December 2 – “A Broken leg and a tasty cake”

We spent some time in the garage yesterday.  Not that we got thrown out of the house or anything exciting like that.  We were just gathering together some things to take to the church for the garage sale this coming Saturday.  Actually it’s part of the bigger Bethlehem Street Market and Craft Sale (10-6 at the church – come!).  The garage sale is one of the booths.  Great name, too: Gentile-ly Used Treasures.  Get it?  Rather than Gently Used.  Genius.  We did manage to throw away some of the stuff that has been accumulating out there.  The old plastic horse is finally out to pasture.  It was part of one of those spring loaded bouncy horse things that my parents gave one of our boys back in the 80’s.  The springs and legs all rusted out after Hurricane Ike, but we gamely held on to the plastic horse.  I even designed a replacement frame made out of wood, but it never got out of the architectural stage.  Finally the horse broke a leg in a tumble while foraging around in the garage, and you know what happens when horses break a leg, right?  Sad, but necessary.

We did go to Jachin’s ninth birthday party in the afternoon.  It was themed from some video game that is really popular now, Skylanders Giants.  A bunch of demonic looking creatures that come as statues and have some kind of computer connection with the Wii game.  You place them on a foundation and that character is somehow activated on the screen.  But back to the party … They played all kinds of fun games related to the theme.  Jachin’s Mom is one of those masterful creative geniuses who can adapt ideas to fit the task at hand.  She can be kind of Old-fashioned Mommy-ish at times, though.  During one of the games, while everyone else was outside, the two grandfathers were hanging out around the cake with Josiah.  The little guy was just staring longingly at the mass of chocolateness.  I was snapping some random camera shots when Josiah got an idea.  It was written all over his face.  He glanced from side to side.  Seeing only his two grandfathers – certainly nothing of consequence to deter him in the execution of his mission – he leaned over the table as far as he could.  Slowly, slowly he inched closer and closer to his desired objective.  Until finally he stopped, mere inches away from the mound of sugary sweetness.  Too much.  Too much.  I couldn’t have held out as long as he did.  There it came.  His tongue snuck from between the confines of tightly pursed lips and … and … licked the cake.  Must have tasted great, because as he jerked away he said with a big grin, “I did it.  I licked it.” 

One thing I don’t understand, though.  When PawPaw Art told Josiah’s Mom about the oh-so minor infraction, she didn’t seem particularly happy.  I didn’t detect so much as a hint of appreciativeness, either.  Maybe she didn’t understand.  I decided to come to Art’s rescue.  Flipping through the pictures on the camera, I called up the one that documented the particular scene.  I thought surely if she could just see it that all would be well.  See, I had that final, delectable moment on camera.  But even then she wasn’t happy.  She got a knife and scraped the area where the myriad of tongue germs must have been gathering to attack whoever happened upon that particular slice of cake.  I think that became Josiah’s piece of birthday celebration fare as well.  Sigh.  All’s well, that ends well, I guess.

Psalms 42:5-6 says, “Why are you downcast, O my soul?  Why so disturbed within me?  Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”

Father, thank you for the joy of children at birthday parties.  Amen.