What Now

WEEKEND UPDATE!

Well, I passed yet another non-impressive weekend, but I still had a good time doing it.

Friday after work we went to dinner with some friends of ours. It's the first time we'd really been out with everyone for a few weeks, so we went to Chili's and had dinner. Shannon and I spent most of the meal acting like lunatics, but at least we weren't asked to leave! : ) After dinner we decided to walk over to *dramatic pause* Coldstone! It had been so long since we had gone over there, and Greg and I were in severe withdrawl for some good ice cream, so we made the trek. Apparently everyone in Jones Valley had the same idea because it was packed to the door. Since we were stuck next to the cooler with all of the cakes, Greg decided that it would be smarter to just buy one and take it home to share with everyone. An exellent idea, as it turned out! We got something chocolate-chocolate-chocolate-chocolate cake-more chocolate. It was sooooooooooooo wonderful. So we all sat around the table and joked and ate ice cream cake. I was a little embarrassed because I kept smelling something bad in my kitchen and I didn't want it to gross anyone out. However, I couldn't ever find out what the smell was! I think it was something in the sink, but I was never sure. I lit one of those oil burner things to make myself feel better, and that seemed to work just fine. I hate having to play "Find the Bad Smell"!

Saturday we spent the day with Steve's dad. The funeral director came by to do some final details, and he was annoyingly smarmy. He was so smarmy that I could feel the smarm oozing around the house. I was in the kitchen doing some things for Mr. Lee while he talked with the guy, and I suppose since I wasn't involved in the conversation directly that I was able to hear that guy being kind of manipulative. Granted, I know he's a salesman and his job is to sell, but geez. He was using stories of his own "past losses" to push stuff off on us. I'm glad Mr. Lee was anticipating this because he didn't get talked into anything he didn't want, but I couldn't believe what I was hearing! I've always heard that death is a good business, but I don't think I'd ever understood why until that day! I had to catch up on some homework (I'm still about 2 weeks behind) while Steve and his dad ran some errands and then we had lunch together. I fell asleep pretty hard once we got back to Mr. Lee's house. I just sort of narcolepted out in the chair! Steve had to wake me up when it was time to go and I staggered around for a while before I was fully aware of where I was and what was going on. After that we ran some errands of our own and went home.

Sunday was, of course, a beautiful Easter day! We had church in the morning, along with a whole lot of people I didn't know. As the preacher started giving his sermon, I started to read ahead a little bit in the scriptures, and before I knew it, I totally missed half of the sermon! I don't know what happened! I don't think I'd ever read about the crucifixion in the book of Mark before, so I was engrossed. I knew I could get into a book, but good greif. That afternoon we went to my parent's house. My mom had invited Mr. Lee, so he got to expirence the nephews first hand. Thank goodness they behaved themselves! My mom always has an easter egg hunt for the boys, but Seth got sneaky. He went outside and found where they all were so that when the hunt started, he would be able to find most of them. Of course, then he told us since he knew where they were, he had to hide them again. He hid them from himself! That's quite a feat! Mom let them look for the eggs she had hidden, and since there was a fair amount of cheating going on, she asked Steve and I to hide them again in the back yard. We hid 55 eggs, and hid them fairly well. Well, that's a lie. We kind of ran out of hiding places and just started tossing them into bushes and everything, but the boys still had a time finding them all. Steve was kind of mean at one point because he put an egg in the fork of a tree as high as he could reach. Seth saw it, and started to cry because he couldn't reach it. Mean or not, that was funny! At the end of it all, there was still one egg missing and as far as we know, it's still missing. Neither Steve nor I could remember where we hid everything! Mom said the lawnmower would probably find it later! : ) At the evening church service, we were going to be having a ordination service for the new associate pastor. It had been a while since I had seen one of those, and since Josh is always interested in seeing new and exciting Baptist events, he came along. Since I'm the church historian, I was armed with my camera and took pictures all during the service. I felt as if I was being rude, but everyone assured me that it was fine to take the pictures. I got some really great shots, but it didn't make me feel any less like holy paparazzi! The new associate pastor also got to baptize his own little boy after his service, so that was sweet. I had thought Josh had seen a full immersion baptism before, but afterwards he asked "What was up with him holding his hand up? Is that normal?" I told him it was, but he just said that he thought that maybe Bro. Ken got confused and held his hand up in the classic "I Don't Know" pose. Silly Catholic! ; ) There were still a billion flower arrangements left over from Ms. Rhonda's funeral service, so I had to bring them home with me. I had a giant peace lily, a giant something called a Chavallier (or at least sounds close to that), an azaelia bush, one basket with an arrangement of various green things growing in it and another giant basket with a calla lily, another unidentifiable green plant and a pot of ivy. These are just the ones we took home that night. We still gave some away before I loaded Rudolph. Driving home with a whole ecosystem of plants in my car was an expirence. The azelia kept falling off of the seat and I was all but choking on the pollen flying around. My head is STILL stopped up from that ride home. Allergies aside, I think it's beautiful that so many people loved Ms. Rhonda so much and wanted to give plants in her honor. I hope that when it's my time to go, my family gets a garden half as big! Now I just have to figure out how to plant these things and keep them alive. We all know how inept I am with plants, but I'm going to try hard to keep these kicking as long as I can.

That's about it!