Well, things will get back to normal now that Christmas vacation is over.  With my husband being a teacher our schedules get messed up during school holidays.  Well, my schedule does.  The worst part is my alone time with the Lord gets messed up.

I have no good excuse as to why that happens.  My husband doesn't get up at the same time every morning so I don't know what time is a good time to get up to be alone with God.  Since my husband stays up late during his vacation time I don't really want to get up at 4:00AM like I do when he has school.  I will end up going to bed early.

Then, I don't know what his schedule is.  Sometimes he is working around the house and sometimes he goes places.  I like to keep myself available in case he needs my help for something.

So, you see, they are excuses, but not good ones.  God isn't going to let me blame my lack of dedication on someone else.  It all boils down to me making time for Him.

We went to my in-laws' house for Christmas and stayed there four days and helped them pack.  They are moving this week.

My husband had been sick with the flu for a couple of weeks and had finally started feeling better.  When we got there we found almost everyone there was sick.  So, we collected up a bunch of fresh germs.  I've been battling a sore throat and achy ears.  Not really.  I've been giving God the battle and He's been taking care of it for me.  It has been two days now and I'm not down and out like everyone else has been.

At my in-laws' I was given the job to pack up the stuff in the china cabinet.  It had a whole bunch of fragile and antique things in it.  What fun!  I went through rolls of bubble wrap.  At one point I almost had a heart attack.  I was holding an antique plate which I had wrapped and was reaching for another when I felt something under my fingers and heart a sound like kkkkkk.  My heart dropped.  I thought I had squeezed it too tight and cracked it.

When I looked to see what I had done I found that I had, indeed, squeezed too hard.  I popped a bubble on the bubble wrap!  Whew!!!

The bad part is I won't know how well I wrapped everything until they unpack the fragile things and that won't be for quite some time!  The suspense may kill me.

I'm finally putting away my Christmas decorations.  I'm trying to be smart about it this year.  I want to organize them a little better and keep each room's decorations together.  I have a lot of decorations.  My mom gave me a bunch of her old ones and my ex-neighbor just gave me a bunch of old ones as well.

Plus the dollar and 99-cent stores have such cute things for such a cheap price I usually end up buying more each year.  In order to fit them all in the large plastic boxes I have I need to go slowly and get organized.  Plus, since I am going slowly and methodically I am taking a little more time and cleaning them as I put them away.  So, next week's Bible study may just find me still putting away Christmas decorations!  No, I'm sure I'll be done way before that.... I hope, I hope!

Here I go again, beating myself up.  Yesterday my son and I washed and waxed my truck.  Then I put Armor-all on all the rubber and plastic parts.  (There's an awful lot of plastic on vehicles these days!)  Then I cleaned and polished the windows and chrome.

We took the camper off the truck because I wanted to give them both a good washing and waxing.  I can't get to all the areas when they are hooked together.

Today I will work on the inside of the truck and my son and I will be washing and waxing the camper.  It's probably a good thing I'm going to finish this Bible study today because tomorrow I expect my arms will have fallen off!

I got to use one of my new power tools the other day!!  (I wanted my own power tools for Christmas.)  I had to cut a bulletin board down and my cute little skill saw worked GREAT!  I had to read the instruction book on how to put in the blade and how to adjust things.  In the past whenever I used a skill saw it was because someone handed it to me and told me to cut something.  Everything was already adjusted for the job.

Then, when I was done, I cleaned it up and put it back into the carrying bag the tools came in and hid the bag.  My husband has a bad habit of grabbing my tools when he can't find where he put his.

Call me greedy, call me selfish, but if you call me for help with a project that takes a skill saw, drill, or jig saw I'll be right there with all my tools!!  I'll be able to find them... right where I hid them.  LOL!!!

I'm organized!  I'm organized!  I got my computer/sewing/ironing/crafts room organized!  A place for everything, and everything in its place.  Except when I am in a hurry, or get up to go do something else and forget to come back, or when I am working on many projects all at the same time, or, or, or....  Well, maybe I will be able to stay organized in here.  I hope so.  It makes things much easier.

God has been convicting me that I have gotten sloppy in my organizational skills.  I have been getting careless which has ended up costing me time and money.  It costs me time when I have to look through a pile of papers to find something that never got put away or handled.  It costs me money when I toss paperwork I need to fill out to obtain a rebate on a purchase in a pile and forget to fill it out until it is too late.

God only gives me a certain amount of time and a certain amount of money.  I need to be more careful with both.

I read something once that I need to heed.  I believe it pertained to how to streamline your desk at work, but it applies anywhere.  It said to handle each thing no more than twice.  You handle it once when you first obtain it and one more time when you put it away/handle it/ or do whatever needs doing to it.  If possible, it is best to handle it just one time.

I'm thinking that God is demanding more of my time and wants me to make sure I have enough time to get the other things done for my family.

I tried to get this done yesterday, but ended up taking care of other things.  We had some repairmen come yesterday.  While I waited for them I vacuumed and dusted.  Then, in the afternoon, I went with my husband to help him figure out how to downsize.  He replaced two large storage units with one smaller desk.  So we had to figure out where to put everything.

Then, last night, we went to the hardware store.  It was a real God thing.  Yesterday I couldn't find any epoxy.  I was having a hankerin' for some ice cream from a place called Cold Stone Creamery.  After dinner I suggested to my husband that we go to the Lowe's Hardware store to buy some epoxy.  He looked at me like I was crazy because we could go to other stores that were much closer to our house.

I then pointed out that the ice cream place was in the Lowe's parking lot.  So, we went.  When we were ready to check out at Lowe's I took a step toward the middle of the store where most of the registers were.  I looked at my husband who had turned toward a lone register way down in the lumber section.  For some reason I didn't stop to point out that our car was parked closer to the middle of the store and we went down to the lone register.

The cashier was someone that we hadn't seen in probably over 20 years.  She was a friend of my husband's family.  The last time we saw her we all lived in a different county.  What was so funny is it took us forever to get our brains to recognize her.  Probably the main problem was that a hardware store was the last place we ever would have pictured her working.  Secondly, we couldn't imagine someone moving from the area where she had lived all the way out to where we are.

The area we all came from has much more temperate weather.  We are in a desert area now.  The reason most people move out here is because the housing is more affordable.  For example, our house we sold was in a very bad neighborhood.  Out here we are in a nicer one.

Anyway, running into her was a God thing.  Had we been sensible and logical about heading in the direction of our car we would have missed seeing her.  More and more God is showing me how He only gently nudges us in the right direction.  It is easily missed.  Often we are in too much of a hurry or we are too bent on following our logic.

We need to learn how to walk in the spiritual.  It is very different from walking in the natural.  We will end up doing things that don't make sense.  Sometimes they will end up making sense and sometimes only God will see the sense in it.

Link to the 1/20/04 Bible study.

Well, there is a possibility we have found ourselves a new church home.  I'll let you know when it has been confirmed.  There are some things that are coming together there that look very much like God wants us there.  However, like I said, I'll let you know when it is official.

I finished fixing my husband's golf team's golf bags.  As I had mentioned last week, the place that embroidered the name of the school onto the bags spelled the school name wrong.  I had to remove the "A" and replace it with a "U" for four bags.  I ended up embroidering the "U" onto a piece of fabric with my sewing machine and hand-sewing it to the bag.  That sure was fun!  I felt like I was wrestling golf bags.

My machine wouldn't zig-zag wide enough so it isn't an exact match.  However, the thread is a perfect match and if you don't know that there is something different you probably wouldn't notice it for a long while.

So, if you are ever watching any of the matches where my husband's team is competing don't tell the kids that there is something wrong with their bag.  Maybe they will never notice!

I'm sure glad to have it done.  Those bags have been sitting in the garage since last May.  I have a bad habit of procrastinating on doing things I don't want to do.  Since I didn't know how I was going to proceed I put it off.  I think those bags were laughing at me.

The bad thing is that I had to pull out my pile of mending to get my machine out.  I can't put the machine away until I finish mending everything, can I?  So, I have a pile that needs to be whittled down before I can move on to any other project.  Right?  (Say yes.  I need encouragement.)  I've gotten a large chunk of it done, but have saved the harder stuff for last.

The good thing is that I will be very glad the mending is done since it has been piling up for a while.  It will give me more room.... to make another pile!!  LOL!

I'm afraid I've gotten involved in our homeowners association again.  I was on the board of directors for nine years.  I had resigned because some new people got on the board and started doing some very negligent things.  I didn't want to be associated with them.  Most of them have moved away since then.  They were just thinking of their own interests and trying to keep themselves from paying much in their assessments so they did some shady things.

Anyway, all of a sudden we find out that the parks department is planning a system of horse trails and they have routed it right through our association's property!  When I got on the board of directors all those many years ago I read everything in the files to catch myself up on everything that had taken place since the origination of the association.  Before I resigned I made two sets of copies of the documents and gave one set to the management company and kept one for myself.  I also kept any duplicates of plans, specs, etc.  I was concerned that somebody over the years would lose things and I knew I was trustworthy enough to keep them in a safe place.

So, I was the only one at the parks meeting that had any proof that the common areas were never designated as part of any trails system (they said it had always been that way) and I showed them where it said that the common areas were strictly for the use of our association members and nobody else.  Our board president was at the meeting, too.  I was listening for God to give me direction on what to do. 

I'm pretty sure He OK'd my offering to be a committee to address the liability and other issues that had arisen.  I knew that some of the gifts that God has given me were what was needed.  Perhaps this was one of the things that God knew was coming that caused Him to get me to get organized.  I had the feeling He was going to demand more of my time.  I'm hoping I didn't mess up and volunteer for something that wasn't on His agenda!!

Anyway, it should be interesting.  The board president seems to think she can do anything she wants.  I'm more legalistic and liability-minded.  We could be butting heads on some issues.  I called my neighbor, a Christian man who was on the board of directors the same time I was, and asked if he would help on the committee.  He is a down-to-earth, easy going, people-person.  He and I together balance each other out nicely.  We are able to view things from all angles.

The best thing that could happen is the county would take ownership of our common areas.  They are nothing but washes for water to run off.  It would save us a lot of money in the long run.

Link to the 1/28/04 Bible study.