Geez. It's 8:36 PM and my eyelids are sooo heavy already. Yipes.

Today we had our big announcement at church about our new adventure. It was nice to be affirmed and sent out. Many people were very shocked, but also just so excited for us. I told everyone that today was the day to be excited and that we'll save the good-byes for a couple of weeks. I'm not ready to say good-byes yet, and neither were they! :)

AND, I had to stand while the whole congregation sang "Happy Birthday" to me--in BOTH services! Aaron laughed at me the first time this happened. He said he could tell that I was just basking in the attention! Well, DUH! :D

My best friend took me to the tea room for a birthday lunch yesterday and we had a good time talking and crying and laughing together. I'll have to post a picture of Tami for you all. We happen to have the same basic description (tall, blonde, blue eyes...ravishly gorgeous, you know, something like that) and both of our families, without knowing each other, visited our church for the first time on the exact same Sunday two and a half years ago. There are still people who can't tell us apart or don't know there are two of us (this is a familiar thing for me, but Tami was an only, so I think it must be weirder for her!). Anyway, we were just laughing yesterday because we really didn't know each other well until about 9 months ago or so. And now we're each other's best Boise friend...until we become long-distance best friends in a few weeks. We're trying to soak up every bit of each other before that happens.

Friday night, Aaron, Punky and I went out to eat at the Olive Garden, not really for my birthday (we were going dutch so that really can't be for my birthday, right?!), but we told them it was in hopes of getting a free desert. No dice. $3.25 for their special birthday cake and singers. Eh. So, Aaron ordered us a slice of Black Tie Mousse Cake instead. At which point Punk lit up like an orange-haired lightbulb, pointed at our rotund, black waiter, and exclaimed, "BLACK! Just like HIM!!!!" Mercifully, the waiter laughed genuinely dispelling the "What do we do now?" looks Aaron and I were exchanging.

I was kerflummuxed. Punk NEVER has referred to anyone's skin color. He identifies people by their clothing color instead (i.e.--"What's the blue lady doing?"), and most kids his age would call black skin brown because it's more like the crayon color brown (like Punk will tell people his hair ISN'T red, it's ORANGE, people!). The man was wearing a white shirt, so I just couldn't figure it out. Until Saturday morning's hazy-dazy-waking-slowly-brilliancy overcame me. Black TIE, Black TIE Mousse Cake! The waiter was wearing a black TIE. Whew. Next Saturday I will use my hazy-dazy time to solve the mystery of something almost as important...like global warming...or poverty. Stay tuned.