After a Different Kind of Week...

...it was so refreshing to spend the evening together here at home, enjoying Josiah's Family Night.

 This week held a lot of the same things that all of these fall semester weeks have held recently: choir, violin, school, etc.  But in addition, some different things have been thrown into the mix.  Let's see...a fun dinner out for me with my friends Julie and Misty, a conversation with a special investigator who was doing a background check on a friend of mine and needed to ask me some questions about her, a substitute teacher for one of Josiah's violin lessons, lunch at Golden Corral during Jeff's lunch break from work (Josiah chose this as his special meal for today, since it's his Family Night...errr...Family Day), a staff member from the children's choir coming by to get something this afternoon, and this evening a chance to go to a nearby farm where our Old Order Mennonite neighbors do the milking three times a week.  We got to spend quite a bit of time in the milking parlor, and the boys--much to their delight--actually got to help.  Josiah and David, in particular, got to spray udders with disinfectant, push buttons to open and close gates to let the cows in and out or hold them in place, spray water into the milking apparatus to clean it out between cows, and even place the milkers on the cows.  In addition, they learned that in that context, it's perfectly appropriate to use a certain word to refer to the place where the milk comes out of the cow.  I can't even bring myself to type it here, but it starts with a "t" and has three letters.  ;-)  I don't know why, but it almost made me giggle to hear that word coming out of the mouth of our Mennonite neighbors.  What made me actually burst out laughing was when Tobin, after watching the whole procedure for a while, suddenly blurted out a question in his normal, rather loud voice:  "Are those things p------?"  (male reproductive organ)  Oh, dear.  "No, Tobin, they're not; they're actually t---."  I guess a farm is a good place to begin one's education of the facts of life at a rather young age.  ;-)

 Well, after all of that, it was so pleasant and peaceful to be here at home, the seven of us, for a quiet evening.  For his choice of activity for his Family Night, Josiah chose the game Risk (which he loves so much, but because it's such a long game, we rarely ever play it).

 I popped popcorn on the stove and dished up peaches from the cellar, Jeff and the oldest two boys played the game, Tobin and Shav munched on popcorn and orange slices and string cheese and peaches and vanilla wafers, Moriah watched from her high chair, and Jed--faithful dog that he is--laid down under the table and went to sleep so he could be close to all of us.

It was an evening of supreme contentment for me.

I wish that everyone around the world could have had such an evening tonight...