January 20 – “843”

In the midst of the cold weather we managed to get a little bit of work done yesterday.  Well, OK.  So the work entailed getting online and ordering some stuff.  But it counted.  Just ask Chris.

Oh, we did do the indoor portion of our workout.  That means the theraband-on-the-door routine and some dipsy doodles down the hall.  It was quite the sight to behold.  Chris was going after it at one end of the house, and I was flopping up and down the hall at the other.  At least that was better than when we were chasing each other – walking sideways with therabands holding our legs together at the ankles. 

The first order we made online was for some outdoor chairs for our newly vacated patio.  That was a Home Depot find Chris made.  Everything in the particular style she liked was half price.  And to make it even better, they will deliver it to our house.  That will be convenient.  The first two will arrived next week, with the other two coming the following week.  Not sure why, but delivery was free, so we didn’t argue.

The second order was a little more complicated.  In fact it has been two years in the making.  Chris has been wading through the thousand plus digital photos we took on our once-in-a-lifetime trip to Disneyworld with Josh and Christi.  It’s when Mickey Mouse revealed to us all that Christi was pregnant with AnnaGrace.  Pretty special occasion.  Chris has planned all along to immortalize it in scrapbook form, but first she had to choose which pictures she wanted to include.  That’s what took so long.  It also gave us time to save up enough extra pocket change to cover the cost.  The crowning blow came when CVS Online announced a sale on developing that was too good to resist.  All we had to do was upload the pictures to their website and they would have them ready at our nearest CVS pharmacy within an hour.  Well, “within an hour” would be for relatively normal orders, I suppose.  I knew it might end up taking a bit longer than that when it took literally all morning to upload them from our computer.  They finally finished around 2 p.m. and the order went in.  The computer and the subsequent email assured us they would be ready by around 3. 

I finally called around 5 to see where they were.  Nope.  Not ready.  In fact they were just on number 260 something out of our grand total of 843.  But she assured me that it would take very long to finish now that they were rolling.  Less than an hour.  Right.  I called again about 6:30.  Nope.  Not ready.  On number 650.  Seems they had to change out a tape of some kind on the printer.  Wore it out.  She assured me that she would call as soon as the last one came out.  Finally, right at 8:00, the call came.  I answered and identified myself and the first sound I heard from the other end was … “Finally.”  I think she was happy to have us out of her hair. 

We hurried over to pick them up so Chris could get a quick look at them before bed.  But “quick look” would not be a very accurate description of what happened next.  She spent the next hour or two thumbing through them, putting them in order based on their position in her computer lineup.  I finally gave up and left her to it.  From the looks of things this morning, I would say she’s more than half way finished.  I think I know how her spare time will be going for the next few days …

Psalms 134:1-2 says, “Praise the Lord, all you servants of the Lord who minister by night in the house of the Lord.  Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the Lord.”

Father, thank you for memories and pictures that jog them.  Amen.