Las Chicas Locas de La Quinta

alright... what a weekend we had! In celebration of our beautiful friend, Beth's birthday, we got to get away to a beautiful house on the PGA West Golf Course in La Quinta...it was great and oh my gosh... talk about crazy, silly women... we were all exactly that... all weekend!



This shot cracked me up... Tam was teaching us all how to do the "monkey face"... I can't remember her telling us that monkeys are cross-eyed though, do you Beth?
it was a BLAST!! Talking about everything... no wait, it was more like therapy... definately therapy.

We giggled, laughed, cried, danced, made a music video (can't wait to see it!! what a wonderful gift idea, Tam!!) took lots of pictures, ate wonderful food, although I was very suprised when not ONE of the girls would join me in a wonderful cigar on the patio!! lol

Beth & Tammy, one of the more sane moments of the weekend! Well, it was sort of sane...

Our Grand Re-Opening

When we added the post office, it was decided that we would have a big opening and invite the mucky-mucks to the shop and have a ribbon cutting. The Postmaster General of Anaheim came and cut it, there were some other officials there; and then they had another one at 4 p.m. (!) because Tom couldn't be there for the morning ceremony! lol The 4 pm one was very well attended but they were both nice... :o)

However, the night before we were all there - the boys and Tom & I... scrubbing, sweeping, wiping, working... trying to make it spotless for the event! It was fun to work together like that!

haggai one

i found an interesting verse while i was reading the bible this last weekend and it keeps coming to mind...
Haggai 1:3-11:
3 Then the word of the LORD came through the prophet Haggai: 4 "Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?"
5 Now this is what the LORD Almighty says: "Give careful thought to your ways. 6 You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it."
7 This is what the LORD Almighty says: "Give careful thought to your ways. 8 Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored," says the LORD. 9 "You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?" declares the LORD Almighty. "Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house. 10 Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. 11 I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the oil and whatever the ground produces, on men and cattle, and on the labor of your hands." (these verses are from a great site called Bible Gateway)
How much am I taking care of furthering God's Kingdom in my day-to-day life? Am I doing all I should? or I guess the word is could... for me that scripture hit hardest in thinking about my kids - we can pray with them, discipline them, the whole bit; but how much am I teaching them? really teaching them - because they are the future kingdom of God?? Is this one of the reasons why we feel like we 'spin our wheels' with our business, with our finances and everything? I feel just like that scripture describes - we toil and try but it seems we have purses with holes in them. Our business just keeps struggling SO much... where are the fruits?

Is the fact that our labors are not producing the way it seems they should, due to the way we are or are not approaching God with our money? Did you notice that part of verse 11 that says He called for a drought on not just the ground and the wine but also on the men and the cattle... interesting... is that like, a drought on how much the men would produce at that time? I'll have to research that..
anyway, just my thoughts today. i'm REALLY excited that we are doing the Crown Ministries study on finances! i'm praying that it will all sink IN!!

What do you get from this verse? Does it speak to you in a different way?

a good week...

YEAH!!!!! They're gone!!!!

I can NOT tell you how happy I am... those two people drove me to crazy town on a cart! Hooray...

Jael from America's Next Top Model and San-what's-his-name from American Idol... wow, did they ever bug... not like a controversial-type of a bug, but a "what-on-earth-are-they-doing-on-this-show??" type of bugging... whew! Can't wait for next week.

Now, we just need Natasha to be gone from ANTM but I don't think we're that lucky. The only person I could think of voting off next in American Idol would be Chris (that guy that looks like he belongs in a boy-band). Talking with Randy Harris last night at church he said Phil creeped him out but I really thought he did a good job with country night. He's found his niche.

This is a whole lot of rambling about nothing.... ;o)

What do YOU think? Were you happy about the American Idol decision?

Who do you think is next? :o)

Tea with my girl...

Paris took me to tea. :o)
in old Orange... our hometown :o)
it's going to be a new tradition; Easter Tea. I call dibs on next Easter - it's my treat and I pick the place. I have to include these pictures here for the sheer fact that you have to look at the background in the shot above- this place had the cheesiest paintings on the walls! oh my gosh-almighty... what were they thinking??? There were these women, (poorly) painted and THEN they had big plastic jewels glued to the wall where their earrings or necklace would be... omg...
i love ya, boo - you sure know how to pick 'em!! lol... jk, you're the BEST, sweetest girl in the world and it was SO kind of you to treat us to tea!!!! Thanks, sweetpea - you ROCK.

push it or leave it?

alright... so our youngest loves football. (so do we) anyway, sign-ups for Pop Warner were last Monday, starting at 12:01 A.M. - yes, that's a.m.... if you want to request a certain coach, you sign up early. we stayed up - and bleary-eyed, we signed him up at 12:17, certain we'd get who we want.

did we? i don't think so... it seems the team mom has already sent out an e-mail to those on his team and we didn't get one.

this is my dilemma: do i push it (while of course praying all the while as i have been) or do i just let it go and let God deal and not say anything?? i put out the cursory e-mail to the person in charge to ask how sign-ups were really happening (as opposed to them telling us it was 1st come, 1st served) because i can't imagine that 32 players signed on before i did...

so, i don't know... what do you think? do you just pray in an instance like this? Just trust that He will put you on the right team, even though it doesn't seem right at the time? or do you push it a little, knowing that they're not 'playing by the rules'... ???

April, in my neck of the woods...

lots of random things lately that i haven't yet posted...

here's that picture of tom & i portraying "the couple who owned the donkey that Jesus rode into Jerusalem" on Palm Sunday at our church... pretty fun. the kids all came around during their sunday school classes and we talked to them. it was the donkey's first time being out on a "job" - wow, that was risky, huh? all of those kids coming around him... it was an interesting test.

that was a fun day as it was April Fool's Day, so on our "break" between services i went out to the car where tom had his golf clubs all ready to go golfing after church... i slid his clubs out and taped the handles together in groups of 3 & 4 (!) and then slid them back in :o) then i stuffed a ton of tissue paper into the toes of his golf shoes... his golf buddies got a kick out of it even if HE didn't!

any more great ideas to 'get him'?? i love playing good pranks. ;o)

here's jon & matt running around during the Easter Egg Hunt...

i can't tell you how many times i walk around a corner and find one of my boys dressed something like this:

the kids with william and sabrina seeing Meet The Robinsons (yes, again!) at Downtown Disney, my favorite :o)

f.y.i. i changed the posting option so you can post a comment now, even if you don't have a blogger account - sorry about that before! i hadn't noticed that it was a 'changeable' option.

so happy! i get the great privledge of singing in first service tomorrow (i do about twice a month now :o) anyway, we're singing "He is Exalted", "Rejoice The Lord Is King", "How Great Is Our God" and a whole bunch more! fun fun... can't wait

OC Tourism Awards

So Tom was nominated for a Service Excellence Award by the Board of OC Tourism. There was a big too-doo at the Hilton and and Paris, Tom's Mom Ida and I thought we'd go check it out... It was a great time except poor little Paris ended up in the emergency room for hours because of the hidden nuts in the dessert!! We both wish that we had taken pictures of that, because, you know it IS a part of life - good or bad - but at the time I was taking her I really was only concentrating on the fact that I wanted her to keep breathing... kind of an important thing in my opinion...

(just before the dreaded nuts kicked in..)

The Anaheim Arsenal

Tom took Cole's Scout group, their families and our boys to see the local basketball team, the Anaheim Arsenal tonight!

One of the players, Tyler Smith, has come in to the shop a few times; we've gotten to know him so Tom set this up with him.

They had a great time! (Below is Matt with Tyler :o)

LOVE THIS MOVIE.

We saw this yesterday at Downtown Disney (my fav- clean bathrooms, hooray) and i just LOVED it. We saw it in digital 3-D... wow.


but seriously, LOVE this movie; it's SO cool. I want to see it at least 10 more times to fully take in the whole thing. it's beautiful, funny, clean, the whole sha-bang.

thursday morning...

the 4th day of spring break.

i just keep chanting to myself "there's a special place in heaven for the mother of 3 boys...." over & over & over.....

and then matt makes a cute face like this and i melt.

whatever... they'll get sick of pounding on each other at some point in time... they're laughing the whole time anyway- how bad can it hurt?? boys.... a whole other species....

what is it about this song?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eELB6NxrZ7A
I was watching Boston Legal with Tom tonight, as usual, and this song came on toward the end and, gosh, for some reason my eyes just start leaking... hugely. the first time i heard it i did the same thing- and it was right before i needed to go on stage and sing! sheesh... talk about emotion. i want to sing this song SO badly somewhere but i doubt i could get through it. in fact, i'm sure i couldn't.
how can people write songs like this? so pure and perfect and natural to the ear... but they just pull at your heart with this wrenching pain... how do they do that? how did God give them that gift? what gifts did he give me and can i ever do something that helped portray a feeling like that? or give a voice to a feeling like that? does that even make sense? not that i want to make people cry but to act in such a way, as an artist of some sort, that helps give a voice to something as strongly as this does me... maybe i'm babbling, i don't know. it's late and i shouldn't listen to songs like these at this hour of the night.

oh well... good thing Tom had fallen asleep by this point in the show... otherwise it would have solidified his opinion of my sanity.
i have to share this totally funny blog that jason from church wrote: http://drinkdeeply.blogspot.com/ - you have to read the entry entitled "burger philosophy"... it's hilarious.
night...

our little life lately...

there were some fires in the middle of march - tom took the kids to see what was going on and they saw the hankins & sabrina there also.... i like this shot.

different little odd things going on lately... matt went camping with his boy scout troop and saw a really cool civil war reinactment...

jon was in a fun musical play at school about the gold rush... here he is with his good friend eddie

cole is at a b-day party at disneyland right now with his buddies...

and me? i'm just trying to work my plan; trying to get this weight off and get healthy! i'm feeling better every day.... just gotta keep going. tom & i got to be a part of a fun thing at church yesterday- i'll post the pics later. :o)