rainbows

6:40 am: Flash of lightening.  pause, pause, pause, pause.  Low rumble, low rumble, louder rumble, louder rumble, louder rumble, loud rumble, shake the house rumble, shake the house rumble, shake the house rumble...if I hadn't seen the flash of lightening I would have thought we were in the middle of an earthquake.  I said, "Was our house just hit by a train?"  And Patrick replies, "That's what they call a roll of thunder."

And so Patrick's smart remark day began.

7:45 am: Patrick before a judge:

J ~ "What kind of grades do you get?"

P ~ "I have a 4.2 grade point average."

J ~ "How do you get more than a 4.?"

P ~ "By being smart."

pause

J ~ "By being smart and a smart ass."

and thus his driver's license was suspended for 30 days.  (Probably more for the reason of taking out two mailboxes and traveling 50 mph on an icy road, but it makes a good story.)

3:25 pm: Jacob and I head for the MMS doors.  I can see the big dark clouds in the sky, but the sun is actually shining through; it's bright outside the windows.  Then I see through the open door that it is raining, big, fat, straight down raindrops.  "Where's the rainbow?" Jacob asks.  We look and look and look and there it is, in Jacob's words, "over the baseball field and into the dumpster."  As we drive down Chapel we see the full rainbow running from the MMS dumpster to Dairy Queen.  Beautiful! "It's a good day," says the 8th grader.

4:00 pm:  It has stopped raining, but the sky has gotten darker.  It's 50 degrees on the 23rd of January...I am NOT going to run on the treadmill at the Y when it's 50 degrees out.  I suit up and head out the door (with no backup to come pick me up in case of deluge ~ since it's not on the way to school for Patrick and Mike's not home).  I run a pretty fast 3 miles...just watching that sky get darker and darker...watching that huge big dark cloud get closer and closer.  It started sprinkling around the railroad tracks (.5 to go) ~ raining a little harder as I rounded Middle Ridge (.1 to go).  I hit the driveway, don't stop for the mail, and head in the back door.  By the time I took off my shoes and got out my Poweraide Zero, the sky opened up and it just POURED.  "Wow, Mom," Jacob says, "You really are blessed.  Too bad you can't have the same blessing when picking the line in the grocery store."

I really am blessed. (except in line choice)

storms, rainbows, blessings.  God is good.