Grief and ice-cream

We're on spending lock down this pay period. 

That is, after we spontaneously decided to go out to Chinese for lunch on Sunday, and took my brother along and paid for his meal too. (Hint: if you want your bachelor brother who lives up in town to come to your daughter's piano recital, trick him into staying around after church by offering free food.)

But back to the spending lock-down. Russ and I renewed our non-spending vows again Sunday night and were all set to conserve our fundage for the next week and a half.

Until yesterday. When a dear, dear man that has attended our church forever and been a recess monitor at our kid's school for 15 years was in an accident and died. And a school assembly was held to tell the children. And I was called to come pick up my son who has, up to this point, not faced death in a real way and was beside himself. As in, he would not stop crying even after multiple (and I mean multiple) explanations of heaven and the glory of being with Jesus, and reassurances that his friend Mr. Turner was 1000 times happier to be there and not here any more.

Well, I had no choice but to take him to the movie store to pick out a couple of movies and then to McDonalds for a caramel sundae because apparently that's how I deal with grief. I called Russ to let him know and he asked me to pick a 2nd movie for us to all watch together later as well, and to get two more sundaes for him and Kendall because he was on his way home and was going to grab her from school.

Sometimes it's okay to temporarily throw the budget out the window. 

It worked too. Cooper was entirely distracted and thanked me when we got back home because it had helped him take his mind off of his sadness.

And our sad day was made sweeter by a cozy family evening together, cuddled under blankets on the couch watching movies, and talking about death and heaven - praying for the family that lost a beloved brother and uncle. 

But my favorite moment of the day was when Cooper got a phone call from his sweet school buddy Aaron, who wanted to check on Cooper and ask how he was doing. Cooper hung up after talking to him, much brighter that before, and said "Mom, I really like that kid."

Really, I would like to bottle up my tender-hearted 8 year old and keep him forever. 

P.S. I was going to write a recap of Scrap Around the Clock today, but instead I'm going to link to my sister's blog because she covered it fantastically.