A Week to Remember

Not only is this my first post of the new year, it is also my 100th post! Of course, neither of these facts guarantees that the contents will be any good, but you're welcome to read anyway . . .

I've had the most wonderful week - truly an undeserved gift from God (and what good thing isn't?).

The week before Christmas, Danny took a half day off work to find a Christmas present for me. Although I'm still not convinced the trip wasn't 97% motivated by the prospect of having lunch with good friends who work near the mall, this was incredibly sweet for a couple of reasons: 1. It was about 3-4 days earlier than he normally shops for me, and 2. He went bargain shopping - he actually hit several stores and compared prices, before purchasing my gifts at half the normal price. I couldn't be prouder or more touched. Seriously.

The only problem was that one of the gifts didn't quite fit right, so we went back to the mall the day after Christmas to exchange it. Unknown to us, a little fuzzy caterpillar had crept onto one of the strollers we threw into the back of the Explorer, and decided he also wanted to do a little after-Christmas sightseeing. He entertained Rachel all day - she hardly took her eyes off him. He crawled all over the stroller, ate lunch with us, spent time at the play area, came dangerously close to being eaten himself (by Kari Bou, of course), and ended up in a styrofoam cup on the drive home. It was a beautiful thing - her eyes sparkling and her little face filled with wonder over something I wouldn't normally have thought twice about flicking off the stroller in the parking lot. Sadly, he didn't last the night, although we supplied him with leaves and grass and even a twig.

The remainder of the week was spent working on projects: I sorted and folded and organized mountains of baby & kid's clothes, finally managing to fit them into 6 32-gal. containers and 8 18-gal. containers. Danny helped me sanitize all the toys in the nursery. We took down the remainder of our Christmas decorations. We had dinner with friends Friday night and Saturday night. We spent the morning with Mom & Dad on Saturday, hanging out and opening the gifts in our stockings, and eating the most delicious bean casserole for lunch.

On Sunday, Danny left for church 90 minutes early, so he could have some time to pray before getting up to speak. (After the morning's message, I told him he needs to do that every week!) As I began herding the kids out to the car for church, I noticed Zekers was wearing a black afro wig he received for Christmas. And do you think he would let me remove it from his head? Not a chance! (This was probably my fault for collapsing on the floor and wetting myself when I saw him) Since we'd already had a typical Sunday morning (If you have kids you know what I mean!), I decided it really wasn't worth fighting him over and left it on. So he spent ALL of Sunday morning wearing the thing, until his nap after lunch. My son is definitely not worried about keeping up appearances!

That night we rang in the new year with some friends and Zekers got sick. He went to bed at 7 with a fever and cough, and laid around all of New Year's Day. In fact, we all did. We did absolutely nothing all day, except eat and lay around! I made tofu pancakes and sausage for lunch - one of the kids' favorite meals - and we played and napped and snacked on leftovers and basically frittered the day away. How wonderful.

Oh yeah - Karis took a rather un- conventional bath. I had just bathed Zekers, hoping it would help him feel a little better. Several minutes afterward, we discovered our Kari Bou had decided she needed a bath as well, only she hadn't bothered with the little details, like removing her clothes and shoes. Fortunately for her, she's darn cute, and was obviously having the time of her life, so we ended up stripping her down and letting her take her bath. The only thing she loves more than stuffing her face is bathing.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!