How to live a week in 3 days.

This past weekend has been one of the most difficult yet wonderful weekends we have had in awhile. It all started months ago when I started sorting for a garage sale. My parents were too and we put most of it together starting Thursday at the garage sale. We did very well. I had sorted out over 20 storage containers full of stuff. It is now down to less than 4. Since we could not get all of it done for this one, we are planning another one in a month or two. That should give us plenty of time to sort some more, which is good because I got home and remembered 2 that I did not take in. Before you start thinking that we made huge gobs of money. I priced everything cheap, so that it would sell. Mainly we have the enjoyment of less clutter.

We packed up the garage sale Saturday afternoon and headed out for a well deserved ice cream cone. Both Will and I have been watching what we eat, but after all of that work, we splurged. In Tomah there is a cheese house that has hand packed ice cream in waffle cones. We all got the regular 2 scoop cones, but Jacob had to have 3 scoops. The cone was almost as big as his head. The sad thing is that he had almost finished it before everyone else did. The cones were so huge that Will had to finish over half of mine. I am not a big icecream fan, so next time I will get a single scoop or regular cone while the rest eat those big honkers.

Saturday night was our fireworks here in town. With Warrens being so small you would think that our fireworks display would be little too, but not here in our town. What a great fire department we have! They work all of Cranfest selling brats, steaks and beer in their station which serves as the beer tent for the festival. The proceeds go towards the fireworks. With contributions from local business people and a large one from Cranfest, they put on a huge wonderful display. It's great and it's wonderful to get home 10 minutes after it's done.

Sunday morning one of our great worship team singers was out of town, so I filled it for her. It was fun. I love singing with my cousins. I'm sure it was not as easy for them, because they are such a great team, but it was nice filling in and praising God at the same time. I don't want to do it full time, because I have too many irons in the fire, but I am more than willing to fill in and love it when I get to. To me, that's better than ice cream cones!

I am trying to find music to sing in Florida. I've been singing so long that my tapes have worn out and trying to find a new and meaningful "story" song these days is not easy. Especially with a range like mine. I'm kind of a strange vocal sort. I have a low voice range in my normal voice. The older I get the lower it tends to be. So many of the songs these days while effective in their own ways, do not tell a story for a "soloist". You need a different type of lyric for that and they are few and far between. I'm working on it though.

Jake starts summer school to finish up a few things on his Nova Net studies before next year. Then on Wednesday they both leave for Lifest. They are both excited. Last year they went to the music festival and came back with one of the speakers being their favorite part. I'm hoping for some life changing insight in the kids that are going. It would have been great if more of them had gone, but everyone has vacations and jobs to deal with.

The kids come home on Sunday from the festival in time for potluck at church and then it's home for showers and washing the remaining clothes. They will be exhausted, but I hope to keep them awake until it's time to leave to pick Will up from work that afternoon. We pick him up and head out to Florida and I'm hoping that they will be tired enough to sleep a good bit of the way that first evening and night. That way they will be pretty much caught up by the time we get to Grammy and Grampy's house. Grumpy children are not in the plans!

In the meantime, we are packing for the festival and packing for Florida at the same time. I have lists of my lists to keep track of everything. I'm trying to get the house sorted out "post garage sale" and make sure that everything is set here for our friend Vicki to house/animal sit for us while we are gone. I plan on "cleaning my way out of the house on Sunday". I like to come home to a clean house, so I try to get it done on the last day as a final step.

We are really, really looking forward to seeing family and friends in Tally. I still have an Aunt down there that is one of my favorite people and I have not seen her in forever. I have loads of friends to see that I have "found" on facebook and through other means. Many of them I had been close to for so long before moving. It has been like finding a missing part of "me" by finding them. I know that sounds strange but, friends and family are very important to me and I find that the older I get, the more they mean to me.

Well, dishes are going in the dishwasher. I'd better get the rest of them done and my second load of laundry needs to be folded. Have a great day.
dea