Our Weekend/ My Man

First off, Happy 39th to my favorite person in the whole wide world!

Don and Princess #2

I am thankful today to be able to look at another year as a time of deepening our relationship and drawing closer to each other thru God. This is much different than how I feel on each of the kid's birthdays. Each year in their lives is a step further toward their independence and maturation, thus in some ways steps away from me. Yes dear, I know! Snip, snip! (Don's sign to me to "cut the apron strings")

My only regret as Don gets older is this: He is 8 years older than I am, and people used to think he was younger because of my age. Now people just assume I am older than I am due to Don's age, well.. that and the 5 kids!

ANYWAY, as I was saying, Don is SO very precious to me! I am thankful God knew what I needed in a mate, and for His perfect plan and timing in bringing us together. There have been numerous struggles as we work out the "kinks" of our relationship, but I am thankful for the knowledge that divorce is not an option for either of us. I also admire and appreciate Don's willingness to invest time and energy into "us" in order to guard against complacency and apathy in our relationship, and to work toward the "oneness" God designed for marriage. Don has helped me focus more on how God sees me, and less, much less, on what others think. We really are best friends! I am so glad!

Baby, I love you!

No, we don't have any special plans for today, but we are going to be doing exactly what Don wants today: working at the property. I did get Don's favorite cake, chocolate fudge with chocolate chips and chocolate pudding, and some strawberry glaze made last night to send with whipped cream for him and the people he works with. Don has meetings all morning and into the afternoon at work. I am not sure on our supper plan, but there is VBS at Sarah's church so I will be dropping the kids there and then I can help Don for the evening!

The kids actually did quite well helping out this past weekend. I long for the day when a day off of work for Don actually means a day OFF rather than an extra day for projects at home!


My parents and 4 of my siblings came over for supper Friday night. There is nothing like company, especially my hyper organized mother, to motivate the cleaning of my house! Don mowed the lawn here in the morning, then he, Jon and Homer headed out to the property to work on getting the basement floor ready for plumbing. Meanwhile, the girls, Jesse and I were going to town here in the house. The kids folded and put away 7 loads of laundry, and did various other errands for me. I was able to get some rather messy areas cleaned up. I was so glad.


I even cleaned our room earlier in the week. Our room tends to consist of one unmade bed piled high with balled up down comforters (Don's nest), and numerous piles of clothes. I packed up my winter clothes and sent them to storage at the new house, hung up and put away the other clothes and made the bed. All this took 2-3 hours. I never get upstairs during the day. This job rarely gets done! Don notice right away something new was in the room, but he couldn't put his finger on what it was. Eventually he figured out, it was carpet! Thanks dear! (in case you missed that, the carpet was always there, it just always was covered with clothes!)

So, my house is not spotless, especially now 3 days later, but I am down to 1 or 2 piles per room rather than the 5 or so....

Saturday was fun, we all worked for awhile and the kids did a great job of pitching in. It is funny how much cleaning needs done in a house that isn't even finished or lived in! Yesterday, we all went to the pool after lunch at my grandparent's. At church last night we were able to see pictures of Alaska taken by one of our deacons and his wife and their recent cruise.

Here are a few pictures of everyone pitching in at the house and the rest of our weekend.

Lunchables in the basement

My "Amish" husband

Time to cool off!

Great Grandpa's new toy