Happy Birthday To Me!

Wow! I had a really great birthday yesterday. Despite the fact that really good friends are leaving the church to find rest, I did get to spend practically the whole day with them, which was really good. The whole church even sang happy birthday to me during worship (they weren't worshipping me; they were interrupting worship). I normally can't stand being the center of attention during the happy birthday song, because I can generally feel myself becoming more and more warm (red) in the face. This time I decided to enjoy it because I realized I would have been disappointed if no one had said anything. It was over pretty fast, and I really felt loved by everyone there. That's a really good feeling to have on your birthday.

Next we went to the pastor's house for a quick pot luck. It turned out to be a nice time to sit and talk with people. We really need to do more things like that as a church. I think if we would do more social things with people outside of church, we would feel more connected with each other. I know the last thing people need is more on their calendar, but I really think this is an important thing to add. For everyone.

After the pot luck, everyone headed over to the airplane hangar in Caddo Mills to watch 7 people skydive. It was 4 1/2 hours of sitting in the heat. It should have been the last thing anyone would want to do on her birthday. I really enjoyed it. I think it's because I had the opportunity to just sit and visit with people. It was hard at first because the kids were very hot, and we brought nothing. No water, food, blankets, chairs, NOTHING! We weren't very prepared. There was a little girl whose family must run the place because she did her fair share of running the place too. She hooked me up with some water for the kids, and we found some chairs. We were in the hangar, which is sort of like a giant garage with the door open. Luckily we were in the shade in there. We only really had to go into the sun when we wanted to watch the people land. It was pretty amazing. I've never seen anything like that. I still would NEVER want to do it. No Siree Bob!

I think sometimes it's good for the kids to be so incredibly bored that they have to make their own fun. They don't often have those opportunities that provide such creativity with the tv, video games, etc. Savanna found a dice and was rolling it then moving her water bottle cap however many jumps the dice said. It was cute. Then she found a small piece of plastic (like part of a straw wrapper, but plastic) and would let it fly then stomp on it to stop it from getting away from her. This was making her laugh out loud, which was quite amusing for me.

I imagine it was quite overwhelming for the skydive people to have that many people descend on their little place just to watch and hang out. There were 48 people watching the 7 people skydiving. Too bad we didn't know we could have just brought a picnic out there. Next time we will definitely plan better. Some people are talking about a "next time" really soon. There were only 3 families in our church that didn't make it out. Maybe "next time".

After we had watched the last of the crazy people (oops! I mean jumpers) jump and land safely, I don't think anyone was disappointed that it was time to go home. We were hot, hungry, tired, and some of us had a birthday party to get to at our mother-in-law's house.

She made all my favorite foods. She had recorded the Olympic trials, so we ate and watched that while sitting on comfortable furniture in the air conditioning with all the kids (until I had to take Austin to Aunt Jill's to spend the night).

In years past (most likely during my emotional teenage years) I could always count on crying for some unknown reason on my birthday. Thinking back it was probably for too-high expectations. Since I ended up crying on my birthday for so many years in a row, I think I am now conditioned to wake up and think, "I wonder if I'll cry today." I did ask myself that question yesterday, and I did take steps to prevent tears when I would think about our friends leaving. I had to blink them back. We ended up spending a lot of time with them throughout the day, and I just pretended they weren't leaving. In fact, they're not leaving town. There is no reason we shouldn't still see them unless we don't make an effort. I plan to make the effort.