This, That & The Shack

I can hardly believe that Thanksgiving is next week! This month has flown by. I did not think November was going to be too busy, but I was wrong. Rob is snowed under with graduate school and work at the moment. He seriously works on something 16 hours a day. I can't wait for this semester to be over for him. It seems the kids are growing like weeds right now. Things i bought three months ago don't fit. All three have been sick in the last week, but not real sick. The kids are always busy even though we currently have no sports in the schedule. (That only happens 6-8 weeks a year!) I'm still staying busy with life and PTA. Mostly PTA. We had delivery for our big fundraiser that I was responsible for last week. It didn't go as well as I would have liked. (That is a huge understatement!) But I learned a lot about people in general. (stepping on my soapbox)

There are far too many people in the world who don't take care of their business and it's just rude. If you think about it, rules and policies are basically in place as a courtesy to the rest of the world. Ninety percent of the time when rules aren't followed or policies aren't abided by, someone is being very rude to someone else whether they realize it or not. People really don't seem to get that. They don't seem to realize that their action, or lack there of, can greatly impact someone else. As busy as we all are these days, it seems we all need a little reminder lesson on manners and the importance of taking care of our business so someone else won't have to. That lesson was drilled into to me during product delivery when I was the one who had to pay for others not taking care of their business. It was a hard lesson. But I have been the guilty party many times, so I do understand. If anything, it has made me want to be much better about keeping my commitments and taking care of my business! (stepping down now)

Part of what was so hard about delivery was that I had no notice before I had to rearrange our world and spend a 2nd day at school for 8 or so hours so people could come get their stuff. Ella Kate had to be with me for most of that time because I had no time to make other arrangements. Ella Kate is as cute as can be, but she isn't a quiet child. She does not like to sit in one place for more than 45 seconds... And she likes to run!!! So taking EK to school for 20 minutes is not fun. Three or four hours is sheer torture. There are good reason why 2 year olds don't go to elementary school!

EK actually managed to get away from me and my friends twice. We couldn't find her for almost 5 minutes the first time. It seemed like an hour. I was mere seconds away from becoming a panicked puddle of blubber and insisting the whole school issue some sort of lock-down version of CODE ADAM by the time we found her. I have a whole new patch of grey hair from that day! (Keep in mind I read The Shack just three days before this. If you have read that book, you'll understand why that is significant when not being able to find your child!)

And...WOW!
Speaking of THE SHACK, have you read it? Did it make you cry like a baby? Has it changed the way you see God? Do you look at people in a whole new light? Do you pray very different prayers and have completely different views of church and religion? Do you find yourself wanting to go back and read what Papa said to Mack over and over? Really? ME TOO! I don't read a lot anymore. I have yet to finish the Twilight series and my Southern Livings are more decorations than reading materials these days... But if I only read one book a year, or even two years, THE SHACK would be that book. Yes. It is that good. And hard. And deep. And life altering.

I went into it knowing nothing. I hadn't even read the description on the back cover of the book. I only had a vague memory of BST saying it was "brutal" reading in the beginning and others talking about how great it was. So I don't want to spoil for anyone else, but take my word for it, it is wonderful but very hard to read at first. Don't sit down to read it unless you have time to plow through the first 200 or so pages. In fact, I read it straight through. I simply couldn't stop. Luckily, I didn't need sleep that night! :) And I keep going back to parts of it reading them over and over. Then I read my Bible and read the book again to see if the two really jive. So far they do! I think it's a transformational book. I would love to hear what others think of it!

Speaking of hard and transformational.... I spent two hours getting Halloween pictures made in the Sears studio yesterday. Yes, I realize Halloween was over weeks ago. Because my older two finally outgrew having matching or themed costumes, I thought we weren't going to do Halloween pictures again this year. (And really in 10 years, I'm not sure the Sear's portrait experience has ever been pleasant.) But, I have 10 years of pictures of my kids in costume decorating my buffet right now. I had to have an eleventh! Especially since EK was such a cute little kitty cat. Yes, I just had to do it.
But, it was painful.
Despite having an appointment, we had to wait forever. Ella Kate was anything but cooperative. The first Sears photographer made it clear she would rather be anywhere but taking pictures of kids. Then the pictures she did take didn't work because she did not have some light turned on. We had to shoot all the pictures again! Of course by this time Kolby had a run in her tights, Rhett had chocolate on his jersey and EK had torn her skirt, smeared her "whiskers," and ground goldfish into her fur, but we were there and dressed. I was not going home empty handed! We had a great photographer the second time. She saved my sanity and our pictures! Here are some blurry pictures copied from the Sears site. And yes, I am glad we did it! But it's Rob's turn next year! :)
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Well, that is all my blog time for today. I won't be blogging as often now that I have become a full fledged Facebook addict! Facebook really is fun. It's so cool to be able to keep in touch with so many so easily. Just click my Facebook icon to the right if you want to join the party! I'll definitely be your friend! :)

Happy Monday bloggies!