Out of the Wild Blue!

Ok, everyone knows my sob story about how awful my slooooow dial-up internet is. Verizon has decided to stop it's DSL lines at my friends house and she only lives 1.7 miles down the road from me. They cannot give any time frame for coming further so "out of the blue" the other night, I was surfing around and came across the website for Wild Blue, a satellite internet service much like Hughes Net. After reading all about the company, I talked to Briggs and we decided to go ahead and sign up. I found out you have to have a two year contract with verizon if you sign up for DSL anyway and so this sounded pretty good. They claim to have a more up to date system than Hughes Net and also 24 hour technical help that is not outsourced to another country, if you know what I mean. They are now offering a leasing agreement for 149.00 for equipment. I will cancel my second phone line that I pay 30.00 a month for and MSN which is 22.00 and it should be just about enough to cover the monthly fee. We are hoping it will work well way out here in the country with all the trees and hills. It should-as we have Direct TV and it works really well.

"A clear view of the Southern sky" is all we need to be online at a speed that we have been waiting for. I am soooo looking forward to having a lot more fun on the internet and saving loads of time that I can use in other ways. I am almost ashamed to tell you that I offered up a little prayer once in a while, that we would soon get faster internet. Well, I guess the answer to my prayer came "out of the blue" the Wild Blue!

Sunday Dinner

I guess that "Sunday Dinner" has been a traditional activity for a lot of families throughout the years. Our family has not been the exception. Although we serve our meal in a casual way and the kids are starving when the get home from church, we do have the tradition of having a pretty nice meal on Sunday afternoon. This week I was reminded of this as I set the meal out on the counter Sunday after church. I was thinking how lucky my kids were to be having a full course meal instead of sandwiches. I usually get up on Sunday morning and put something good into the crock pot so it is done by the time we get home. I almost always make a cake or brownies for desert. I think that is a pretty lucky thing that my kids have to look forward to when they are so hungry after church. It reminded me of Grandma Gilliam.
She loved to cook of course, and when she was with us we always had a big meal right after church. She and I shared in the responsibility of preparing it. Her special thing was that she wanted the missionaries to eat with us on Sunday. Very, very often they did. I hope that each of my older kids and the younger ones now will recall those good meals and the family sharing that went on every Sunday afternoon because of the tradition of "Sunday Dinner."

Frantic Saturday Morning

This morning I got up and had plans in my mind to make a scrapbook display of Chloe's swim team pics for her talent display at the church activity tonight, clean house, help Lindsay make a baked spaghetti casserole for the church cook off tonight, mow the lawn, paint the bench outside and maybe a few small other tasks. Well, I did not keep in mind that we have a little resident at our house that takes almost minute by minute supervision to keep him out of anything and everything around the house. This little boy is on the move! As my day started so did he. I no sooner got him his breakfast and he was on the prowl for whatever he could find to get into. I started on the scrapbook pages ( My first mistake was to procrastinate this job until this morning). It seemed that nothing went just right with my creative powers today. I ran into one problem after another with what I was trying to do. I finally settled on digital pages to speed the process. As I was working on the computer with that, Briggs was boiling up bushels of apples to make applesauce with. Between us both our little resident, who by the way is called Gatlin, was busy climbing on top of the counter, getting into the printer, pulling out pots and pans, crumbling bread on the floor and a whole lot more. I was beginning to have an anxiety attack because we wanted to leave at 1:30 so we could attend Ian's football game and then Lindsay's swim practice and on to the church talent show at 5:00. If everything was going right with my project, things would not have been so tense, but it seemed that today was not my day for creating something with smooth going. I finally had to let Adam know we were going to have to catch Ian's game another weekend. That helped to ease the tension all the while little Gatlin was still moving into anything he could see or do to occupy his curious little brain. Around 12:30 Briggs said he would take him into the bedroom and try to get him to sleep for a nap. Yippee! In a few minutes he was asleep as sound as can be. We were able to finish the applesauce, help Lindsay with her casserole for the cook off and get Chloe's Swim Talent posters finished. The house is not cleaned, the bench not painted or lawn mowed, but we survived another busy Saturday. But....you can't help love the face on this little fellow. You know? I think I like Mondays best.

Eat My Bubbles !

This summer has been a big time for swimming on the swim team for our family. We have six grandchildren on the McDowell Mariners Swim Team. Caleb, Joshua, Rahlee ,Ian, Jade and Chloe. For two months parents, grandparents and children participate on a daily basis in practicing and going to swim meets- swim meets at home and swim meets in other towns in our Mountain Swim League. It takes effort and is a time consuming sport, but the benefits outweigh the work and time. All the kids have had a great time associating with other kids and sharing the experience with them. They have all improved in their swimming strokes and speed and have a sport that will always be theirs. Lasting relationships have been formed and sharing this sport with Mom and Dad, Poppy and Grammy will always be remembered.
A bonus this summer has been that Adam and Aimee, as sister and brother, have been the coaches for the team. It has been so nice to see them working together. Both of them were on the Mariners Swim Team many years ago and now their kids are part of the team.

Many years ago, Poppy and Grammy were participants as parents so it was just natural that we wanted to be part of our grandkids team again. All the kids have learned to be really good swimmers this summer and improve all their strokes and times. But this was Chloe's first year and she did not know how to swim at all when she came to the first practice. She struggled and worked so hard to learn the freestyle stroke. Before long, she was swimming with much more ease. She was so proud of herself and never gave up even though it was a struggle at times. She still has improvement to make, but by the end of the two months she was swimming all the strokes and jumping off the block instead of the side of the pool. I can't help but think that her self-esteem has been given a big boost by her accomplishment. We are proud of each of the grandkids- Caleb, Josh, Rahlee, Ian, Jade and Chloe. "Eat my bubbles"

Joy, Joy, Joy!

I was reading an article by Anne Perry in the Meridian Magazine, early this morning. My writing today is a quote from that article.

" Life itself is one endless blessing that I have not really earned yet. I have one opportunity after another to do something good, make something, taste of what is beautiful, delicious, funny, wise, in all ways precious. I have simply to look out of the window to see the light on the water, countless flowers in the garden. I can listen to music, I can hear the wind in the grass, I can taste raspberries, crusty bread, I can smell clean linen, fresh rain, cut grass. Best of all, I can wake up tomorrow and start again, try harder, use this gift of time to do something good. I can be kinder, I can forgive and seek to be forgiven. I can manage pain or disappointment with more faith, and less self-centeredness.
Altogether I have another chance to make myself into what I really want to be, and that is to include helping others make themselves into what they want to be.
God holds a hand out to help us – not a foot out to trip us up. I think sometimes we forget that. There are no tricks in the fine print. Man is that he might have joy."

If I could only keep this in mind each and every day of my life. How much more happy and joyful would I be and how much more joyful would my family be. I have a decoration above my bathroom sink. It is really a Christmas decoration I bought at Christmastime. When I redecorated my bathroom I put it above the mirror because it does reflect what I want to be and what I want my home to be. "Joy, Joy, Joy". I need to look at it more often and remember this

quote by Anne Perry.