All the Wrinkled Ladies!

Anita Renfroe.
How can you not LOVE this lady? Her sense of humor is priceless!

Turning 6

My poor children. They are so neglected at times. Just ask Owen.

Oh wait, he might still be outside taking a nap in the dirt.

Between conferences,
teaching the boys to ride their bikes without training wheels,
training for Bloomsday (or not training in my case - I'm up to a mile and a half without wanting to die but I'm a little concerned because the race is this Sunday and it's over 7 miles long. Hmmm...),
helping teach a Dave Ramsey class each Sunday evening, and
just living life...

in between all those things we managed to squeeze in a birthday for our little boy, Caleb. Oops, I mean our big boy. Our SIX year old big boy Caleb.

Caleb got to have his first ever "friend" party. He was allowed to invite a few 4 friends from school (and his brother of course) to Chuck-E-Cheeses. This is who he chose:


                                                                       Mr. Muscles - (aka Jack)

The next Michael Jackson - (aka Andy)

"Caleb's Girls" (aka - Delaney and Allie)

The kids had a great time playing games, eating food, dancing, and just hanging out. Mark and I had a great time too (believe it or not!).

 

The best part was watching Caleb though - he loved every minute of it.

Happy 6th Birthday sweet boy!

Inside Jokes

There is someone in my life you must meet.

He has a smile like Matt Damon - one that takes him from being an ordinary guy into something extraordinary. His hair makes McDreamy jealous, his blue eyes can find you across a room and make you freeze in place and his body, well, let's just say -Whoo-ah. His charm is what gets you though - his

ability to make you laugh, to make you feel special- as though you are the only girl in the room. When he talks with his Australian accent it makes you want to purr.

His name is Luke and he is a figment of my imagination.

Let me back up and tell his story from the beginning. How he came into being (and how I am not crazy).

My good friend Cindy and I always sit together at various teacher trainings. We always laugh and joke and visit our way through the more boring parts (we even secretly text each other during the not so boring parts). Trainings are good as long as we have each other. Well, one night at a tech. training we were taking the "end of the night" survey. It was a zoomerang survey and very long, as are most surveys. But this survey had a surprise ending. 

It had Luke thanking us for taking the survey.  

Cindy and I looked at each other, looked back at our computer screens and said "Yum" in unison.

And Luke was born. We quickly started to wonder about him and assign fictitious facts about him. Half a dozen names were tried out and discarded before we both agreed on Luke. He had to have an Australian accent, of course, because only the hottest of men do. He is in his late 30's, possibly early 40's and he knows how to treat a woman - that went without saying.

Well, not too long after that first night of meeting Luke, we took another survey, and lo and behold, Luke was back. Since then he has been popping up in my life in all sorts of places.

 My good friend Cindy has made me my very own "brag" book of pictures. You know the grandma who always whips out her pictures of her grandchildren and they fall out accordian style for you to peruse? Well, I don't have grandchildren, but I do have Luke.

The best part of my "brag book" is the messages that Luke wrote to me on the back of all the pictures.

Well, our little inside joke has slowly started to spread out to others. Fellow teachers have heard us speaking of this "Luke" character and they want in on the action. Pretty soon we were seeing people sign up to take Zoomerang surverys just to catch a glimpse of our Luke. My husband even asked me "Who is this Luke and should I be worried?"

Women and men react differently to Luke. Case in point. Here is something my friend Ken sent to Cindy and I. (He is too creative!)

"Why, Hello Luke."

(said while looking down and glancing back up through eyelashes)

"Click here to see what you look like off duty? Ok."

Aahhh! It's a Ken cleverly hidden in a Luke body!

That wasn't all Ken created. Look at these pages.

   

You just have to love that guy - both Ken and Luke!

Just last month Cindy and I were at another tech. training and we were eagerly filling out our survey in anticipation of seeing "our" guy again. But, you wouldn't believe it, a girl was there thanking us instead!

I was ticked. Cindy quickly filled out her survey and the same thing - some bimbo, slut, tramp was there saying thanks in some boring old language like English.

Cindy and I pinky promised we were taking no more surveys until they brought Luke back and we agreed to promptly write to the head of Zoomerang and demand they bring Luke back immediately.

Before I could send our letter, I recieved this email:

That was cruel! I have already warned Mr. Joe that he had better watch out! Revenge shall be mine!

(Sidenote- aren't inside jokes the most fun! I love how with a few words or an invented name you can create your own language and laughs! I am loving how more and more people are being included in our little joke and all the things they are doing with it. You go ahead and try it - bring a little Luke into your life and start enjoying some laughs! I know only about 5 people read this blog but if you have an inside joke I would love to hear about it!)