Life is good!

We had a great weekend of family and couple time! Jay and I have not been doing a very good job of making time for just us, so this couples retreat could not have come at a better time. Date nights have fallen by the wayside in the past few months!! We only got to go to the retreat on Friday night, but it was still so great to just be around adults talking about strengthening our marriages for a couple hours. The drive to and from Pettijohn gave us some good talk time, too. My favorite thought from the night was that Ephesians 5:33 can provide us with a good guide for our feelings toward each other: "...each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband." If the husband doesn't love his wife as himself, the wife has a difficult time respecting him, and if wives don't respect their husbands, men can't love them as they should. I feel like for me anyway, the love part is intuitive, but the respect takes a little more work. So it's important to remember that a husband really needs to have respect from his wife to be able to love us the way we want to be loved.

Mom, Grant, Amanda, and Tyler kept Claire for us Friday night, and we went ahead and let her spend the night with them, since we were going out for the Coleman Centennial Saturday morning. That was only her second night without both of us in her life, and her first night at Mom's house without us! So needless to say, Claire stayed up verrry late and ate lots of sweets! We arrived Saturday morning before nine to find her sitting on the Highway 48 Church of Christ parade float with a Tootsie Pop in her mouth! The parade had a total of three floats, a handful of antique tractors, ten or so kids riding decorated bikes, a bunch of local fire trucks, a dozen or so horseback riders, and a swooping helicopter! The Community Center was all decked out with Coleman history displays, yearbook photos, and a slide show, so that was pretty cool. Between my mom's and dad's families, and people at mom's church, it seemed like we knew people in almost every graduating class! Mom's grandpa was in the second-ever graduating class from Coleman, and his sister I believe, was in the first. Mom's grandmom had the coolest graduating picture, a full-body group shot of her and three other girls wearing these super-cute flapper dresses with pearls, patent shoes, and wavy hair.

It was great to see so much of our family and schoolmates, even though it was SO much colder than I thought it was going to be! I don't mind cold weather if I'm dressed appropriately, and I definitely felt in need of another layer! It makes it even worse when I know Claire isn't dressed any warmer than me! We ended up eating an early lunch at the community center and then going back to Mom's house for an early nap. Jay pulled on a hat and another layer and then took our car to go fishing with his cousin while I stayed to hang out with the fam and watch the OU game. Go Sooners! It's kinda sad when we have to be so excited about a win over Baylor, but it was good for the old Sooner morale to see Sammy B back and in fine form.

We've spent today just being lazy. I was a "feeder" at church this morning--four women share the fellowship meal after church every Sunday, and I was in charge of veggies and salad this week. So after making corn casserole, cooking frozen green beans, and putting together broccoli slaw and a tossed salad, and then helping serve, clean up the church kitchen, and then coming home to clean up my kitchen, I was pretty tired! So of course, I didn't start getting stuff ready for school tomorrow until 10:30 tonight!

Here's to a week of love and respect!!