Dinner with royalty and more roller coasters

Last weekend was quite amazing - I got to do something really cool! I got to have dinner with royalty! The Sarah Smith crew were in town picking their son up from the airport, and several of us fellow Sarah followers met them for dinner. It was so much fun! Besides myself and the Smith's, Pam D and Vicki were there. I took my 2 girls and they chatted with Sarah the whole time. Sarah is right in the middle age wise of my girls. Pam and I discovered that not only are we from the same home town, we are from the same denomination of church. She actually goes to church with M.'s teacher! Vicki brought her 2 adorable little boys. They were so well behaved, and so so so cute! It was kind of weird in that we all knew so much about Sarah and her family, yet we had never met each other face to face. The restaurant was very nice to us and was quite interested in the whole situation. If you click on Sarah and Pam's names above where they are highlighted, you can read their version of the night. Since they are much better writers than I am, you will be much more entertained there than you are here, I promise.

Here are some pictures from that night:

Sarah and the adorable guard dog, Snowy:

The 3 blogging ladies, Pam D, Becky Smith, and myself:

J., Sarah, and M.

The whole gang, starting at the left and going around: Steve Smith, Pam D., myself, M., J, Sarah Smith, Becky Smith, Vicki, her beautiful boys and her husband, whose name escapes me at the moment.

Becky's son Nathan called to let her know his ETA back in the states. Notice the smile and the eyes glowing:

How cute is this little guy?

Sarah trying her first fried pickles. She is being quite brave here because she does not like pickles.

The men pretty much had their own conversation going:

Bravely trying an olive for the first time:

Knowing we were meeting in downtown, we were a little nervous as to what kind of restaurant we would end up with, but it proved to be quite nice:

Even if the decorations hanging from the ceiling were a little, um, strange. These were hanging right above the girls' heads. They kept looking up uncertainly, hoping they would stay suspended and not come crashing down on their heads.

Sunday brought a whole new set of emotions as the kids at church were told that their youth ministers are leaving. There were so many tears and so much anger. I worry over how the kids will get past this. So many of them have deep relationships with one of the youth ministers or with the other, or both. It is hard to understand emotionally. However, the leaders felt this was best for the kids as a whole. While I trust our elders, as I stated earlier, I wish all would have been handled a little differently. Hindsight is truly 20/20. We must remember to keep our focus on God and on continuing the legacy started by our youth ministers. Now is the time to start healing and start looking forward.

Also, during this past week, another friend of ours, Kristie, got some horrible news about her husband and his ongoing battle with cancer. This family has been dealt a "crap sandwich," as they put it, over and over again. Please go visit them and leave them some words of encouragement.

This weekend found quite a bit of snow in our area. We actually had a snow day today! The funny thing is that the temperature for this coming Saturday is supposed to be 70 degrees. Go figure.

Here a few snow pics:

So, this post was quite a potpourri of topics. Hope you stuck with it and weren't too bored.

Thank you for stopping by.

Let me know you were here.