From Boo-Hoo to Booyah!

Christmas vacation officially ended TODAY. Thankfully, it wasn't quite as painful as I had envisioned.

The girls woke up fairly early (Both alarms went off at 6 AM. Amanda was up by 6:20, Megan was coaxed out of bed at 7:00.)

All was going according to plan until I reminded Amanda to grab a jacket. Since our Central Californian high today was going to be in the 40's, I really felt a jacket was appropriate (call me overprotective if you must.)

This was when the meltdown ensued. Not because she didn't want to wear a jacket, but because apparently during the 3 weeks we were off, all of her sweatshirts/coats shrunk! She ended up wearing her big coat that came with one of those liner-type-coats that fit inside of the bigger one. Do you know what I mean? The problem now, I was told, is that the liner-coat no longer fits. So she had to wear the coat without the liner, which wasn't warm enough. Ugh!!

I assured her that we'd head to Target after basketball practice to try and find something to carry her through the rest of the season, if she could just make it through today. (Side note: Christmas and a $1500.00 car repair bill just happened, so it's not like we were really looking to spend more money on a coat that should have lasted all winter, but you gotta' do whatcha' gotta' do, and somehow I knew God would provide.)

So ... the promise of a trip to Target is usually a cure all.

Not today.

She pouted all the way to school, which really irritates me. Wanna' know why? Because I was a pouter back in the day. Hard to believe, I know, but it's true.

Anyway, we drove in silence. Parked in silence. Walked up to my office in silence. It was lovely.

A few minutes after Amanda had gone to class, a co-worker who has an older daughter walked into my office with 3 bags of hand-me-downs! I calmly thanked her, waited for her to turn the corner and then rushed over to see if there were any sweatshirts or jackets that might fit Amanda, and wouldn't you know ... there were 2 absolutely darling sweatshirt-jacket-things that were lined with fur on the inside so they were super warm, and did I mention darling?!

At lunch time, Amanda came into my office to eat because she knew she'd be too cold outside in her non-lined jacket. That's when I showed her the bag with the sweat jackets. Her eyes lit up as she tried them on and found that they both fit perfectly!! Is that not the best?!

Now some may think this is a coincidence. Or better yet, good karma, because after all, I just gave a few bags of hand-me-downs to someone else last week. But I'm here to tell you that this was a case of the Lord providing for his children! The Christian life is anything but boring!

All in all I'd say this was a great way to start the new year!

Oh, and Megan is now smacking her lips after every 3-4 words that she speaks. Almost like a nervous tick. Not sure what that means, or if it calls for it's own blog posting, but I just thought I'd let you know what she's been doing since we rang in the new year.