The Indoctrination Starts Early!

Today is opening day for Cardinals baseball. In St Louis, Cardinals baseball is practically a religion. It doesn’t seem to matter where you go to school, “Cardinal Days” are very common. On Cardinal Days, the students are encouraged to dress in their Cardinal gear–or to at least wear red. With it being opening day, my older kids all participated in Cardinal Day at their school. Evangeline is the only one with a Cardinal shirt that still fits her, so the boys had to settle with red. Staying in the spirit of the day, I got out Charis’s Cardinal t-shirt for her to wear to pre-school today. (Said t-shirt was purchased for less than $1 at a thrift store last year, BTW.) When I arrived there to pick her up this afternoon, she was also donning the lovely “red bird” hat that they made in craft time today. Not only was she wearing the proper attire, she was chanting, “Cardinals, Cardinals, Cardinals” all the way home.

I grew up watching baseball with my brothers, so I was something of a fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates. But we never were taught to love the Pirates at school. When in St Louis, there is love for God, love for your family, and love for the Cardinals. During baseball season, the order of these loves sometimes gets a bit skewed.

Mark and I are still not big fans, but it is sort of hard not to get caught up in the frenzy of it all. So, in honor of the Cardinals, please enjoy the photo of the team’s newest fans. She is quite jealous that her siblings are getting to go to a game on Thursday with their school. She wants to know when she will get to go.

Happy Easter, Snow, and Floods

Here are a couple pictures from the Horne family for Easter. The photo of the girls is cute, but you do see what happens when young girls demand curlers the night before Easter. I much prefer their regular hair styles. The dresses they are wearing are really remarkable. Aunt Tricia sent them for birthdays when Evangeline was 6 and Charis was 2. They wore them then, and because they have really big hems they can still wear them now. I am not thrilled with the photo of the whole family, but let’s face it, getting a good picture of 6 people, 4 of whom are under 12, between the worship service and Sunday school is not an easy task. So we take what we can get.

Snow

We sat in worship today while a quiet snow fall of giant soft flakes fell throughout the service. Then as we enjoyed Easter dinner and fellowship with friends, we saw more of the same. It was so odd to have snow and to run the heat on Easter Sunday.

Floods

As most everyone knows by now, some of the rivers around St Louis flooded this week. We went to the home of some church friends who live west of where the flood waters were high enough to close down I44. While the waters have receded since the rivers crested, we passed several places along the road to our friends’ home where the water came up to the roofs of buildings, covered soccer fields, and only allowed the tops of the trees to show.

You Can Always Blog About It

This is the scene in our back yard. The ground is completely saturated. And, today, while I was sitting at my desk in the unfinished basement (lovingly referred to as “the dungeon”), I felt some dampness on my feet. I looked around, and I saw something shiny in the seams of our basement’s concrete floor. I got some towels, and started “plugging the dam.” Then I saw little puddles beginning to form around the vein-like cracks in our concrete basement floor. At this point, I decided to move as much stuff to higher ground as I could and pray that the rain would stop soon and that nothing important will be damaged. Oh, and I decided to blog about it. After all, when things get tough, the tough start blogging!

Tidying Up

Take a peek at my sidebar. I’ve tidied things up a bit. I’ve updated the books I am reading, and I’ve added a very short list of what I have read this year. Hopefully, that list will grow as the year marches on.

Anybody reading something great that you want to tell me about? I always enjoy trying something new.

We Won!

A couple weeks ago, I got a call from a rep at a marketing company in New York who said, “Is this Jennifer Horne?”

I said, “Yes.”

He said, “You may be the potential winner of a Disney Cruise from the ABC show America’s Funniest Videos.  Did you enter the on-line contest?”

“Yes,” I said, thinking that I had just entered over the weekend and finding this call a bit surreal.

The marketing rep went on to explain that I was the potential winner until I could complete some paperwork to prove that I am who I say I am, and when that was complete, he could call me and tell me officially that I was the winner.

I was excited about winning a Disney Cruise, but, of course, the prize is a trip for 4.  We have 6.  Later the marketing rep called and said Disney would do their best to give me the best deal to add two more to the trip.  Yesterday, I got a call from the cruise line that sealed the deal for us that only 4 of us would be able to go on the trip.  I should be happy, but I am a bit sad.  I guess I have learned I shouldn’t enter contests for trips for 4.

We didn’t tell the kids about the prize until it was announced on tv tonight.  They were excited, but as we have decided that I will take the 3 older kids on the trip and Mark and Charis will “do something else fun,” there were some tears amidst the excitement.

What’s strange about this prize is the timing.  We would never consider making a trip like this ourselves.  We really never go on real vacations of any sort because of income limitations.  But if we were in a more stable position financially, we might have seriously considered paying for the two other passengers.  As it is, we aren’t really sure it will work for any of us to go.  But it was sort of fun to see my name on national TV along with a photo of the family.  We also received some well wishes from people we hadn’t told about winning.

I’ll keep you posted about our plans as summer approaches and we see how life unfolds for us.

A Day at Home

The kids have been home from school a lot lately with MLK Jr Day, Presidents’ Day, snow days, etc. Today, the three older ones were home for a teacher in-service. On so many of their other days off, I have just kept on with work projects I had to finish. Today, I acted like it was Saturday. Evangeline had a friend over to play, I cleaned a little, did a little laundry, did a little web surfing, fed kids, and forgot about most of the work things I had to do.

We ended the afternoon with the three older ones playing Candy Land with Charis, and with three of the four helping with making homemade pizza and Evangeline helping me to make homemade bread to take to shepherding group on Sunday. Here are a couple photos to help us remember the day:

The pizzamakers

The pizza mmmmmmmmm . . . . . .