Reverse C & E Christians...

We ditched church today. But that's not the important thing.

The important thing is that we ditched church last week, Easter Sunday. We had planned on going. I even ironed, and wore a skirt, and everything. When it came time to leave, however, His Highness was in the middle of a nap, and instead of waking him up to go, we decided to let him sleep. To be honest, I don't think either of us was feeling particularly motivated to try a new church on Easter. Long story, hard to explain, blah blah blah.

This is the second major holiday in a row that we've missed church. Just this last Christmas (Eve), about half our extended family was sick and, despite a valiant effort to get there, in the end we didn't make it.

So while there are some who don't attend church except on Christmas and Easter (affectionately referred to as "C & E Christians" in evangelical circles), our general pattern it seems is to attend most every week except Christmas and Easter, making us reverse C & E Christians.

Other snippets from the week--

--I found myself feeling a little bit sad about being here in CA only 5 months (just over 4 remaining, actually). I might be falling in love with the central coast. This is rather remarkable, given my history with new places. Usually it takes some time for them to grow on me. So I'm a little bummed out that the one I instantly love is our most short-term station thus far. Sometimes I wonder what God has in mind about that--letting us spend a lot of time in places that take some getting used to, and only a little time where I'd love to spend a lot of time. He's God though, so...

--His Highness and I went down to Santa Barbara yesterday. We needed to hit Barnes & Noble, and found it smack in the middle of downtown. This place has personality, lemme tell ya. The streets were packed, so we parked in a garage and took to the sidewalk with the stroller. We tried the baby leash for, like, 2 minutes, but there were too many interesting things to see, and His Highness kept holding up traffic while he stopped to look. He was fascinated by the juggler, which the juggler was excited about--he said it was the most interest he'd had all day.

A word to the wise--Barnes & Noble's time limit for returns is now 2 weeks from purchase. Guess they had too many people doing the old buy-read-&-return.

We had a delicious and nutritionally void lunch of hot dogs and Luscious Lime shaved ice. His Highness didn't actually eat his corndog--only the breading. We stopped into a couple of shops and I came away with a picnic blanket and a hooded sweatshirt. I'd been hoping to stop at the beach on the way home, but in the end we didn't have time. Had to be back so the Cat Daddy and I could make it to our double date sans kiddos.

Another word to the wise--the Hitching Post in Casmalia has fantastic food. And wine, if you're into that sort of thing. Its 'brother' location in Buellton was the one in the movie "Sideways," but Casmalia is the home of the original. Casmalia is also the home of not much else, so the Hitching Post is hard to miss. Get the filet.