Another day

I don’t know when I’ve ever been so ready for Spring Break. Second grade is about to kill me. And this is where many of you will leave comments like “Wait until third grade!” or “You think this is bad? Junior high is brutal!” or “Cherish this moment because pretty soon she will be going off to college and getting married and you’ll be a grandmother!”

Then I’ll get all sentimental, especially because I held my friend Natalie’s newborn baby yesterday and it was a reminder that little babies are so soft and cuddly and don’t ever look at you and say, “NO WAY AM I WEARING THAT.” And then I’ll sing a few bars of Time in A Bottle by Jim Croce because if there’s a tender moment that can’t be summed up with the musical stylings of Jim Croce then I don’t know it.

(On a parenting side note, a few weeks ago my friend and I were in the school gym waiting for our girls to be finished with basketball practice. She had her two-year-old with her and he was having a particularly bad night. You know? The kind of night that toddlers have because their life is so hard with all the being waited on hand and foot and having their diaper changed. A nice dad from the team was trying to help her out and she said, “Thank you. I’m so sorry you’re having to deal with this.” And he responded, “Oh this? This is nothing. I have a daughter in junior high.” I looked at her two-year-old throwing a big screaming fit and have never felt more frightened for my future. On the upside, it has helped my prayer life considerably.)

If I didn’t know before, I knew for sure it was time for a little break from our routine on Tuesday morning when P told me he could drop Caroline off at school if I’d just get her ready. I packed her lunch, grabbed her school bag, put it around her shoulders, HANDED HER THE KEYS TO MY CAR, and kissed her goodbye. She walked back in the door about five seconds later, handed me back my keys and asked, “HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?”

Yes. I have. Somewhere between the Rocket Math and the word problems and trying to remember how many pints are in a quart, I have lost my mind.

Anyway, Gulley and I are leaving town with the kids for a little trip over the break and I can’t wait to get on the road. Spring Break brings out the wanderlust in me, maybe because P and I spent about ten years worth of Spring Breaks taking a busload full of high school kids skiing in Colorado when he worked for Youth for Christ. Obviously this was back when we were younger, stronger people who didn’t mind being woken up in the middle of the night to hear tales of drama and woe such as, “Umm, I told her I liked him but then she said she liked him first and I was like WHATEVER and she knew we were supposed to ski together yesterday and then they went off together and (insert big sobs and nose-blowing here) and she wore her pink ski jacket when SHE KNEW that I was going to wear my pink ski jacket tomorrow.”

I don’t know why we quit chaperoning those trips.

Oh, I kid. I loved chaperoning those trips. The actual skiing and the seventeen hour bus ride? Not so much. But the kids? LOVED THEM. And I can’t really think too long about how the majority of those kids are all grown-up and married and have kids of their own now. Cue the Jim Croce.

So what about y’all? Going anywhere fun or doing anything interesting for Spring Break?

(Disclaimer: If you are part of a roving band of thieves who is now planning on breaking into our home because I’ve just announced we’ll be out of town, I must warn you that P will still be at home because he is a busy worker bee. He is armed. And semi-dangerous.)

Well.

So that’s what I had to say about that.

And I cannot thank y’all enough for your kind words and encouragement. Seriously.

Honestly, now I feel a little bit like George Costanza. Like I may just need to say “I’M OUT!” and shut down the blog forever.

But I think we all know that I have way too many words stored inside my head to really do that. Plus, what would become of poor P if I didn’t get out at least 1,000 of my words here every day? He’d be forced to listen to my thoughts on The Bachelor and why I never pay full price at Gap and how I saw this product called Easy Feet on sale at HEB yesterday and am so confused how people who can’t manage to wash their own feet could get their feet so dirty that they’d need special shoes in their shower.

It would really only be a matter of days before he’d move out to the back house and just visit us at mealtimes.

(I know this because he’s sitting right next to me and I went into great detail explaining why I don’t believe we should even have Daylight Savings Time because they’ve monkeyed around with the dates to the point that it’s not worth losing an hour of my life every spring. And he looked at me and said “Hmm.” Clearly he is very passionate about the whole thing.)

(Also, to add insult to injury, I just tried to save this lame post while I went and grabbed the camera so I could download pictures from Caroline’s soccer game this past weekend. But my blog broke and the whole bottom half of what used to be this post disappeared. I was grieving my loss when P asked what I’d written about and I said, “The fact that you had no interest in my thoughts on Daylight Savings Time”. To which he replied, “When were you talking about Daylight Savings Time?” I KID YOU NOT.)

Anyway, I guess I’ll assume that no one wants to hear my thoughts on Daylight Savings Time so I’ll tell you about our weekend instead. It was unremarkable.

Unless you count the fact that we all almost froze to death at Caroline’s soccer game on Saturday morning. I realize that many of y’all are hardy Northern stock that laugh in the face of temps in the mid-50’s and north winds gusting up to 30 miles an hour, but we’ve been in flip-flops and shorts for over a month now and it came as a complete shock.

Note to self: Watch the weather forecast the night before a soccer game. Don’t assume it will be warm just because it’s been warm for the last thirty-two days. Also, don’t judge the temperature and windchill factor by standing on your covered back porch on the south side of your house.

The good news is that the frigid temps and gusting winds allowed P the chance to give our team of seven-year-old girls a lecture on mental toughness. A lecture they really seemed to take to heart while they huddled together under an assortment of quilts and blankets.

I’m just so glad that some of the other mothers had the good sense to bring some blankets because you know what I brought? A beach towel.

And if I’m being completely honest, I didn’t even bring the beach towel for Caroline. I brought it for myself because I thought the field might not have bleachers. Mother of the year.

After the soccer game, P and Caroline headed down to the ranch to burn a bunch of brush because a good burn makes the land healthy. I know that because I listen to P when he talks.

(Y’all aren’t going to believe that I just asked him if he took any pictures of the fires while they were there and he asked, “Did I have the camera?” Yes. That’s what I meant when I put it in your ranch bag and said, “I’m packing the camera in your bag. Take some pictures.”)

So, no pictures of the fires to show but let’s believe they were impressive because Caroline came home and announced her new favorite ranch activity is “BURNING THINGS”. Bless her little pyromaniac heart.

Meanwhile, I spent a large chunk of my free Saturday afternoon watching a remake of Ice Castles. I would like to mock it endlessly and talk about how you know you’re watching quality programming when the commercials are infomercials for a knock-off of Kate Middleton’s sapphire engagement ring for only $19.95, but since I cried at the end of it I feel that I’ve lost my right to act like I’m too good for a remake of one of the schmalziest movies of all time.

Saturday night we ate dinner with some friends and Caroline’s friend, Sadie, came home to spend the night with us and ended up spending most of the day on Sunday with us. I took the girls up to the ballpark to watch Gulley’s oldest, Jackson, play in his first baseball game of the season. He got a base hit on his first at-bat and Gulley got teary and then I got teary watching Gulley get teary. I realize it’s not as emotional as skating in the nationals after a career-ending injury while Robbie Benson looks on and “Through The Eyes of Love” plays in the background, but still, it was a big moment for him. We were so proud.

Then after that Caroline decided to go to choir practice with Sadie. I thought this might give her a chance to see if she enjoys singing, but she came home and announced that choir is boring because all they do is sing.

So that’s probably the end of that.

And this should probably be the end of this post. If you didn’t make it to the end or can’t remember anything I said, don’t feel bad. I seem to have that effect on people. Especially people I’ve been married to for 13 1/2 years.

So we had a big weekend o’ fun.

It all started on Thursday afternoon. I picked Caroline up from school early so she could go to Alamo City Church with me and help the LifeWay event team set up for Priscilla Shirer’s Going Beyond conference. We unpacked boxes of t-shirts and unrolled large marketing posters and spread tablecloths on tables and a million other little things that I had no idea had to be done. Caroline had the best time and believes she has found her calling setting up posters and hauling boxes from one room to another.

We left there around 4:00 and had to make the final decision about the Bike Rodeo which was happening Friday morning. Caroline said she was too tired to practice and I informed her that if she didn’t practice then she couldn’t participate in the Bike Rodeo, especially since she’d just learned to ride four days earlier. She announced she needed time alone in her room to weigh her options.

Ultimately, the allure of the Bike Rodeo won.

It wasn’t a flawless performance but she never gave up and, most importantly, never threw her bike to the ground and cursed the day bicycles were created. It felt like a victory.

Friday evening I went back to the church to help with the conference and hear Priscilla speak. Y’all will be sad to know that I did not get my own walkie-talkie and headphones this time. Or maybe I was just sad about it and y’all won’t care. They said it was because they’d only brought five of them along and gave them to more crucial team members, but I suspect it might have had something to do with my inability to figure out the difference between the talk button and the listen button. Whatever. It’s not as easy as it looks.

I worked the merch table. Mainly because I like to talk about selling merch. It makes me feel like Andy Barnard.

And I got to slip in and listen to Priscilla speak. She taught an amazing lesson on Gideon and the Midianites that will stick with me for a long time. I’m sure I’ll end up writing more about it later but I’m still processing some of it.

On Saturday morning I had to be back at the church at 6:45. For those of you doing the math at home, that means I had to set my alarm for 5:45. And because I am neurotic and tend to fret endlessly about oversleeping, I got a grand total of 15 minutes of sleep Friday night. Needless to say I left the house early enough to stop at Starbucks for some serious caffeine because you can’t work a merch table and do all that math (buy 2 CDs, get 1 FREE!) in your head when you’re delirious from lack of sleep.

But I was so excited to meet the cutest group of girls from Waco. Shout out to the Waco gals! Loved meeting y’all so much. I’m so glad the bus didn’t leave you on Friday night.

Anyway, after the event was over, we grabbed a quick lunch before dropping off most of the team at the airport. My friend, Paige, stayed behind to spend Saturday night so we could have a little more time to hang out. We headed straight to Caroline’s last basketball game of the season. I’m sorry to say that it was not their best performance. I’m even more sorry to say that they played the same team they played last week with the coach that made me want to throw something across the court. They were sad about their loss for all of two minutes until they discovered they were all getting medals.

Upon receiving her medal, Caroline immediately announced, “I’M THE QUEEN OF THE WORLD” so it would appear the loss had a negligible effect on her self-image.

After that, Paige, Caroline and I headed to get pedicures because we felt like we needed them after all the selling of the merch and the standing on our feet.

I chose an OPI color called “You Don’t Know Jacques” and couldn’t be more pleased. It’s kind of a pewter color which is normally not in my color range, but I love it for this time of year. The highlight of the pedicure was when Paige’s male pedicurist (Is that what you call them? I have no idea.) put her flip-flops back on her and then did a Ninja move in celebration of his flip-flop putting on skills. It brought us untold joy.

(Is this post as boring as it seems from this end? Because I’m kind of struggling. It’s also not helping that P is sitting next to me watching When We Were Soldiers which isn’t necessarily the lighthearted feel-good movie of the year. I may wake up with post traumatic stress syndrome tomorrow morning.)

Saturday evening, we introduced Paige to the glory that is a cheeseburger from Chris Madrid’s and then we stayed up late visiting in between countless yawns because we were about to fall over from exhaustion. Eventually we gave up the fight and headed to bed.

We woke up in the morning, went to church, and ate more Mexican food. And then, sadly, the fun had reached its end and we took Paige to the airport.

And then we went to a birthday party for P’s mom and ate cake.

And then Caroline wanted to go for a bike ride because she has decided her bike is the best thing EVER and can’t believe we let her go so long without knowing how to ride it.

Right. Whatever you say.

And that was the weekend.

On a totally different note, I just dated this post and how is it already March? My word at how the time flies.

Wow. It has been a whirlwind of activity here since Thursday afternoon.

And now I’m sitting here wondering what Anne Hathaway’s blue dress is made out of and if she is actually able to breathe in it or if she has to go backstage, unzip it, inhale a few quick breaths, and head back out.

I also have questions about Natalie Portman’s earrings.

Most of all, I’m questioning why I feel compelled to keep watching when I am this bored.

And with that, I’m going to bed.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a full recap of the weekend and who knows what else, but in the meantime I’ll leave you with this picture of Caroline I took last week.

I realize she’s my daughter and I’m a little partial, but how cute is she in that flower headband?

Also, do you think the leaves on that tree will ever be green again?

See y’all tomorrow.