August 22 – “The Other Party”

This morning began with clean the church day.  The students had a fund raiser last night for camp.  That's right.  For next year's camp.  We plan to go to Ridgecrest, North Carolina, and we want to charter a bus, so fund raisers are definitely the order of the day.  So, the fund raiser was a Parent's Night Out.  Parent's drop off their kids at 6:00 p.m. and come back at 11:00 p.m.  Our students provide the child care and the parents donate whatever amount they can to the cause.  Usually popcorn and a movie are integral parts of the Friday evening experience for the kids.   This one was no different.  They weren't too messy, though.  It has certainly been worse.  And they unstacked all the pews for us.  That was a huge help.    We left the church and headed over to our friend's garage to bring home some more of our stowed stuff.  The idea today was to clear a better path to the mattress and box springs that are in there.  Christina's Mom needs it, so she is coming in Monday or Tuesday to pick it up.  We plan to tell her she can also have the little table, the stuffed chair, and the microwave that are also there.  We did get a truckload moved out.  It was mostly boxes with books and stuff from Mom's house that we have to go through.  We didn't really have time to go through it all.  We planned to weed eat the back yard when we got home, but I was really hungry, and didn't have enough energy to go any longer without food.  So we stopped for lunch.  Hey, it was already almost two o'clock.    After lunch I went in the back yard and instead of using the weedeater, I started pulling up the offensive weeds by hand.  Well, by hand in glove.  The evil weeds with those tiny little seed pods that stick to your leg hair were taking over back there.  I was determined to get rid of as many as I could.  Problem was, you can't pull it out by the roots because it breaks off too easily.  Chris came out to help, and we got a lot of it pulled.    That ate up a lot of time, though, so we had just enough time to shower and head for WalMart.  We had to pick up some chips and dip for the other party of the weekend.  This one was at my brother's house in Tiki Island.  We made it in plenty of time.  The food was great.  Barbequed chicken and sausage as well as fajitas.  And then a huge chocolate cake for dessert.  The cake turned out to be a birthday cake for Mom, me, and Chris, and an anniversary cake for Kel and Christina and Stan and Sue.  I think there were more celebrations, too, but that was all I could keep track of.  Christina and Jachin went for a kayak ride on the canal.  Micah settled for a pretend hurricane on the floating dock.  I got to sit in my brother's "make your back feel good Portable Chair."  He said if I look miserable next time we come over, he'll get it out for me again.  Guess I looked worse than usual.  But the chair was really comfy.   Psalms 97:1 says, "The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad; let the distant shores rejoice."   Father, thanks for the brief times of respite you bring into our weird world.  That chair was mine for the day.  Amen.