Yep, we celebrated Valentines’ Day 24 hours early since Amanda is leaving for Philadelphia tomorrow night and I work tomorrow. Stephanie missed it. She is somewhere in Pennsylvania skiing or snowboarding or whatever young people do these days. We will see her Monday.

So Scott and I concocted a plan to get Amanda to dinner with all of us. She is still not feeling well, and not in the best of moods, so I talked her into going with me to look at a property for one of our churches to rent. I made it sound pretty important and talked about really valuing her opinion too! (Of course I take it with a grain of salt….she is still a Colts fan and thinks that household dust is the number one threat to health worldwide) But she bit the hook and we left. Two minutes later, Scotty and Ben, now dressed in identical white shirts and jeans, left to beat us to the restaurant with the cards and gifts. Scotty sat them facing the door in the back of the restaurant too so when we came in (under the guise of being paged there because one of our parishioners fell on the ice there) Ben started screaming “Mommy Mommy.” It was too funny. We had not only tricked her completely, but then she had to endure the three of us in the restaurant till the very end.

Ironically, I was the best behaved. Ben put on a show with his crackers, napkins, and ice cream. His brother did nothing but egg him on too. And I just laughed. She will probably be glad to get out of town until the stories stop circulating through the area.

So tomorrow will be just a partial day together with the family we have left, then just us boys. It is going to be a whale of a time! Fortunately for us we know when she will be returning…..and we will have a full 72 hours to figure out how we can pin anything that goes wrong on Steph!

Goodnight my friends and God Bless!

Tommy+