The Beauty and the Beast

Tonight is a glorious night! Tonight is "Date Night" for us and 4 additional couples. Here's how it works and I highly recommend it to those of you out there with kids who can never seem to get a date with your spouse:

Once a month we do this. It's always the same time of the month so you can plan on it! We have a schedule already typed up for the remainder of the year so it's serious and not altered unless several of the couples agree to the change! Tonight we will have 3 couples who get the benefit at 6:30 of dropping their children at the house. They are then free for 3 hours until 9:30 when they must (that's mandatory and not optional - HA) return to pick up their children. They can go out to dinner, catch a movie, go shopping, whatever. There are then 2 couples who stay at the house and are in charge of watching the kids. Thus the "beast" reference !! :) If you are thinking that sounds too much, know that we have about 11-12 kids in this "beastly" group ranging from 6 month olds to 5 year olds - gasp!! But we can do anything for 3 hours - especially knowing that 911 is a call away!!!

Tonight - it's a beauty because we are part of the date group. We hope to see a movie while grabbing a quick fast food bite on the way. Usually if there's not a good movie out, my wife and I love a leisure meal at Macaroni Grill, On The Border or some other sit down restaurant. We don't do that with our kids much so it's nice knowing there's not any McDonaldland playground equipment within eyesight.

So here's my plug to all you parents out there. Get connected with some other couples and figure out your rotation. It took us several versions of the spreadsheet to get it right but we finally did so that no one couple has to "babysit" more than 2 months in a row. That means there are lots of built-in dates for us over the next several months. And that's beautiful, Belle!!

God bless you all,

SJ

Thank God for the Jesus Bridge!

I'm in a weekly Bible study and we currently going through Leviticus. Today's study of chapters 6 and 7 brought us to the conclusion that we are thankful that we have Jesus instead of having to follow the incredibly tedious law involving sacrifices. Read Lev 6-7 for more details.

It was clear that in order to reach the holiness of God, you had to do these sacrifices exactly as was prescribed. However, it's clear that it was probably impossible to do it "just right" thus stressing the point of how holy God truly is. The men in the group were discussing how you can read Lev 6-7 and through all of these tedious instructions, we all had the same thought: Thank God for Jesus!!

As I was reading the passage, I was brought back to my thoughts on bridges. Just recently I watched a golf competition on ABC called Battle at the Bridges. There were several remarkable images of the players hitting off the tee and then walking across these beautiful bridges to get down to the green. If it had not been for these bridges, the players would have had to walk across some treacherous and seemingly impossible terrain.

I went Prince Edward Island (off the coast of Nova Scotia) a few years back. To get to the island, a bridge was constructed that is one of the longest in the world! It's called the Confederation Bridge. Before the bridge was built, people had to take the ferry across which was much more difficult.

So, the next time you are walking or driving across a bridge, let it remind of you of Jesus Christ and how he is our bridge to our Holy God!! Thank you God for the Jesus bridge!!

(you may now pass your attendance cards to the end of the aisle as we stand and as we sing)

God bless you all,

SJ

Potty Humor

Ok, before you run away thinking this is some barely PG-13 teen movie plug, let me explain:

Kendra and I are in the battle of our lives! Yes, it's potty-training time!! For those with little ones I hope you can bring me hope and advice. We've read the books, searched the internet, talked and prayed with friends and each other. Yet, we're a little frustrated. Although we are in the spirit of the political season and "negative attacks" seem to be the norm, I don't want to spend this blog talking negatively about our son. So let me attack... the toilet!

I may invoke my "Wonder Boy" persona now to ask some serious questions. Please allow me a minute to enter the bathroom to change into my spandex, please!

Ok, it's Wonder Boy here and I'm on a mission to help Donny and Kendra. I've come up with some good questions already:

• Is potty training that hard because the toilet is not "inviting" enough? Maybe a toilet for kids should be more colorful and make funny noises instead of "inviting" funny noises by the kids!
• Whoever called this the "porcelin throne" must have been sick! Porcelin sounds too fancy and throne represents royalty. When you conjure up thoughts about a toilet, are you thinking "fancy royalty". I think not!
• How can a child "make messes" in his pants and not be the least concerned about it while playing his computer game? For Wonder Boy, the thought of just having to go makes me squirm uncomfortably in a meeting.
• Is the diaper an evil thing? Has the diaper put our children in mode of thinking that they can just go whenever they want!! Oh, the madness!!! Why aren't we potty-training our infants? Could it be a Pampers/Luvs/Huggies Conspiracy?

Ok, I must go now. Other questions to wonder about somewhere else... Donny back to you!!

Hey, thanks Wonder Boy! The world is not the same without you. As I close, I want to let you know that 2 ironic things happened recently that made me chuckle. On the day of my son's three (yes, count 'em three) "#2 accidents" within a 4 hour period, what was I doing on the same day? I was fixing our toilet. I thought it was fitting that I was surrounded by this all day long.

Lastly, I almost embarrassed myself yesterday. A co-worker was meeting with me at 3:00. Before the meeting, she said, "I'm going to run to the restroom real quick before we meet". I had to catch myself before I blurted out "Well, you just Run to the Potty! Hurry, Hurry!!" It was on the tip of my tongue and I'm so thankful that I had better judgment than to say that to her. Now if I can just get my son to do it!!!

God bless you all,

SJ