Confirmation

I feel very lucky to belong to the church that I have belonged to for more than 15 years. The congregation is a family, not just a group of people that hang out together for an hour or so every week. I especially feel lucky to have them as extended family because it takes a village to raise kids and they have helped me raise my two.

Today, B and 3 other teens became confirmed; as in they became members of the church. They had to go through a journey together to become confirmed. They went on a retreat together and each had an adult mentor to guide them on their path. They each had to write and read a faith statement out loud to the church congregation.

The poise, confidence and whit these 4 young people displayed today brought tears to my eyes. I am not sure at 14/15 if I could have spoken to my church. Then again, church was different back then (way back then). We had a congregation and we were friends with lots of people, but other than being in the children's choir, I do not remember being apart of services. In our church now, we have inter-generational services once a month which I love. It's great to see all ages contributing to one service. I also love watching the children grow up. Yes, it makes me feel old, but if is very cool to see the kids I knew as babies, as young adults.

So, a big thank you to Joe and Amy for today. Thank-you for your unfaltering work. Thank-you for making our church as important as our home. Thank-you for giving B a firm foundation in faith.

Merry Christmas My Friends

My gift to you for Christmas:

Silent Night (Yes, B is one of the singers:)




Hope you all have a wonderful day!

An Oldie, but Goodie

Since no one knew who I was in blog world back in February and I wrote the most fantastic post about communion Sunday and we had communion Sunday again today and similar things were said by B; I thought I would write this run on sentence and offer this post up to you again.

Read it here.

Church Pictures

Today was the day that the girls and I went to have our pictures taken for the directory at church. DH isn't a big fan of church, so we go and he doesn't, thus the 3 of us in the picture. 5 years ago when this was done, B was crying and the picture was crazy. They offer you an 8x10 of the picture you pick for the directory for free, then they take "extra" pictures to try to get you to buy.
I picked the girls up from school and took them straight to church. When I made the appointment time, I thought this time would be a lot better than 7 at night or so. Here is the exchange...

We go into the bathroom, B heads for the mirror and starts making her hair go straight down by the sides of her face.
"I look hot with my hair like this." My mom's voice flew into my head, "Push your hair back so I can see your beautiful face." (She said this to me 1000 times at least when I was younger.) So I wet my hands (with spit) in the sink to unstatic-cling it. I went with the hair by her face, whatever, I thought.
I (spit on my hands again) wet my hands and turned toward Kelsie to try to control the curls. A little water puts the random curls in their place. She threw a fit like I was coming after her hair with syrup.She hissed, "My hair looks FINE!" Ok, I thought, pick your battles.

We get called into the "studio", where the very nice lady is trying to crack jokes. Nothing is going to crack the steely gaze of K. The lady sets us up, my kids are trained that when a camera is in your face you smile, everything is fine...Then the lady says, "Honey, let me fix your hair" to K. K is a great kid, but she can be very stubborn at times. She GLARES at the nice lady (who ran away, just kidding) and I sweetly tell the lady, "It is what it is, don't go there with her". As a photographer, I felt her pain. She looked very uncomfortable knowing that in these pictures one curl was out of control.

Make it through the pictures and head to the "portrait" room. The (stressed out) guy starts with pulling up all of our pictures and narrows it down to the best of the bunch. (Not an easy task.) Then he tries to sell us a $635 package!
I almost
gagged,
laughed at him,
ran out of the room screaming.
These were not the pictures I wanted to spend that much on. Throw us outside and take some pictures (with DH) and then we'll talk.

I took the girls outside after the picture debacle and had them climb a beautiful pink tree and shot this....
Much better than the inside ones.

Later in the evening, I was back there for a Christian Ed meeting. We were talking about the pictures. One lady said that the guy tried to sell her her portrait on canvas in a frame, "for her children when she passed on". Nothing makes you feel better than making you think about your demise. Another woman said, she looked horrible, her husband looked horrible, but her 16 year old daughter looked great. Then our minister walked in and we asked him how his pictures were and he announced that he looked like a "goat" in them. He definitely has a good sense of humor. At least we won't have to go through this again for another 5 years!

Superbowl Sunday

It is Superbowl Sunday, but it also communion Sunday at our church. This happens the first Sunday of every month. DH and K went horseback riding and B and I went to church. She comes into my room completely decked out and informs me that I need to look good for church today. Not normal good, but extra fancy. I wonder why and she says because she is and that's that. OK, so I put on nylons which I haven't had on since a Christmas party mid December. That's always fun. I throw on a dress instead of my usual black pants and she approves of the outfit. Phew!

She calls communion "snack time". We go through 1/2 the service, she goes to Sunday school and comes back for "snack time". You have never seen a kid so happy for a teeny piece of white bread and grape juice. She watches the minister break the big loaf of bread and whispers to me that she wishes she could have a chunk of that. Then she says"Oh no...it's pumpernickel" like it's poison. I say, "No I think it is wheat". So the congregation does not get that bread anyway, they get the cut Wonder white bread in neat little (teeny tiny) squares. In our congregation, the bread gets passed out, then we eat it all together, then the juice and we drink that all together. So here is our conversation while we are suppose to be praying or thinking about Jesus.

me "Remember, just one piece not a handful."
B "I think I know, I've done this a thousand times." (She has done this no more than 10 times)
B "My bread is stale."
me "Mine too."
B " But I want to roll mine in a little ball. K says that the bread is always stale that's why she doesn't like communion."
me trying to pay attention
B "I just had a little taste." "Look that kid up there got a chunk of the wheat! No fair!" (That kid up there is the alter boy).
me, starting to get the giggles..... we get to eat our bread.
me, giggling, "Mine is stuck in my teeth."
B "Mine is stuck in my apparatus." Now we are both giggling.
They start to serve the juice. B is practically levitating she is so excited. If K were there she would get 2 juices because K doesn't like grape juice. We take our little cup of juice.
B "Hey, these are new glasses because they are not glass, they are plastic." Then she starts sniffing her juice and saying "mmmmmmm". I have to take her glass out of her hands because I am sure she is going to spill it.
We all get to drink. B licks the glass clean. I am shaking and trying not to laugh at this point. She is fully laughing. The minister gets a large mug (sorry I don't know the official name of it) for his sip.
B " I hope David enjoys his big hunk of bread and his beer!"
At this point I am looking away from her trying not to burst out laughing. Tears are rolling down my face.
I think with her having the flu and being home all last week, she has either forgotten how to act in society or we have been spending way too much time together!
Now we are ready for stage 2 of the day.... the Pats game. We are all comfy in our Pats gear and have enough snacks to feed the team! Maybe I should have gotten extra Wonder bread and grape juice?