Excerpts from a recent Friday at our house, illustrating life with four boys:
“Ok, Daddy, come on and let me spank you. Bend over.”
“My word! River, no! You don’t throw cereal on the floor!” (A few seconds later) “Tris! Don’t stomp on that cereal!”
“Mom, on my birthday can it be movie day and computer day?”
“Riv went poopoo in the potty chair? Can I see?”
“You two sit down in the middle of the floor, hold hands, and look at each other. Don’t get up ’til I tell you to.”
We had a good, busy day yesterday. We had a small party for Morgon’s belated birthday, and had our neighbors, Jerry and Erika’s family, and Rick and Katie’s family come over to go trick-or-treating in our neighborhood with us and hang out afterward.
I had to run to the grocery store for some lettuce for supper, and was asked by a cheerful homeless lady on my way out if she could wash my van windows for some change for something to eat. I was in a hurry, so I gave her a dollar and went on.
It’s all River’s fault.
We’ve been in the early stages of potty-training with him, and lately have been trying to catch him before he goes in his diaper, which explains why this morning I was careening through the house to fetch the potty chair before it was too late.
Somehow my little toe intercepted the corner of the wall on my way by.
The wall didn’t budge.
At first I thought that it was just the injured toenail causing the pain, but as I grabbed it (yelling), I felt the bones grinding together.
I met another of our neighbors yesterday, but in the most unusual way yet.
I had walked with Morgon a couple blocks to Jerry and Erika’s house drop him off so he could play basketball with Malachi. Erika gave me a plate of ours to take home, and I started back.
As I rounded the corner to our street, I saw a dog walking and sniffing around on my side of the road. She looked to be a pit bull mix, not too big, but I didn’t see an owner anywhere. I crossed to the other side of the road and kept going.
Photo by Eduardo Amorim
The first part of this story happened back in August of 1998, when we (the people of Rose Creek Village) were living in Bethel Springs, Tennessee, in what we affectionately called "Mash 'em Inn," a farmhouse that we had built a massive addition onto to create a 14-bedroom, 7-bath dwelling which housed about 85 of us. Fun times! (No, really!)
Anyway, living this kind of life really brings out the creativity in people. We have an annual festival we call the Ingathering, which we do around the end of September/beginning of October. We usually have new dances and music that we create to honor our Lord and encourage the Body. That year, we were going to do a series of four dances that were themed around the four horses spoken of in Revelation. So, of course, it only made sense to plan on there actually being horses involved in these dances.
I was approached about whether I'd want to be the rider of the "red" horse, to which I agreed. Now, this wasn't smart on my part (or anybody else's), as I had little-to-no experience with horses up to this point, and the reason I was asked to participate was because my best friend, Stephen, who had been working on this part, had been thrown by the horse into a barb wire fence...