G is for christening the church bathroom........

is for gagging for the good of all involved.....

I did my first "lock-in" at the church this past Friday. There were 9 of us and I thought we all had a pretty good time. We had lasagna for dinner, did gingerbread houses till near midnight.....










(dirty feet from the gym floor)


did facials till 2:30 in the morning.....

(exfoliating)


(mud masks)



(mud masks still & clear cucumber peels)


(Peeling the cucumber peel mask off. We all loved this one, it was equivalent to peeling sun burned skin)


..... finally winding down at about 3:15 am for some sleep.....


(one 8th grade gal is missing cause she had to leave early)



.....then ate some french toast for breakfast and had a spiritual gifts devotional time. After all of that, it was time to head home.

We woke up to snow!

It was quiet and awesome as I rambled around at 6:30 am alone trying to get breakfast ready. I had the Christmas music playing, while the others slept away in another building.




Let me say this though, prior to enjoying my kitchen dream with snow and Christmas music.....I totally had to get up off the floor on which I was sleeping cause my hips were screaming at me to "GET UP OFF THE FLOOR!!! I WILL NOT WORK PROPERLY IF YOU LAY DOWN HERE ONE MORE MINUTE, GET UP!!!!!"

So I lifted my wretched sore body from the floor and went directly to the 8th grade girls sleeping room, got my toothbrush from Maysie's bag and christened the church bathroom sink with a wonderful 5 to 7 minute gagging session with my toothbrush.

All the stars were properly aligned after that.

It had to be done, so I could feel good in the kitchen with snow, Christmas music, and french toast.

I really had a super time. I am convinced I had just as good a time as the girls did.

I believe that I did get to know some of them better, which was the whole purpose....for us all to get to know each other better.

Laura McC (Mac) stayed with me. I hadn't spent any real time with her in about 100 years.

Probably since the baseball field, two seasons ago. In fact the last time I had seen her she was kicking me in the back cause I was begging my friend Danielle to tell me the little girl singing the National Anthem, in a blue jean jumper dress, with a long unbrushed pony tail, just killing the song........ making me want to lob my head off in a guillotine in agony of having to endure such a tragedy in the National Anthem world of singing.......I was begging Danielle to tell me the girl was not home schooled, and Laura kicked me from behind and told me to "shut it."

They shoulda just played the instrumental and left it.......

I had forgotten how funny and refreshing she is. Randy, her husband, is surely a lucky guy to get to hang out with her all the time. Randy was one of my Sparks leaders in the past. He is a great guy too; I adore them both. In my opinion, Laura made everything about the lock-in better. She is beautiful, funny, totally gets young girls and they trust her. She was absolutely hand picked by God to stay with me that night. Even though her only boy had a football banquet she wanted to attend, she stayed with me and the girls. I am more crazy about her now than I was before.

So when I finally got home around 11:30am or so on Saturday, I had a crick in my neck.

I said, I had A CRICK IN MY NECK...........uuuuuuuhh It sucked.

When I was talking to my mom on the phone, turning my head just to talk, bending to laundry, just in general trying to live.....my freakin neck screamed, "You old lady!! DON'T SLEEP ON THE FLOOR ANYMORE!!"

Tony Workman was my hero Friday cause he gave me the safety idea of double locking us into an area of the church that had a bathroom with water for facials, our own heat, and clean flooring...... I am crazy about that guy too! That was an awesome idea! It worked beautifully and I felt super safe!

tires are not a conflict of interest........

Today is mine & D's Anniversary.....8/7/93

We have been married 16 years.

I was trying to think of what we were doing this time 16 years ago....he remembered that he was staying in a hotel the night before our wedding. We didn't get married till around 6 or 7pm or something so we had all day to do stuff. It totally rained during our wedding. It was an indoor wedding though, thank goodness. A lot of the guests were coming downstairs where I was located hair drying their clothes off.

These are the Anniversary dates I remember:

1994 - (totally newlywed, no children, both people have a job gifts) D gave me a tennis bracelet and I gave him an out building from Home Depot with about 3000 screws. We needed an out building bad and he was excited till he spent about 4 days straight putting it together.

1995- we spent the night at Look Away Hall in North Augusta. A bed and breakfast in these two old mansions down the street from where we lived then. We had a good time.

1996- I delivered, what would have been yesterday, Maysie. D sent me a dozen beautiful , huge, yellow roses with one pink one to the hospital room. I still have them them dried up in a jar.

1998- I was pregnant with Zach and have no idea what we did.

1999- we had moved to Santa Fe this year. I have no idea what we did for our anniversarys the whole time we were in New Mexico. We probably went out cause we had this awesome sitter, whom I still LOVE LOVE LOVE, Leslie. She was 13 when she started sitting for us and now she is a grown married woman.

2000, 2001- New Mexico...no idea, one year we took a late anniversary over night trip to Taos. We stayed at this awesome bed and breakfast and ate at this wonderful restaurant outside. They had Williams Sonoma napkins I believe, I pretty much stole them as souvenirs. I actually still wear them sometimes on my head when I mow the grass....sad & pathetic I know. D 's parents were in town and they watched M & Z for us. It was a great getaway.

2002 - again I was pregnant with Skylar, she was due on Labor Day, didn't happen, 2 weeks late. Plus we had moved to TN that Feb and we were building our house living in this God forsaken rental property.

2003- D wrote me the most wonderful love letter. Telling me how good the past 10 years had been. I have it hanging in my closet. I still read it. I think that is the best gift he has ever gotten me in all our years, for any gift type occasion.....except maybe my Purple Martin bird house which he had gotten for me for my birthday. I really like it also.

2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 - I have no idea what happened on our anniversary.
2008 - Now...... this I remember quite clearly for a number of reasons.

D had a gall bladder attack like two nights before & drove himself to the ER cause he is stubborn as crap the next morning. He had scheduled his gall bladder removal for the 8th, the Friday after our anniversary...so he could recoup over the weekend and go to the beach the following week, if the doc would see fit he was healing okay.

We had also planned to go to Wild Wings for dinner with Brian & Danielle. They home school 4 & have the same anniversary date as us only year ahead. So D decides we should go anyway.....to Wild Wings.... the night before gall bladder surgery. He doesn't eat that much. However, all of us sign up for a "cruiser," this fancy boat parked outside. A local radio station is there and we are having a pretty good time. The DJ starts his spill about the cruiser and the giveaway and blah, blah, blah....... to make a long story short....10 people , 9 people left, 8 people left, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 people left in the drawing...D and some other dude.....1!!! D wins the "cruiser".......wooo hooo Happy Anniversary Baby!!!

uuuhhhhhhh no

He wins a "Bud Light Party Cruise" for two. Okay to me this = conflict of interests immediately (4 kids to get care for, Sunday School teacher, Awana director, no brainer, don't go), to D it = me and him on a free cruise with no children (forget the logistics, it'll work out, just because other people are drunk doesn't mean we have to be, not everybody will be young, we aren't 21 and we have tickets).

So we have, I don't know....... about 1 MILLION discussions about this retarded cruise.

He understands my conflict of interests argument & I understand his argument for the two of us to take a free cruise. Ultimately though, the Lord did impress upon his heart drunken young people would be about the boat and that wasn't our bag no matter how free the cruise was. So he listed the tickets on eBay. (Halla dang lu yah)

Gosh almighty, that was an event. Other folks had their tickets listed but D's tickets shot through the roof for some reason...maybe it was a reward from God for making the decision not to go.
Folks on eBay were sending emails saying we can't sell them, some saying they were this and that and blah, blah, blah. We tried to pull them off at the last minute but couldn't cause the 24 hour time limit eBay has and the dang things sold for about $2000 dollars. We rejoiced when the buyer of the tickets went on the cruise and all was well in the universe again.

We purchased new tires for the van with that anniversary gift. They were not a conflict of interest.

2009- so tonight we are going out with Brian and Danielle again for dinner. Although Danielle and I agreed we are NOT going to Wild Wings, I don't care how good their wings are....and they are GOOOOD.

D wanted me to put on my wedding dress this morning...straight dress, about a size uuuuhhh 8 or 10....not feelin that. I am sure first thing this morning I wanted to wring his chicken neck for even bringing that up.

I do love Derrick, he's super cool, smart, funny, and handsome everyday of the week. We have grown over the years and are surely not the same people we married back then. I am glad about that.

It's good that we have lived away from our parents all these years, we have learned to truly depend on one another. For as much as I love the confidence of a female friend.....D really knows me the best through and through......he is my soul mate in every way and we are one......

.........whether he likes it or not

Happy Anniversary D, see you when you get home.

XOXO

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