Jenny Day

Today started out with a blast; a blast of freezing cold water, that is!  I have only taken a cold shower twice in my life before today.  Once because we had to turn off the hot water for repairs in the laundry room, and I needed to take a shower.  I bravely suffered through the cold.  The other time was because we had to turn off the hot water for some reason I cannot remember at the moment, but no body told me!  How do you not tell every one in the household that the hot water is turned off?!  When my parents woke up, my mom just laughed and said, "Oops, we forgot to tell you."  Yeah, that's really funny mom.  It's really funny to turn the shower on and all that comes out is freezing water.  I'll tell you one thing though, I sure woke up in an instant that morning.  Talk about wake up call!  Since then, I have made it a habit to turn the faucet on and check the temperature of the water before I hop into the shower.   I hate cold showers.  It ruins the moisture in my hair, not to mention that the water is so cold that my skin cannot stand it for a second.  This morning was just that case.  I had spent the night at Connie's house in order to avoid driving across town more than I needed to this weekend, but mostly because she's my best friend and I enjoy hanging out with her.  To get the whole effect on my cold shower to top off what a great weekend I had, let's rewind back to Friday night, a night that I will never forget.

Friday, February 18 was our This Is Not Goodbye- Part 2 party at my good friends, Scott and Susie Derouin's house.  In case you didn't notice, I did say Part 2 because we had a Part 1 (obviously) the week before.  And if you haven't read my previous blog, Scott and Susie are beginning their steps into ministry by moving to a new church that is growing in their ministries but lacks the leadership.  Scott and Susie were the leaders of my College and Career Sunday school class at my church,  so as a last hurrah, we had two going away parties, so to speak.  Anyway, Friday night was our Part 2.  It started at 6:30, but I didn't get there til 7:00pm because I was waiting at home for my sister, Megan, as she was coming straight from school, MSU (that's a whole other issue in itself as I am a U of M fan).  To avoid bringing many cars to the Derouin's, I waited for Megan to get to my house and then drive together along with another friend.  We entered the house and Scott tells me that they couldn't start the evening because I wasn't there yet.  Every body waited to eat.  I felt so bad.  They could have started without us, but they said some things weren't ready anyway.  I think they were just saying that to cover up. Regardless of that fact, the food was worth the wait. We ate some yummy lasagna, spaghetti, green beans, bread and butter, and for dessert we had brownies!  And we had coffee!!  I probably shouldn't have had three cups of coffee!  I'll get more into that.

At some point in the evening, I had Scott and Susie open a gift that I had been working on for them.  It was a scrapbook of their time with the coolest people in the world, the HBC College and Career class!  (I think this is when I had finished my first cup of coffee.)  Everyone enjoyed the pictures, mostly because they were in them.  It was nice to go down memory lane for a bit and remember the good times.  I told Scott not to cry and I could see him tearing up before he even opened the book. He's such a cry baby.  After that I went up to Scott with my empty mug and said, "Please sir, may I have some more (coffee)?"  That was my second cup of coffee in less than an hour I think.

Other then that, it was a typical Friday night at the Derouin's.  The Wii was out and in action.  Connie schooled everyone in basketball.  Megan apparently schooled everyone in archery.  I, on the other hand, was in the other room playing a nice quiet game of cards. Yeah right.  I hate playing cards.  It's so boring to just sit there and place cards down on the table.  Where's the fun?  I was playing Bananagrams with some friends.  For those of you who have never heard of Bananagrams and are trying to imagine was that entails, stop thinking right now!  It's a scrabble game where you create your own mini scrabble board, and you can shuffle your words around as you get new letter tiles.  It's a really fun game.  If you've played it enough times like Susie and I have, we play the game really fast so you better keep up.  To finish off the night, we had to play Catchphrase because this game only gets better after 11pm!  Some of us ended up staying til about 12:30 in the morning (even Connie), but we knew it was time to leave.  We can't have Scott and Susie forever, however I am coming over every week to spend time with their family.  Their son, Caleb, and I are calling it Jenny Day (hence the title).

Saturday was a fun day too, mostly because I didn't have to work!  I had plans to meet up with Connie and another friend at a restaurant for dinner, but the other friend bailed out.  Connie and I quickly changed our plans.  I ended up going to her last coaching game for basketball, then went to Patty and Joe's house for dinner.  BTW, Chicken Shack is AMAZING!!  Then, of course, we played Just Dance on the Wii and my new favorite game, Family Feud for the Wii.  This game had us laughing so hard.  For example, one of the questions was "Name a food that is difficult to eat with a fork."  The number two answer was spaghetti.  Spaghetti!! Really?!  How else do you eat spaghetti?

Sunday, February 20, 2011 was a day that I was hoping would never come; Scott and Susie's last Sunday with our church.  I already told you about my cold shower, so we don't need to get into that again.  Connie and I left for church.  I hung my coat up.  I went to the bathroom to check my make-up and my clothes.  I walked down the hall.  I entered my class and immediately started crying.  I have no idea where this emotion came from because I wasn't too sad all morning.  I knew our time with Scott and Susie was coming to an end and I thought I was beginning to accept the fact that I won't be seeing them every Sunday and Wednesday.  And the funny thing is that neither Scott or Susie were in the room yet and here I was crying.  I had to leave the room right away because I didn't want to cry in front of people.  I don't like to be vulnerable.  I pulled myself together and walked back into the room.  I sat down as everyone was making fun of me for crying.

Then Scott walked into the room.  Now I started blubbering and quickly left the room as I was about to fall apart.  I had the waterworks going, the crying noises, even had trouble breathing, and I was shaking.  I could hear everyone in the room tell Scott that I had cried and that I just needed to collect myself.  I came back in the room and told Scott not to look at me.  I was still shaking at this point.  I could see him out of the corner of my eye, but I looked away as I knew I would have to fix my eye makeup once again.  He asked why i was sitting by myself, and someone mentioned to him that I wanted to sit by myself because if I was going to cry again, I wanted to cry by myself.  Well that lasted a whole five minutes when someone I was trying to avoid walks in the room; Susie.  And guess where she sat? That's right, right next to me just to torture me.  I held it together though.  I made it through Sunday School.  I sure am going to miss their faces at church.  For the past two weeks, however, their son Caleb has been asking me when I am coming over for Jenny Day.  He just has to melt my heart.  Caleb is such a sweet kid.  I didn't realize he really wants me to come over as often as I can.  I will definitely make time for Derouin's as they will always be in my heart and prayers.

Sunday night was Flocks night.  This was an incredible distraction of Scott and Susie leaving.  I love my Flocks.  For those of you who don't know what I am talking about, I am not talking about my own personal flock of sheep.  I am not Little Bo Peep.  Flocks is a home Bible study group and we meet every first and third Sundays of every month.  It's so great and such wonderful fellowship with awesome people.  We had a good study and great discussion, even though Joe (the leader of the pack) was picking on my friend Andrew which is why I chose not to say any answers aloud as I would have to explain them.  I'm just kidding.  I did shout out some answers, but whenever Andrew did, Joe would say "what do you mean?"  Poor Andrew.  Joe's wife, Patty, jokingly said that all of  our names were on a dart board and the dart landed on Andrew's name for the night.  After our study, we ate dinner.  Miss Vicki made some delicious pulled pork, and or course we had to have some orange soda!  My brother Mike is in my flocks group too.  He hasn't been feeling well and he had been waiting to get called in to plow snow for the night.  He was going to call his boss to call in sick when he did get the call to be at work at 9pm.  He ended up snow plowing for 20 hours!  Anyways, me and Andrew stayed at Patty and Joe's with Mike till he had to leave for work.  We played Just Dance on the Wii (we love the Wii) and their kids beat Mike in a lot of dances.  It was pretty funny.  I did a few songs myself but it is so tiring and makes you sweat.  We even got Andrew to do a song when we pulled out the Michael Jackson version of Just Dance.  I was not even going to try to the MJ dances because he moves pretty fast I would not be able to keep up.

Despite the fact that I was sad 50 % of the time, I had a really great weekend.  I have such wonderful friends and family in my life; people who would drop what their doing to help me with anything.  Patty even told me to text her when I got home Sunday night because of all the snow.  I can't remember the last time it's taken me over an hour to get home from Warren but I got home in one piece.  I love them so much and you all know who you are.  Thanks for an awesome weekend!

Jennifer Nicole