Catch Up

Tonight is our Vacation Bible School picnic. For the fifth or sixth year I have done VBS music. As my musicianship has improved so has the VBS music. Tonight we will be singing "Oh, How I Love Jesus" and "Softly and Tenderly" accompanied by the accordion (note the 3/4 time on those--perfect for the oooom-pah-pah), which most of the kids had never seen before, and "Alleluia to the Lamb" and "Big House" accompanied by the pink Daisy Rock electric guitar. Of course the acoustic would have been just fine, but the kids got really really jazzed about plugging in. After the picnic several other mom/helpers will go to Murphy's for our annual post-VBS beer. I love my church.

Paul bought a 23-pound turkey. The desire for a giant turkey must have just struck him while at the grocery store. I started defrosting it--it took forever--and realized I was running out of dinners at which to serve a giant turkey. Tonight is the picnic, tomorrow is Phoebe's birthday party and Sunday we'll be in Iowa. So, I got up early and put that bad boy in the oven. We had roast turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy for lunch today...June 6..for no good reason. It was great. While Paul was carving I drove to the gas station and bought big-gulpy giant Cokes to go with our giant turkey. Yum.

Phoebe's ninth birthday party is tomorrow. Six girls are coming over. We're roasting hotdogs over a fire in the back yard and having s'mores in lieue of cake. Did I put an extra "e" in lieue?

I'm missing a camp reunion right now. I'm trying to think about it. I could be in Monett chillin' at the Garretts' house and visiting the greatest man I've ever known, Heno Head, who is old and quite ill and requested we have a reunion so that he could see us all, his camp children, again. I just couldn't swing it. JVB even offered to meet me at the Iowa/Nebraska border and drive me down. :(

JVB lives astonishinly close to John & Hope, but almost everytime I go visit John and Hope JVB goes out of town. I think we'll get to see him this time on our way home, though. Hooray!

My parents brought us a Wii. There's loads of fake tennis and fake boxing etc going on around here. I'm sad to say, my initial Wii fitness age was 79. Say what?

My mother-in-law in Indiana called me at seven this morning. My mother in St. Louis called me at eight. Both had heard on the news, or heard from someone who heard on the news that Hastings was hit by tornados. Not true. Wednesday night the sirens went off at 1 am and we hauled the kids to the basement, but there was no rotation. Last Thursday there were loads of tornados throughout the state, but none in Hastings. Last night, there was nothing.

I'm taking a one-credit class by arrangement this summer. The chair of the English department, another English professor, my friend/co-worker J and I are reading George Eliot's Middlemarch. We get together on Wednesday nights at the chair's home and discuss. It's like my dream book group. I get college credit for this. Reading and talking and drinking ginger tea.

Speaking of ginger--vodka ginger lemonade--my new summer drink of choice. Mix one cup sugar, one cup water and 2 tsp ground ginger. Boil for a couple minutes until slightly syruppy. Let cool. Then pour syrup into a pitcher with 1/2 cup lemon juice, 1-1/4 cup vodka and a 750 ml bottle of sparkling water. Serve over ice. Say hello to summer.

Because of my nutty new life with a job and graduate school I didn't teach Sunday School at all this year until the past three weeks. Why is it so easy to forget how much I love something? What a ridiculous notion--to forget a thing like that. I love those kids. It was great to discuss spiritual matters and theology with teenagers and try and get them to really think and not just recite and try and break big ideas down into smaller pieces, not too small--not pat-answers--but manageable pieces. Good stuff.