Monthly Archives: May 2005

Well, I finally got my garden planted today!  I am very pleased, and have to give credit to Alex and Faith who helped me a LOT!  Alex worked harder than I’ve ever seen him work.  Kendall helped some, but hates gardening, so I only made him do the stuff the rest of us didn’t have the muscle for, LOL!

We planted tomatoes, peppers, green beans, yellow squash, zucchini, slicing cukes and pickling cukes, and carrots. (I hate carrots, but Faith and Alex insisted.)  And, so far, my back is doing fine!  I took a hot bath after we were done, and I think that helped.

Bonnie, our puppy, has turned into a tiny furry hurricane!  She is taking over the house!  She is so fun to watch, but she has developed a voracious appetite, and we have to really make sure she doesn’t eat something that will make her sick.

Amber has been busy planning her upcoming wedding to Jeff.  We told them they couldn’t live here after they got married.  It would just be too many people (Jeff has his 2 children every other weekend) and with Jeff working for Gaylon, I think it would not be good.  So, she is also trying to find a house.  Not an easy task around here, because everything is so expensive.

Anyway, I need to get some sleep. . . didn’t mean to stay up so late.  But I just had to report that my garden is in, and I am very excited about that!

Oh, one more thing.  Talked to Mom today (FINALLY!).  She is in Jerusalem now, and having a great time.  She said she hasn’t seen any signs of terrorism, but when they were in the Jewish Quarter, there were a lot of soldiers with guns.  She has already visited the Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee, and some other city I won’t even try to spell correctly!  She will be home next week.  I will be relieved.

I managed to throw my back out last week, and it has caused me a great deal of pain for the past several days. I am really ready to be feeling better again, because Gaylon just finished putting the fence up around my garden and getting the gate on it. So, now I finally have my garden all tilled and ready to go, and I can’t bend over to plant anything! And I’ve got all these tomato and pepper plants sitting in my dining room ready to be planted! Well, Amber and Faith said they would be glad to help me, so I think I’m gonna have to take them up on that. I am so ready to have my own garden again. . .I love canning, and haven’t really gotten to do much of it since we’ve been in this house.

In other news, we have finally made the decision to return to the Catholic Church. Kendall and Alex have both really wanted to do that for a really long time, and I knew how much work it would be to get everybody caught up with catechism and all, so really kept putting it off. But Gaylon finally said he really wanted to go back, too, so we found a really wonderful parish, and joined a couple of weeks ago. Alex LOVES the youth group. . . there are 45 kids in his age group alone. Kendall hasn’t really gotten to go to the St. High Youth Group yet, because they didn’t meet one Sunday (they had all gone to a Youth Conference that weekend) and last Sunday night he went to a Christian concert down in Spartanburg.

Faith is not terribly happy with the change, because she doesn’t like change in general, and I know that the Mass is a bit confusing for her. So, we are working on explaining things, so she will understand better. There are TONS of kids her age, too. Last Sunday, 29 children received their First Holy Communion. It was very cool! She did like the Communion gowns that the little girls wear, and I promised her that she could wear one, too, when the time comes. One of my favorite photographs is my grandmother in her First Communion gown. It’s on our piano.

It’s good to be back in the Catholic Church. I have really missed all of the ritual and prayers, and I have begun to realize how very Catholic I really am! It is good to be in a denomination where it all makes perfect sense to me. I know that many of my Protestant friends are going to have problems with us going back, so I’ve been really reading up on Catholic apologetics, so I can explain, Biblically, various Catholic beliefs that most Protestants question. It has been really good for me, because it has really reinforced what I believe, and helped me to be able to better defend my faith.

We got a new puppy a couple of weeks ago. Her name is Bonnie, and she is a little Pekingese! She is absolutely adorable, and we are all madly in love with her! We’ve just go to train her to not attack our toes! She really loves to try to mangle our socks! LOL She is a very pretty color. . . mostly brown, with black and gray. Her face is all black. I think she is going to be really beautiful when she was grown. Right now she is just this little ball of fur, with little stumps for legs. It’s really funny to watch her try to jump up the steps onto the deck!

Well, it’s getting late, and I do think I need to get some sleep. Hopefully I won’t sleep wrong and mess up my back anymore.