T.G.I.F.

At dinner, we were all discussing our ages.  I asked the boys, "If I will be 30 on my birthday in January, what am I now?"  Without pause, Elijah firmly announced, "OLD."

Judah saw a picture of Newt Gingrich with hands outstretched.  He pretended to have a deep, manly voice and said, "I am the KING!"

The boys were commenting on a bird they saw sitting on the fence.  It was puffed up due to the cold weather, but they kept talking about how it must have babies in its tummy.  I explained to them the reason why "she" was all puffed up, that birds lay eggs rather than carry babies in their tummies.  Judah, smart kid that he is, asked, "But don't they carry the eggs in their tummies?"  Uh, actually, I don't know how that works, Judah!  "We could look it up online.  Computers know everything."  :-)

And here's a TGIF where I myself am the subject of the hilarity (read: embarrassment).  Several weeks ago, the kids and I went to a farm to do the traditional fall field trip of hayride and pumpkin patch.  It had rained the entire day before, so the ground was a bit soggy in places.  Another mom and her daughter arrived at the same time my friend Shannon and I did (with our 7 kids...brave, yes?).  So we parked all together in what I thought to be a stupendous spot compared to last year when we arrived AFTER busloads of kids rather than before.  We enjoyed our time for a couple hours and then got ready to leave.  Upon walking back to our vans, including the other mom and her daughter who finished at the same time, we discovered our spot was not as great as originally thought.  There was a big yellow bus parked right behind all three of us.  With two buses in front of it.  Just sitting there.  We waited a few minutes.  Still nothing.  So we asked Lady Busdriver if they were waiting to leave or waiting for their kids to get off.  She said they were waiting to unload but she wasn't sure what was going on that was preventing them from unloading.  Still longer we waited.  Finally, someone else found a way to drive around one particular farm building to get around the buses to the one exit road off the farm. Shannon was able to back up JUST enough to be able to pull forward and drive around the building.  Once she had moved, I had room to back up JUST enough to pull forward as well.  I put my van in reverse, slowly pressed the gas pedal, rolled back a little..... and then went nowhere.  I pressed a little harder on the gas, and my ears were met with spinning tire sound.  But if I pressed harder, what if I went too fast and hit the bus?  What to do, what to do.  I pressed gently again.  Spinning tires.  For real?

I was stuck in the muck.  I pressed the pedal even harder... and created an even louder spinning tire sound and felt the van sink just a touch.  Lost cause.  Shannon had stopped by that time, wondering why I wasn't following.  I looked to the lady in the van next to me and mouthed, "I'm stuck."  She gave an "oh no" with a pitying laugh and got out to help assess the situation.  I gunned the pedal again but to no avail.  They saw just how stuck I was.  Lady Busdriver was viewing the whole thing from her perch.  She attempted to direct me with which way to turn my wheel and to gun it, "HARDER!".  Still nothing.  I realized there was no one behind Lady Busdriver; and if she moved back, I could feel free to do whatever to get unstuck without hitting her bus.  I asked her if she could back up, and she said sure.  So with fiddle faddle in hand, she backed that thang up!  (Bus drivers sure do know their stuff!)  She went slowly so as not to hit the line of cars we were in.  Old Gentleman walked up and started helping her ease backwards.  She finally cleared the back of my van, so we tried again to press hard on the pedal and turn the van wheel correctly.  I was demonstrating the phrase "going nowhere fast" perfectly.  Older Gentleman decided he would try to push while I gunned; and by this time, Older Gentleman 2 had walked up to help.  So with two kind men behind me pushing and Lady Busdriver telling me how to operate my vehicle, we tried again. Nope.  Older Gentleman came to my window and told me to put my van in first gear and walked back to push again.  I looked down at my gear shifter... and there was no number 1 to indicate first gear.  All these years of knowing cars have different gears used for different situations, and I had no idea which number meant which gear!  Enter Phase 1 of embarrassment.  So I called out to him to ask which number was first gear.  "All the way to the bottom," he said.  So I looked down again and shifted to first gear (number 2, by the way... makes perfect sense, right?)  As I lifted my eyes back towards my windshield, a little red light on my dash caught my eye.

"Emergency Brake."

You know those moments in film when everything goes dark and the camera zooms in on a speechless, stunned actress as she realizes something monumental?  Yeah.  That happened to me.  Phase 2 of embarrassment.  I quietly and quickly turned off the emergency brake, and I tell you my van JUMPED forward with glee that its driver had finally gotten a clue.  Cheering ensued from my dear helpers -- and the audience that had grown -- as they had "succeeded" in freeing me from the muck.  I stuck my hand out the window with as regal a wave as I could muster and with a sparkling grin loudly thanked everyone as I drove off to skirt the building to the exit road.  I did NOT have the heart or courage to inform them all of my incredible oversight.  "Let them feel as though they've done a good deed... just slink away and let them believe... let them tell the legend of how they helped a poor mother stuck in the muck get free..."

(For the record, I never use my emergency brake.  I only used it that day because I knew I was parked on a slight incline that was a touch soggy.  Heaven forbid my van should slide backward while we were enjoying the farm.  Never used emergency brake means brain not used to checking if it's on or not...)   ;-)