaw. It did this last August, so I recognized it when it happened again. It always begins on the weekend; I don't know why. I began taking colloidal silver last week, hoping to fight this off, but it didn't help. Sunday, I had severe headaches with facial pain, and Monday morning I woke up looking like a chipmunk with nuts in my cheek! :rolleyes: I went to the doctor, and not only did I have a severe sinus infection, but also an ear infection. There is a technical term for the swollen lymph glands, but I don't remember it. The swelling is caused by the lymph glands producing too much fluid which then goes all around it making my face and under my jaw swell. When you feel it, it's rather firm, not squishy (nice medical description don't ya think) like you would expect. Hopefully the medicine will help it begin to decrease quickly.

Hannah has been doing a great job of organizing and sorting everything, and we hope to begin our work on their books tomorrow. The girls have tons of books and we are going to set them up by the dewey decimal system so that we can easily find them!

Here are a couple of pictures of Hannah painting. The walls are a very light lavendar; we didn't want to get it too dark(I've had a habit of doing that in the past). I will post more pictures when the room is finished.

Click to see larger images:

Lindsay has already started on our next project, the hall bath. It will be painted a light yellow and we will be putting in red brick tiles(the stick on kind). The floor had carpet and over time has become mildewed from the water. I'll post pictures of that as we finish, also.

Our Weekend

This weekend is coming to an end; it's hard to believe the days go so quickly. Things went really well for Gene Friday night, though he said there were really too many people. They had to cancel things for today, as it was rainy with a high of 40 (quite cold for Houston). People aren't really eager to stop and talk when they are freezing and getting wet ;).

Yesterday the girls and I went shopping and had a good time. We went to Hobby Lobby, as they had lots of the things we love on sale. We love the Hobby Lobby sales! We then went to another one of our favorite places: a used book sale. We bought several craft and cook books. I'm trying to get all of the girls to direct their time towards better pursuits. I like to buy Christmas craft/food books such as the Southern Living Christmas books. I will seldom use the ideas for Christmas, but I will take the ideas and adapt them for any occasion. We also purchased a few older novels. After that we went to a resale shop and did really good. Then we went to Walmart, ran home, ate, and headed back out to dancing. Once a month we meet with several other families and do International folk dancing. I didn't dance last night, but the girls had a blast. Gene and Sarah stayed home; Gene wrote and Sarah doesn't really dance, so she stayed home with him.

Today was another cold and cloudy day. I really can't complain because most of our "winter" has been beautiful and in the 60s and 70s. We went to church tonight and afterwards ate dinner, did a science experiment and played Taboo. Taboo is a lot of fun, especially when you have people of all ages playing. During our Bible study time we had some great discussion, which I really enjoy.

The other day, Hannah put out our bird feeders and put some seed on the ground for the birds. I believe the Northern migration must have begun, as we have had hundreds of birds in the yard today. We had a great time watching them out the windows.


The birds were sitting on the fence waiting to come and eat.


The birds taking flight after being frightened.

I've been working on organizing many aspects of my life in the last few weeks. We've changed what & how we're doing school. We switched the girls to Alpha Omega Lifepacs. They are able to be self-directed in their school and this will allow them to work ahead if they wish. I spent most of Friday night working on a planner/organizer for me and a book to keep up with all of the girls' reading. I am assigning them biographies and novels in addition to their school. We are also doing some organization of the house, little bits at a time. I've been working on a master to-do list that will have big and small projects I want to complete on it. I have many projects I would like to do around the house in the way of minimizing and decorating. Organizing what space we have is always a priority, as we have 7 people in our family and our house is only 1184 sq feet. I also have several rooms that I would like to paint and redecorate. I have been visiting Cat's blog and her Yahoo group, which have both been very encouraging to me and have given me lots of good ideas.

I have a couple of deeper, longer posts that I need to work on, but haven't had the time to do it. I hope to be completing my research and getting to them later in the week. I am going to try to at least post something small every other day to get back to where I want to be concerning my blogging.

Busy Times

Many things have been going on around here, and I wanted to catch you all up on some of them. January 25th was my birthday ,and since Gene was going to Los Angeles, we celebrated on the 24th. The girls had a good time getting things ready for me. Gene had taken them shopping and let them help pick out my cake and presents. The cake was a praline cake with caramel and pecans on it. For my birthday they bought me a foot soaker/massager, which I love. They also got me a gift certificate for Books a Million, which I also love.


My Birthday Cake


The foot soaker massager complete with bubbles.

On the 25th, Gene went to Los Angeles for 5 days of one-2-one witnessing and open air preaching. While there, he met up with Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, and many other seed sowing friends. He witnessed or preached at Manhattan Beach, University of CA, Long Beach, Hollywood (near the Chinese Theatre and the Walk of Fame), Santa Monica Third Street Promenade and Venice Beach. It was a wonderful experience that God has used greatly.


Gene with Ray Comfort


Gene with Kirk Cameron


Gene open air preaching.

On Feb. 7th, we finally were able to meet the MacDonald Family! We had a wonderful time of fun and fellowship. It was like we were getting together with old friends. God certainly does use the internet for His good purposes. We had a lot of fun that night doing dry ice experiments, having Gene share his testimony from Los Angeles , and listening to the MacDonalds play and sing, and Lindsay even joined in on some playing with them.


Gene showing a trick during his testimony


Lindsay, Carol & Bonnie eating


The MacDonalds playing and singing


Squeezing in a jam session (literally)


On the 11th, we had a dinner for the MacDonalds, with the Pedersen family joining in on the fun. The older kids played music, and the younger ones rode scooters and played outside while the adults visited. We had gumbo with rice (which was a new experience for the MacDonalds) and salad, and Rachel baked 2 cakes, cookies, and brownies. We all had a great time together and were sad when it had to end. We will miss the MacDonalds when they go back to MA. We hope they will come this way again on their next trip.


L-R-- Bonnie, Peter, Carol & Anna Pedersen


L-R-- John Pedersen, Vincent & Lindsay


L-R Carol, Lindsay & Bonnie

Please be in prayer every Friday night for Gene and his evangelism team. They meet from 9pm-12am CST every Friday. Though in the next couple of weeks they have some added events. This afternoon, they met at the Toyota Center to hand out tracts to those going to the All-Star basketball game, and they will meet again on Sunday. On the 24th they will have a team downtown and a group in Galveston for Mardi Gras. Then Gene and some others will join the team in Galveston for Saturday & Sunday. Then after that they will be going to the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo to hand out tracts.

Happy Birthday, Lindsay!!

January 16th was Lindsay's 21st birthday. She is a blessing to have in our family. We have her to thank for this blog, as she is the one who does all of the design work and programming; I would be lost without her, in this realm and in many others! I am thankful that we have become very good friends. We can spend many hours discussing scriptures and their application with each other. We have jokingly titled her our experimental child, as we test all of our parenting theories out on her. She loves music and is learning to play both the guitar and banjo. She has acted in several plays, from American Girl to Shakespeare. We love to laugh together, and she has a great sense of humor. One of my favorite things about her, but don't tell her, is that she challenges me. If I say I think something or I believe the scriptures point a certain direction, she will challenge me to back it up. I can tend to swing my pendulum too far in one direction, and she will help me to see that. She loves to study the scripture and one of my favorite memories is of her searching the scriptures at the age of 10. We had been to see a play depicting Heaven and Hell, and she wanted to know what the Bible had to say on that subject and on the subject of Satan. She had sat in on my Precept Bible studies for years and had watched me use the Strong's Concordance and other study tools; therefore she was familiar with how to search and cross-reference scriptures. She found every name for Satan, and every scripture that mentioned him or hell and read them. She then read the whole book of Revelations, which intimidated me until a few years ago; I guess that's the example of the faith of a child. To this day, she is still like that, if she wants to know something, she will get all her reference books and begin to research it. She is often referred to as my research assistant, because when I'm pressed for time, I will ask her to search something out for me. I can trust her research because she will look at all sides of an issue and then come to a conclusion, as opposed to going into something with an agenda and then making up her mind. If you haven't visited
Lindsay's site before, I hope that you will. Here's a picture we took of Lindsay last May.

Catching up on posts

I know that it's been a while since I have posted; the weeks have flown by. During that time we've had two birthdays, Gene's had two trips out of town, the girls have been battling URIs and I have been ill(which is very unusual). I hope to post more often, I know, you've heard that before. But, during this time off, God has been showing me several things and I have a feeling a very large soap box is about to appear. I may post in rapid succession, but I want to be careful in what I say and how I say it, so we will have to see how rapidly they come out. Please feel free to share on any post, even a dissenting opinion, as long as it is done with a spirit of love, is welcome.