Back to Back Dates

It is nasty cold outside.

But that's not keeping us in this evening. Bruce and I have a date. Not a solo date; one with our Sunday school class. But a date is a date is a date.

And tomorrow I have a date with Spencer. For breakfast at McDonald's, bright and early, because we have to be at the church gym for Upwards basketball a little before 9 a.m.

Spencer and I have been butting heads in a major way these last few days. He blames me. I blame Kevin Leman, author of Have a New Kid By Friday.

It's taking me longer than a week to read this book. And I have a feeling I'll go back to it again and again.

But poor Spencer is suffering. Because of stuff like this (from Leman's book): "An unhappy child is a healthy child.... If you're happy and everything is going well, are you motivated to change? It's when things aren't going well that you start evaluating.... That same thinking is true for your child. When a child is unhappy (it could be because of something she has done wrong or simply the fact that you are not heeding her wishes), she's motivated to do something different."

Spencer has been very healthy this last week. Not happy so much.

There have been a lot of tears in our house this last week. Some his, some mine.

During one of our "after the storm" talks, Spencer asked if we could have a date, because "when it's just you and me, we get to really talk."

You can bet that's a date I'll be keeping!

My mother made it safely back to Germany. I called her this morning, expecting to reach her husband and that she'd be napping. Instead she answered and said she'd been home for only 10 minutes.

Her last flight from Frankfurt to her hometown was a no-show. The plane simply didn't come.

The same thing happened on her flight from Germany to here, but the airport accommodated everyone by sending them in a taxi drive for four hours to the Frankfurt airport.

Mom opted out of that choice this time and instead took a flight to another town an hour and a half from her home.

All that makes me a little less eager to plan our next trip to visit her in Germany.

Still, I always breathe a little easier once she's back safely.