Tender Mercies

Guess what! Our missionary is home and no longer a missionary! I have to share his home coming, because he was blessed all the way home. In turn we were too.

Originally he was scheduled to have a 5 hour layover in Denver. We had tried to have that changed, but in so doing we would have had to drive 5 hours to pick him up instead of 5 minutes. I know. When he arrived in Denver another traveler saw him and asked him where he was headed. He told the gentleman and mentioned his layover. The gentleman suggested that he see if he could catch the earlier flight. When Flights aren't full they will allow it at times. So just for fun our young man headed over and asked. They opened the door and let him on.

When he arrived to our small po-dunk of an airport he asked for directions to a public phone. They didn't have one and apparently nobody had one on them for him to borrow. As he was asking around another mother who had just dropped off her son noticed his name tag and asked if by chance he was related to my hubby.

Mean while at the house we were trying to clean things up some and get ready for his return. Things were a little hectic at the moment, we had had some friends stop by, and suddenly I was getting one phone call after another. When things looked like they were slowing down the door bell rang. It kept ringing. My husband was in the living room and I couldn't figure out why he wasn't getting it, so I ran in to find my husband helping our youngest with something. I went to the door and saw a glimpse of black, looked out to see the car and didn't recognize it, but the driver was one of my husbands colleagues, she was grinning from ear to ear. I looked back to see who was at the door and it was OUR MISSIONARY!!!! home 4 1/2 hours early!!!!(and I got to be the lucky one to see him first!)

The plan had been to go with him the following day to get him released. We were able to make arrangements to do it that very night, instead of driving 2 hours to do it, we were able to go 45 min. After his release we went to dinner and then headed home. when we were about 18 miles form home I thought I saw a plane land half an hour before scheduled. When we got in town we decided to stop by the air port and see if his luggage had arrived. It had not only arrived but had been unloaded and was ready for him.

So the tender mercies were that he arrived home early, was released, had dinner, received his luggage, and was home to shower all before his plane had been scheduled to land. We were able to put in a lot of love'n in that four and a half hours we couldn't have done otherwise. Just saying, it was sweet to have him come home!

Darndest Things

My kids crack me up! Last night while picking big brother up from scouts my little lady is telling me how nobody spells her nick name right. Then she goes on spelling all of the miss spelled ways in which she has seen so far. Not wanting to be left out of the conversation my little man interrupts:

"Yeah I know! None of my friends can spell my name right either!" He spats out random letters.

I turn to him a little surprised and ask "You learned to spell your name!?"

He replied quite matter of factually, "Well yeah mom, it starts with "S" and then has a lot of letters after that."

Those kids tickle my funny bone!

BIG Things in an itty bitty Package

As I admitted we have had little varmint visitors a lot lately. Due to colder weather and living close to a field I am sure. That and our mouser cat is no longer with us. And due to alergies on my behalf, sadly we will not be replacing him any time soon. Those 14 traps I purchased last week, it turns out were an investment worth making! Up to date we have caught 10 unwelcome little guest.

That is why, this morning when I went to our computer room and noticed a fowl odor I became a little unhinged. When I first detected the smell, it was just around the computer table. As I worked on a small project for church and another for my daughter I noticed the smell getting stronger and stronger.

For any of you born in the 80's, or who have gone to beauty school, I can best describe the smell as "perm solution" after you have applied the alkaline, and then acid...or conditioner. The odor was beginning to give me a head ache.

My little man announced he had to go potty, so while he ran up to do his duty(with a heart full of song) I decided to find where the smell was coming from. We have some safty traps in the basement so the baby won't find poison, nor any of the other children for that matter.

When I realized I could not locate the safty traps, and the smell had become...lets just say... overwhelming, I decided it was time to called my hubby and asked him if he knew where our son had placed the traps. As I searched, I explained the horrid smell. After listening he suggested that if the smell was like I was describing I probably should not stick around, but it wasn't a dead mouse, it would smell like a rotting corps...(okay?)

By now as you can imagine I was quite perplexed. I ran up stairs to check on my little man. He was holding his diaper afraid to move. He had not made it to the bathroom. Bummer. When I went to help him clean up I was hit by a wall of that smell from down stairs.

(Now for any of you with weak stomachs, now is the time to discontinue reading, exit this screen now...you have been fairly warned.)

The boys diaper was the cause of all my discomfort! for the last few minutes I have been rattling my brain as to what I have fed that boy that could smell so horribly wrong. To be honest with you, I do not know. Whatever it was I hope not to repeat it!

Mostly I am just relieved it wasnt a dead mouse.