Laughter

Lately, life in our home has been stressed. Things just haven't been going the way we planned or hoped they would. Maybe one day I'll be able to share with everyone what's been going on, but today, I'm just not there yet.



So last Friday night, Hector and I found ourselves sitting at the dining room table, putting the finishing touches on Samuel's Pinewood Derby car for Cub Scouts. We'd waited until the last minute to finish it. Hector hammered in the wheels, we hot-glued some washers and quarters onto the bottom, I painted a web and spider on top. Samuel wanted it to be a Spider Man car, which he named The Spider Mobile. And the next morning, bright and early we woke up and headed over to the Pinewood Derby races. So, you might be able to appreciate our surprise and enthusiasm when Samuel's car not only won 1st Place for his Wolf Den, but he also won the Grand Prize for the entire Pack. Each time Samuel's car would race and win, Hector and I got a little more enthusiastic. Okay, I'll admit it, we were totally and completely acting like those over-zealous parents that you see video footage of on the 10:00 nightly news, going crazy at their child's sporting event... Parents Gone Mad!!! :-) No, we behaved ourselves. We just couldn't believe his car was winning! And the Pack Leader told us afterwards that he'd never seen Samuel so happy and smiling so much. It was a great moment for Samuel and for our family. In the car on the way home after the races, Hector and I just laughed and laughed. We needed that laughter. We needed that win! :-)

Samuel's car is the red car on the right side of the track...

The District Pinewood Derby races are this coming Saturday. I'll let you all know how that goes!



And then this past Friday, Samuel and Avery came home with their school classroom pictures. Samuel looked so cute, sitting there in a chair with all his classmates around him. I proceeded to take down last year's class picture to put up the new picture, and that's when I noticed that I had put Samuel in the same exact shirt 2 years in a row. It would seem that in the fog-like state I've been in lately, that it simply didn't occur to me that I was sending my child off to school for picture day in the same exact shirt that he wore last year. How funny is that?

Classroom Pictures, 1st Grade (above) and 2nd Grade (below)

In the midst of all this stress and anxiety, God has given us laughter. Thanks be to God!