i bought dinner for 56 tonight

Well, I didn’t pay for the whole shebang out of my pocket, but I was partially responsible. Someone gave Calvary’s pastors a gift for October’s Pastor Appreciation month.  Dan figured that we could either split the gift and buy sweater vests or we could pool our resources and take the entire staff and spouses/significant others/random friends to a nice dinner.

56 is a pretty big number.  I’ve been on staff at Calvary since 1998, when the staff was much smaller.  The church has grown a lot over the past 13 years, and we’ve been pretty creative in how we staff.  We’ve had to, in order to keep up with the growth.

Kim and I got to sit with Erica (College Min) Reitz and her hubby Craig, as well as Bruce (Pastor, Warrior’s Mark/Encore) Eveleth and his wife Syd.  We had a blast!  We laughed and shared stories, talked about babies and adoption and missions and the Mission of the church…It was a good night.

Our children managed just fine without us tonight, too.  Levi accompanied Isaac to his first basketball practice (thanks Delm for the transport!)  In Levi’s words, Isaac was a “beast.”  Apparently he’s inherited his basketball skills from me, as he hit some wild running sideways shot that was on the verge of miraculous.  I did that once…Annabelle had her first practice tonight as well (thanks Pat Sullivan, we’re blessed to have you as our coach!)  The other girls took great care of Charlie, got their homework done, and didn’t destroy the house in the process.

Throw in some Kelly’s prime rib and call that night a win!