Another Week in Review

It has been a busy, odd week.  This week in March always is.  This is the week when all of the pastors and youth pastors from all of our sister churches in Washington, Idaho and Oregon come to Leavenworth for their pastor's retreat.  They all meet up in Plain and stay at Natapoc Lodging which used to be owned and managed by our friends, Dirk and Karen Andersen.

Our ladies ministry group is in charge of the food.  Since Todd and I moved back Karen had me work with her in the food prep.  She planned the meals and I helped her in the kitchen.  She generally left on Monday night leaving Tuesday morning for me to prepare the breakfast on my own and then clean up and pack up everything.  Karen has moved and so I did it by myself this year. It is natural for me to be at the retreat since my husband is in attendance but it is a little awkward to have another woman there from our church helping me so I turned down all request to join me for the weekend.  I want Todd to speak freely at the retreat and feel he might feel reserved if there are listening ears in the room, if you know what I mean.   The ladies in our church did help with making cookies and some of the food purchasing, but this year with other pastor wives in attendance I knew I would have available help whenever I needed it.

The Lord must have known that Todd and I needed a little break from life, in that the President of the pastor's group failed to notify me that the retreat would start three hours later than normal.  Since we have participated in this group, they always arrived at noon and Karen always had a pot of soup on the stove ready for them to eat.  So I made arrangements to be in the cabin by 11 am so that I could have the soup on and ready for the men when they arrived at noon.  By 1 pm Todd and I realized something wasn't right and after checking emails, saw that an email went out Sunday afternoon notifying the group that the meeting would start at 3 pm.  So....Todd and I enjoyed a delicious bowl of chili, turned off the stove and sat back to relax for a few hours.  Well, not exactly relax.  I was too keyed up.  Stressed that the food would come out good.  (I dreamed about the food, preparing it, cooking it, timing everything....yeah....I was a bit exhausted.)   Stressed that I would miss something.  Just stressed. And to be honest I was a bit "put out" that I wasn't informed about the lunch.  Oh...well...the pastor's paid for a lunch they didn't eat and now I have a meal ready for our Awana Leaders Dinner.

The retreat totally throws me off for the week.  Bryce did his best to keep the house in order while we were away. When we arrived at home on Tuesday it was time to finish cleaning up and put away everything from the retreat and just debrief.

It is funny how a minor disruption in your schedule can effect your whole week.  I struggled to get back on track.  It didn't help that on Wednesday Todd had a speaking engagement at the Christian school which meant I had to take Bonnie to school.  That put me a half hour behind schedule at church.  I then had to pick Bonnie up at school (another hour and a half gone)  so that she could make her speaking engagement for  DYW.  By the time that was over I had to make sure the boys were still on track with their school work, then off to AWANA.

  Thursday, Todd went in to see the doctor to have a lump removed from his back.  I try not to think of it too much.  I have pictures, but they are a little graphic.  The doctor believes, and we hope, that  it is just a benign, fatty tumor.  Hopefully, the tests will confirm that.  Time will tell.   So Todd is stitched up and sore for the moment.

The weekend is finally here so we can try to find some normalcy.  Bonnie and I have to find shoes and another dress for her competition which means a trip to Wenatchee.  Brian is working on his research paper.  Bryce has decided to memorize all of his remaining AWANA verses so that he can win the Timothy Award. And Todd is umpiring his first baseball game of the season.

Yep,  it has been a busy week.