Well. We're back. I say that with little to no celebration, since I'm currently in the middle of a pity-party for myself about living here. It will pass (in a couple of years), and I'll be fine, but for today, I'm kinda grumpy. Jacob must have been feeling this way last night because he was just such a Debbie Downer. Around 8pm, he was like "I'm sick of watching tv, let's do something." I went through everything I could think of--"We could go to Applebee's and get half price appetizers!" Jacob: "No." "We could put a movie on Netflix and watch that!" Jacob: "No." "I could put a Top Gear on and we could watch that!" Jacob: "No." "We could play Scrabble or some other game together on the iPad!" Jacob: "No." "We could hand wash all of our dishes, even the clean ones!" Jacob: "No." So as you can see, it wasn't really the funnest night for me. We ended up watching an episode of Top Gear, even though Jacob had initially turned that down, and I popped a couple bags of popcorn. The British humor combined with the buttery treat seemed to do the trick, as I saw him smile almost three times, so I guess that's good. We were both pretty exhausted from the day of traveling, and ended up going to bed at 10pm. It's totally fine if you're jealous of what sounds like the greatest Saturday night ever. Unfortunately, once we were in bed, Jacob's irritation returned, and as I was reading, he was complaining about the clock in our kitchen that he could hear ticking. I got up and took the battery out, only to have Jacob immediately complain about Andy's placement in our bed, because it was wrinkling the sheets. He was also frustrated because Andy was curled up against him, which was making him warm. I tried to adjust Andy so that we could straighten the sheets, but Andy decided he'd had enough of us, and got up out of the bed and left. I don't think anyone will be surprised to hear that Jacob immediately complained about how cold he was without Andy's body heat. I offered to turn the heat on, but he turned that down, I think just so he could continue to complain. A bit later, he got up to go to the bathroom, and when he came back, all he said was "Man, I'm really grumpy." I agreed, and he said "Sorry about that."
Yesterday, when we got back in town, I decided I wanted to see if Herbergers had any good sales still going. I didn't get to do any Black Friday shopping since no one would take me (HUNTER), so I was really needing to scratch the shopping itch I had. When I got to Herbergers, I realized that all their good deals were Friday only, which was a pretty big bummer, but I did stumble across a purse on clearance that I have had my eyes on for MONTHS.
Okay now that it's getting to be super cold, I am in desperate need of some good warm recipes. I made chicken pot pie last week, and it was pretty good, but I need more. More soups, more casseroles, anything that will be really warm and comforting. This week I'm making a few baked pastas and shepherds pie, but I really don't want to make the same things all winter, because I get tired of stuff so quickly. Suggestions???
Warning: if you don't want to read my tirade about a Pastor, then this paragraph probably isn't for you. For the rest of you, let me just tell you how annoyed I was today during church. Jacob and I both overslept this morning, so we couldn't go to the LCMS church, and would only be able to make it to the Bible church next door we go to most of the time. Here's the deal with this place; we love the music, and the congregation seems really friendly and passionate, but neither Jacob nor I are crazy about either of the pastors. You may recall several weeks ago, when the pastor made a comment about God creating the birds of the air, and then immediately making a hunting comment and me becoming enraged. Today the other pastor gave the sermon, and as soon as I saw in the bulletin that he was the one preaching, I was a bit nervous. This pastor tends to be a bit....verbose. Now, that probably seems ironic coming from me, but this guy rambles unbelievably. He will literally say the same thing 10 different times consecutively before moving on to his next point. WE GET IT GUY, YOU'RE NOT SAYING ANYTHING NEW. WRAP IT UP. He also has an extremely annoying habit of telling WAY too many personal stories during the sermon. Today he managed to incorporate about 12 stories about his daughters alone. The problem with his stories is that as soon as he starts a story, he realizes he's got to tell like 10 others in order for his point to make sense, so every story splinters into a ton more, and he gives you so much useless knowledge. For example, he rambled on like this for awhile: he gathered his family together on Friday evening to discuss how they would prepare for the Christmas holiday. Did you know the word holiday means Holy Day? Most of us don't treat them that way. So anyway, he has his family gathered and his youngest daughter, who's 3, is the most talkative in their family. Sometimes she just makes noises, because she's talking so fast. She knows words, but she just can't keep up with her words sometimes when she's so excited. And when you give her hot chocolate, it only gets worse! But somehow, when they were discussing how to celebrate the Christmas season, and how they were going to slow down, even she was able to sit still and listen. Now that's a Christmas miracle! That was only a portion of the story he was telling. Another obnoxious example of this is when he was telling some story, and he starts out by saying "Once, during a huge storm--I'm not one of those dads that goes by the rules. During storms, I bring my kids outside to watch. You can ask my wife, I'm always waking the kids up to bring them outside to see the storm. Except one time during that terrible storm...where was it? Anyway, the storm was so bad, and I told my wife 'get downstairs!' and she did, and I followed right behind her. Normally, I'd be outside watching, but not this time. And my oldest daughter, she was 4 at the time--actually, I remember before we had her. My wife was with child-she does all the work, I just help in naming them! I had bought a Bible for her. You know, you're supposed to be able to tell the reading level based on the version of the Bible you buy. I bought her New American Standard. I guess I expected her to be reading at a young age! That's actually about an 11th grade reading level. She's not quite there yet. No, really, she's a great reader now. Loves to read. She reads her Bible all the time. So during this storm, we're downstairs, and she asks me if anyone lives in the town effected by the storm, and I said yes, so she asked to pray for those people. Isn't that great? Boy, does that humble you when you realize how good a job you're doing guiding and growing these children when a 4 year old thinks to pray for someone else in a time like that." I mean, really. How much of that information did we need to know to hear that at 4, your daughter thought to pray for someone else? And, to be honest, I have no idea how it even applied to the sermon. Another favorite trick of his is to spend 75% of the sermon, regardless of the topic, discussing how important it is for HIM PERSONALLY to be a good spiritual leader to his family. He goes on and on about how he's a good example, and how his girls see that they need to look to the Bible for answers because that's what he does, and that, even though he's a workaholic, he can't bother to be away from his family. Underneath all the bragging, he has a good point about how important it is for fathers to be spiritual leaders of a household and how families should be in the Word together. I agree with all that, but it's the way he says it, like we should all be clapping through the sermon and giving him an "Amen" at the end of every sentence for how amazing he is as a father. And to top it all off, after 20 STRAIGHT MINUTES of saying how awesome he is as a father and how good he is to his daughters, he said "I truly believe humility is one of the most important things." I feel bad, but I actually laughed out loud. I tried to cover it up with a cough, but I think the people around me knew. To be honest, he lost me about 10 minutes into the sermon when he started bragging about how much time he spends with his daughters, because that's so important. He even brought them out hunting with him because he couldn't bear to be away from them. Then he spent about five minutes talking about how deer season was one of his favorite times of the year, but it's hard because he wants to be with his family, so he wishes the state of North Dakota would extend the season so he could get out there some more. I'm tempted to paint my face and hide in the bushes outside the church playground and shoot his precious daughters with tranquilizers. If he gets offended, I'll just tell him I like the challenge of it! Clearly this guy is not my favorite, and since he pissed me off with the hunting comment, I sat stewing the rest of the sermon, growing more irritated with every story he told that was of no spiritual significance. Unfortunately for me, the sermon lasted over an hour...
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