Sunday Rest Day

Four generations of Hartnesses have attended Ardmore Baptist in Winston-Salem, so before we leave town, Jonathan wanted his sons to attend one Sunday as well, to make it five generations. So, just for the fun of it we went to their service today. It was good practice to have Matthew in worship with us, as our church is about to change format to include children 5 and up. At first he wasn't happy about not having a fun kid's class to go to, but once he was in with us, he did just fine. While the service was more formal than our usual, it was nice to sing classic hymns and have a feeling of reverence.

Matthew frequently has trouble behaving in situations like that, but since he did so well, we took him to Krispy Kreme to redeem a "free donut" coupon that he had. Jonathan got himself one and I had exactly one bite.

We went home for a light lunch and naptime. After nap JH and Matthew briefly entertained the idea of going for a swim, but it was just too cold!

Jonathan let me get in a workout video before heading out to take some junk items out of the garage. While he was out, I began working on dinner. Usually these days we have pitiful meals for dinner, as I don't want to make a huge mess to clean up in the kitchen, which needs to be super-neat for showing. Tonight I didn't care-- I wanted to make a "real meal"!!

I made a delicious meal out of my Rachael Ray cookbook, bacon-wrapped meatloaf patties with pan gravy, sour cream-tomato smashed potatoes and steamed broccoli, plus some leftover french bread I'd made earlier for Jonathan. I used super-lean beef, turkey bacon and fat-free sour cream, so it was pretty healthy. It was supposed to be one of Rachael Ray's "30-minute meals", but it took me an hour and a half! But it was worth it-- not only was it nice to actually give my family a "real meal" for the first time in a while, but it was SO YUMMY!

After dinner we put the boys down, Jonathan helped me clean up the kitchen (bless him!), and we ended our mostly-restful day by watching a kids' movie called Zathura, which was very imaginitive.

It was so nice to have a true Sabbath day, where we didn't feel obligated to work on the house, we had a nice worship service together and in general just enjoyed each others' company. Sundays are so rarely like that for us. As I tucked Matthew into bed and said prayers with him, I thanked the Lord that we could enjoy being together so much today.