ANOTHER FUNNY STORY

Years and years ago there was a British sitcom "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em".  The main character was Frank.  He was clumsy, well meaning, accident prone, and often found himself in awkward situations.  My husband took to calling me Frank soon after I met him.  Like one of my friends said "If it's going to happen to anyone, it's going to happen to you."  I wouldn't say that I am accident prone or even all that clumsy but I do seem to find myself in situations that are just... well... awkward.  Take last week for instance.  I was in a fast food restaurant with three of my children and a friend. I ordered a chicken sandwich with accompanying fries and drink and we all sat down at the table and proceeded to eat.   It was a perfectly normal situation.
 Directly across from us, sat two men eating their dinner.  Now, I am not being judgmental (well maybe I am) but these guys were not the kind of men you would expect to see this close to the big city.  The word "Deliverance" should conjure up enough of an image but just to be sure you get it, I'll tell you that the clothing they wore was pretty tatty and dirty but had nothing on the hair they were sporting.  I did not want to make eye contact.  We busily chatted about the movie we had just seen (Avatar, which was amazing) and I forgot all about the men... that is until I noticed that the mayo from my sandwich was leaking out at the bottom.  I flipped my sandwich over and slowly licked up the side of it so it didn't get all over my hands.  Just as I reached the top of my sandwich with my tongue, I raised my eyes and met with the gaze of one of the "deliverance" guys.  He smiled at me.  I just about choked as I realized that  the guy thought I was flirting with him in a very suggestive way. This is why Ian calls me Frank.

Frank

Deliverance Guys

FUNNY STORY

Today I attended a meeting at my church where the main topic of discussion was whether or not to hold an outdoor Christmas Pageant this coming December.  This had been an annual event for a number of years but had slowly petered out.  At its peak, it was held three or four nights in a row and had included live animals.  I guess it was quite the production but I had never witnessed or taken part in it as the last year they held the pageant was the same year our family moved here.  I will recount the story as told to me today by one of those involved.  He is not given to exaggeration and others who were present confirmed its veracity.

A donkey was borrowed from a neighbor's farm. Apparently, it was not a well behaved animal.  The young lady portraying Mary was assured though that all would be well and at the appointed time climbed atop of the donkey which took a few steps then promptly bucked her off.  Mary landed unceremoniously upside down in the snow, dress up over her head. One of the wise men (the man who shared this story) grabbed the donkey before it took off and did any more damage.  Having a farm himself and having raised horses, he related how the disciplining of large animals required swift action with a fair amount of force.  A horse (or a donkey in this case) is not going to respond to a slight smack on the backside and a telling off so he said he pulled his arm back and punched it as hard as he could in the snot which just happened to be the exact same time as the director cued the lights on what was supposed to be Mary making her way by donkey to Bethlehem.

They had double the attendance the next night.

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TOO MUCH FUN

Sincerest apologies  for neglecting my blog.  The excuse?  Well to be perfectly honest, I have been having entirely way too much fun with my family.  All the kids made it home for Christmas meaning my house was an absolute disaster (12 people here most days), my cupboards were overflowing with junk food( chips, cheetos popcorn, pop, cookies, chocolate, ice cream, sugary cereal, and the list goes on), and it was a miracle if I made it to bed before one in the morning.  We packed a ton of fun into the two weeks that most of the kids were home. Here are some of the highlights.

Pajamas: I was able to get everybody to wear matching pajamas for a picture to commemorate the fact that we were all home together for Christmas for the first time in a number of years.  Not one of them complained. Bonus

Rock Band: Possibly the most fun family gift we've ever received.  Ben owned the drums and Brittany and Adam played expert level on the guitar and bass.  Even the die hard Call of Duty fans got involved and miracle of miracles, dear hubby, hater of video games, had a go too.

Christmas Dinner: It was the usual Christmas dinner but soooo good. What made it memorable was the washing of dishes and cleaning the kitchen afterward.  I have the best husband in the world.  He thinks because the women put so much time and effort into preparing a big meal that it is only right that the men do the clean up. The women all headed downstairs to enjoy some conversation while the men remained upstairs.  I was concerned that it was taking them a long time and there seemed to be some shouting going on.  This is what I found when I went to investigate.  All of them were hanging out in my bedroom watching an exciting basketball game, doing the dishes during half time and time outs.  Notice that they still all have their jammies on.  Priceless.

New Years Eve: While our company had started to dwindle (Daniel, Olivia, Matthew, Kere, and their kids were gone) there were still enough of us left to celebrate.  It was a perfect moonlit evening with fairly mild temperatures so we bundled up and went outside to toboggan in the back yard.   We attahed LED lights to our clothing and had a blast playing like little children in the snow. We packed the LED lights into snowballs and had a glow in the dark snowball fight.  The effect was almost magical. We rang in the New Year by lighting a fire in the chiminea with the intention of making s'mores but we became distracted with lighting off firecrackers which will be the subject of my next post.
Good times!