Tag: Life w/the Colemans (Page 3 of 8)

I Got an Alien Soul!

August 22, 2011 / Jennifer Coleman / 3 Comments

That makes 4 cars in one summer.

Mike is now “an expert in buying cars.”

We are hoping that we are done car shopping for a while.

With five cars in the family, it was time for me

to get a smaller car with better gas mileage.

Before Joel got his car, we were filling up the van close to 3 times a week.

That was pretty rough even though we were taking turns.

It’s kinda sad saying, “Goodbye” to the mommy van. (Don’t we look sad?)

We can’t all go to church in one car now..

but with music practice and youth group we rarely do.

Next time we go camping, we’ll probably have to take 2 cars; not the first time.

The saddest part is that we’ll probably never take another long road trip with

all of us in one car.. everyone’s schedules make it near impossible.

The last time we was a couple of Christmases ago when

Josh was the only one with a job and in school.

If we’re able to work it out again one day, maybe we can rent a van.

I picked the “Alien” color so I could spot it easily in a parking lot. We think

it looks like a tree. Judi said it fit me better than the dark gray color.

I think the back end is cute. I really wanted a hatch back; this one’s seat

sits up a little higher than most cars.. I am going to miss being able to see over
everyone in the van. I am so brainwashed from having two blue KIA mini-vans.

I broke it in real good the first day. I was playing with the bluetooth..

showing off to the kids on the way to church and scratched it when

something fell over on in the the garage (I knew a speaker phone

would be more distracting than holding the phone up to your ear).

I think the scratch rubbed out… then I took Zoe with me

to pick up Judi from work and she got sick in it..

most (not all) of it landed on her blanket. 🙂

(Our beloved parking lot)

Joel said..

“Judi doesn’t need a car because we already have one in every color.”

She said, “I get a yellow one!”

I think it’ll be a miracle if we manage not to ever hit each other.

Lots of fun car shuffling going on.

I go for tattoos tomorrow. Say a prayer for me.

Love,

Jenny

James’ Birthday

August 16, 2011 / Jennifer Coleman / 0 Comments

James turned

A few of his good friends helped us celebrate after church.

We only make this awesome cake when we have friends to help us eat it..

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Cake

1 chocolate cake mix

Heat oven to directions on box.

Prepare 2 layer cake as directed.

Cool completely.

Cream Cheese Peanut Butter Frosting

12 ounces cream cheese, room temp.

1/4 cup butter, room temp.

1 teaspoon vanilla

6 cups powdered sugar

1/2 cup peanut butter

In a large mixing bowl, blend the cream cheese, butter

and vanilla with an electric mixer until smooth.

Add the powdered sugar and peanut butter and mix until smooth.

To frost the cake, place one layer on a serving plate.

Spread 1/4 of the frosting over the top. Place the second layer on top.

Spread the remaining frosting over top and sides of the cake.

Do you keep calling your kids “kids” when they become adults?

Should I be calling them our young adults?

James loves to serve

@ church

@ his job

and sometimes..

@ home, too.

We are so blessed!

Jenny

New Driver/New Car

August 13, 2011 / Jennifer Coleman / 1 Comment

Joel is the proud new owner of a Nissan Sentra.

Only thing is he doesn’t know how to drive it.

He passed his driver’s test Thursday on his first try.

Good thing because we only had to wait in line SEVEN HOURS for his turn.

Why doesn’t someone with a license know how drive their own car?

..because it’s a stick shift.

It’s been over 20 years since either Mike or I have driven a stick.

We hear it’s like riding a bike. I hope so, because I’ll be the one teaching

him how to drive it next week.. and I thought I was done giving driving lessons.

Joel’s excited about learning; especially because he’ll be

the only one of the kids who know how to drive one

and none of his siblings will be able to borrow/steal his car.

I have a feeling there’s going to be a lot of begging.

Three down .. one to go… for now.

Love,

Jenny

Two Amazing God Things in One Week (part 1)

July 22, 2011 / Jennifer Coleman / 1 Comment

I love when I have great God stories to share.

I have two this week. Yay, God!

The first is

Joel got a job!

All four kids have jobs now!

With a 30% unemployment rate for young people their age

and our lack of connections in our new town it is a real miracle.

God is so good!

Joel just recently started applying for jobs,

because I was just recently well enough to drive.

He’s applied at 6 places so far.

Josh applied at many more places this summer before

landing a job at Pizza Inn a few weeks ago.

He is very happy with his job by the way.

He’s been making good tips delivering pizzas.

And even found the right house to deliver one pizza

that had the wrong address and phone number.

One day last week, a local pizza place called and asked for Josh.

I handed him the phone then thought too late,

“Oh, they are probably calling to offer Josh a job.”

As Josh was on the phone saying,

“I’ve accepted a job at Pizza Inn.”

I thought, “Oh, no! I should have told them about Joel.

If there’s a next time, that’s what I’ll do.”

On Sunday, during lunch, we had a family discussion over

if or not Joel should apply there.. it’s 20 min. from our house

and we weren’t sure if the commute would be worth it.

On Monday, the same pizza place called again. ??

Has to be a God thing. Right?

This time I was wiser and asked if they were calling

Josh about a job. When they said yes, I told them about how

Josh had a job now, but that I had another, younger

son who just graduated from high school who was looking for a job.

We talked for 20 minutes about homeschooling

(he and his wife homeschooled a few years), where Joel

was going to go to college etc. before he was ready to talk to Joel??

Joel went in the next day for an interview and was offered the job.

His boss told him to tell me that he liked my resourcefulness. 🙂

Yay, God!

Joel had prayed that he would find a job fast, so he

could focus on school and not be as distracted by looking for a job.

God was so kind to answer his prayer.

Joel is getting some driving practice in now.

Driving me crazy.

He started improving a little yesterday.

He’s learning how to get to work and school and back on unfamiliar roads.

It’s a lot to learn; speed limits, which lane where, and when and which way to turn.

Once I am comfortable that he’s comfortable, he’ll get his license.

We are waiting to see if Judi is able to stay

on staff as a lifeguard during the fall before we

decide if or not we need another car.

I am not sure the three of us can share my van

if Judi has a job. We’ll see. We have 5 cars in the

drive way now. It would be nice if we could have James’

one car towed before we got a 6th car.

Love,

Jenny

Christmas Ornaments in July

July 21, 2011 / Jennifer Coleman / 0 Comments

For the last 12 years I’ve been buying the kids

each an ornament at the after Christmas sales.

For a while they enjoyed receiving them and hanging

their individual ornaments on the tree, but the last couple of years

they’ve decided that that decorating trees was a waste of time

and can’t understand why I would even buy them any. :-/

So last December, I decided that it was time to put away their ornaments

and collect some ornaments for myself and have a more grown up tree.

I got 20 of these ornaments at Trees and Trends 80% off on New Years weekend.

I like the colors because it goes with the soft colors in my home.

I knew I wanted to make some ornaments that were centered around Jesus;

nativities and/or had the names of Jesus on them, so I started looking ideas on how to

make them and started studying my collection of lists of His names.

I decided to make quilted ones because I love to hand sew

and thought they would last a long time (maybe survive the pets).

At first, I thought I would embroider His names on them,

but quickly decided that it would be faster/easier

to print them on the computer.

I designed 5 different styles of ornaments using Photo Shop on my computer.

I am making 5 of each ornament shape with different names

so that I will have 25 in all and around 150 of Jesus’ names.

The kid’s first reaction was, “They are so big.” They are about the size of my hand.

I wanted the print to be easy to read standing a few feet from the tree.

And I’d found so many names that I loved, so they had to be big enough to hold them all.

I’ve completed the first 5. I pieced the first 10 together before

our trip to Alaska so I could work on them on the planes.

It’s taking a lot of fiddling to decide on how to embellish them.

I am not sure I am in love with how they turned out. It will be strange

to see them on the tree this coming December (I hope I get them all done).

I am working on embellishing the second set of 5 now.

They are more centered around Jesus as the Lamb of God and have a little lamb

at the bottom instead of a cross that I am trying to decide how to embellish.

Maybe they won’t survive the pets. 🙂

Maybe I should be looking into getting some cat/dog repellant.

Love,

Jenny

James’ Guide to Car Ownership (x2)

July 11, 2011 / Jennifer Coleman / 1 Comment

Day 1: Spend 8 hrs. shopping around town with Dad for a used car.

Buy great car with all the extras and 170,000 miles.

Arrive home with new car; watch engine light come on.

Week 1: Spend close to $1,000 on repairs and new tires.

Week 2: Have fancy car stereo put in.

Week 3: Total new car on the way to church. 🙁

Thank God that no one was hurt.

Wait for the police and tow truck; fill out reports; deal with insurance.

Get an awesome raise at work for being such a wonderful employee.

Week 4: Shop with Dad for another used car.

Find a newer car with fewer miles and fewer gadgets.

Hope that the title for your totaled car comes in soon so you can sell it to the junk yard.

Tell your mom that if she blogs about this,

that she better mention that she totaled her mom’s car when she was his age.

Sorry, Mom.

Memorial Day Weekend

May 31, 2011 / Jennifer Coleman / 0 Comments

We had a really nice weekend. Spent it working on the yard and patio.

I am actually thankful now for the little bit of damage the tornado did to our house. We got to shop for new patio furniture. Bought some chairs and a table with a fire pit from Amazon. I’ll post pictures when they get here.

Mike and the boys put down some new mulch and planted some impatiens.

We didn’t realize it until much later, but we think the storm killed our tree. We found damage low on the trunk.. we think that it must have been blown to the ground then popped back up.

We started from scratch looking for the best tree for our yard. Based on the direction of the wind and the location of our tree and our house we decided that we didn’t want too big of a tree. 🙂

If you want to buy plants in Huntsville, we discovered that Bennett Nurseries is the place to go. They have free BBQ, drinks, live music and a miniature train. It’s like going to a picnic.

A very nice man there spent a lot of time with us showing us and educating us on different trees. We learned that the fact that if you dig a whole in our yard it will fill up with water might not have been too great for our tree either. He suggested several trees that would do well there and took the time to show us grown ones in the nursery.

We got a Shantung Maple. Isn’t it pretty? It came with the heart already carved in the bark.

I’ll write in “Mike n’ Jenny” in when it gets big enough. 🙂

We added a special soil mix into the clay to help with the water problem.

If it doesn’t make it, we are going to try a River Birch next.

Hot puppy. It’s in the 90’s now. In Texas, where Judi’s been, it’s been 111. Crazy.

We took this picture before Judi left as a last ditch effort to get a family photo.
Sun’s in our eyes.. can you tell? 🙂
We normally take family photos in October.
It turned too cold too quick and we never got a good one.

I wanted to thank everyone for their prayers.
They plus the nice distractions God and Mike arranged for this weekend
are definitely helping. I am doing very well. Slept 8 hrs. last night.
Just the fact that I had to pack and clean and that my mom is coming would have
normally made me crazy, but I have a mightier God-peace about the surgery, tomorrow.

I am so thankful for my life and all God has blessed me with and
so glad that He has promised to be with us in the storms,
and that He works everything together for our good.

I have a couple of extra prayer requests:
My mom and Judi are on their way. Made it to AR … and discovered that something is wrong with their brakes. Pray they’ll have wisdom on where to take it and favor to get it fixed quickly, and enjoy the unexpected delay.

When I went to my last Thursday to my first pre-op appointment, we were told that the cat-scan showed two spots on my liver. They don’t think it’s related to the breast cancer, but they were too small to tell anything and want to check it again in 6 months. It was a little hard to take in, but Mike and I both are feeling from God that it’s nothing to worry about.. never hurts to take it to Him in prayer.

My confessions for today:
By your grace I am able to glory in times of trouble, knowing that they develop perseverance,  and character and a joyful, confident hope that does not disappoint because of the love that You have poured out in my heart through Your Holy Spirit. Romans 5:3-5

As I get to know Christ, who called me to and by Your glory and goodness, Your divine power gives me everything I need for life, making a glorious display of Your virtue in me. 2 Peter 1:3

Love,

Jenny

Back at Home and to Birmingham

May 4, 2011 / Jennifer Coleman / 0 Comments

We packed up camp fast as we could Sunday morning. A storm was blowing in and we didn’t want to take home wet tents. Arrived home safe and took a nap.

After lunch, we took Holden home and went shopping again. Lucked out and found an ice truck at Publix shortly after it pulled up. Ice, propane, batteries and generators were still going fast.

3% of Huntsville now had power. We saw a couple of lights 3-5 miles from our house that gave us some hope, and Publix now had generators for running their freezers.

Mike and I went to bed shortly after dark. Joel fell asleep on the couch in the living room with the dogs and they were all three awakened around midnight by a looter on our back porch. The dogs earned their keep by barking up a storm and Joel by screaming.. the looter ran away and jumped in his get-away car. So glad we were there that night and I am hoping that we can find a solar motion sensor light for our back porch today.

I woke up two hours later being bit by a big tick. Boy, can they bite. I ran to Judi’s room because she had a candle lit. She couldn’t sleep after the looter incident. She tried pull off the tick with tweezers.. he was stuck on tight.. then to burn the tick with her candle lighter – I suggested we find some matches and get Mike to help. He burned it with a lit match (not much better) and was finally able to get him off. I should really look up symptoms for lyme disease.

Next morning I was about to enter an ice cold shower when I had an idea.. we could spend the night in Birmingham that night, take a hot shower, and not wake up as early for my appointments the next morning. Didn’t take much to convince Mike; he’d already been thinking about it. We went to a near by store and used their internet to find and book a hotel, bought the kids a few groceries then ran off to civilization. Almost felt like a date instead of a doctor’s visit.

We had two hot showers, ate at Jim and Nick’s (one of our favorite bbq places) and slept in maybe the nicest hotel we’ve ever stayed at. Appointments went well. I didn’t have an allergic reaction to the CAT scan die (yay!) but did have a reaction to the rubbing alcohol the lab prepped me with. It was probably a good thing.. it was my first time to have an immediate reaction.. and now I can just tell them I had a reaction and request they use something else in the future.

It’s nice to be home again and now that the power is back on, I can get some laundry done. We have a lot to do before Judi goes to TX on Saturday, and even more to do before Mike and I leave for Alaska.

Love,

Camping at Bear Creek Lake

May 4, 2011 / Jennifer Coleman / 0 Comments

Next morning Mike woke up and decided it’d be OK to go. The camp site actually sounded
some what better than home in that they would not be running out of running water
anytime soon and had electricity and coveted hot showers.

We called and were finally able to get through to a different campground, Bear Creek Lake.
They were Ok and were willing to hold a camp site open for us until 2 PM.
We packed fast as we could picked up two extra kids and were on our way.
How I wished I had my camping list from my computer that I print out when ever we go.
I forgot stuff to wash dishes.. but other than that we did pretty well.

We made it exactly at 2 pm and got a really nice camping site on the lake.
Enjoyed the nice cool weather, scenery, electricity and hot showers. Next day we went
to town for breakfast, gas, internet, cell service and TV (Mc Donnald’s gained new
respect in my eyes). We got to see the first images of the storm outside our neighborhood.
The kids looked up sensational videos on You Tube and we called family to update them on our status.

We were able to buy supplies for smores in town and dish soap and band aids.
We were amazed to see the number of propane tanks they had 1.5 hours from our house.
No D or C batteries anywhere.

Kids had a great time at the camp swimming, playing hands and foot, hiking,

and playing games on their computers. I think they all had a good time despite

the little bit of fighting between the boys and girls.

View from our site.

First day the lake was a little flooded.

Sun set.

We discovered that the canoe rental place and spelunking down the road was hit hard by a tornado.

We saw half a house with it’s roof over in a tree on our drive over.

Girls got the yellow tent. Mike and I slept on our new cots in the big tent with the boys.

Mike and I spent a lot of time just sitting and enjoying the breeze.

Zoë’s first time camping.

Sally’s tired out from a hike.

Boys playing Medal of Honor Allied Assault.. Josh is winning.. he had the only mouse.

Mike

The girls got a little sun

and found a salamander. James made sure he escaped safely.

Boys hunted down fire wood and started the fire for us.

Ready for hot dogs and smores?

April 28th Day After the Storm

May 4, 2011 / Jennifer Coleman / 0 Comments

Woke at day light happy to see it again. No storms in the forecast. Our first priority was to get to the store and hopefully find some propane and groceries. Thursday is our regular grocery day so we were low. Josh was kind and drove me and helped me out a lot carrying stuff and thinking through what we should buy.

We stopped by Lowes first. We were there at 6:30 and they were open. They had generators running their cash register and lights. Everyone was buying water.. I asked if the water was safe and they said yes but didn’t know how long it would be until they ran dry. We bought water and propane. D and C batteries were gone and by the time we checked out we heard that the propane was gone too. We actually bought too much. I didn’t know how long one of those little tanks lasted.. just knew the one we had was empty. Need some propane?

Next we went to Star a grocery store next door to Lowe’s. They had generators running the cash registers and a few lights. A bunch of perishables had already been thrown out. They were taking cash and checks only and I didn’t have my check book with us. We had gotten cash back at Lowe’s (didn’t realize we weren’t supposed to) so I had $60. We tried to be wise with our money and got the bare necessities. Our bill came out to $59.49.

Next we went to check out Publix (another grocery store down the street). They had generators for the lights in the front of the store and cash registers.. they were taking ATM cards. There were no lights in the back of the store.. everyone was shopping by flash light. All the baskets were taken so Josh and I took what we could carry and when we got in line a nice lady rearranged her basket so we could share with her. Lines were long.. but we got through pretty quickly 20-30 min.

We got home, unloaded our groceries and took a nap. All the excitement wears you out. That after noon we spent a couple of hours helping our elderly neighbors clean up the muck the flooded lake had left in their yard. Josh and Joel pulled a trash can out of the lake. I am not sure who got the builder’s port-a-potty out.

They were thankful for our help and offered to recharge our cell phone with their generator and share their freezer. We were thankful for their generator and for the cool weather. Josh and Joel got a little sunburned. Josh and I got to take showers in tepid water.. but by the time Joel got one the water was ice cold.

That night Mike flew home from DC. The air port was also with out power and they had to wheel over some stairs for them to climb down from the plane. In side the air port was dark and of course there was no air.. felt eery. We were glad Mike got home safe and showed him around.

Once he sat down we had a family discussion on if or not we should go camping. We had planed to go camping at Tim Ford’s lake from Friday through Sunday for Joel’s birthday, but were unable to get them on the phone and didn’t know what kind of damage they might have. I was a little uneasy about leaving the house in the dark and without a working alarm but the dawn to dusk curfew helped. We went to bed that night thinking we’d just stay home.

To be continued…