Day Eight - February 8, 2010

Ever watch those commercials for dating & matchmaking websites? They tend to show the romantic side of relationships with the couple dancing, eating a dinner by candle light and having a good time. Today I vote they show the other side of relationships!!! Laundry, clipping coupons, doing the grocery shopping list, changing bed sheets, taking out the trash, scrubbing floors and paying bills!! My wife called this morning on her way to breakfast and asked what I was doing – told her I had laundry going, was clipping the coupons from the Sunday paper, getting the grocery list going and watching the weather channel to see what the weather would be for the rest of the week to plan daily clothing choices – her response “well, that’s not very sexy!” Welcome to the reality of life!!

I forgot to include yesterday’s devotions for the end of the day – the girls read “Mistaken” which referenced John 9:1-7 – it talked about whether God makes mistakes or not; it led to a good discussion and everyone came to the conclusion that God doesn’t make mistakes, there is a purpose for everyone. My devotion was “The discipline of dejection” and referenced Luke 24:21 – it talked about expecting God to be in the thunder, lightning and powerful people of the world while He can be most readily found in the commonplace things and people around us.

The pancakes must have been a hit with the little one over the weekend because she asked for chocolate chip pancakes this morning! The teenager wasn’t interested and she went with the safe choice of cereal and fruit.

I started laundry a little earlier this morning – wanted to get the bed sheets going before the regular laundry. For the most part, the house stayed neat over the weekend so it only took a light pick up this morning. The weather outside was quite cold this morning (20 degrees) so we had to bundle up to meet the bus in the driveway. We really lucked out with this bus driver – the regular bus stop is supposed to be down the street a little bit and we had to walk around a slight curve – our street does not have sidewalks so the walk is kind of dangerous especially in wet weather. Without prompting from us, on the third or fourth day of school this year the bus driver told me to call the bus manager and ask for the stop to be moved to a safer location for our girls directly across from the house. Always nice when you get that little bit extra from someone.

Even though I am not working outside of the house right now, I still handle my mornings as if I am – I still do all the morning household chores, shower and am dressed by 8:30. Since last week, I have also added a run on the treadmill. When I do return to work it won’t be a major disruption to my routine.

For the past couple of years, we’ve been using online banking and I can’t imagine how we survived without that and Internet access to our bank accounts! It is quite nice to log onto the bank website, check the accounts and balance the checkbook instead of slogging through the monthly bank statement. We have several items set up on auto-pay and some companies actually reward you to have automatic debits set up. Our insurance and security companies both gave us a reduction for doing so. We also have our mortgage set up for the “equity accelerator” program paying about half of our normal mortgage two times a month and in theory, it will save us about five years of payments– the start to that program has given us some problems but I think we might have worked past those now – if we have any more issues with that program, we’ll go back to writing them a check to prevent surprises to our budget. We pay almost all of our bills online via our bank’s web bill pay program – the only checks we actually write are to the grocery store, church, missionary support and the little girl we sponsor overseas. It certainly makes life easier as long as you remember to take those auto-payments out of your checkbook!!

Car maintenance is another area we have well addressed. My wife’s car was serviced in December and shouldn’t be due again until April. I’m taking my car in next week for an oil change and tires rotated. As long as we don’t take a long trip or anything, we can go once every four months to keep the cars in good shape – our current schedule has me taking one car or the other into the shop every other month. We have a great repair shop about a half block from our house – he usually gives us a wave every morning as he drives by while I’m standing out front waiting on our 2nd grader’s bus.

Today I made my first fatal mistake of the deployment. I went into our teenager’s room while she was in school with the intent of being helpful by putting her sheets back on her bed and making her bed for her – Monday’s normally present a full load of homework for her and I figured this would be nice. She also had her printer on the floor so I was going to put that up on the dresser for her to give her some more floor room. As I was making the bed, I knocked something small off of her nightstand and when I looked under the bed to find it I also found the “hidey-hole”!! All the mates to her unmated socks, a couple of empty cups and other assorted “not supposed to be there things” – conveniently kicked under the bed! Of course we all know that where there is one hidey hole, they somehow breed into multiple hiding places. So as I turned the second was under her desk and a third was under her dresser. I know I shouldn’t have, but I opened the closet door to find the fourth! I did take a few minutes to do some rearranging but I left the messes pretty well alone except for the cups – they were just those large red plastic Dixie cups that hopefully only had water in them but it was more the thought than the actual cup – she receives a rather nice allowance every week and part of that is the faith she is keeping her room clean – we observe her privacy and don’t go messing around in her room but we both decided today that to prevent further issues, I’d come in and check her room weekly with her before she got her allowance. Her other big areas of responsibility are easier to watch, dog baths and her bathroom as well as running the vacuum on all carpeted areas of the house. As I type, she’s in there working right now and at last check it was looking much better.

I spent the majority of my late-morning, early afternoon chasing down the final couple of documents we need to file our taxes. I’m not even going to pretend to do these taxes this year, I have an appointment Saturday morning with a tax professional – I’ll give them all they want/need, they can do the work!

2nd grade homework was easy tonight – we counted money and made change. Her project was pushed back to tomorrow so she’s really ready for it now. Supper was good – country fried steak, fried potatoes, gravy, corn and a roll. After supper, the little one helped me take an inventory of the pantry. Sounds easy but we have a “food phobia” and we seem to really stock up on food. Our kitchen has a small pantry area that I converted to a pan/pot/appliance storage area and I set up a large metal rack in the laundry room for the food reserves. We are very good about rotating food and using up the oldest first but I just wanted to make totally for sure what was in there so we can incorporate it all into the meal planning. We found a few items I had no idea what to do with, but when my wife called she gave some ideas. There are several bread mixes in there that I’ll never be able to eat up myself as the girls don’t care much for them (triple berry bread and cranberry bread) so I’ll just bake one a week and take it to the church – probably better for them than donuts anyway! But for the majority of the items, we’ll be able to use.

My wife had a long day of class and practical experience. They were doing a form of “land orienteering” using a compass, finding her way from point to point and all that. Hopefully she’ll never have to use it but if she does, she’ll be ready. Tomorrow they get to do the roll-over test in the Humvee – this simulates a vehicle turning over and they have to be able to get out of the upside down vehicle. When she went to OIS (Officer Indoctrination School) she had to go through the “dunker” where they simulate a water emergency and you have to unstrap from your seat and swim safely away. I suggested she take an Advil or two before class, that sounds like some more bumps and bruises!!

The girls’ devotion tonight was “whose fault is it?” and referenced 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 and 10:31. It talked about making excuses for our actions instead of being accountable. My devotion was “instantaneous and insistent sanctification” which referenced 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24. It asked if we were really ready to be set apart.

One final “new experience” to report today – I changed my youngest daughter’s ear rings tonight and cleaned her ears. I’m not an expert on ear lobes or anything like that but I thought the hole through the ear lobe was a straight shot and wouldn’t be too much of an issue – while she didn’t scream, she did give me a face when I pushed the new ear ring through the front hole but missed the exit hole – how was I to know the front skin of the ear lobe isn’t connected to the back skin – when I rub my ear lobes, they feel like one continuous mass of ear! I did better on the second ear though despite her having a death grip on the vanity anticipating another missed approach!!

Day 8 is finished and more importantly, our second Monday is over with! Here’s looking forward to Day 9!