The Surprise...

...was great! I had arranged to have my mother stay overnight with the boys so that I could steal Jeff away for the night. I showed up at the barbershop at 5:30 PM, informed him that I was kidnapping him, and that he must follow me. He was a bit surprised, to say the least. :) From the shop, we first went to By the Side of the Road, a beautiful Bed & Breakfast, to check in...then out to dinner at Wood Grill Buffet...then back to the B&B where we watched the movie Cinderella Man (a really great movie, by the way) in our suite. Staying at a B&B is something we have occasionally indulged in throughout our married life; it's probably our favorite extra-special date. However, we are at the stage of life where it just doesn't happen very often! The last time we got to slip away to a B&B was a year and a half ago, to celebrate our 10th anniversary.

Nothing ever seems to go quite like I plan it though, and last night's surprise was no exception to that rule. I won't mention everything that went wrong, but here are three examples.

1. I was not remembering AT ALL that Jeff had a 6:00 AM meeting this morning to plan our church's worship service for Sunday; when planning this whole event, that thought never even entered my head once...needless to say, Jeff didn't remember either, until around 9:15 when we were eating a delicious breakfast at the B&B...oops, missed that one!

2. With the boys' recent sickness, we weren't sure how they would do so we prayed specifically that they would stay healthy during our time away and not cause extra challenges for my parents to deal with. We should have prayed for my mom's health since she was the one who started feeling sick in the middle of the night! :(

3. I had some bleeding last night. This morning I called SWHC and got an appointment for an ultrasound this afternoon, so we'll be able to find out what's going on. You can imagine how my thoughts raced in the middle of the night to every imaginable possible scenario. It took me a while to fall asleep. The good news: we get to have an ultrasound, and if all is well, it will be wonderful to have a peek at our tiny one! The bad news: well, there was blood. Nuff said.

Anyway, let me end with some happier thoughts. Both Josiah and David were eager to help with tree-decorating this year so the bottom half of the tree got richly-ornamented. There was LOTS of ornament clumping, which is the name of the game when it comes to kids' decorating style, I suppose (and Josiah exemplified it well last year). When we first pulled out the ornaments this year, David kept calling them "convertiments," and I laughed every time he said it. :)