A Confirmation and some BBQ

Big Boy was confirmed last weekend. My sister Melina flew out from Southern California to be his sponsor and visit St. Louis for the first time. So very grateful for the time she spent with us as she is in the middle of a move from the house she’s lived in for the past 15 years to a house closer to where our parents live. The weekend flew by much too fast and was filled with lots of sunshine, love, and all-around happiness.

I took her to Bikram Yoga with me on Sunday morning and then we squeezed in two lacrosse games around Big Boy’s confirmation. We were also lucky enough to have the honor of Big Boy being confirmed at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis on a gorgeous, 81 degrees blue sky day. For Big Boy’s confirmation gifts, we bought him his first NSV bible along with a book of prayers for young men. He has been reading his book of prayers every night since. I am so glad that the words he is reading there are resonating with some part of his soul. His confirmation marks the official end of Sunday School – a journey he has been on for 9 years. Our parish has a teen youth group he will now move into and hopefully create some great memories there.

Afterwards, we had ourselves some down-home BBQ at SugarFire Smokehouse BBQ. Dang- the veggie lover in me licked every bit of sauce off my fingers. Along with Pappy’s BBQ, these are some serious BBQ St. Louis institutions you must visit if you are ever in the area. Still thinking about those baby back ribs… mmmm. Enjoy your weekend friends!

 

 

Unpredictability

Okay, I’ll confess- I got cocky and confident. I thought I had this Mid-West weather thing all figured out. See, what I’ve been doing is checking my weather app at least once or twice a day. It’s pretty accurate and so when Team Jackson attended our first Cardinals baseball game this past week, I knew it would be a cool evening in the 60’s. We all had our sweaters and I even took umbrellas just in case and we did get rained out at the top of the 6th inning and it was okay because it was 8 p.m. on a school night and we needed to get home anyways. Silly, silly me thinking I had this whole weather thing under control.

Fast forward to this morning. When I checked the weather app last night, it didn’t show rain until at least the middle of next week. I set out for my usual Saturday morning walk. I looked up at the sky and thought- hmmm – well it is a little overcast but it should be fine. Walked for about 30 minutes with a little drizzle and I’m thinking well there are a lot of trees and if it should perhaps rain a little harder I could always run for cover under the trees. But then- BAM! From one minute to the next, it completely poured down on me. There was no warning. No rain one minute and then complete downpour the next. I tried finding a tree- I really did but I had no idea that rain could come down so hard in such a short amount of time. I finally found a solid, broad tree and huddled over my phone under my shirt. My phone! That’s all I cared about. I thought to myself how in the world will I get home? I’m literally trapped under this tree and I’m getting wetter and wetter by the minute. The wierd thing too is that when it downpours like that- all you see is white mist everywhere and all of a sudden you feel like you are in an episode of the Walking Dead and you are the last person left alive- no cars, complete quiet except rain. Then I thought- I’m not going out like that – I need to keep moving.