the monday update

hope everyone's week is off to a good start. it's sunny here and supposed to get up to 70. what?!? this crazy texas weather.
we are having the outside of our house painted. so i sit here typing to the sound of a whole crew banging, hammering, moving ladders, etc. i just hate having workers in or around my house. i feel so exposed since i always leave all our blinds open. when i was washing dishes the other day, one of the guys outside working had no other place to look except at me at the sink! (of course, i could close all the blinds--but i don't want to do that.) so i'll escape up here at the computer or in my room (where our blinds are always closed. isn't that weird? i almost never open the blinds in our room.)
enough about having my house painted. (if you were hoping for more interesting reading, you can probably stop right here. :)
i haven't been in a blogging mood lately. i still need to post about our camp and i will do that this week.
i've been so cold i haven't done a lot the past week. i don't like to be out in the cold, so i've just done boring stuff around the house. and now that it's finally sunny and pretty, i can't leave. (painters, you know.)
friday mom and les spent the night so they'd be close for staci's memorial service. that was saturday afternoon--it was emotional and so sad. i just hate seeing people in pain and grief. it was such a gloomy, gray day. it seems like funerals are always on days like that. we were all in a kind of gloomy mood the rest of the day.
sunday, chris had a talk in garland, so we got to visit a congregation i had never been to before. we went to chili's afterwards and had a nice dinner with a table-full of new friends.

i meant to post these pictures a few weeks ago when we had the visit of our new c.o. and his wife. she is so sweet and vivacious (even though she is battling stage 4 cancer right now. that makes us so sad.) mckinlee got to work with her one day and just loved her!
here she is with a group of girls on sunday before the meeting.

a terrible picture of me(i thought my hair looked much better that that), but i wanted to be sure i got one of her with mckinlee and me.
this is a card that mckinlee made for her telling how much fun she had with her and how she'd miss her until our next visit with them.
last thursday was our girl's breakfast at breadwinners. here is me, kelly and zane.
here are the others that got to come that day. we always have a lot of fun and yummy food.
you've all seen pictures of miss sadie belle's shower on danielle's blog, but i had to include a few on mine too!
the garland we made (sad to say, because i had been so busy and just my procrastination problem in general, danielle was helping mckinlee and i make the banner to her own daughter's shower that morning. sad, right? it did turn out cute though.)
my first diaper cake. i thought it turned out really cute. (did you know you can find out how to do just about anything on youtube?)
look at all those gifts. danielle opened presents forever. she even had to get up half way through and take a bathroom break!
i thought this was a cute one of me and her (or is that she and i?)
she got the prettiest things i've ever seen. so many darling outfits (her mother-in-law said everyone got things for a mini-danielle!) and so many handmade things that were beautiful!
these were "heelarious!" (that's what they're called. baby's first high heels~isn't that hysterical?)
during the shower, the guys went fishing. here is les cleaning fish in mom's kitchen. i thought she was going to have a heart attack! (see her in the background ?) it was pretty funny but i doubt it will ever happen again! mckinlee and i had never seen fish being cleaned before, so we had to watch for a while. les said he'd never seen such a picture taking family. i think he thinks it's odd what we take pictures of! (just capturing everyday life, right? ali edwards would be proud!)

well...that's about it. better get to my laundry and dishes (while hiding from painters!)