On Our Way To Crazy

For a couple of people have never taken Valentine’s Day particularly seriously, we had a whole mess of stuff going on this weekend. I am wiped out.

It all started Friday night with a youth girls’ sleepover at our house. Thirteen girls and two adults crammed into our tiny house, with all the pillows and blankets and games and movies and marshmallows and kool-aid and glitter that come with them. It was out of control.

We played a rousing game of Celebrity (which included references to both the Andrews Sisters and BILL CROSBY, which I took to mean Bill Cosby but actually meant Bing Crosby, apparently my junior high girls were born in in the 1920s) before tackling a Valentine’s cookie making project. I thought it was going to be simple – roll out the dough, cut out the hearts, bake and decorate. No problem. Somehow, instead, we ended up with a mountain of oily batter that would not shape into hearts no matter what we did to it and flour everywhere. EVERYWHERE. It was all over the kitchen, in their hair, on our clothes. Messy messy messy. Fun fun fun.

After not nearly enough hours of sleep, we got them up and headed over to a nearby assisted living center for our monthly service project. The kids sang old hymns and visited with the residents, and were overall just full of awesome. I was really proud of them – for a lot of them it was their first time to do something like that, and making conversation with people in those situations can be pretty nerve-wracking. But they did a great job.

We got home mid-afternoon, just in time to turn around and go to a Valentine’s event our church’s men’s ministry put together. It was exactly what you think it was – dressed up old people, roses, cheesy love songs, linens, tiny desserts. But it was oh so much more. There was a barbershop quartet. There was a picture of our pastor dressed as Elvis. There was contraband wine snuck in from the hotel restaurant. There was an under-the-breath Delilah reference that made me cry from trying not to laugh.

It was… not cool. But we had fun with the other four people there under the age of fifty, and we learned a valuable lesson – sit in the back corner where no one can see you. And bring a flask.

We celebrated the actual day by doing nothing, thank goodness. We had a good morning in youth group, a quick lunch, and then spent the entire rest of the day reading, napping and watching the Olympics. We ate sweet tart hearts and pineapple salsa and it was glorious.