We moved to our new house the last Saturday in February. This photo shows Mark with one of the items we acquired with the purchase of the house. Statues of Mary like this one are very common sites in St Louis lawns. On our short dead-end street alone, there are 3. After talking with a friend and long-time St Louisan, I learned that one slang moniker for these Mary statues is “Yard Mama.” As you can see, Mark was debating what to do with our Yard Mama. Since the photo was taken, I have found a home for her with one of our neighbors who wants the statue because of her fondness for the now-deceased lady who owned the house before us.

With a lot of help from church friends, we were able to have everything transferred from our old place to our new one in about 6 hours. We have had an eventful 2 weeks since moving. Of course, we have been unpacking with hopes of settling into a more normal way of life. However, we also had to go through normal activities for the kids–3 different birthday parties to attend, a school musical for 2 of the children, special school projects for the school’s Open House–throw in a little stomach flu on the side, and you have an idea of what our life has been like. We are hoping for better health and fewer outside activities to give us more time to get things settled in the coming week.

We are excited about the new place. It has a lot of potential, and the kids are really enjoying living on a street with other kids. We are enjoying having bedroom with a door, and we’re thrilled that our bedroom furniture fits in the new room!

I’m a little late with this post that is loosely related to the Cultural Discernment presentations on postmodernism our pastor did the last 2 Sunday nights in February. But now that I have a few boxes unpacked and no one is throwing up tonight, I want to post about this conversation with my nearly ten-year-old on the way home from school last Monday afternoon (the day after the last presentation).

We were driving past a now-empty Lutheran church, and Calvin said, “Hey, that’s a post-modern building.”

I said, “Well, I really think it is more modern.”

He replied, “Well, yeah, I guess. But there are some traditional elements.”

No, I am not suggesting that Calvin (or I, for that matter) understand postmodernism. I just thought it was great that he was remembering something from the night before at church despite complaining that it was boring (sorry, Jeff).

I should have taken pictures of the floors in our new house before we had them refinished. When we closed on the house last week, it had a rather non-descript old brown carpet on the floor in the living room and dining room. The two downstairs bedroom had newer berber carpet. We decided to have the carpet pulled up and the floors sanded and refinished. They look great! I am so pleased with the finished product. Thanks to our contractor friend who recommended the floor guys we used.

The bathroom downstairs is very small. It seems I am destined to always live in a house with a small bathroom. The benefit is that painting (and cleaning) a small bathroom is easier than painting (and cleaning) a large one. I chose a blue color for the walls. It turned out to be much darker than the paint sample, so Evangeline and I did a sponge effect over the blue with white paint. It is not perfect, but it does cover up the few rough spots in the plaster. I have hopes of eventually using white tile paint to cover up the ugly gold 70s wall tile that goes half way up the walls. I saw a porcelain paint kit at Home Depot that looks like it would work to paint the tile and the ugly gold marble-effect basin on the sink. Until such a day as we could afford to really redo the bathroom, these quick fixes will be good enough.

I wasn’t able to finish the painting of the rooms downstairs because the floor guys were there, and we can’t walk on them until tomorrow. However, I did a lot of the master bedroom before the floor guys were done. I have to finish a bit on each wall, and I have one wall that is completely unpainted. It is the wall where I made the mistake of taking the wallpaper off. I originally planned to paint over the wallpaper. But I came across one little tear, so I decided to see how it would come off. The first strip was great. So I kept going. I ended up pulling off a layer of plaster paper that left a wall that looked like a giant map from chips of the plaster paper all over the wall. And, it wouldn’t come off. So I used wall plaster putty to try to smooth out the rough edges. Now, before I can paint I have to sand it flat. It seems like simple jobs never remain that way!

The last two days, I have been painting at our new house. Long hours of bending and stretching and balancing myself with one leg on a rung of the ladder and one leg on the edge of the bathtub has rendered my body sore and fatigued. It is obviously time to stop the entropy before the time comes where I won’t be able to attempt such painting.

Life is busy. The diet has not died, but the exercise and dieting that I had hoped would be a way of life by now does not exist. I am still down by 7 from the beginning of the year, and I am attempting at least maintain until I weigh myself after we’ve moved. . .

Yes. We are moving. We closed on the purchase of our first home today. We are excited about the potential for the 67-year-old brick house. Our boys are old enough to appreciate the fact that we own the house, so it was fun to tell them the deal was done and to take them to see it for the first time. The actual packing and moving won’t be so much fun, but in about 2 weeks, I’ll feel a lot better about life.

I was game mom for my 4th grader’s Valentine Party this week. I was pretty happy with how the games turned out. It was nice to be there for this party. It is his last classroom party planned by the moms. Next year, as a 5th grader, the teachers give the kids a chance to plan their own parties that often consist of junk food and a movie. So I was happy to be a part of it.

That’s about all for the happenings of my life. Not very interesting, really, but overall, good.

Ok. So I had a 2 pound loss this past week. Seven total for the first month. Not 8 as the goal was stated, but I’ll take it.

It is my tradition to do a Groundhog Day entry. I hale from DuBois a town about 15 miles up the road from Punsutawney, PA, where the famous Punsutawney Phil lives. My parents were both born in Punxsutawney, and I spent the first 2 years of my life in the rural area outside the small town.

Fun Punxsutawney Facts
Natives call Punxsutawney “Punxsy.” And yes, the high school mascot there is a wood chuck (another word for groundhog, in case you didn’t know). My high school mascot was the beaver, and the big rival game–the last one of each season played Veterans Day weekend, was between the wood chucks and the beavers. Not as ferocious as lions and bears, but at least it was a fair match-up. Another little tidbit is that the Groundhog Day Festival that was made famous in the movie Groundhog Day didn’t always exist. When I was a kid, they didn’t have quite as much fanfare on the actual Grounhog Day. They waited until summer to have a carnival called the Groundhog Festival. This seems more sane since even this year when they are having a mild winter, the high will only be in the 30s.

Happy Ground Hog Day to one and all!

(By the way, Phil saw his shadow)

Tonight Evangeline came to me with a library book from school about the human body. She said she just wanted me to read a couple of pages to her. She said she wanted to find out how she was born. So with trepidation, I read the page with photos of a pregnant woman at different stages of gestation. It “explained” things in a very vague manner, and Evangeline looked puzzled. She asked, “So, how does the baby get out.” I explained this to her. Her jaw dropped. “That would hurt a lot, wouldn’t it?” “Yes, it does,” I responded. “Can’t they just cut you open?” she asked. “Why, yes, they can,” I said. I added, “But getting better after that hurts, too.” Then she said, “I’m not having a baby.” I told her I understood why she said that, but that I hoped we would have grandchildren some day. She said, “The boys can have children.” Before the conversation was over, she had changed her mind and said, “Charis and I will each have 5 children, and the boys will each have 6.”

Ok. So I haven’t lost any more weight. I have been pretty faithful to the diet I’ve been on, but I haven’t met my exercise goals–minimal as they are. So I am tweaking the diet, going to a doctor to get some input regarding some possible health issues, and working harder on the exercise goals. I’ll keep you posted.

by Barb
Editorial comment–I feel a bit honored to have been tagged. I confess to not hitting the blog circuit much in the last oh, 18 months, or so. So I don’t get included in the little “blogger games” very often. Thanks Barb.

Four Jobs I Have Had:
Vacuum cleaner salesperson
Janitor
College Instructor
Marketing Copy Writer

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over:
Pride and Prejudice
Broadcast News
Groundhog Day
Wives and Daughters

Four Books I Could Read Over and Over:
The Starbridge Series by Susan Howatch
A Room with a View by EM Forster
Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
Moo, Bah, La-La-La by Sandra Boynton

Four Places I Have Lived:
DuBois, PA
Ft Lauderdale, FL
Nashville, TN
Auburn, WA

Four TV Shows I Watch:
Gilmore Girls
ER
Trading Spaces
Monk

Four Places I Have Been On Vacation:
Hawaii (The Big Island)
Kwajalein, Marshall Islands
DuBois, PA
Niagra Falls, NY

Four Websites I Visit Daily:
realtor.com
Mark Horne’s blog
My bank
google

Four Favorite Foods:
Chips & salsa
Any dessert that has lots of whipped cream
Asiago cheese bagels from St Louis Bread Co (or Panera for you non-St Louis people)
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream

Four Places I