Much Ado about a Date

hello all. I am going on a date with Joel in One hour and 35 minutes. I.Am.Excited.

I am always excited to go anywhere with him.

Forgive me for not having more thought provoking posts as of late, but I HAVE started them only to save them in my drafts because I have not the sufficient time and brain activity to complete them.

They will come though.....so....back to life here on haywood.

Yesterday Caleb asked Joel, over spaghetti and garlic bread, if THIS was the bread that the disciples ate. I seriously could NOT stop giggling. Partly because I imagined the disciples handing out the chunks of lightly toasted garlic bread as the Lord blessed it and broke it when feeding the 5,000, and partly because he was so serious about his question. Caleb just listened to Joel explain to him, while stifling a laugh I might add, what kind of bread they did in fact eat in "those days." Another one of the kiddos remarked to them both, "It was a LOAF!" To which Caleb replied, "This IS a LOAF!" And as I continued to giggle, wondering if Caleb inherited my overactive imagination.....

Anna has a cold and so when she has to eat something with her mouth completely closed (a rare occurrence..) her nose whistles. No really. And by whistle I don't mean a little squeak....I mean a whistle. One that makes us all hover around her as she eats just to hope to hear it and giggle. Joel asked her the other day if she was "Whistler's Mother." :) I love jokes the kids don't get. It is so cute, but NOT as cute as her looking at me with a stern face last night and asking me if we were gonna listen to "Fuucus onna fammey." THAT was adorable plain and simple.

Abbs acquired a cat for her last birthday and Josie and our dog Buddy just run through the house periodically acting like baboons. When I began typing this I was getting so sick of them wrestling and caught myself getting ready to say, out loud, "You two fight like.........(and then I laughed to myself) CATS and DOGS. Just can't stop that sense of humor of mine I tell ya.......

Isaac likes to draw and then bring me his creation. He shows it to me and then tells me to "find something funny in it." And then I proceed to mention how the camouflage on his airplane really looks like a green plane with a hoard of groundhogs stuck to it, and so on it goes, until Isaac is SO tickled that he can no longer stand, leaving you to give a running commentary on his masterpieces while he squirms and buries his head in your shoulder laughing like a hyena unable to talk. at.all. He Will occasionally come up for air.

I am trying to exercise and eat healthy. TRYING is the key word there. I am consuming more spinach than Popeye and use these disk like things on my feet to attempt to get into shape. Seeing me do one or both of these two things is comical........... and a little scary.

Joel referee's basketball games on the side and sometimes I get to go along. The last one I attended, I brought my new camera and sat in the bleachers with Alayna thinking how fun it was that I was here and no one knew who the "Weird skirted lady taking WAY too many pictures of a jr high game" was. What was even more interesting was the man 3 bleacher seats up and to the right of me. He musta had a bad day at work, and for goodness sake none of Joel's or the other Ref's calls made his day any brighter. And he let us ALL know it. I felt just about every emotion possible in the span of that game as I listen to that man, and kept my cool. (THAT is my friends, a modern day miracle of gigantic proportions.) I DID think of turning and frantically unloading snapshots of that man telling him that it was a hobby of mine to get pics of every loudmouth at each game........Yeah I refrained. After the game as the bleachers began to empty the woman sitting behind me leaned over and said, "Your the Ref's wife, aren't you?" I nodded. She began to tell me that she could have never kept her cool in such a situation. I told her I was so much more spiritual that anyone on earth............Ok I couldn't resist that......actually I had overheard her talking about her son to another couple, telling them about his cancer. So I told her I overheard her talking about her son, told her my sweet husband was also an Assistant Pastor and told her that if we could ever do anything for her or her family, we sure would be glad to. The Lord is able to do so much more with me when I mute myself......

I am going on a date with Joel in 1 hour and 4 minutes.

I have ALWAYS loved dates with Joel.

Give me a date with Joel and I will give you a Wife and Mother who will mend anything that needs mendin', clean the house spick and span, and will somehow make 2 meals out of one pound of hamburger. It just gives me that pep in my step.

There is such a thing as an "UNdate" though. An "Undate" is a way overdue date, or a date with way too much stress hovering, where you spend too much money trying to figure deep things out and iron out your relationship wrinkles that cannot and will not be worked out in 2 hours worth of time. Gone are the moments you pictured of you both smiling sharing a milkshake at McDonalds. Most likely you will play with your straw while he doodles on a napkin, knowing that you must choose your words carefully or you may begin World War III. Into all of our lives a little "undate" must fall. You know they need to happen here and there, yet you wish you could skip them and head into the real "date."

I know this. I had an "Undate" last week. This is why I am so thrilled to go out tonight. No relationship wrinkles, no discipline problems involving the hoolagins.....no money either, but hey it's still a date! I always wished they would change the coined phrase, "Love is blind" to "Love is broke." Hey there Jeanette Oake, if you are reading this I get full royalties (no pun intended) on that one if you make that your next book...You know something like, "Love Finds a Quarter."

Or not.

45 minutes and counting........