The Happs...

Warning... This is an exceedingly long post... If you have nothing you need to be doing right now, by all means read on... Otherwise you may want to go about your life and come back if you are ever overly bored... You were warned...

Sorry it took me so long to update y'alls on what been goin' down in these parts... I have been crazy busy and losing my mind getting Cate off to school was time consuming... We had a fundraising yard sale to raise a little extra cash to send them off with... People from church and family donated tons of stuff and we raised a little over $1000. ($500. for each of them.)

Oh, wait... You are probably saying "them??? Who the heck is she going on about?"  Well remember I mentioned that our sweet Cate has a boyfriend? Yeppers, some kiddos take a futon or mini fridge to college, not our Cate... She is taking a boyfriend.

Here's how it all went down...

Wait... I'm getting ahead of myself... What ever shall we call this interloper who has spent nearly every waking, non-working moment in our home for the past few months?? I was gonna say "the Brat", but only because he's soooo not bratty, but that seems uncalled for... For now we will just call him The Boy until I think of another moniker for him...

So, here's how it all went down... Sparky met The Boy first... He went to her school and was part of the youth group at church... If you are a long time bloggy friend you'll remember him from this picture... He's the one in the dorky flag sweater... (Yes, getting his head licked by that guy who has been hanging around our Sparky all summer, but that's a story for a different day...)

Also there is a story behind that sweater... But again, for a different day... Let's face it folks this is gonna be a really long post as it is, and if I cram all my lame good stuff into this one y'alls won't appreciate it... But I digress...

Anyhow, The Boy was a senior in high school so he was in our youth group which goes up to 22 years old to cover our "young adults" too, so our Cate met him there...

They didn't think much of each other at first... I mean they were friends, but The Boy is a super nice kid so he's friends with just about everyone. I fact we kinda thought Sparky was sweet on him based on the photo evidence...

But our suspicions were wrong... She had already decided he might be a good match for her sister... When a certain small Bible college came to speak to our youth Cate couldn't make it that night since she had work, but Sparky not only thought is sounded just like what Cate was looking for but also found out The Boy was applying... Clever devious girl that she is, she convinced her sister to go visit the school.

Alas, she was right, it seemed like the LORD made this school just for our sweet Cate and during our visit she felt led to apply. It turned out they were having an event that night, and Cate wanted to stay. Our Sparky suggested she ride back with The Boy so we didn't have to stay down there and since he lived in our neck of the woods, it made sense... A flurry of calls and texts later it was all set up. It was only on the ride home Sparky fessed up let us know that she felt they would be a good match and that she was hoping a couple hour car ride alone would get things in motion.

She was right... You see they are both a couple of fairly serious kids with a deep love of the Lord and they both have a silly side... It wasn't but a few days before her father and I noticed a bit of a flirtation going on. He was here a lot, and they seemed to really like each other... When they started going on almost nightly walks together we knew it was only a matter of time, and we were right. Eventually (much longer then we thought it would take) he got up the courage to ask us for permission to "date" our daughter. Poor boy was so nervous he couldn't even eat dinner... We had already gotten to know him quite well by this point and prayed about this so of course we said yes, and the rest is now history...

Here he is giving our Cate one sunflower on their first month anniversary... Please excuse the mess... Oh and that's his mama in the back ground. We don't really let our daughters just "date" in the traditional sense... It is more of a dating/courting hybrid. We don't let the boy (any boy) come and just pick up one of our daughters and go who knows where just to drop her off hours later... I'll do a post on our personal thoughts on this later (and try to shorten this one) but suffice it to say, the boy and our girl are basically expected to spend most of their time either with our family or his...

Sooo... Back to the yard sale... You might want to scroll up if you forgot what we were talking about...

We had a huge yard sale the Saturday before last and we did really well the first day. Paul's contribution was to sell hot dogs, etc... to any hungry shoppers... This will be important in a minute... Wait for it... Anyhow we had TONS of stuff left over so The Boy's mom and I decided to open it back up after church on Sunday. It seemed like a good idea. So on Sunday I asked to make an announcement. After worship, but before announcements our pastor had Cate and The Boy come upfront and pray over them before they left for school the following week... He then had everyone come up and lay hands on them and pray corporately for them, and their families... Then he had Paul pray over them (The Boy's dad wasn't there that day) and I was basically a blubbering basket case.  (say that 10 times fast...) On our way back to our seat our pastor started announcements and said "Rebecca before you sit down, you have one right?" so back up I went. I reported on how well we did, but right there in the front row was my girlie and her beau... Pretty soon I've lost my train of thought and remembered we had plenty of hot dogs and chips left to sell from Saturday and that is how I accidentally invited the WHOLE CHURCH over for lunch... Yep, all 160 or so of them... I didn't even realise what I'd just done, but Paul did. After announcements we break so the kiddos can go to children's church and we have coffee and snacks at that point. People kept coming up letting us know they would be there and asking what they could bring. I looked at Paul and asked him if I had just done what I thought I had... He said I had and we should think about leaving early because we were gonna need a lot more food... Whoops... Keep in mind, we were on day two of a yard sale.. Our home was trashed... And in the next few hours we hosted an impromptu church picnic. I don't know how many showed up but we started with 260 hot dogs and only had about 35 left over...

I'll try to get through the rest of this quickly...

How did the Boy spend the yard sale??

When he wasn't working he'd get as far away from his mom and his girlfriend's mom as possible...

See...

Yeppers... I think the "moms" treed that there poor boy! (I said that in my head with a bad southern accent... Add what ever accent works for you...)

Here the Girlies are at the end of the sale...

(Poor guy was climbing down the tree at that very moment, but I told him I'd title this one "Creepy Boyfriend"...)

Here they are together...

Sparky calls this one "best friends"... She misses them a ton too...

Before Cate left we went to meet our newest cousin...

 and spent as much time with the kiddos as possible...

Here they are the night before we took them down...

I love this photo...

But these seem more accurate...

and this one...

Those two actually came first... I had to force them to stop goofing off so I could get the good one!

Here is Cate in her new "dorm" room...

The president of the college turned his daylight basement into a series of bedrooms surrounding a common space for the girls "dorms" (Remember... EXTREMLY small college.) The guys kinda have the same set up at his sons house. Unfortunately the Boy's room wasn't ready so he is staying in the guest room upstairs in the same house... This is unfortunate because they feel like they are under a microscope with everyone watching them, so they are more then a little uncomfortable with the current situation...

Here they are with Cate's "school mom"

She's the wife of the president and the owner of the aforementioned microscope...

They were due to start classes Monday, but because of "Hurricane Irene" (not much of a storm in our parts) power was out so they had Monday off... So after two whole days at school (ie... two days of me being weepy and sad.) They decided to trek home for the few things they forgot...

The Boy didn't realise he "forgot" a haircut... 

Paul set him straight... 

There... Paul declared this "much better"...

And they are off again...

Someone get that boy a belt...

So... That's the happs around here...

If you are still reading this... Wow... What a true bloggy friend... I started just skimming myself about ten minutes ago and I'm writing it...

Next time I will try to be brief...

Hey, a girl can dream...

Thanks for listening,