Where to begin?

let's see ... i'll start with friday evening. jen invited us out for a "play date" with the two kids she was watching all weekend (a 3-year-old boy and a 3-month-old girl), so i collected elijah and peri from the house and met them at mcdonald's. elijah still insists he doesn't want to eat there "because it's bad for you." he watched "super size me" with mom. his favorite part is the extra feature where they show the miscellaneous burgers and fries rotting. the boys had fun playing together in the playland, and by some miracle of God got Kaylie to calm down when we took a little visit to the mall. it was trick-or-treat night, and we saw a little girl dressed up as a bunch of grapes! she had purple balloons stuck to her. it was so creative. then i thought how she probably didn't have a way of sitting down without ruining her costume.

on saturday, i opened at kohl's and was in the plus department. it was so slow, i was glad for the loss prevention word search that kept me occupied. i spent quite a bit of time at the desk finding phrases and words like "code yellow" and "shopability." all that for a bag of runts.

i had the afternoon free, then went to serve food at a couple's anniversary renewal of vows ceremony. it was fun, and there was a great jazz quartet. (i actually didn't count the musicians, but "quartet" sounds so natural to say.)

i spent sunday morning in the nursery trying to get my cousin's 19-month-old daughter to walk. she walks fine holding onto a finger, but as soon as you let go, she slumps to the ground. the poor child was frustrated when we tried to get her to stand using the jar of cheerios as incentive.

at 4 p.m., we had elijah's belated birthday party. he was, let's just say, excited. i had to leave at 5:45 for Sunday school.

afterward, our accountability group met at one of the girl's house who lives across the street. we had some halloween candy, oreos, pringles, coffee and delicious chips and taco dip. oh, and we had a pretty good conversation, too. we were all laughing and crying by the time we left two hours later. this group is just amazing. even the girl who said she didn't "have any big problems" was sharing prayer requests and crying. i love these girls. i hope we'll continue to be this good for each other.