Wish I Had a River

My weekend began at 6pm Friday evening when five 11 year old boys with sleeping bags and birthday card envelopes in their hands and expectant grins on their faces pushed into my front door and funneled into my basement where Luke was waiting, listening to his favorite homemade cd and anticipating a night of fun. If that was a bit of a run-on sentence, let it just be an analogy to my experience of that 15 hours.

This spoon is just an example of the physical toll six 11 year old boys ramped up on sugar and Coca cola can take on a home-owner's property.

Seems they had a rousing session of the card game "SPOONS." The spoon wasn't the only victim of the night. Besides myself, who slept on the couch so I could keep tabs on the rockin' basment, Zac fell backward at some point in the evening and hit the coffee table. I happened down soon after to find him standing there trying to shake off tears and rubbing the giant egg that had formed on the back of his head. So, he got iced, but he wasn't the one who went home with a headache. That was Ryan, he has dog allergies. But don't let me lead you to believe, by all these reports of pain and injuries that there wasn't fun all around because there was major fun.

Sometime during the evening Luke mentioned that he wanted abelskievers for breakfast and I mumbled, "Arg!" under my breath. I thought I could get away with the 3 for $7 cereal special I got from Target that day. Abelskievers are little round pancake/muffin type things
made in a heavy cast iron pan with holes...
(oh, just follow the link) and kids think they're tasty and fun, especially dipped in melted butter and syrup or cinnamon and sugar. The thing is they require buttermilk and I never have that and the pan only makes 6 at a time. There were six (well, 5 remaining) boys at the table so I made the entire batch while they were running around outside and kept them warm in the oven as I went along, so I didn't hear, "Can we have more?" 5,000 times in one half hour. Luke likes showing off our abelskievers and everyone loved them, as usual.

Saturday, Luke and I took our weekly trip into Philly for our art class.


As I signed him into the class a tall thin girl yanked on her mother's sleeve in front of me and whispered, as Luke walked past her to his seat, "Mom, he's a really good artist." I smiled. Then I went to my class where I heard something else pleasing to the ears. A new guy had ventured into our class and Weezy was explaining to him, a tattoo artist, how things work in the class. Then I heard her say that after we students finish the first stage of acquainting ourselves to the still life, we then put it on canvas, "Like, there's a girl over here," she began walking in my direction, "who I think is ready for canvas," and by George she was talking about me. So, in two weeks (I can't attend next week) I will be painting a base coat on a canvas! Utterly amazing. Then I went to pick up Luke from his class and we headed back across the bridge. He was so exhausted from the night, he fell fast asleep on the way home.

Then today at church something neat happened. I got curious about our Sunday school teacher's name and address and it turns out that we're related. My great grandfather was his father's second cousin. I thought that was great. I have never met a relative out of the blue like that and I really like this man, such a great teacher and fine fellow. Made my day.