Two Things

I will miss this Christmas:

Hiding a squeaky toy in the top branches of the Christmas tree.

Uncle Bill's Godiva Chocolates.

Delicious Irony

Reckon there's a recipe for Forbidden Fruit Jam in the cookbook?!?

We saw this in Dumas, Texas, this week.

Delilah, here's to you...

This summer, one of the songs the kids listened to frequently was "Hey There Delilah," by a group called Plain White T's. It's just a lovely little acoustic love song that to me is one of those timeless kind of songs - if you didn't already know, you might think it was from the sixties or seventies, and I came to love it as much as the kids did.

When Randy and I were in Rome, we left our tour and walked to the Hard Rock Cafe on the Via Veneto in search of Amanda's souvenir bear. If you've ever been to a Hard Rock, you know that what you usually hear on the sound system is mostly LOUD classic rock, and after a while it just becomes the same-old, same-old noise that just kind of fades into the background. So I found the bear and picked out some t-shirts, and while I was standing in line to pay, the noise went silent...and then, the opening guitar line, and Tom Higginson's quiet voice: Hey there, Delilah, what's it like in New York City? and I nearly lost it.

We were on the next to the last day of a long, incredibly wonderful trip, and I was rather tired and mildly homesick, but when I heard the song that the kids and I had enjoyed together all summer, I thought: "This is such a perfect moment. Here I am, and way over there they are, and even here there is something that connects us."

I told them about it when we got home, and they thought that was sort of cool also, in a gee, isn't our Mom odd? kind of way.

Tonight, they went on a road trip. They've been looking forward to this for months now. Fall Out Boy is in concert at the Wharf in Orange Beach, and being the FOB fans that they are, they bought tickets and went. They're staying at Grand Beach for the weekend. They had said that Plain White T's were going to open for FOB, and they promised they'd take a picture for me.

But then something even better happened: Amanda called about 8:15, and when I answered, what did I hear? Tom Higginson again: Hey there Delilah...what's it like in New York City? She kept the phone on for the whole song, and cool thing at the end - instead of "Hey there Delilah, here's to you," he sang, "Hey Alabama, here's to you," and I could hear the crowd just go nuts.

At the end of the song, she hung up, and then seconds later came a text message: LYB! which is our shorthand for love you bunches

And my tears just flowed. It was one of those sweet reminders that even when I am here and they are way over there, these two kids - no, these young adults, whom I so adore - and I still have things that connect us.

A thousand miles seems pretty far,
But they've got planes and trains and cars
I'd walk to you if I had no other way.