‘Twas the Week After Christmas

Christmas has come and gone – in the literal sense anyway.  I pray you’ve had a wonderful season of Jesus and family and church and friends.  I know we have.  We are flat out blessed and grateful for all the ways that Jesus has reminded us that He is present with us in the dailyness of all we face here on planet Earth.  Hard stuff.  Happy stuff.  He is here, alongside.  What a gift.

There is so much I can tell you about the holidays but I’ll just start with the most recent event.  The day after Christmas (yay for snow on Christmas Day!) we loaded up and took the kids to The Wilderness Resort in Sevierville, TN.  Oh my.  LOVED IT.  You’ll have to visit the link to see all the offerings but the highlight for the kids was obviously the indoor water park. 

Now, I don’t think I have to tell y’all that the thoughts of putting on a swimsuit in the dead of winter after two months of holiday feasting was not something I looked forward to whatsoever.  Everybody knows that tan flab is cuter than white flab and my complexion as of late can only be best described as pasty.  I finally broke down and played with the kids one day with t-shirt and shorts over my swimsuit.  It was so fun but the time I chose to play happened to be when the Connect Youth Conference that was held in the adjacent event center was out on break.  So, imagine 4297 teenagers in teeny bikinis and mamaw in shorts and t-shirt and you can begin to see how I may have gotten a weird look or two.  Oh well, the wonderful thing about being 39 is laughing maniacally to yourself with the knowledge they will one day be you.

We also had a near miss during the trip.  Most near misses are happy but not this one.  Back in October I had the privilege of being a radio guest of two awesome dudes who have this groovy show called Grounded.  One of the hosts is Toben Heim, hubby of the fabulous Joanne (The Simple Wife!) who has been my blog and IRL buddy for a few years now.  The other dude is Ryan Dobson.  You may have heard of his dad.  He writes books about parenting and stuff. ( Books I have obviously never read}.  Of all the interviews I did with the Cute Shoes book, this one stands out as one of my all time favorite.  They have amazing chemistry with one another and made me feel like I’d known them forever.  Y’all seriously need to check out their show.  

All that to say, Ryan was a speaker at the conference.  He and Toben flew down together and we tried to find a time to say hello to one another but they got in late one evening and we left out early the next day so it just didn’t work out.  Even though we didn’t attend, it was so fun walking through the hotel and seeing all the youth pastors and their wives wrangling their groups.  I wanted to hug all those darlin’ women so much and realized they would think I was a freak.  I walked by one youth pastor in the hallway who was telling his kids, “I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t leave this room tonight.  I don’t want any old fogies whining to me that you made too much noise.”  I laughed all the way down stairs to stand in an hour line to get my Caramel Apple Spice it the STARBUCKS COUNTER.  Could this place be any better? 

Also on my way down I chatted with a group of girls on the elevator.  I asked if they were attending the conference and when they said yes, I asked if TobyMac had played yet.  They squealed, “YES!  And sheeee (pointing to a girl among them) GRABBED HIS FACE! ”  (more squeals) So I’m going to go out on a limb here to say Toby is glad to have his face back from the overzealous pre-teens.  But seriously.  They were adorable and it was all I could do not to squeeze their darlin’ cheeks right back.

So we’ve made it back home.  The road trip was uneventful unless you want to count my beating Elijah in an Angry Birds smackdown as an event.  As  much as we enjoyed the time away, there really is nothing like your own bed.  Speaking of it, I’m getting in it now. 

How did you spend your week after Christmas?