Fall is Here!!!

It's been some time since I last updated this blog, life just has a way of flying past so I am trying to slow down and enjoy each day that God has given me. It's 59 degrees outside and I am enjoying the sunshine and cooler weather today.

I am between surveys right now so I am getting caught up on my reading. Yesterday I finished three books. :-) I'm currently re-reading Tom Clancy's The Cardinal of the Kremlin. I do start a new survey sponsored by Dartmouth about the media influence on teenagers soon, that sounds like it should be fairly interesting.

Chris and I are planning a lovely Labor day picnic here in our front yard. I plan to make Iowa sweet corn for the last time this year, we'll grill some steaks and have his mother's baked beans recipe and twice baked potatoes and stuffed mushrooms from Hy -Vee-yum!

We are down one cat since I last updated this blog. We found a home for Gizmo on a farm in the country and dropped her off never to be seen again. The people we left her with say that she took off and they haven't seen her since. I feel bad that she is missing, but ever since she got fixed she has not been the same cat. I have suspicions that she was under the anesthesia a tad too long because she was a very energetic fun loving kitten but then she turned into a brainless fat lump that didn't like to do much of anything but gobble down her food and puke it back up again. The final straw for me was when she puked on edge of the bed and it went all the way down to the floor. We found her a new home shortly after.

Today I am baking a Spicy Apple Cake for our young adult Sunday school tomorrow. I got the recipe out of my Apple Lovers Cook Book that I got at the Iowa Arboretum. It's a really cool place. If you've never gone there you really should-that is if you're in Iowa of course.

I'm in the mood for Fall, I have already started putting out my Autumn decorations. I went to Hobby Lobby the other day and they had all of their seasonal items on sale. It was hard not to go crazy but I get my thriftiness from my mother who always asked us "Now, do you really need that?" whenever we started whining about stuff we wanted to get. Even if we used our allowance she would always ask us that question. it was annoying when I was a kid but now that I'm an adult I realize the value of it. Of course, no one beats Karen Conkle when it comes to being cheap, but I'm still in training :-)

I just heard from my baby sister who is in language study in the country of Guinea. She writes that their language teacher is going to teach them how to use the squatty potty, now being an MK, I would think that she doesn't need lessons in this, but perhaps she has forgotten the lessons of her childhood. It reminded me of something I heard on WHO Radio on Thursday, the host of the show was talking about Drew Barrymore and some other Hollywood stars who recently spent a week or so in a remote village in Chili with no electricity or running water. Ms. Barrymore spoke about taking a dump out in the woods and how thrilling it was. Now me, I wondered, how did the villagers take having her poop out in the woods in the middle of nowhere where anyone could walk into it instead of using the facilities that I'm sure the villagers had set up. I mean I've been to remote villages in West Africa where they had a specific place set up for bathroom facilities, it was a squatty potty but it was still a potty, you didn't just go anywhere you felt like!

One of my other sisters-I have three altogether-Becky, is a missionary in Mali, West Africa. She is 7 1/2 months pregnant is hosting a sleep over for Ella, her oldest while her youngest, Lydia has bronchitis. She claims her middle child, Aiden, is just like me as he constantly walks into walls and things, she says this because on Wednesday I managed to trip over the floor fan in our living room and take a flying leap. I now have carpet burn on both knees, elbows, and wrists.

My other sister, Becky's twin, Rachel, is currently suffering for the Lord in Paris with her family visiting her in-laws who are missionaries to France.

My youngest sibling and only brother, Ben, is currently getting ready to enter med school in the Caribean. Apparently you have to be 100% healthy to enter med school, he just had to get tested for HIV and is now getting tested for TB. My mother is concerned because he is the only one of us without a spouse, she found what she thought was the perfect wife for him once but he would have nothing to do with the poor girl!!! Ben has inherited the full strength of Conkle stubbornness. If he doesn't want to do something there is no way you can make him. I still remember when he was a little boy and Mom made something he didn't want to eat he would sit at the table all day with the food in front of him and still not eat it, the rules being if you didn't eat it the first time around you had to eat it for the next meal. I also remember a time when he smacked Abby for something-she was great at provoking him until he snapped and then running crying to Mom and Dad that Benny had hit her, what a brat! So Dad would haul Benny off to get a spanking and I'd hear him yelling, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry"-meaning he was sorry he was getting spanked, not that he was sorry for hitting Abby. Of course Abs would also get a spanking for bugging him.

Christmas and New Years

Christmas was a blast with my parents visiting us and the cats taking turns playing Christmas Ornaments in the tree. I took a lot of fun photos. Even though my parents still haven't gotten their luggage we had a great time together. I had cooked a LOT of food but we didn't eat nearly as much as I had planned so I have a TON of leftovers! We're going to a New Years Eve party so I'll have to bring the white chocolate pepermint pie I made that no one ate and the eggnog, otherwise Chris and I'll be eating all that sugar by ourselves. I'm a big believer in sharing the calories:-) Chris was sucking up to my mother big time, as always! They have a mutual admiration fest that just makes me SICK!!!! He even wrote them a poem, the Night Before Conkles Came!!! Spare me!

Dad was on the phone with United,the entire visit trying to track down their luggage which got stuck in Chicago, it made it to Cedar Rapids on Saturday and was supposed to be flown to Des Moines that afternoon, but disapeared into thin air again. The 800 number they were given was for India which never once got anything right regarding the location of their luggage. The website they were given to track their luggage didn't show anything either. We sent them on their way Sunday afternoon and they arived at Brian and Abby's that night. I had made a No Whining sign for Brian which he immediately put up so he can point to it whenever my sister starts to whine. I made Abby a Love, Honor, and Negotiate sign because she loves to get her own way. We had a wonderful Christmas but I'm glad it's over. Now it's time to undecorate and get the house back to normal again. Since I have so much work to do I'd better go do it.
Ta ta for now,
Ruthie

Who We Are

Chris and I have been married for almost 4 years. Our family consists of three cats, Princess, Gizmo, and Bogey. Chris told me when we first got married that he would never agree to us having a cat since he had so many bad cat experiences as a child ... Princess was a Valentines Day present our second year of marriage. Gizmo came along the next year and Bogey, our most recent addition, is another little stray kitten that has found a home with us. He has been with us for almost a month, his sisters are still getting used to his presence. Of course it doesn't help that he loves to jump and wrestle them.

Our favorite movie is "You've Got Mail" because that's how we met. My aunt was visiting his home church in Boone, Iowa in June of 2003 and gave him my e-mail address, he eventually wrote me a letter, I wrote back, we started corresponding and he came to Toccoa, Georgia, where I was living, to visit for Thanksgiving. I flew up to Iowa for Christmas to meet his family. As a measure of his devotion, Chris had never flown before he got on the plane to come meet me! We debated who was going to move where but since my family is scatter all over the globe, it was decided the best option was for me to move to Iowa (in the middle of a blizzard in JANUARY!) where his family is. He proposed in March of 2004 and we got married October 30th of that year in our small country church.

We are total opposites in many ways because I grew up as a missionary kid in Burkina Faso, West Africa, I was a world traveler at the age of two. He went as far as Minnesota to college, and toured a few states by bus with the college choir. His whole family for generations is all in this town. My whole family is scattered hither and yon. The closest relatives I have are my grandparents in ShellRock, Iowa, but even they haven't lived their entire lives there!

Chris is obsessive compulsive about just about everything, I'm laid back about just about everything-except when my mother or mother in law is coming, then I go crazy cleaning the house while he laughs at me. I had to teach him that it is NOT the end of the world if something nice gets dirty. You have to actually wear nice clothes sometimes and you can't enjoy wearing them if you're terrified to get anything on them the whole time. I am accident prone, I can acquire a splinter in my foot, sitting at the computer desk-the floor isn't sanded the best. He is extremely cautious and careful where I rush in where angels fear to tread. I let most things just roll off of me where he gets worried and uptight about if someone is getting offended or not. My family is always yelling, shouting, arguing, etc, at the top of our lungs, where his family is excruciatingly polite to each other for fear they offend each other! I grew up with three sisters and one brother whom we spoiled rotten. Chris has one brother and one sister. His family has stayed in this area all of his life, my family has been all over the world. I went to boarding school in Africa, he went to public school in small town Iowa. He's calm when I freak out, I'm calm when he freaks out. It works. He's good with the math part about finances, I'm good with the practical side of finances. He can't say no to anything I ask, I'm so used to hearing my mother's voice asking me if I'm sure I want to spend my money on that little frivolous thing that I have a hard time asking for things:-)

We are the same in some very important areas. Chris and I both love the Lord Jesus Christ with all our hearts and seek to serve Him as best we can. We both grew up in the Christian and Missionary Alliance. We attend Bethel Church in Boone, Iowa which is affiliated with them. We are Sunday school teachers for an adult Sunday school class which we both enjoy now, but were terrified about to begin with. Leadership is always a bit scary. I enjoy being an AWANA leader on Wednesday nights, while Chris attends a Bible Study. He is in charge of rounding up people for special music during the services, he only has to do this every six months or so, but I love to hear him gripe about it every time :-) He and I both love to sing, but he's more comfortable doing it in front of an audience. He's great at solos, I'm terrified of singing solos, ask me to give a speech, no problem, sing, no way, he's just the opposite, again! We both love to write, and talk about writing a book together. He enjoys teasing me and I can't help doing things to make him tease me. I just am very talented in that area. We both enjoy reading as well.

Reading is something that he's picked up more since we got married. My whole family loves to read and we do it all the time so when he married me he had to start reading more in self defense. He started with comic books and has graduated to sports books, Stephen King, and lately he's reading Tender Warrior by Stu Webber. Me, I'm a bookworm, I'm currently in the middle of Raymond Feist's Midkemia Series, I'm waiting for The King's Buccaneer to arrive from Paperback Swap, I'm also in the middle of Eric Flint's General Belisarius series, I'm waiting on an inter-library loan for the latest in the series, The Tide of Victory.

One of my biggest pet peeves is that the library will start a series and then they won't have the rest of it, or else they'll skip around in the series so you only have half the books and you have to find the rest of them somewhere else! Some of my favorite authors are Mercedes Lackey, Anne McCafrey, David Weber-I can't wait for the latest in his Honor series to come out!, Kasey Michaels, Andre Norton, Diana Palmer, Stephanie Laurens, Lillian Jackson Braun, Rita May Brown, Carole Nelson Douglas ... well I read just about everything so it's hard to pick just a few. Chris hates it when I buy books because I'm normally done with them in a day or two and then never read them again, or at least not very soon. I resell a lot of them on Amazon or trade them on Paperback Swap.

Well, that's it for now, I'll have Chris write more later.