Archives for 2006

First night of VBS down, four to go. I think numbers were down tonight because it is Sunday and Father’s Day. We only had 2, yes 2, in my 4th grade class. 1st grade and preschool had pretty good numbers. I still did not get in all of my material even with just 2. We are having to fit in an opening and closing bible study in one time slot and it just didn’t fit. So I’m cutting out a bunch of stuff for tomorrow’s lesson and sticking them at the end only if we have time. I feel like tonight I barely focused on the lesson for all the games/activities I was trying to fit in. Anyway, all the rest of the stops went fine but quickly. We could have easily been done 30 minutes before quitting time. Emma had a great time though and Lexi stayed with Mom and she said she did great even without anyone of us there with her. Which is a relief.

So tomorrow I’m not looking forward to working tomorrow. I feel like I can’t even concentrate on that this week. I have tons to do but once again, it’s that feeling like I’m going in circles thing. I did balance the checkbook and dust today. So I know I got something done.

Ugh, I think I’m tired. I drank caffeine at dinner tonight. I hope that doesn’t keep me up. I think I’ll take a Unisom and call it a night.

http://www.amyjbennett.com/2006/06/18/363/

I’m on countdown now to VBS starting tonight. I feel like I’m pretty prepared. We went to decorate yesterday which was a nightmare. Lexi ended up getting a fever right when we got there, or at least that’s when I noticed it. She would NOT let me put her down and go anywhere. Thank goodness Scott went with me and there was some other guys to help. It turned out pretty nice but it was pretty stressful. Especially with certain family members their giving out lots of ideas. Too many chiefs in the room for sure. So Lexi ended up taking a second nap when we left there and then went to bed as soon as we got home from eating at my parents yesterday evening for our Father’s Day thing. This morning Lexi slept in and Mom invited us to her church since Scott was sleeping from work so we didn’t go to Sunday School and went to service with them.

I left Emma over at MIL’s and brought Lexi and Scott home to sleep. Scott got in almost 2 hours late this morning from arresting a DUI at the last minute.

So I have lots of nervous energy for some reason. I have everything cut and paper-clipped and paper-clipped again and two baskets of stuff to take. I can’t seem to settle down enough to do anything productive. Seems like I start something and go on to something else and feel like I’m sort of running in circles. I really need to balance our checkbook and I really don’t want to. I need to clean our bathrooms and I really don’t want to. I did dust. And ate a brownie. And paper-clipped. I’ve done something.

http://www.amyjbennett.com/2006/06/18/362/

I always seem to stay up late when Scott works. I think if he wasn’t such an early bird I would stay up later every night. With the kids down, I actually get things done. My laundry has been sitting in my bedroom floor since we returned from youth camp and I’ve gotten it all done just this afternoon and evening. That’s a load off my shoulders…lol…actually about 6 of them.

Tomorrow should prove to be a busy day. I’m supposed to attend a bridal shower tomorrow for a young (and pregnant) girl at our church. I feel for the two of them. Marriage is hard enough, but to start it with a baby soon after is even harder. So I’m going to try to support them if even it is in only a gift I’m giving them. I think any support they get from the church is good at this point.

And tomorrow is decorating day for VBS. Scott built me a fireplace. I’m lining the wall to make it look like a log cabin. I’m bringing in my rocking chair, sleeping bags, some coats, etc. And then I just need knick-knacks and to put some posters up. Hopefully if I get some help, I won’t have to be at the church for too long tomorrow. But I need to make some copies so who knows how long I’ll be there.

Since we have VBS starting Sunday night, I’m guessing we’ll have to do Father’s Day tomorrow night with one of our parents.

Somewhere in all that I need to actually clean my house. I straightened up most of it tonight but didn’t actually clean anything. And it needs it. I did light cleaning last week when we got home and I think the weekend before that it wasn’t much either. I don’t know, all I can tell you is it feels like it needs cleaned. I’m so tempted to get someone to come clean it. My mom has a new lady cleaning hers for $50 every two weeks. That’s another $100 a month but I’m thinking maybe I’ll just get her to come once or even just once a month to give it a good cleaning and then I can maintain. When we lived in our first house, I had a lady come every week (I think). She would do laundry while she was there and it would be sitting on my clean and made up bed folded very nicely. She cleaned out my fridge one time I think. She did baseboards and fans and all for only $30 a time. It was so wonderful. I think I should have her here for my birthday while we’re gone to the beach if nothing else. Maybe we’ll get the house cleaned and then the carpet cleaned while we’re gone. I think that’s a terrific idea.

My friend D is contemplating a breast augmentation in a few years. I’m contemplating getting one done with her. I thought I would never say that and I’m still hesitant about it. But I’ve been looking into it and thinking about it and I’m half-convinced to consider. The two things I’m concerned about are money and complications. Thousands of dollars on myself is hard to swallow. I really would rather put that towards land to buy or even paying off our van. And it would be my luck to get those awful complications that can happen. It’s yucky just thinking about it. I am quite different since breastfeeding two children. I’m down to a size A cup and saggy at that. I’m not terribly unhappy with them or myself but I did enjoy when I was breastfeeding and they were a bit fuller. The thing is, I would probably only want a big B and is it really worth all those thousands of dollars and risk of complications to go from an A to a B??? Well, I don’t know. But I do know we don’t have the money now and so I have some time to think about it.

Speaking of buying land…I pitched the idea of buying the two lots near us to my dad and having them keep one back until we are ready to build. He didn’t seem overenthused about it but I know my mom wants them to buy some land in Fort Mill to invest. I hope they do though because I’m not seeing any way for us to buy the land right now. I’ve kind of let the idea of re-doing Scott’s grandmother’s house go for now. I just feel like Scott should be the one to really be enthused about it since he’s the one doing all the work and I have yet to see him overly enthused about it. The last thing I want him to be is resentful towards me for pushing him to do it. But you know…I should tell him we’ll keep 5K of it back for my boobs. I’d bet he’d do it then. lol! I seriously don’t think I could look my in-laws in the face after getting that surgery. Especially if I made the money off of flipping MIL’s childhood home.

Well, what’s new with the kids? I haven’t written about them much…Lexi is getting her eye teeth in. I think that has kept her up at night a few times. She is saying Dora perfectly now. She calls me and Mom “ma”. She says “rock” when she’s in a rocking chair. She says “brush”. She says “nana” for banana. Juice, jump, book, bottle, wheee!. She holds one finger up on each hand when gets ready to slide and says two! She waits for you to count to 3 and say Go and then she slides. It’s pretty cute. She loves the sprinkler. We had a friend plant a bunch of plants in our yard recently and have been running the sprinkler. She gets in it and gets soaked every time. Emma is Emma. She loves doing puzzles which she is fantastic at. Really. She can (mostly) count to 20. She can say and write (mostly) all of her ABCs. She can spell her name. She can spell her name in sign language. I’ve been trying to teach her some of that. She thinks it’s great. She loves to paint. She loves Dora. She loves to read (or for me to read). She plays store. She pretends she’s Barbie. She pretends she’s Belle. She pretends she’s Dora. She loves to dress up and pretend. I hear her spouting out movie lines a lot. She loves to play kitchen. She’s still shy with strangers. She’s picky with her food. She doesn’t eat a lot and would rather drink milk or yogurt. She’s whiny. She loves someone to play with. She’s bossy in a nice kind of way. She’s lovable and tender-hearted. She’s growing into such a wonderful little girl. Just in the past week I’ve had someone tell me how well-behaved she was. At Scott’s Trooper of the Quarter ceremony and the Rainbow vaccuum demonstration guy. He was here for over 3 hours and she stayed with me in my lap or played quietly by herself while Lexi napped. She really was good. I feel like sometimes we’re hard on her but I think really it was necessary at times and I think it is paying off. My little Lexi though is quite the stubborn one. She’s into the arching of the back, laying on the floor tantrums right now. I feel like sometimes I’m going through the exact same thing with Emma but I know they are very different so we’ll see how that goes. Lexi is much less timid that Emma. She’s not afraid of much and has bruises to show for it. She seems to be less shy but more stuck to me if that makes any sense. She gets into Emma’s stuff constantly. We actually call her Swiper a lot. She wants whatever Emma is playing with usually. Emma hates that too. You’ll her “NOOO!!” and then either whining or crying. Or sometimes a Swiper, no swiping! Unfortunately that hasn’t really registered with Lexi yet although it would be great if it would start working. Lexi is much less of a picky eater than Emma. She eats about anything and wants to eat constantly. Some days, she’s snacking the entire day almost literally. Lexi’s my mommy’s girl though. Emma’s a mommy’s girl too but she can cuddle up to Daddy sometimes. But Lexi, no way, if I’m around, she won’t have anything but me and doesn’t even like it if I’m holding Emma and not her. Sometimes I feel bad for Emma. She seems to have to share me a lot more than Lexi does. I really need to try to do some things one on one with Emma.

Ugh, I think that’s enough for me tonight. My brain is getting close to empty and I’m sleepy!

http://www.amyjbennett.com/2006/06/16/361/

Let’s see…what do I do last night? Emma and Lexi went home with MIL. Emma had slept all afternoon over there which was not like her. She had a little fever when she got home. Not good. I went to the gym though and worked my butt off in the Custom Cuts class. I seriously about passed several times. Not good to do when you haven’t eaten in 5 or 6 hours. Scott went to work and I ended up cuddling with Emma after Lexi went to bed and we watched The Family Stone. I didn’t immensely enjoy the movie by any means but parts of it were entertaining. So Emma went to bed with me because by that time, she was burning up even with Tylenol. We spent the night up every hour or so taking sips of water and moving around with her wet washcloth on her forehead. It was not a pleasant night. Lexi woke up several times too. I’ve been working pretty hard all day. I can’t believe it’s already almost 3. The girls are off with MIL for the afternoon again. I could so get used to that every day. Scott is off to the gym. I’m going to probably work later this afternoon to make up for yesterday morning.

Tonight is youth group. The youth pastor has had a lot on him since we got back from camp. One of the kids got put in jail and he has no family to get him out. They had to travel this weekend to get their kids too. I imagine he’s pretty frazzled but we’ll see. The pastor didn’t say anything about youth camp this Sunday. It will be interesting to see how youth group is tonight, especially when they mix with the kids who didn’t go. Hopefully it will go well.

http://www.amyjbennett.com/2006/06/14/360/

OK, nevermind, it’s working again.

Yesterday evening the girls were really irritable so I took them to the local park. Lexi went right down the huge windy slide even before Emma would go. I think Lexi went twice before Emma would go. They were filthy when we left though. I brought them home and gave them a bath. Emma said her tummy was hurting and laid down on the couch. So both the girls went to bed really early last night. I got almost all of my VBS stuff organized. I still need to print some stuff out but otherwise I’m in good condition. I’ve been really busy the past few weeks but I’ve really, really enjoyed it. I enjoy researching and studying up for the lessons and it keeps me busy doing something I feel is worth spending time on.

This morning Scott went to Columbia to be recognized as Trooper of the Quarter for his troop. His mom went with us and the girls. It seemed like a pretty big deal. There were a lot of people there. I think all the DPS employees were there that worked in Columbia and as Scott says, there was a lot of brass in the room.

David Nasser put a blog entry out about last week. The blog name is Hyperbole because Thursday night he was talking about some verses and said like a billion times that it was a hyperbole. Only he wasn’t saying it was a hyperbole, he kept saying hyper-bowl. In the post, he mentioned a bat was flying through the sanctuary also. I’m not convinced hyperbole wasn’t more distracting! Every time he said it, I was like grinding my teeth and whispering hyperbole. He knew he had done it on Friday. Apparently people told him Thursday night. He was making fun of himself Friday morning at our last service before everyone left camp. Anyway, I think it’s funny he named his entry that.

http://www.amyjbennett.com/2006/06/13/359/

Uh, what happened to my last post?

http://www.amyjbennett.com/2006/06/13/358/

No posts in forever. Sorry about that.

Well, back from youth camp and back to work. Let me just say youth camp was AWESOME!!!!!. The kids were great on the way up. Monday afternoon was a bit crazy because we had several meetings in a row and no time to get our stuff out of the van. Carla was left in the room with no tv and hardly any toys. Although I was a bit worried if that was a clue to the rest of the week, it turned out fine and the rest of the week was even better.

Geez, I can barely remember already. Monday evening we had our first family group. Everyone was mum. Hardly anyone talked although they graciously played the silly ice breaker games. I knew the lesson well enough and think I delivered it well, they just had not much to say on the matter. I think Monday night I stayed in with the girls instead of going to worship and Carla stayed too. Tuesday morning we got them up at 6:45 to make the early breakfast. I didn’t even put their clothes on, I did their hair and put shoes on them. They ate good but when Lexi was done eating, she wanted down and was hard to keep up with. That also got a LITTLE better towards the end of the week. Each day was bible study in the morning, lunch and then rec. Somewhere around Tuesday evening we found the playground there and that was really nice. They went there at least once a day, if not several. When I went to rec in the afternoon, Carla would get them down for their nap. She usually rocked Lexi to sleep on one of the many porches and then carry her up to the hotel-type room. She then would read Emma a story where she would fall asleep too. So I usually came back from rec to find at least one, if not all of them asleep. One afternoon I headed out for frappuccino they had at a coffee shop. Yes, they even served Starbuck’s coffee there. The word “camp” in youth camp was pretty unfitting. It was really nice there.

Tuesday night was an awesome night at worship. I wasn’t even sitting with our youth group and we all had similar experiences. God really moved that night and during our church group time, two of our kids stepped up during the youth pastor’s invitation. I think the entire room was in tears. I think I cried on and off for at least an hour or two. It was really awesome.

Wednesday we went to Wal-Mart during our free time in the afternoon so Carla could go baby shopping since she found out they’re having a BOY.

Thursday seemed to be the most relaxing day. We all had our system down finally. We would skip breakfast, I skipped the leaders meeting. We took the girls to the service at 9. Bible study was at 10 and Carla took the girls to the playground. I came back for lunch. I went to rec and they napped. We had free time and dinner and then worship for the evening. It really felt like a vacation that day and by Friday morning, I really didn’t want to leave.

Tree63 was the worship leader and is an awesome band. Please google them, find them on myspace, find them on iTunes. Whatever. They are awesome. I have to say they were much better live but bottom line is they are great.

David Nasser was the speaker who was very easy to understand, very funny and just plain enthralling. The time always flew by with him and you always wanted more.

I think all the youth group were very hesitant about going but by the end of the week didn’t want to leave. And then even on Sunday, everybody wanted to go back. They were all very well-behaved except for one set of girls who actually got in a fist-fight on Thursday night and then there was the usual cattiness between the girls.

Even the weather was awesome. It sprinkled on Thursday evening and never got above 80 degrees there. It was just SO PRETTY up there. We were up on a mountain and there lots of trees and even hiking trails that had a stream going through it.

I don’t really have anything bad to say about the week. I stayed busy with the girls there and it probably would have been a lot easier without them. Sometimes I got tired of chasing Lexi down or holding her because she missed me so much but I don’t think I could have done it any other way. Carla was my hero for the week for sacrificing so much and the kids really were well-behaved. And I didn’t have to sit home with only Scott going or having to figure out where the girls would go if the two of us went.

And the time at worship where I really got to worship and learn was something I really needed. I feel refreshed.

Some of the kids in our youth group really have a hard time though. I had to sit in some of the sessions with the youth pastor with the girls and I can’t believe some of their homelives. My heart almost hurts for them and I hope they can get through and be able to stay close to God and come through it seeing His faithfulness.

I’m not sure how we’ll handle next year. Carla will have a 7 month old and probably won’t be able to go. I’m not sure if I’ll be willing to leave the girls for a week yet still. Maybe I can convince Mom to let Heather go with us. Anyway, I’m still on the high from this year and am going to ride it as long as I can.

Emma: makes a mean growl when I tell her not to do something
Me: Emma, don’t say that, it’s not nice
Emma: it’s a bad word?
Me: It’s not a bad word, it just isn’t nice. it sounds mean.
Emma, very matter of factly: well, then, it’s a bad word.

Scott to Lexi: go put your diaper in the trash
Lexi after putting it in the trash: we did it!
Lexi after coming back to Scott: put it-in trash!

http://www.amyjbennett.com/2006/06/01/356/