One, Big Happy Family-the Power of Prayer

See this happy family? See that cool girl in red, wearing her big brother’s jacket because she was freezing to death but insisted on wearing that red dress no matter what? The girl with the immovable, poofy bangs protruding from her forehead? Yep, that’s me.

(Usually we were a much happier group. I think the cold froze our smiles off. Or it’s more likely we just sat through one of the most boring sermons at my Grandma’s church and were starving, tired and cold.)

Anywho-when I was about this age, while I sat in youth group one Wednesday night, sporting my sweet Guess jeans and a bright pink Guess T-shirt, my youth pastor told all of us to begin praying for our future spouses NOW.

And so, being the rule follower that I was, I did. I started off asking God for a hot guy. Then, I added to that a Godly guy. Before long, my list had grown to 42 things that I wanted in my man.

And ladies, this was what I was praying for all those years, unbeknownst to me. (If you ever had any doubt about the power of prayer-this is some smoking hot evidence that prayer really works.)

Here are a few things from the Spousal Prayer list of an 11 year old:

1. Brown hair, blue eyes and good-looking
2. Can skateboard (what?!)
3. Looks good at the beach
4. Likes to exercise
5. Hot body
6. Has ridden a bull
7. Encourages me to be me
8. Loves God, loves his family, loves my family and his family loves me
9. Wants kids
10. Likes cats
11. Is a musician, can play an instrument, likes to sing
12. Is a virgin
13. Raised in a Godly home

(It seems the “body portion” was very important to me at that age. Oh wait, it’s still important now.)

There were 42 things total and this man fulfilled my list-and then some. God is so good to a weird little girl and her 11 year-old dreams.

But, let’s take a look at #8 and #13 in particular.

At one point in my life, I dealt with a boyfriend whose family didn’t like me. It was awkward and awful. However, when I met Biceps’ family, they were easy to be around and instantly gave me a nickname-“peel-eater” (for eating the peels on my sweet potatoes-genius, I know).

The “mother-in-law syndrome”-that I thought was inevitable in a marriage-was nowhere to be found between us.

This beautiful woman (on the left) raised her children with God’s wisdom, honors her husband and honors the Lord with her life. Without her knowing it, she answered my prayers-particulary #8 and #13. And I love her for that-and for so much more.

Today is her birthday and I wish I could be there to celebrate with her. Instead, I will say a prayer of thanks that I married into such a wonderful family. And another prayer of thanks for the hot man God blessed me with.

Happy Birthday, Connie. You are an amazing woman of God. And by the way, great job at pro-creating. You made a good one-a real good one (see #1, 3, 4, 5).

Small Town Parade

I grew up in a small town in Kansas. A traffic jam might occur after our hometown football team–the Kansas State Wildcats–would win against Nebraska-causing the agricultural students to pull out their tractors and zoom 5 m.p.h. down our main drag.

 

Graphic courtesy of: albumelossless.wordpress.com
The only signs I witnessed of the “big-town” mentality was a coffee shop (that flopped) and the outrage over Metallica coming to play at our stadium-only to be greeted by a bunch of picketing conservatives.

 

Now that I live in the booming metropolis of Tulsa (which is really still considered a mid-sized town), I miss my hometown roots. I miss knowing the old men hanging out at the donut shop, the guy bagging our groceries and the names of everyone in my church.
I miss the small town parades full of “Sunflower Queens”, insurance company-sponsored floats, tractors, horse poop and candy.
So, I was elated when Biceps’ fire department participated in their district’s hometown parade just outside of Tulsa.

 

I grabbed my cute mother-in-law, made some coffee and headed out in hopes of witnessing combines (pronounced kom-bines) going down the road, noisy high school bands and scary clowns.

 

It became immediately clear that I would not be disappointed.

 

Of course, the Shriner’s were there. It’s not a real small town parade without them.

 

I don’t understand what exactly the “Shriner’s” are or even what they do-but I like seeing their very weird cars and eating the candy they throw at me.

 

The horses are typically put at the end of a parade-due to what comes out of their back end. However, these furry dudes were smack dab in the center of the parade.

 

Right before the fire department made their grand entrance. The boys had to dodge heaps of you-know-what.

 

This guy here is a good friend and belongs to the same fire department as Biceps.
He’s one of the sweetest men you’ll ever meet and lucky for him-he’s married to one of the sweetest ladies I’ve ever met in a long time. And yes, this is his really cute Dalmatian.
Too perfect.
The fire department was one of the highlights of the parade-at least for me and my mother-in-law.

 

We were so proud of this guy that’s throwing candy. At me and his mother.
He is so naughty. But you already knew that.

 

Boy, does he think he’s funny.
With my need for the small town parade satisfied, mother-in-law and I loaded up our candy booty and headed off to pick up the naughty boy, while dodging the horse poop left on the street.
Ah, I love the small town parade. It will tide me over until I can go “home” sometime soon.

Mothers and Angry Birds

Following our Thanksgiving visit, my Mother-in-Law camped out in our van in her driveway in Minneapolis. She refused to leave the van as we said our good-bye’s. She had even packed a bag-several bags in fact, and she had her pillow, house shoes, bags of presents, bags of food and her new phone. We told her that we commended her on her preparedness, and understood it was hard to say good-bye to us-since we are so dang fun. But we reminded her that all good things must come to and end.
She said she wasn’t going anywhere and she sure as heck wasn’t about to say good-bye.
She was coming with us.

So, I did what any good daughter-in-law would do. I challenged her to a game of Sequence. Of course, I lost. I think she had the game rigged somehow.

 

She had some sort of motivation for coming with us. Apparently, there was a new baby about to be born in our family. But then, you probably already heard about that.
Off we drove into the sunset, eating dried apricots, playing Angry Birds (as shown here), speaking of things yet to come, enjoying the road…

 

…until this happened. We were 45 minutes from home when a real life Angry Bird went all kamikaze on our windshield. What did Mr. Bird have against our van?
Was it the fact that my mother-in-law so carelessly tossed around his friends during her enjoyment of said game?
Or was it mere coincidence?
Or is it some sort of Angry Bird conspiracy to redefine just how hard a bird can shatter glass since all that I consider them to be are cute and fluffy creatures?
Or was it everything combined?

My mother-in-law said that I was crazy and went back to her game.