Looking on the bright side

I went for a second visit to the church I went to last week, and I enjoyed it again - the music was good and God really spoke to my heart during the sermon. People weren't as friendly this week, but it was a rainy, humid, yucky day, so that may be part of it. Or, maybe they needed God to lift them up today. I certainly have those days!

When I got home, we decided to go the Museum of Science for a couple of hours before my birthday tea. (Thanks for the birthday wishes, by the way!!!) We knew that we needed to get R somewhere where he could run around and burn some energy before teatime. And, he did. There's this great exhibit at the museum where kids can run the entire length of the room and try to beat the flashing lights, and R ran it over and over again. He climbed tons of stairs and ran from exhibit to exhibit. Oh! And, we just happened to be there on the day they had a special NASA exhibit about the Mars rover and the upcoming Orion/Ares lunar missions - woohoo!

But when we stopped home to change for tea, R melted down. He was tired and hungry, but he was also just a big pain in the butt. He didn't want to go and, as he got crankier and crankier, A and I realized it would be a huge mistake to try to go. So A called to cancel our reservations and I went to lay down in my room to be alone. I have to admit - I was really sad and disappointed. Eventually, though, R apologized with angelic sincerity and A told me that he was going to have to pay for the tea anyway(!), so we decided to go. (I decided not to bring the camera - I didn't want to document the potential disaster, especially with all of us in a crabby mood.)

It ended up being fun. R was SO WELL BEHAVED. He even initiated polite conversation, asking me how my scones were, if I liked my tea, etc. He kept saying what a nice time he was having and he kept apologizing for his earlier beastliness. He was wonderful, the sweet boy.

The tea itself was, well ... interesting. We were the only ones having tea and the only people in the inn's dining room. They sat us right next to the wait station - and I soon realized why: our waitress was about to collapse from heart failure or something. She was an older woman and super nice, but she was already limping, and she almost fell over from carrying the three-tier tea stand and trying to hoist it up and place it on our table. Then, the poor woman was out of breath while explaining what all the sandwiches and pastries were.

When we arrived, she explained that she was about to get R's cocoa all ready - "I have the packets right here!" The packets were Swiss Miss cocoa. Um, if a fancy inn is going to use packets of commercial cocoa (and charge a fancy price for it), at least hide the packets and let us assume that it's homemade when it comes to the table in a china pot!

There were a lot of other things like this that made A and I chuckle, but I don't want to focus on that stuff. Overall, everything was very nice - the food was delicious, the tea was hot and soothing, and the imperfections actually put my slightly grumpy and not-at-all fancy family more at ease. We came home stuffed to the gills and didn't need dinner.

And, the best blessing of all, R went down tonight without a peep! No crying, no stalling, no begging me to stay with him. And, even with all the sugar he consumed at tea (hot cocoa, two BOWLS, YES BOWLS of whipped cream, peanut butter & jelly sandwich fingers, and a brownie ice cream sundae!), he fell asleep on time. You can be sure I'll be thanking God for that tonight in my prayers!