for Girl Scout cookies. My favorites are the thin mints right out of the freezer. You’d think subbing I’d be inundated with order requests, but none so far.

Which is good.

Because if you can believe it, I found something better.

Edy’s Girl Scout Cookie, chocolate, thin mint ice cream.

Seriously.

(Mig, stop waving that finger at me. You’d love it, too.)

P.S. I’d love to be posting pictures and making my blog all pretty and such but my computer is dead and so I’m working off of Jacob’s and it has challenges enough to deal with without trying to deal with my pictures. So sorry.

Last Friday night, before we went to see Blast!, I suggested to LM that perhaps it would be a perfect night to use a gift certificate we had received from friends for Christmas (how cute is it that they sent the card to LM and told him he was to take his mom out to dinner?) LM readily agreed saying it had been a long time since we’ve eaten at Cracker Barrel. I thought for a moment and replied back that I couldn’t even remember the last time we ate at a Cracker Barrel. LM did, he seemed to recall it perfectly. “Were there other people with us?” I asked, certain that we must have gone when company was in town or something. “No, just us,” he replied confidently.

I thought awhile longer.

“LM, I don’t even know where a Cracker Barrel is back in PA. The only one I can think of was in Iowa, but you were way too young to ever remember eating there.”

“No, Mom, we ate at one, I’m certain. I got my clock there.”

Well, they do have a gift shop, but for the life of me, I could not remember eating at a Cracker Barrel with Jacob.

When we arrived at the restaurant, I dropped LM off to get us a table while I parked the car. When I came in , they escorted us to our table and LM whispered to me, “This one doesn’t have a very big store.”

I looked around. “LM, this is exactly like the Cracker Barrel I remember.”

“No, Mom! The one we went to had a much bigger store. Remember, I got my alarm clock there.”

“You bought an alarm clock at Cracker Barrel? No, LM, I do not remember this. You aren’t thinking of a Cracker Barrel. You must be thinking of something else.”

We looked over the menus with our eyes as big as saucers. No where else can you get a meal so smothered in gravy, so laden with cholesterol, so deep fried, covered in corn bread, served extra thick and dripping as at Cracker Barrel.

“I can’t even decide what to have, everything looks so good!” I exclaimed.

“We didn’t eat at the restaurant the last time we went, Mom. This looks incredible.”

“LM, what are you talking about? Why would we go to a Cracker Barrel and not eat?”

“We went there to shop, Mom. I don’t think I even knew they had a restaurant.”

“LM, you are not thinking of a Cracker Barrel. I have never in my life gone to a restaurant just for the gift shop.”

“Mom. I know what I’m talking about. We’ve been to a Cracker Barrel in Pennsylvania. We just shopped, though, and I bought my alarm clock. I know I’m right.”

I just shook my head, tired of the argument, not wanting it to contaminate our night out together, but I was bothered by hi recollection. I was nearly banging my head on the table trying to figure out why he was being so stubborn about it when he was clearly so very wrong. Finally it came to me.

“LM, you are thinking of Crate and Barrel. It’s a store. A big one. And yes, you might have bought a clock there, but they don’t have a restaurant. It’s just a store.”

“Oh, yeah, Crate and Barrel, that’s what I mean,” he said with a sheepish grin.

I was subbing at Bird’s school today and happened to see her as she was headed in to lunch. I had a few moments, so I went in to say hello. She had her lunch open and had already eaten everything out of one section of her divided container.

“Hmm…peanut butter and jelly and pretzels for lunch, huh?” I commented.

“And marshmallows! I already ate all those!”

“Marshamallows? For lunch? Bird, it’s obvious who packs lunches in your house (the biggest child of them all, Bear.)

While it would be easy to blame Tom Brady the imposter, the one who was at the SuperBowl last night but was clearly NOT the Tom Brady we have come to know and love, for the tremendous loss – no, loss doesn’t even describe what occurred last night – meltdown? humiliation? debacle? I must admit, it really is my fault and my fault alone.

You see, earlier in the season, when the pundits started whispering about “the perfect season” I may have not- so-quietly quipped that I wished the Pats would lose – just one – but lose, nontheless. Because in my mind, I hate to see cheaters prosper and even if half a dozen other teams in the league (or more) were doing exactly what the Pats were caught doing, commonality doesn’t make it right. And so I might have said, “just lose one”. Might have. I’m just saying.

So for those of you like me, who were screaming at your television set last night; for those of you, who, like me, may have thrown a thing or two in the direction of the television; for everyone who was still shaking their head in complete disbelief even today, you can blame me.

I am so sorry. I never intended for the ONE game to be the BIGGEST game of them all.

Be careful what you wish for.

(If for some chance it was not my wish that made it so, it may very well have been the RED sweatshirt Bill was wearing on the sidelines last night. Everyone knows you don’t suddenly change the color after you’ve won 18 in a row!!! Stick with the grey, Coach!)

5:15 am – LM is in the shower, I am on the couch watching the scrolling list of closures across the TV screen while I watch the latest weather updates.

5:30 – LMasks for an update. So far, school is on, but more and more cancellations are coming up as I watch.

5:35 – LM gets breakfast, reading his latest James Patterson book. Mom watches the announcement that the school she’s to sub at today is closed. Not good news. The computer is booted up, hoping to pick up a sub position elsewhere today.

5:45 – LM is brushing his teeth with just a few minutes before we head out to meet the bus at the curb. Mom opens the bathroom door and announces LM’s school has been closed. LM gives a shout for glee!

5:50 – Mom starts to search the computer for the one last district that isn’t closed yet hoping for a sub job.

5:52 – Mom sees the last school district in the area announced as closed on the TV. Mom gives a frustrated moan. LM is stationed on the couch, already absorbed in his book.

I can’t wait for us to both cheer when we have a snow day.

I was at school to pick up LM on Tuesday and happened to see a sign for the Valentine’s Day Dance. Later, I asked him if he was buying the tickets of if his date was (since she asked him).

“Tickets? I didn’t know we needed tickets!”

“They are only $5, it’s not a big deal. I’ll give you the money for the tickets. I was surprised (but secretly delighted) to see that the dance was right after school from 3-5 on that Thursday.”

“What?! I thought it was during school! I don’t want to stay after school for a dance!”

Apparently, if he had only known some of the details, he might have given a very different answer when asked to go.

When Stacy recommends a book, I don’t waste any time getting my hands on it. I was only aware that this book struck her in ways that pushed her Christian thinking outside the box i some areas – I knew nothing else about the journey I was about to embark upon. Yesterday was a snow day, so I thought it was the perfect time to begin reading. It turns out, it was the perfect day to devour a book and be let with so many thoughts and questions happily swirling in my mind that I know this will not be a book I forget anytime soon.

I really don’t want to say much about this book other than to recommend it to everyone I know (which is exactly what the back cover said I’ll want to do). Greatly and unjustly simplified, it is an account of a Christian man’s struggle to understand the purpose of evil in this world. While I find myself a skeptic whenever an experience is related to me that I cannot reconcile with the tangible world, I know there are times when things occur that cannot be explained with anything tangible. Whether or not you believe that the events of this novel took place as written the concepts of God, judgment, evil, and perception are still as intriguging and thought-provoking. I could declare Mack’s account as hogwash and still spend days or weeks in theological debate over some of the ideas presented.

Before leaving you with a direct invitation to follow Mack’s journey for yourself, I want to assure you that I cannot fathom any way that the implications of this novel would be offensive to anyone’s faith in God. By ‘thought-provoking’ and ‘intriguing’, I only mean that in the most positive ways, my understanding of God and love and faith has been broadened by this novel.

I would already be re-reading this novel if only I hadn’t felt so compelled to share it that Iimmediately placed it in the mail to a friend of mine whom I know will greatly enjoy it – and will respond with incredible thoughts and questions. Go get a copy for yourself – while you’re there, pick up an extra, I guarantee you’ll think of so many people to share it with before you’re done.

As always, thank you, Stacy.

I think this was a library book sale choice, another book I picked up knowing very little at all about the plot. I even violated my own rule of never buying a book with “Oprahs’ Book Club” stamped on the front. But who’s to be picky when it’s $1?

Fall On Your Knees is an epic tale. Spanning generations, this novel takes the reader in and around characters within one family, mainly four sisters, like a rollercoaster ride with many twists and turns, plunges and steep climbs. But instead of leaving my heart racing and my hands gripping the wheel while I screamed for more, I found this novel difficult to get in to initially, and unappealing in many places. While I was curious in the end to see the explanations and choices that led up to some of the events that had taken place earlier in the pages, I could have just as easily set the book down and never picked it up again. The setting, the characters, the challenges, the choices, the behaviors were all so foreign – things I could not begin to relate to nor understand – that I struggled to find personal meaning in the book at all.