It’s always Autumn in England

The last couple weeks nothing much has happened for me to update on, and today I have several things I want to write about.

Last night Sam did really well in Football. He had his name announced several times for tackles he made against the other team. A lot of the time, the other teams send the ball down the other side of the field, but last night he got lots of opportunities to get the first touch and he did!!

This morning, Evan’s sister was here and was showing us this house she had found that she was considering buying. It is in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Lafayette, but from the pictures it looked like no one was living in it and it needs a LOT of work outside. There were no pictures of the inside of the house…which to me says bad news. Anyway, we and Jane, convinced Sarah it wasn’t the kind of house she wanted because it was too much work. However, Evan and I are seriously thinking of going and looking at it! It is less than we thought we would spend, but we could fix it up and because of the neighborhood it is in, we are sure we would get a return when we sold it…even if we just kept it a couple years! I have always wanted to buy and fix up a house to resell and make a profit!

Now, one of the exiciting things I found out this week, is two travel dates. I am going to be going to the National Missionary Convention in November and in December I am going to be going to Costa Rica! My expenses will be paid for the NMC and Costa Rica, but I will probably need to raise some of the cost of Costa Rica. I will certainly be sending out letters asking for people to be praying…and that is far more imortant than the money really.

I have come to see more and more how the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy and if you are attempting anything that goes above the daily living of the Christian life, I think he hates that even more and will do whatever he can to steal, kill or destroy whatever it is you are doing. It is as if you are sticking your head above the crowd and the enemy doesn’t want you to do that. Anyway, I have to confirm with Gary what will be paid and make sure I can really go these dates, because when I found out about the opportunity, Gary wasn’t in the office, so I haven’t had a chance to tell him I want to go!

The Big Read is an NEA program designed to encourage community reading initiatives. Of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six. According to some other bloggers, they encourage us to:

*Look at the list and bold those we have read.
*Italicize those we intend to read.
*Underline the books we LOVE

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman  
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Our container is being delivered today!

It arrived in the US on 1sts August and took about 2 weeks to clear customs. So, since around the 14th August, it has been sitting in a warehouse somewhere in South Carolina. I am glad it is finally being delivered. the only answer we ever got when we called the company was that they didn’t have a truck available to send up here to us. Last week, I sent an email to EuroUSA saying that a month was far too long to wait for it to be delivered. I also emailed PSS in England to complain. PSS is who we hired in England, and they use EuroUSA on this side. I don’t have a complaint for PSS, they were always very prompt, very friendly and always followed through on when they said they would call or be there. They were excellent at keeping in touch with us to let us know what was going on.

EuroUSA has not been that way. On August 1st we called to see when it would be through customs and delivered. Their standard answer was always, ‘we will call you back’. We would wait a week and hear nothing. Call them again, and their answer would be, ‘we will call you back.’ My complaint to PSS about them was that, if on the 14th August, they would have told us, it will take a month to get it here, because that is the next truck they have, at least I would have known what was going on. But just telling us that they would call us when they had an answer was very frustrating. They never once called us back, by the way. The only call we ever got was from the driver of the actualy delivery truck. On Monday he called and said it would be delivered today. He called again last night to let us know where he was and to tell us he would be here around 10am today.

So, now I only have about 30 minutes before all of my stuff arrives. It is very exciting!!! It kinda feels like Christmas. I don’t remember exactly what it is I have in there!!

My birthday is coming up in 20 days. I have started my ‘wish list’ on Amazon. What made me start thinking about this was the ‘Social Calendar’ on Facebook. It has a way you can import your wish list from Amazon straight into Facebook. How fun is that! So that is what I did!

I have some fun books that I want. Plus some books for work that I want. A couple CD’s, movies and of course a digital camera! It is actually the same camera we have now, but much better. I think I would actually like an SLR, but I haven’t spent enough time deciding what I really want or need.

Anyway, take a look at Amazon and buy me something!

Here is the latest news on the car. We have had endless delay after delay, but we have received half the cash up front and the rest will come when the final paperwork goes through.

The dealership has agreed to release the car we are buying with the final payment being made once we get it from the insurance.

Here are two pictures of the car. They are not great, because I have taken them from the dealers website, once we have the car in hand, I will post some more. Evan is picking it up at noon after they have detailed the car for us.

This is a 2001 tan (brown as the dealer calls it) Mustang GT with charcoal leather interior. It drives great and just had 4 new tires put on it. We drive it off the lot at noon today…only an hour to go. Unfortunately, I had to come to work and Evan is picking it up on his own and driving it to Sam’d football game tonight.

I GET TO DRIVE IT HOME FROM THE GAME!! I have never really been excited about any car I have purchased in the past. This is the 5th car I have owned in my life and it is by far my favorite!

Yesterday morning, I let out the cats as I usually do and then sat down to read the newspaper. Every few minutes I would look up and see what the cats were doing. Chica doesn’t usually wander too far away and generally just sits on the patio and sunbathes. Well, all the sudden she is no where to be seen, so I step out and call her name. Nothing. She doesn’t come and I can’t see her. I don’t worry too much, but I did tell Evan she was no where to be seen. About 5-10 minutes later Evan went outside and then came and told me he had found her, but to come and see her.

This is what we found:

Chica had found a tree and was at least 25 feet up. I guess she must have been even higher when I first called her, because I could not see her at all. I think when I called her, she started making her way down and it took at least another 10 minutes for her to get all the way down.

Here she is a bit lower:

Decide which one is the lie about myself:

1) I’ve flown a glider plane

2) I’ve always wanted 4 or more kids

3) I’ve driven a motorcycle

This is definately how I operate! If it is too big of a task, I usually just leave it alone, hope that someone else (usually a firstborn) will do it instead. So far it has worked well in my life since I have an older sister and then I married a first born!!

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.