I love Elizabeth George. I have read several of her books:
A Woman After God's Own Heart,
A Mom After God's Own Heart,
A Woman's High Calling,
Beautiful In God's Eyes,
Breaking the Worry Habit...Forever. That's just a few.
I don't remember in which of her studies she mentioned the need for a date night for parents. However, in it she suggests putting the kids down early and preparing a separate meal for Daddy and Mom. What a great idea, especially when the added cost of paying a babysitter cuts into the savings needed to bring home an adopted child. So, I added it to the list of changes needed to save even more money for the adoption.
Wednesday night there were no activities at the church, because of Bethlehem City. I found this to be the perfect opportunity to implement our Daddy/Mom Dinner plan. So, Larry made the boys waffles. (He bought us
this waffle maker about a year ago and it's fabulous!) While he was feeding them and getting them settled in upstairs for the night, I made us a separate dinner. Baked salmon, sauteed spinach with onions and some rice (brown, red and wild rice blend). It was marvelous. I even used the china and crystal. As I heard Larry getting them settled in the gameroom for a movie, I thought, "I have time to get out some candles." And, I did.
We had our meal. We lowered the lights, lit the candles and had quiet conversation over our delicious, non-hotdog, non-mac-n-cheese meal. After a while, however, our solitude melted. The boys got bored with the movie and started meandering about the house. We knew it would happen. Jeremiah came down the stairs and asked, "Why are those candles on the table?" Larry's response was as follows: "We are having a romantic dinner." Then, the question of the ages...
"After your romantic dinner, are you going to have a romantic blowout?"
Imagine me and Larry as we both pursed our lips to try to keep from exploding with laughter. What little boy wouldn't associate candles with blowing them out? That's their purpose, right?!
Oh, we couldn't contain ourselves too long. We eventually erupted with giggles. Larry headed back up the stairs with Jeremiah and tucked all four guys into bed. I did the dishes and contemplated the romantic blowout.
The term "blowout" could mean any number of things.
It could mean that our romantic intentions were blown to bits by something unexpected...I'm thinking tire blowout here. You know, as in "we were trying but the boys interrupted". It could be anything really, the boys, the dogs, the bills, the laundry. Anything can interrupt and cause the romantic blowout.
It could mean that our dinner was going to turn into a romantic extravaganza. Or, as we once heard it pronounced by a pizza delivery guy in New Orleans, "Extrava-GAHN-ZAH." He was just talking about pizza though. There was no mention of romance. Thank God.
The next day, Jeremiah asked, "How did your romantic dinner go, last night?" What a neat kid. We told him it was nice and continued on with the morning activities. The long and short of it is that life has some blowouts...good and bad, romantic or not. I am grateful, though, for the sweet time that we had at our breakfast table, with the boys upstairs. So many of our little tasks and brief moments are becoming sweeter in this adoption journey. If we hadn't been "saving money" we would have had a regular dinner at a busy, loud restaurant...with no mention (or hope) of A Romantic Blowout.
