*Pause*

On Hiatus. Gone for jury "service".

I'm slipping!

I don't know how many people have noticed this, but almost all of my blog titles are from movies. If you could correctly guess them, I'd give you kudos. The title has to go along with my post, though. For example, today's title is from one of the greatest climbing movies - because there's only about 6 climbing movies ever made - Cliffhanger. My last post about our burglary used a knock-off of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. One time when I was in an especially upbeat mood, I quoted School of Rock. "Be a thinker, not a stinker" was from Rocky. I did a knock-off of Wizard of Oz for "Cakes and Cookies and ice cream, oh my!" For my post about bowling, I used Big Lebowski of course. I guess the list could go on and on but I'm not sure anyone really cares but me. I just think it's funny (and sad?) that for almost every event in my life, I can think of a movie almost immediately that has to do with that event and has a great quote to sum it up.

This weekend was so absolutely tiring but so much fun. Friday night we finally got to go out with Jenn and Matt, who we haven't seen in forever. We went to Beefeater's. If anyone finds out their chicken sauce recipe, please let me know. The chicken kabobs made me drool. We were the old-fart-tired couple, but the four of us really wanted to do something, so we agreed to match wits in our new/old '90's Trivial Pursuit game that I bought specifically to play with Matt and Jenn. By about midnight, Jenn was looking incredibly depressed, and was even toying with the idea of playing couple vs. couple the next time instead of girls vs. boys. We were down by 3 pieces, and no one wanted to finish the game except for me I think. We somehow managed to get 3 pieces practically right in a row, and then it was sudden death. Next piece won. And we did it! We somehow pulled answers out of our butts for those last pieces, and we deserved our victory.

Saturday we woke up early for yard sale-ing. There were some huge jackpots! I got some great books, cookbooks, and baby clothes dirt cheap. We finished just in time to get to the Vertical Gym to go wall climbing with the youth group. It was a blast. Turns out that three of our kids have a fear of heights. One stayed firmly planted on the ground. One didn't tell us he had a fear until the next day. And one would get halfway up the wall, freeze, and then yell frantically, "Get me down! Get me down!" Then he'd be ready to go again 15 minutes later. My arms and back are still sore today because it was harder for me this time than any other time for some reason. I did my first route ever. Routes are hard because you can only use specific holds, and it's hard for me to concentrate on looking at which hold to use while trying not to fall. We got home from that just in time to have Steve from PMB pull up to replace our door. And then he left just in time for Steve, Jesse, Aaron and Tyler to show up to watch UFC with us. We had steaks in an awesome Hickory BBQ sauce for dinner, thanks to Jesse. So by the time UFC was over at 11, I was so ready to crash. I don't remember anything else after them walking out the door. I was so exhausted. Sunday after church we went to mom and dad's for lunch - cube steak, little green peas and mashed potatoes! Oh, with apple crisp for dessert! Ohhhhh it's paradise. Then we went to Betty's for a card tournament. Boys won the first game and girls won the second, so we'll have to have a tie breaker pretty soon. So after church last night, needless to say, we were in bed as early as possible. What a long week last week was! I'm hoping this week will not be so awful. We'll see!

Invasion of the XBox snatchers

As you know, (I say to the 6 people that read this blog), we were burgled yesterday. Burgled, not robbed, because breaking and entering was involved, as the below pictures show.

They came in the front door around noon, in broad daylight. They went to the living room and snagged Stephen's XBox 360:

As you can see, he thought it was necessary to rip up our entertainment center. Thanks a lot, guy, we paid 30 bucks for that! Then he went upstairs to where he thought our master bedroom was, and trashed it:

I am actually a little tickled that he went into this room expecting something. He opened all the drawers to find emptiness. He opened the closet to find a big stuffed Scooby-Doo dog (which he left, for some reason). He pulled off the comforter to find that we don't even keep sheets on that bed. That makes me smile a little inside. He then went through the guest bathroom (leaving all my valuable hotel shampoos and tampons) and then into our office. Our office is where he stole Stephen's 6-year-old, 10-pound laptop and some of his guns that we hadn't yet put into the gun safe. I was sort of hoping that he would steal my computer in that office, because it's Windows ME, Internet Explorer doesn't even work on it, and neither does My Computer. As we were waiting for the police to show up and clear the house, I began hoping more and more that he had taken it. I wasn't surprised though, that it was left. It's quite bulky.

I have some other pictures but that's all I have here at work. So, everything that was stolen was Stephen's. I haven't figured out yet if I'm relieved or offended. I mean, I realize most of my jewelry is fake and from Claire's. And my CDs are all burned, not the real copies. But, come on, didn't they see the movie Elf just sitting in the middle of our living room? Or our coupons for Giovanni's? I would really have loved to see the look on this guy's face when he came into our house. I don't know what he was expecting, but it probably wasn't all that JUNK!

The important thing is that we weren't home, Josh and Jenn weren't staying with us, nothing was damaged except the door, and we have serial numbers on all the guns that got gone. The bad thing is that our insurance won't cover about $7000 worth of the stuff that got gone, so unless we recover it, we're out of luck. But I count myself lucky. No one was hurt, nothing personal got gone that's irreplaceable, and we slept soundly last night.

We joked early in the week at Ladies Group about those of us who were baptized Sunday night - we've all had awful weeks since then. I'm convinced the devil's on my back, trying to get me aggravated, so I'm taking pride in being calm with everything that's gone wrong since Monday.

Plus, Stephen said it's kind of our fault - we DO have a welcome mat at our front door. Haha!

I service society by rocking.

This is turning out to be quite a busy summer! I hope tonight will be spent in pajamas watching TV that will rot my brain. I would love a night like that. Saturday, Josh left to go back to Georgia. We tried to hit some yard sales before he left but we only got to two. We'll try again next time. Then I worked for a couple of hours, went home, did some yard work, and then Stephen and I had our first date alone in weeks. Stephen wanted to be in bed by 8, but he didn't get there until a little after 9. That's still pretty good.

Sunday night, Stephen and I, along with a few others at church, were baptized at Jean's pool. It felt so good after standing in the hot sun! Of course, I didn't get baptized for the coolness of the water, but it was a nice benefit. Last night I had Ladies' meeting at church, and we had Christmas in July. I only had a day to get something, so I got a book out of my yard sale box and wrapped it up. I got a candy dish with doves on it that Lora brought.

I don't think we have any plans tonight. The rest of our week is filled up with stuff, but it's very exciting stuff that I'm so ready to do! Tomorrow night is youth group, which we haven't had for two weeks because of VBS and 4th of July. Thursday night Stephen and I are going climbing so I can get my belay certification. Friday night we're doing dinner with Jenn and Matt, who we haven't seen in ages. Saturday morning we're golfing, Saturday afternoon we're rock climbing with the youth group, and Saturday night we're watching the UFC fight from last week. Sunday we have a date with Betty and Steve for cards. Then Stephen goes back to work. He probably won't feel like he has any time off.

Today at work, one of the kids that stays here (one of my coworker's kids) pulled her tooth. Four of the kids piled into the bathroom, yelling, laughing, and getting sick at the sight of blood. Turns out her bark was worse than her bite and she couldn't finish the job. Renee (who turns out to be kind of tough) helped her along. It was a molar, so there was lots of blood. Ugh. I'll leave that up to Stephen when we have kids. Having kids here makes me wonder how I'll handle living with them, because they're making me feel a bit crazy. And dizzy.

Winding Down?

I was hoping this week would be a winding down week. So far it hasn't been, but I kind of made up for it by being a lazy slob all day today. Last week was super busy because of VBS every night. Then Saturday, we switched out siblings and sadly waved goodbye to Jennifer Kl. but said salutations to Joshie. Monday night we took our annual trip to South of the Border (Jabs, really - they're much cheaper) with Steve, Aaron, and Josh. We have so much fun shopping for fireworks. Mainly because we're really dorky about it. Stephen and I have an Excel spreadsheet of all the fireworks we've bought, how much they cost (that was my idea years ago but now I don't really know why it matters if their price is raised or lowered), and our rating from 1-4 stars (based on prettiness, loudness and lasting power.) I absolutely love doing it.

Last night we went wall climbing again. Lauren T and Lauren H came as well. It was so much fun. Not rushed like last week because we went on my lunch break. Last night we were able to stay almost 3 hours and just do whatever. This wall is four different walls with several different trails on all of those walls. There is one "easy" which is straight up, another straight but much harder, one that stairsteps, and one that inverts. The inverted one is kind of the one you're out to conquer, because you know it's the hardest one. Well, I am proud to say that I got it on my very first try! I had done it about 3 or 4 years ago, but it took me several tries over several weeks. I think it's safe to say I'm much stronger now than I was then. Anyway, we had a really good time, and we'll be back out there next Saturday with a lot more people.

Today I went to lunch with mom and dad. I made hamburger vegetable soup and it was flat out delicious. Also, so were mom's sides of cheese toast, M&M cookies and oatmeal raisin cookies. I didn't want to do anything after eating but lay around and rest up for eating more later. But we ended up playing cards and I won, of course. All in all, a very good day because I was also able to do some housework, clean out some boxes from our move, and watch a Lifetime movie. Awesome!! I'm off now, going to Steve's tonight for the July 4 festivities. It will be a huge cookout with a huge bonfire, great people, and a multitude of fireworks. I can't wait!