Saturday Night

Wilaca, Cathie and I met out in Troy for dinner at Maggiano's Italian Restaurant. (Nate reminded me the other day of how my Mom's first question would always be "what did you have to eat?"). We ate family style some of the best food in the world until we literally almost exploded. You pick a bunch of dishes from each category and the beauty of this place is that they will keep bringing you unlimited quantities of anything you've ordered. It was some of the best eats in a while, but I was still full this morning when I woke up. We sat around for about 2 and a half hours laughing, eating and singing various School House Rocks songs.

Tiff and her boyfriend Reagan watched the kids last night, which they all loved. Nate got to play video games with Reagan while Tiff did all sorts of fun stuff with the girls. When we came home, Reagan, who is majoring in Film, was just finishing this collection of stop motion video with Em and a worm using the camera on Tiff's mac laptop.



After the kids went to bed, the four of us sat around talking for the next four hours. Tiff was in my youth group starting back in seventh grade and is now a sophomore in college at Grand Valley and Reagan grew up in my friend Mark Butler's youth group and I've gotten to him (as did Tiff) over the years as our youth groups do camps and retreats together. Tiff's been baby-sitting our kids for the past 6 years or so, ever since she was old enough to do it. She's become an extension of our family and one of only a few baby-sitters that can hang with Nate with boy stuff and still do fun girly, crafty stuff with the girls. She's like a little sister to me, and with that comes the same kind of interview for all of her potential spouses that my siblings had to endure, and my children will have to in the future. Reagan and I hung out together at the Malltease Manhunt as a covert interview, and then I was able to work subtle questions into the conversation to better understand his intentions ("Reagan, on a scale of 1 to 10, how serious are you about marrying Tiffany"). Anyways, it's always a cool thing for me to see the kids from my junior high youth group grow up and continue to be a part of the church and our family.