Year 2, Day 337 & 338: When Your Business Explodes!

It's been a crazy few days!  We've gone from one activity to another with barely a breath in between.  Yesterday, Jared dropped Keturah off early at 8:15am to church so she could sing in the services again and then she went to her Sunday School classes.  Jared came home and stayed with Abishai, while I took the other two boys to church for the 11am service (some call it 2nd hr, and some call it the 4th service).  Benaiah shadowed the sound booth guy, whom I've watched grow up doing it side by side with his dad.  He's a few years older than Benaiah but both and and his dad are incredibly kind people.  Anyway, Justin helped in 1st grade and I helped in the nursery.  Nursery was full Saturday night and this morning partly because of the childrens' choir singing.  They needed all the help they could get!  I am a "sub" so I'm not on a regular schedule.  That may change with come January when the service times change.  We will see!

So Jared stayed home and cooked lunch, with Abishai at his side.  We had fireplace roasted sausage! I think we all love that fireplace!  I bought more marshmallows and some graham crackers so we can make chocolate less smores (no need for messy chocolate!)  Then was little time between lunch and Benaiah needing to go back to church to do sound for Crave.  Keturah had an extra long rehearsal on the stage for choir and Abishai hung out in Daddy's office (which he really loves to do more than the other kids have done).  I made myself available for a homeschool meeting, but ended up writing my thank you notes for my booming business.

Speaking of the business, yes, despite having only a little traffic through the craft fair yesterday, we sold a few clips, AND someone wanted to do a quick FB party and earn some free and half priced items!  Wahoo!  I also made the decision to sell some of my older stock to other stylists' so I could rotate through my inventory.  Thankfully there's a FB group set up for just that.  I intend to restock but with newer products.  So, I had a few packages and a bunch of thank you cards to send out in the mail today.  My hand hurt after that!  And it's a lot to keep track of at times.  My paperwork isn't very organized, so I will need to spend some time with that come January.  Having an accounting degree, you would think I would have immaculate records.  But with the moves and my focus on other things and with having gone through my parents' files, yes, it's easier to find stuff, but man there's so many other things to focus on rather than piles of papers.  Sigh.  But it's on my to do list.

Then, when I thought we would have a nice quiet at home today, Monday, Justin reminded me that we had Poke'mon club.  We had to skip last month so we made the effort to go today.  Justin has lost a two tone green backpack that looks like a Minecraft creeper and it had all his Poke'mon cards, a library book, and something else in it about 1-2 months ago.  So, we had to make a mad dash to two dollar stores to get some cards to trade.  They were going to do a little gift exchange but not everyone came so they postponed that until next week.  Poke'mon Club starts about the time Abishai should be going down for a nap.  So, when we hit the first store and Abishai saw the toy aisle he went beserk!  I had many, many stares but I don't care.  I know my toddler and I had to get mailing envelopes and bubble wrap anyway.  Then I'll take my kids out of there.  I got some cash back, and I'm glad I did because I was able to send Justin by himself into the next dollar store and finally a CVS to pick up the Poke'mon cards.  And we made it to the library in time.  Abishai was already stir crazy, but he did great sharing with a 5 yr old boy, who listened well when his dad told him to stop running and I encouraged both Abishai and him not to throw the big trash truck and dump truck around.  Abishai ran and ran and ran.  We hang out in the back corner of the children's section, so for the most part, the noise doesn't bother others.

3:30 pm rolls around and Abishai was ridiculously tired.  But, we made it out the door without a meltdown.  He almost ran away a few times, however.  We drove through the downtown circle to see the decorations and then had to take Keturah's glasses to the eyeglass store for her new lenses that had come in.  Well, we left them there and went to the post office because it was going to take 30 minutes, but I got a phone call from the eyeglass store saying they couldn't get the frame to unscrew (I think I had glued it) to put new lenses in so they have to order new frames.  They won't charge us for the new frames because it's under warranty.  Praise the Lord because we aren't made of money!  And the rest of the evening was normal.  Abishai didn't finally go to asleep until normal bedtime at 8:30.  I don't know what that kid is made of, but I want some of it!

11 am service, 4th hour, 2nd hour, whatever you want to call it, gets interpreted for the deaf.  We have a growing community of deaf people and it's awesome! 

Sound guys! I think that's a brand new board, too.  It's what Jared used to do when he was Benaiah's age.

Awww, it's the adult choir and the children's choir singing a special song/new song for the congregation.  Benaiah's friend Ethan and his siblings and dad are in the choir as well.  We certainly have a variety of music in our services.  Sometimes we have the full band and sometimes we have choirs.  Sometimes we have an acoustic minimal set and sometimes we have a cello or violinist.  It's pretty neat.

"I sit in Grandpa's chair (and eat my snack/dinner)!" - Gary's Mini Me

Jared, his post it notes, many coffee/tea travel mugs and huge (because it's really a TV!) computer screen.  Keturah and Jared watched videos on someone using a whip to break a wine glass, so trick shots.  Ok, then.

Sorry, Grandpa, this seat is taken.

He tricked me!  I was chasing him around the couches in the office and he sneaked onto this table!  I got some great video coverage of his stir crazy behavior shrieking through the office.  I'm pretty sure Jared and Aaron weren't allowed to do this when they were little, which is probably more right than letting they kids run around.  But hey, it's home away from home, especially on Sundays, so, what can we do?  Hold him down and we would all go crazy!

Benaiah and Justin doing their thing.  "Whiteout" was the theme, so everybody was supposed to wear white.  Justin thought he didn't own any white clothes, so he went with all black clothes instead.  He wasn't the only one!

Kids' choir doing their thing.  One more week until the performance!

Abishai was hiding from Daddy. And Daddy did get down on his hands and knees and crawled under the table, too.

Owie, my hands hurt! I don't think I've done this much regular handwriting in a long time.  And definitely not with a fountain pen.  But it feels good to have had 12 orders come through doing the Black Friday sale!

The boys waiting on Keturah's rehearsal to be done.  Ethan's there, too.  And when we all walked out together, Abishai thought Ethan was coming home with us.  He was kind of upset that he wasn't and talked about Ethan the whole ride home!

Poke'mon club!

Abishai made a friend!

Someday I'll get brave enough and we'll come early enough to walk down these few blocks to the war memorial and museum and green spaces.  Someday.

Cool seats! But hard plastic!

And guess what I found next to those seats!  The Indiana Association of Home Educators magazine from a couple of years ago!  Woot! Woot!  I'm so glad that it was out in the open like this.

"One more! (while he held up his index finger).  One more tea!"  Oh and he also called his cars, "vehicles."  Yes, it's very specific about his objects with wheels.

Putting the thank you cards in the mail!

I guess Abishai is a large package!

Roasting sausages in the fireplace!  I'm grateful Jared loves to build fires!  He does all the work and I get to enjoy them.  In fact, I got to put two logs on the fire so it wouldn't go out before we got home.  We closed the doors of course and then the heat vents through the bottom out to the house.  I'm also very happy that we didn't have to pay a chimney sweep to clean it and it was usable right away.

The little boy next to Abishai said he taught him out to make caramel apple sauce or soup or something.  They seemed to get along together perfectly!  I love these soft sided kitchen toys!

Putting the apple concoction in the oven.

Poke'mon club with a twist?  They were playing a knock off version of Minecraft that has guns.

Peek a boo!

Because this is the first library probably in Indiana or one of the oldest, they have these really neat paintings that someone made in 1934 of all kind of fictional characters that were known back then.  The person did the whole alphabet and had characters like Tom Sawyer and Robin Hood.  You wouldn't find any of the Disney princesses here!

Very, very neat!

Beautiful and tasteful!

The downtown library is incredible! 

Keturah practiced her cartwheels a few times.  There's a green screen where the kids can get up on the stage and get involved in the video that play up on the screen.  The scenes include flying a kite, walking a dog, walking on the moon and riding a bicycle.  And for once in our lives, we walked out of the library with no books in our arms!  That's because I have no less than 21 books to pick up at our regular Franklin Rd. branch tomorrow.  I ordered so much that I had to use Keturah's card and mine to do it.  But we've taken a ton back to the library recently and have another bagful to drop off.  We are going to skip toddler time tomorrow since we had social time today and I'll just run over there after Jared gets home tomorrow to get them.  I don't want my books to be reshelved!