Prayer Dinner (Originally Posted August 8, 2009)

Good Wednesday morning!

No time to dilly-dally today. We've got a lot of ground to cover!

But before I begin, I have a very old "miscellaneous" pic to share. A Summer-time pic!

Isn't this bird beautiful? You may or may not remember this picture from our trip with Grandmother to Amelia Island a few years back.

This guy and his parrot were just walking up and down the beach... like it was a normal, everyday event.

If I ever move to a beach, I'm buying a parrot... and I'm going to walk up and down the beach for photo-ops.

Just sayin'.

CONTEST! CONTEST! CONTEST! - This is my 988th post for A Simple Life. The countdown continues!

The Contest will be simple. The rules are as follows:

Beginning today, leave your NAME followed by the word "CONTEST" in the Comment Section of A Simple Life, e-mail me (mfaulkner1306@charter.net) or go to my Facebook page.

You can enter the Contest ONCE A DAY (each and every day including Saturdays AND Sundays) until Thursday, August 30 at midnight. (Your name could be put into the drawing bowl a total of 16 times between now and Thursday, August 30!)

I will write my 1,000th post Friday morning, August 31.

I will draw from a HUGE BOWL of names, and a winner will be announced the morning of Friday, August 31.

The winner will receive a $15 Gift Certificate to one of the following restaurants:

1. Another Broken Egg
2. Original Pancake House
3. Olexa's
4. Lucia's Italian Restaurant in Helena

It will be Winner's Choice!

If you win and you live somewhere other than Alabama, you will win a $15 VISA Gift Card!

"May the odds be ever in your favor!"

(I'm going to be saying that for the next 11 POSTS!)

NEW THING! NEW THING! NEW THING! - Since the fate of A Simple Life is still undecided (totally gone after August 31 OR once or twice a week updates instead of five consecutive days), I'm going to post one of my favorite posts each day from the past four years until the decision is finalized.

Plaque Reader - January 29, 2009

I always tease Mike about it, mainly because it was something I didn't know about him until after we were married... but is anyone else out there married or associated with someone who is a "Plaque Reader?" If you know someone like this, the term is not odd at all. If not, you're probably wondering what I'm talking about, so I will explain.

When we married, we went to Washington, D.C. for our honeymoon. I know it sounds like an odd place to go, but it was really quite wonderful. Mike loves history. I love snow. Mike loves ALL museums. I love snow. Mike loved the fact we were going to a place neither of us had ever been. I love snow. Well, I got my snow... 4" the day before we landed, and it stayed with us the entire seven days of our trip. Beautiful. And Mike's dream came true. We were honeymooning in the "Land of Plaques." There are probably more plaques per square inch in that city than anywhere else in the world.

I am a skimmer. I read the title on the plaque. I look at what the plaque is standing beside. I skim a couple more sentences and then I'm off to the next plaque. Mikie "absorbs" the plaque. He reads it carefully. He looks at the object carefully... and then re-reads the plaque again in case he missed something the first time. Can you say, "KILL ME NOW!!!"

We actually have a picture from our honeymoon of me sitting on a bench in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History (my favorite kind of museum)... asleep. I just couldn't take it anymore. What takes most people one, two or three hours at the most to go through was taking us six to seven hours... and we still weren't finished.

Almost five years ago, Mike and I had the opportunity to drive down the Natchez Trace. If you've ever been, it is a beautiful ride and along the way, there are places "of interest" to pull over. Well, you know what that means. Plaques in the middle of nowhere. After pulling over to our fifth (AND FINAL) Indian mound and reading the accompanying plaque, I had to put my foot down. (Have you ever seen an Indian mound? It's just a grassy hill in the middle of a grassy field. But the plaques are huge and probably have two-pages worth of information regarding the grassy mound.) Can you say, "KILL ME NOW!!! I REALLY MEAN IT THIS TIME!"

We had the opportunity to visit the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. A relatively small area in which plaques live and prosper. "Mikie, it would be different if we didn't know this story or if we had never heard of Davy Crockett or Jim Bowie or the Alamo. We watched the John Wayne movie before we came. We know what these plaques are going to say. Heck, we could have written some of these plaques."

And, deep in thought and concentration, he continued to read and learn... and I found a nice shady bench in the garden to wait.

This past summer, we went to Graceland with the kids. We had a great time, but not surprisingly, Graceland has almost as many plaques as Washington, D.C. The boys and I breezed through the tour in about 90 minutes... and we enjoyed it. However, Roxie and Mike hung back... reading plaques. As you can imagine, this was very disturbing to me because I had no idea Roxie had inherited Mikie's "Plaque Reader" gene. As the boys and I waited at the end of the tour for Mike and Roxie to catch up (60 minutes later and complaining we had RUSHED them), they were content to listen to their I-pods. I don't have an I-pod. I was not content. When we rode the bus back to the main complex across the street, everyone wanted to see the airplanes... more plaques. And the new military uniform museum... more plaques. And the costume museum... more plaques than grains of sand on a beach! "They" tell you to plan on spending three or four hours at Graceland. Well, we closed it down... and we still weren't finished.

I know there are worse things in life. Being married to a "Plaque Reader" isn't the end of the world. I've learned to adjust. Most of the time now, I just take a quick picture of the plaque in question and say, "Come on. It will give you something to read when we get back home." (I know the people at Wal-Mart think I have the most boring scrapbooks EVER because two-thirds of all the pictures I develop are plaques.)

I'm thinking about getting him a plaque for Christmas next year to put on an attractive stand near our front door. It will read, "In this house lives a wonderful husband and a terrific dad. He is funny, generous and loving. He is a Christian man, a fisherman, a camper, a racing fanatic, an Auburn alum. He is a good listener and great partner... but most of all, he is (and will always be) a "Plaque Reader."

RANDOMNESS - Josh and I spent our day at Wallace State yesterday. We had to put the final touches on the late registration process. It went well, but it went LONG!

Here are the facts... in list-form:

1. He only has classes Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

2. He gets out at 12:30 those days.

3. He is excited at this point of the process.

4. We are excited for him.

5. We didn't finish standing in line for everything until 3:30 p.m. yesterday.

6. There is a Subway right across the street from Wallace.

7. Josh and I LOVE Subway.

8. He bought my 3:30 p.m. lunch. He said, "It's the least I can do for you when you stood in all those lines with me/for me all day long."

9. What could I say? When Josh is right, he's right.

10. We're still practicing living day-by-day.

11. Yesterday was a very good day!

This is the OFFICIAL Wallace State Community College sign. (There's another smaller, nondescript sign down the street, but because it doesn't flash and move and appear in different colors, I made the natural assumption this one was the OFFICIAL sign... and thus, deserved to be photographed for posterity.)

This is a corner of part of the campus. I took many more pictures, but with Josh driving and refusing to slow down for pictures (something to do with being hungry), this was the best picture I took!

Stay tuned for more Wallace State stories next week!

Wednesday Wisdom - Sad as it may be, I am getting all of my wisdom from Pinterest nowadays!

"The greatest advantage of speaking the truth is that you don't have to remember what you said." Anonymous

I don't think it is the greatest advantage of honesty... but it's up there!

PRAYER DINNER (Originally Posted August 8, 2009)

This was new to me, but I'll be doing the same thing for Josh and Roxie when their time to go out into the world comes around. We had Austin's favorite dinner (Italian chicken) with the Faulkner Five and Grandmother. (You can invite as many or few people as you would like for this special dinner.) It was a simple meal... a quiet evening really. There was nothing huge or party-like about it.

After the meal, we all went into the den and we sat down and we took turns each saying a prayer for Austin. Some of the prayers were about safety, some were about being thankful for the time we were given with him in our home, some were blessings prayed over Austin. All of them were meaningful and personal and sweet.

No, this isn't a big party or event, but it can be a very important, memorable time with your family. It was a good way for us to reflect on one part of Austin's life and to pray for him as he begins another part all at the same time.

A Prayer Dinner would ALWAYS be a good way to start a new chapter of someone's life.

Have a superb Wednesday. I think I will have one of those, too. I'll be back tomorrow with the Contest, an oldie, a Date, Blog Linkage, Randomness, pictures, etc. etc. My goodness, I have a lot of work to do.

Take care, and I'll talk to you in the morning.

Sincerely,

The Enchanting Belinda

Since I am still picture-poor at this time in August, expect more and more OLD pictures to pop up for no particular reason.

Me and Mikie... in the mountains a few years ago!

Yep. No particular reason AT ALL!