Tuesday Trauma

Julia had her first major scooter accident today. She biffed it pretty hard and lost a big chunk of skin on her knee. She has several other scraped-up spots all up and down her legs. I had never seen that much of her blood all at once so it was pretty unsettling. I even had to run to the drugstore and get extra-big band-aids. I would post pictures, but if it grosses ME out -- and I'm her mom -- it would be a whole lot worse for you.

Jenna had a fun day, too. After cleaning out my purse, she decided to eat a pill she found in one of the pockets. (Which was wrapped in cellophane that I usually have trouble tearing into, but it was no problem whatsoever for my 2-year-old.) It was an AZO pill, which is for bladder infections. (Any woman who has ever suffered through one of those keeps AZO with her at all times.) We're pretty sure Jenna only got part of a pill down. She figured out pretty quickly how gross it tasted and spit out a pill that was still two-thirds intact. A call to poison control reassured us that she was probably going to be OK. She might pee neon orange for a few days.
We are back on soccer Saturdays now. Julia's playing Upward Soccer this time, which she played in Baytown and loved. She was excited to learn that a church here is starting it this year so we signed her up. Her team is the Lady Bears and their uniforms are really, REALLY orange -- about the color Jenna will be peeing for the next several days.
Jenna quickly lost interest in the game and amused herself at the nearby playground.

We got a lot of work done on the house over the past several days. Our house church met over here Sunday night for our house blessing so we wanted it to look really nice. We all had dinner and then members of our house church prayed blessings over our new house, which was so touching and another reminder of how much we love being part of this church family.

Living room,
Julia's room,
And Jenna's room.

And we even got our room, the one room we had completely neglected, in a lot better shape. And check out the nightstand -- I've had it since I was two!

Where's George?

We've been in the new house for almost a week now. Here's Julia reading to Jenna the other night in Jenna's new big-girl bed. (Which is actually Julia's old big-girl bed.) See the color on the wall? That's "Tinkerbell," and it was painted by Chad and our friend who probably doesn't want to be named. But get him high on paint fumes and hey, who knows what he'll do. Anyway, they also painted Julia's room, and Chad has pictures, but I promised I wouldn't post them here because he wants to put them on his blog. (I've been in trouble for picture-stealing before.)

Here's Jenna waking up on the morning we moved, which means it was the last morning we would get her out of her crib. The crib is now in pieces in our new garage. And you know what? I'm OK with that.

In other news, my friend Linda in Germany sent me a one-dollar bill with www.wheresgeorge.com written on it. You go to the web site, enter in a bill's serial number, and -- as long as future recipients of the bill log in to the site and record the bill's whereabouts -- you can track the bill's journey around the country. Or in my dollar's case, around the globe. I think I'm sending it on to my dad next. He really gets into this type of thing. Oh, you can enter as many different bills as you want, and you can even set it up to have an email sent to you whenever there's any activity involving one of the bills you entered. I think it's kinda cool.

Little Church-Owned Houses... for You and Me

We closed on the house this morning! On the way to the title company, Chad and I were talking about the different houses we lived in growing up. So I decided to blog about mine.

Birch Street, Lovington, New Mexico: We lived here from when I was born until just after my 3rd birthday. I was little, but I remember a lot about the house. I remember the dark blue carpet and the way the house was laid out with the living room in the front, the kitchen behind it and the bedrooms down a hallway to the right. I remember watching Lawrence Welk on Saturday nights while my mom rolled my hair up in those pink sponge curlers. I remember my brother Brian breaking his arm in the front yard. I remember running around the backyard with Snoopy, our puppy.

Highland Street, Hobbs, New Mexico: My dad got a youth minister job at Taylor St. Church of Christ, and that church had a parsonage. It was one of the nicest houses we ever lived in, and the only four-bedroom house we had. Brian and I were big fans of The Brady Bunch at the time, and I remember thinking that if we had an Alice, she could live in the extra bedroom. I was three and four when we lived there.

700 Trailing Heart, Roswell, New Mexico: We never knew what "Trailing Heart" meant, but this house was cool. It was the parsonage owned by Country Club Road Church of Christ, where my dad was the youth minister. The church building was fairly new, and for some reason the elders were afraid the youth group was going to tear it up. So the church paid to turn our double garage into a giant activity room so the teens would hang out there instead of the church building. It was awesome. It was carpeted and had a (8-track!) stereo and a ton of games. On the last day of school that year, my kindergarten class took a field trip to the park that was right across the street from our house. It started pouring down rain and as the class was running for the bus, I told our teacher that we could just go over to my house. "Are you sure that's OK?" she asked. I assured her that it was, and you can imagine my mom's horror when my entire kindergarten class showed up unannounced at the front door. We had fun though -- sitting in a circle in the big room playing Duck, Duck, Goose.

2713 Carol, Big Spring, Texas: We moved to Big Spring so my dad could be the youth minister at 14th and Main Church of Christ. The church had a parsonage on Cindy Lane, but it needed some work so the church rented us a house on Carol Street until the other house was ready. Apparently, the rent house also needed some work and the elders' wives who met us at the house the day we moved were horrified at the condition it was in. I didn't notice, though. The house was huge and I could make a full circle in it on my Big Wheel.

2502 Cindy Lane, Big Spring, Texas: Finally the house was ready and we moved over to Cindy during my 2nd grade year. I loved this house, too. It had fluffy yellow carpet and my best friend lived one street over. When we moved away in the middle of 3rd grade, I missed this house more than any of the other houses.

103 North 3rd St, Lovington, New Mexico: Yep, back to Lovington so my dad could be the YM at 3rd and Central Church of Christ for the second time. We lived in the parsonage right across the street from the church. There was a separate building in our backyard where the teens met for class on Sunday mornings. So my dad walked out the back door across the backyard every Sunday morning to teach class. This was a small house, but we liked it. I remember watching Dallas on Friday nights with my mom in the living room, and feeling very modern because we were now living in the 1980s.

805 West Gore, Lovington, New Mexico: This was the other house the church owned. The preacher and his family had been living in it, but they built a house and moved, leaving the Gore Street house open for us. This was another nice house. I lived there for 4th, 5th and 6th grade. Over the years, I've met several other children of former ministers from 3rd and Central who lived in this house. One had found where I had written "DEANA WAS HERE" in my closet and he said for years he had wondered who Deana was every morning as he was picking out his clothes.

4060 Redwood Drive, Beaumont, Texas: Ridgewood Church of Christ in Beaumont had no parsonage, so for the first time in 12 years, we bought a house. Beaumont was my dad's hometown and we moved in right down the street from his parents/my grandparents. This was the house that I felt the most at home in. I moved in as an 11-year-old kid and moved out as a 22-year-old married woman. After Brian left for college, I moved into his room where I had my own bathroom. This was especially handy for the nights my boyfriend sneaked up to the house so we could kiss through my bathroom window. My parents moved to Houston in 1994, and Chad and I made one more trip to Beaumont to get my last bit of stuff from the house. I cried when we drove away.

Chad and I have lived in eight apartments/houses/townhouses since we got married in 1993. Our realtor just came by and gave me the keys for the house we closed on today. Hopefully it will be the last house on my list for a long while.

Trespassing Revisited

Back to the new house today to play in the yard. Chad stayed home this time. He was sick...plus we needed someone to bail us out in case we got arrested.

Here is how we usually see Jenna -- a blond-haired blur.





Julia in front of what will be her bedroom window.



Jenna and her new bedroom window.









"Julia, it's the cops! Don't take their picture... RUN!"

Expert Cheese-Opener

I just signed up for the new version of Blogger and went to make a new post and found that TEN comments were awaiting moderation. Some of these were from a year ago. I had no idea. So if you ever commented here and it never showed up, your comment was not offensive. I was just clueless.


Today I took Julia, Jenna and Julia's friend Addie to Barnes & Noble. (Shameless plug: Check out the Silpada Jewelry issue of Empowering Women magazine -- I've got three articles in there. My friend Sarah Paulk has stuff in there, too.) Anyway, an older man came up to me and said, "That younger one of yours sure is a handful." Really? I had no idea. I've been with Jenna for most of her waking moments since August 26, 2004, and it had never occurred to me that she might be a little difficult to manage. Thank you, observant stranger!


We close on our house this Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. and we are so excited we can hardly stand it. Julia wants us to take her out of school for it. Thank you for all the suggestions about the hardwood floors -- the info helps a lot. Here's another question. See those little tiny drawers on either side of the stove in our new kitchen? What am I supposed to put in those things? Here are my ideas so far:



1) toothpicks
2) Slim Jims
3) Pixy Stix



Here's a conversation I had last Wednesday night over dinner (hamburgers) with 5-year-old Kayla from our church.


Kayla: (handing me her slice of cheese) Can you open my cheese?
Deana: Of course I can. I just so happen to be an expert cheese-opener.
Kayla: (eyes very wide and serious) You ARE???


Oh, and don't worry. I had a Boca.

The family that trespasses together...

Saturday...nothing to do... Hey! I know! Let's go hang out in the backyard of our new house! So we did. The reason we were hanging out in the backyard is because we don't close until the 21st so it's not exactly ours yet. But it's vacant, so...what the hey?







"It's locked! Dang it!"















Someday, we'll actually be able to go inside instead of sitting on the back patio like transients.










Trespassers "R" Us!