like hot McDonald's french fries, right out of the bag

Listening to "Like a Virgin" on my iPod. Not just ANY "Like a Virgin", but the extended dance re-mix. My iPod makes me so happy. I'm not even going to tell you how many times I've listened to Captain & Tenille, Tears for Fears, Hall and Oates, oh... and Eminem.

how I knew my son was my son
We celebrated my sons's 10th birthday early. Technically it's not til December 20th. Even though I carried him around in my uterus, Nate really doesn't look like I had anything to do with him, except he did get my blue eyes.

There are very few occasions when I've actually seen myself reflected in my son. There was one time, when I caught him sitting on the kitchen tile eating green olives right out of the jar. I knew on that day he was MY boy. Then this past weekend, when we were getting dressed for his b-day dinner, he put on three shirts before he finally decided on the fourth one. In that moment. I knew he had my style dna in his genetic make-up. Then he did a similar thing with fixing his hair. Now if I could only make this sort of headway with the daughters.

The Pastor and I have been enjoying some kid-free time this week. It's amazing how much better the quality of our relationship is without children. I'm not sure how other married couples, who have their children around all the time, actually have intact marriages.

The Pastor and I enjoyed sleeping in until 10:15 on Saturday morning. Since I married the Pastor, I have become the laziest person ever. Anyway,10:15 a.m. is about four hours later than we get to sleep when younger daughter is around and wakes up early and thinks because she is
awake everyone in the house should be awake too.

Speaking of having an intact marriage, there are just some things you cannot possibly predict will be a problem in your marriage. For instance, I know what I agreed to and vowed and all that jazz, but I had NO IDEA I was marrying someone who would not respect boundaries with my library card.

Before I married the Pastor, I went to the library. I tried to get my son excited about the library and would try to take him to stuff there. I usually had a fine for my tardiness in returning materials. But the Pastor goes to the library EVERY FREAKIN' DAY. If they had some sort of
frequent flyer program at the library, he would have more points than anyone. So the Pastor decided since he pays my bills blah blah blah,he could check out the maximum number of library materials on my card and double his check-out ability. That might have been ok for him to max-out my library card, but the one book I did get, he read before me and told me it wasn't worth reading. I finally had to sit him down and ask him to not use my card or spoil the plot of my book. If that doesn't work, I'll have to change my library card number and not tell him

I think we have a Christmas party every night this week except for Tuesday. You think its tricky trying to figure out dress codes like "business casual" and "holiday casual" and "resort casual" and "semi-formal", just try and figure out "Nazarene party wear" that doesn't involve some ugly Christmas sweater.