I realized I haven't posted any pictures lately, and then I realized I haven't taken any pictures lately. Like since Christmas.

So here are a couple from December of Jenna doing her best Santa impression... HoHoHo!

Hmm...'Cause I would've called it "Cruel Low-Brow Bridal Humiliation"

I walked thought the bridal section of Walmart the other day (am I obsessed or what?) just because I like all the new do-it-yourself invitations and placecards and papergoods (because I definitely DO have a paper obsession) available to cost-conscious brides these days.
I also had no children with me so I was free to meander at my own leisurely pace.

Towards the end of the display, I came across a figurine that was a take off of the standard bride-and-groom-standing-together cake topper. Only in this version, the groom was sitting down, legs splayed out in front of him, his back facing the bride. And the bride was grabbing him by the back of his jacket collar and forcibly dragging him towards some imaginary altar. I presume. And she looked angry.

But the best - THE BEST- part of this whole thing was the packaging. On the box, underneath the clear plastic window, was written: "HUMOROUS WEDDING FIGURINE." And the box went on the suggest that this HUMOROUS WEDDING FIGURINE could be used not only as a cake topper, but could also be placed on each guests' table as a centerpiece.

Yes! That would be SO HUMOROUS! Because nothing says I'm making a blessed covenant before God and my family and friends with this person whom I love and cherish and will spend the rest of my life with better than a plastic figurine of an angry bride inflicting her will on a seemingly hapless victim/groom. What a knee slapper! SO HUMOROUS!!

Man, I LOVE Walmart.

Good Little Lutheran.

Yesterday as I was straightening up the living room before dinner, this scene unfolded before me:

"Mom!" Michaela yells from down the hall. "Jenna has Oreo cookies and is taking the top off and smearing the cream filling onto her babies!"
"Oh," I reply. "Give her a baby wipe and tell her to clean them up."
I wait a few minutes.
"MOM!" Michaela yells again. "she's got it on her face and the babies' feet, too!"
I decide to fully investigate.

I get to Jenna's doorway and find that she has indeed opened up Oreos and covered her forehead and a few babies' foreheads with the cream filling. "Jenna!" I say to her. "What are you doing? Please clean up your babies and don't play with food like that."

"Mom." Jenna says, with the greatest level of condescension I have ever heard from her. She looks up at me with her chin tucked down and her eyebrows practically on top of her head, as if she's had to explain this to me a MILLION times:
"I'm BATH-TIZING them."

A glimpse into what the future might hold.

Yikes! I didn't realize it's been a whole week since I last posted... this past week was school vacation and Vacation Bible School at our church and errands and Dan was home for a long weekend and all that kind of jazz.

But now Michaela's back at school, Dan's back at work, Jenna is playing quietly with her Polly Pockets next to me and laundry is whirring away around the corner from me.
Ahhh... the sweet smell of routine.

I have a quick story to tell you today that I heard at church on Sunday. There is a family who we've known for many years now who have two daughters aged 20-ish and just turned 18. The parents could not be lovelier, sweeter people: very nurturing and loving and well educated and always helping out other people. And their daughters are real pistols: very pretty and bright and feisty and disdainful (as most 18 to 21 year olds are) of their parents' constant MEDDLING in their lives. You know, making sure they are safe, educated and drug-free. REALLY intrusive stuff. :)

So the newly-eighteen year old is counting up her birthday money in front of the parents and announces, "Well, THAT should cover the cost of the tattoo!"

And I just pray- PRAY-that I am not telling the same story to a younger family at church in 10 years.

Jetting back in time.

I went to a wake on Friday night and it was awesome.

It was the wake for a parent of a family friend... she was almost 90 and died in her sleep very peacefully and quietly. She lived a good, honorable life and though you will miss the person and feel badly for their family, it's just about the best way to go in my book.

So why was it awesome? Well, the deceased had a large family made up of one daughter and four sons and my mother became friends with the daughter (whose name is Patti) when they were in high school. They have been friends now for many, many decades and over the years we have gotten very close with their family. We have spent countless hours with them celebrating graduations, Father's Days, Christmas (we attended a "Kiddie Christmas Party" every first weekend in December for over 20 years) and other fun events. They are a great, old-time large family: loud, loving, affectionate (everybody, it seems, kisses on the mouth as a greeting- something that my WASP-y family never did), Italian, devoutly Catholic and in everyone else's business. For years when we would go to a party at Patti's I would be rendered practically mute because I was so overwhelmed by the yelling, the teasing, the kissing, the everything.

Well, over the last 10 years or so as my brother and I have grown up and started our own families and Patti's children have grown and moved away, the parties have died down and now we see Patti maybe once a year or so. Some of her siblings I have not seen in over 15 years.

My parents and I went to the wake and of course the whole family was there: Patti, her husband and children, her four brothers, and her nieces and nephews. And it was just incredible to see everyone together again. We circulated around, reacquainting and hugging and kissing (on the mouth, of course) with one brother and then another nephew and we were all trying to piece everybody together... who belonged with who, who lived nearby and who lived far, and how old must so-and-so be now?

And then we saw Jenny.

And then I started crying.

I'm not sure why I cried when I saw her and got to hug her. She is the ex-wife of one of the brothers and she disappeared many, many years ago. She was sweet and nice and somehow quieter and more familiar to me personally than the rest of the family. I really missed her when she and her husband divorced. She had stayed in touch with Patti and over the years we've heard little snippets about how she's doing. So I hugged her and looked at her- she looks exactly the same even after all these years- and blurted out something like, "I have two little girls now!" and she was appropriately happy and we just kept saying, "I love you! It's so good to see you!" over and over again.

I was just blown away by the whole night.

After I thought about for a while, I think it was so meaningful to me because I was really able to slip back into my childhood for that hour. I was still a little girl, standing with my parents, greeting all these people who don't know anything about me- they don't know my husband or children or where I went to school or what I do or where I live- and they just loved me up and hugged me and kissed me just the same. Just because I'm my mom's daughter and we all had history together. All that garbage of being an adult just washed away and it was 1982 again. And seeing Jenny pushed it all back even further, back before her little family kind of fell apart and back to when she was still coming to parties and was so sweet on me.

It was a luxury to be able to travel back through that window in time and be eight again.

What a gift.