Blessed Ephiphany

Today is the Day of Epiphany. According to the dictionary, this means "a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience." Wow, that's confusing.

For the Christian world, it is a commemoration of the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the Magi; Twelve days after His birth, though most probably was closer to two years after his birth. But if we celebrated it that way, Wal-Mart would only get one "holiday season" every three years. That certainly wouldn't do.

I stress this point because I am disappointed to see that we are the only house in a 5 block radius that still has a Christmas light on the outside of the house, or the light of the Christmas tree still shining. A day of light in total darkness on our street. Now, just to be clear, we have really great neighbors and I mean no offense. It's just another example of how the modern world has taken over the Christian Holy Day and the 12 days following.

Ok, climbing off my soapbox now.

I am pleased to announce that after nearly a month of illness, this house is finally healthy and happy. A few stray coughs here and there, but otherwise, fine. After Tuesday's recovering of New Year's Eve and the margaritas that went along with it, Eden and I picked up the house. (She skipped on the margaritas and had cherry koolaid). With the excitement of the upcoming Maytag repair man scheduled for Thursday, we sorted laundry, greatly anticipating that day.

Also on Wednesday, Al started up the '78 to help a fellow pastor move a shed to Bayard. He had to jump start it every time he shut if off, but got the job done, anyway. I had a fire meeting that evening, the 1st one without our old rescue captain, whom we all miss dearly. It went well. The state is requiring us to go ‘paperless’ as of January 1, which, naturally, requires three other pieces of paper to be generated to have a paper trail for the all computer ‘paperless’ system. I know, makes a lot of sense. After three calls this week, it’s going surprisingly well. Nobody has killed their coworker yet because of this.

Thursday came and went with no Maytag man. The parts never came in, so now we're waiting until later this week. We hope. We really hope.

Friday was cleaning day in this house. We were hosting the circuit social and had only until 5:30 to make it look good in here. The early sunset helped mask the dust layers, and it looked great by the time people started arriving. We served a meal of spaghetti and meatballs and everybody seemed to enjoy the fellowship. The peanut brittle helped.

Saturday, I took the kids to a sitter so I could get some work done at the fire hall. After a half an hour, Laura called saying that Lars was still hungry after a bottle, so I rushed back to their house, about 2 miles out of town. He was so mad by the time I got there, nothing would calm him. After a while, we just got in the car and went back home. That evening, I had her two girls while they went out and we watched Eden's favorite movie, Cars, while eating rainbow sherbet and popcorn.

Today, the kids and I hung out at the house while Al went to an installation service in Bayard. As you can see by the photo below, Eden served herself some corn flakes for dinner, as they hadn’t been put away from lunch. What I should have taken a picture of was the FLOOR, but her face is much too cute. Later, she begged to watch Cars again, and I finally relented minutes before her daddy came home. Once he got here, the movie really didn't matter anymore. She's now asleep, Lars has posed for some pictures, and now that he's in bed, Al and I are probably going to fall asleep here on the couch watching reruns of M*A*S*H.

This week promises to be full of adventure...and hopefully the Maytag man! Hmmm…adventures with the Maytag Man. Sounds like a movie or something….