Sunday, January 9, 2011

The Stock Show

I lost track in December. 

I lost track of how much money we were spending on food. Between the out-of-town guests, Christmas parties and special holiday food, I threw in the towel. One thing I do know, those Lithuanian Bacon Buns and pounds upon pounds of Heavenly Burnt Sugar Almonds don't really fit in well with my $150 week budget. But it was the holidays after all. My "Why not?" motto kicked into high gear. 

I lost track of time. I have no idea how many weeks remain until my dear hubby walks across the stage to receive his diploma on that glorious day in May. When he's on break from school I guess I don't really care. 

I lost track of all sense of reality. I had a short holiday break from teaching my childbirth classes. I did, however, have the special privilege of attending a beautiful Christmas night labor and birth. These all night doula jobs always throw me into a time warp. It's hard to know which end is up after welcoming a new life into the world. The experience is gloriously otherworldly, no matter which way you look at it. 

But the biggest shift over the break was my dear husband finishing his finals in mid-December and not having to return to his schoolwork until mid-January. Somehow I forget during the semester how much life really changes when he doesn't have school to contend with. A schedule of full-time work, family, socializing and climbing almost feels slow paced.

Take for instance our family outing yesterday.

On a whim we decided to spend the afternoon at the stock show.

It was easy breazy going to a huge event like this with two adults and three children. There were a million people there, a hundred thousand wild animals (make that one hundred thousand and three when you add my rowdy bunch to the mix), and ten places to be all at once.

It felt so good to experience all the new sights and sounds as a family. After all, God did only make this woman with two hands and two eyes. I swear, during pregnancy with the third child God should have made a special provision to grow a second set of arms and a third eye for us ladies.

But that's not needed when all five of us are together. Thank you God for not answering my pregnancy prayer. That would look weird.

Just look at these youths. So calm. So serious. So invested in the advertisements selling horse semen. I can't blame them for being captivated. The horses in those catalogs are drop dead gorgeous.

If you study those catalogs long enough, you could order semen from a horse that looks like this. I suppose that would make sense if you had a mare to inseminate. We don't. So we won't be ordering any semen today. Shucks.

Or you could order the semen from these big guys. Take a close look at that man standing next to these beauties. He was not a small man. In fact, he was a huge man. Good thing, because these were the biggest dang horses I have ever seen with my two eyes. And they were majestic. I don't want their semen. I want them. For my backyard. You better believe my four year old was begging to bring them home. Sweet girl. Daddy said no.

And when the day was done and it was time to head home, the children were so exhausted they crashed within minutes of buckling into their seats. And this, my friends, gave me the greatest gift of all - time to talk with my husband uninterrupted all the way home.

So here's to the beginning of my sweet husband's last semester of this four-year journey towards a diploma. It's been long and tiring. But I think we're all ready to get 'er done. Only 18 weeks to go, in case you're counting!

I about fell over when I first heard this Auctioneer start singing his song at the stock show last night. I've never heard anything like this before, but it made me want to dance. Clearly I don't frequent very many auctions.

3 comments:

  1. Hello,

    You shared on The Pioneer Woman that you have a chai recipe. Would you mind sharing it with me? I didn't see it in your recipe box...but there are a lot of recipes there!

    Jackie

    jackiecouraud @ yahoo.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Jackie,

    Thanks for stopping by. I'm going to be running a feature about my chai here in the coming days. Keep a look out.

    Judith

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't blame you for losing track of the holiday budget, but I'm really glad you didn't spend it all on horse semen. :)

    ReplyDelete

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