A Lot of Cooking Going On Here
I just spent five days hanging out with my son and his girlfriend in Lynchburg, VA and had a blast. The plane trip went according to textbook or actually better than expected. I'm now singing the Jet Blue Praises. I would definitely fly that airline again. My last flight home was 40 minutes earlier than expected. My husband was able to track my entire flight and picked me up exactly on time by doing so. I was very pleased.
It all started a month or so ago when I told David if I could get tickets for under $200 I'd come down for a visit and cook for his houseful of roomates. He has has eight roommates in one house they rent, all runners I might add.
It all started when he picked me up on a beautiful sunny Thursday late afternoon in Dulles. He drove 3 1/2 hours to get me but it took us at least 4 1/2 to get to his house. One of the reasons was because it started to rain. Since his accident he has flashbacks when it starts to rain which causes him to drive very conservatively which pleases me to no end. The rain was a factor in that accident. Before the accident I thought he was too much of a lead foot, but now....what a difference.
The next day, Friday, I headed to Sams Club to load up on groceries. Josh was in CA running a very big 10K and his brother Jordan was running the Penn Relays so they were out. One other roommate was gone for the weekend with a Youth Group so he was gone. I decided then instead of tripling my recipes I'd double them instead.
The first night we went into the house and I was met with a sinkful of dishes. The house is what you'd expect nine boys to be living in. The bathroom was off limits as far as I was concerned. Aly warned me not to go in the bathroom. I didn't. I'm good at holding it...very good.
There was one boy at the stove making pancakes in what looked like his pj's. He didn't speak at all. He finished up and left the room not to be seen again. I asked David if he had told the boys I was coming. He seemed a bit evasive only saying something about he told a couple of them. Obviously this boy didn't know. I found out later his name was Jarvis.
So we three, David, Aly and I cleaned up the dishes, set the dishwasher in motion, disinfected the bar area and went to work. I made a recipe called Swift Spaghetti. We also had salad and garlic bread. While I set the table, only seeing one other boy named Clint, I asked David to go round up whoever was in the house. He looked around and came up with just a couple of them. Drew, Clint, Christian, Aly, David and I sat down for the first meal. I was planning on four nights.
We did have a brownie mishap this first night. I knew that David's house was going to be not as clean as I'd like so I thought before I'd go over that first night that I'd make the brownies in Aly's nice clean kitchen. So I whipped up a double batch, threw choc chips on top and put in a nice big cookie sheet. Aly had wax paper so I put that over the raw mixture.....big mistake. I thought I'll just pop in the oven when we get to the house. On the 10 minute drive over there while I was holding the pan carefully it started oozing out first on this side, and then on that side and before I knew it I had chocolate all over the place including my canvas bag. I was covered, the car seat which I managed to almost protect did manage to get to spots about the size of a quarter and it was just one royal mess. Lifting the wax paper only made it worse with much of it clinging to it. So when we stopped David said to throw it all out but I'm too cheap. I shifted it around, cleaned it up the best I could, had Aly spoon the batter off the top of the paper onto the pan while I held the pan....all of this going on outside the house on top of the trashcan.
We popped it in the oven and wouldn't you know it...... this was probably the best tasting batch of brownies I had ever made. They were raving over them. Who woulda thunk? And David wanted me to toss them. Let this be a lesson!!
Drew and Christian were very funny and I enjoyed meeting them. I had met Clint last fall briefly. Drew, a Senior is student teaching at a HS nearby. He is a Phys Ed teacher. Christian, also a Senior with very dry humor won the Nationals in the mile when he was in HS. He was on the cover of many reputable running magazines at the time. He was very heavily recruited for Liberty only to be a big disappointment when he got there. He ended up losing his full scholarship mostly because he just wasn't motivated. He actually hates to run but likes the idea of it. He's very gifted and could be one of the best runners out there today. The coach was not happy with this new recruit. Christian tried to talk the coach in letting him stay on scholarship by saying he was like fine wine, getting better with age. The coach didn't buy it, took the scholarship away, and they have not been on good terms since then.
I told them I'd be back the next night as well, hoping to meet the others. David, Aly and I set off for the movies. We saw Ghost Riders. Aly hated the move.
The next night, was Chili Mac night. Again, we had to first do the sinkful of dishes clean up the counters and stove and get to work. This time, the pancake man, Jarvis joined us. He told me he had no idea I was coming that first night. It was very obvious by looking around the kitchen that these boys live on pancake mix. I had also brought bags and bags of candy, stuffing it into my suitcase. I picked out a nice big bowl and dumped it all in placing in in the center of the table when we were finished eating on that first night. For the next four nights I watched this bowl of candy disappear.
The Chili Mac and Cornbread was a success. I also made homemade Chocolate Chip cookies. We stayed around the table for a long time just enjoying each other's company. They guys loved it. They didn't want to leave. The first night as we sat down I said, "okay who's going to pray? Who's the eldest?" Christian said he was and he prayed. The second night we went to the youngest and that was Aly and she prayed. The third night we went to the tallest and Clint prayed. The last night I said who's the best looking and they all looked at David and he prayed.
At the end of each meal, one boy got up to do cleanup. Very willingly I might add. They loved these family dinners. They said they want to keep this going.
On the third night we picked up Nate since he came back from the Youth Group camping trip. I had heard that Nate was a very sensitive guy. Not in a bad way, like an eggshell person, but just a gentle type of soul. The first thing he said to me when he met me this now third night was......"I'm not gay. Don't believe these guys. I'm not gay." He was very fun loving and I could tell there was a lot of love that passed between all these guys. I did come to realize you can't believe a single word they say. They seem so serious but you still can't believe them.
So I head about the diaper run, the smurf run and the day David ran right up and over a slow moving car. The diaper run was hilarious. Drew was telling me the story. They all put on diapers and went on a run. The problem was that Drew sweats....ALOT. His diaper started to sag really badly. It was hard to run he said with a sagging diaper. He ended up with Diaper rash. I looked at my son in amazement. "You did this I asked?" "No way" he said. While he did admit to doing the Smurf run, he drew the line at putting on a diaper. The Smurf run was a run where they all ran around town painted blue. They got some spray paint and painted themselves silly blue. My elsest son, Bobby who ran as a Senior with a couple of these boys as Freshmen said this is the boldest group of runners Liberty has every had. The runners before always talked about doing these things but this group actually went out and did them.
The car incident? While they were out on a run David decided to run up the hood, over the roof and down the back end of this moving car. The car lurched to a stop, as David kept running, and a big redneck guy got out. He started screaming 4-letter words and spoke about getting his rifle out to shoot them all. In the meantime his buddies were trapped inbetween this guy and David, now running down the street laughing his head off. The guys apologized the best they could for this, now scared this guy was going to take them all down. He had muscles on muscles and he was much bigger than probably three of them put together. Then the wife steps out of the passenger side and with many front teeth missing started cussing them out as well. They laugh now, but they were a bit scared of this duo. They took off down side streets breaking up hoping to get home alive that day.
They ended up getting reps for the diaper run. They also got reps for NOT having their ID's on them while doing so. Nobody runs with ID but when you only have a diaper on......oh well you're going to get caught. David was really glad he didn't run that day with them.
I also heard the story about the rivalry between Christan and Nate. Christian is from Ohio and Nate is from MI. During football season it got really heated. In the house Christian brought in a cat in which he named Sexy. He loves this cat , but his mom is not happy about the name. One day while Christian was gone, Nate shaved a big M on the cat and painted the M on the cat blue. When Christian got home he was not happy. He was equally not happy the day they decided to spray his room with the fire extinguisher either. This just happened to be at 1 am. He left his room for a little bit to return to find it all covered in white foam. He was literally foaming at the mouth that night I was told.
On the last night I got a surprise. This time a few of the guys were waiting in the kitchen for us to come. The dishes were not only done but the DW was completely empty with a stack of clean dishes waiting for me. Everything was cleaned up so I could immediately start dinner. Aly comes into the kitchen a few minutes later and whispered they even cleaned the bathroom. So David goes and checks it out and was extremely impressed. He said they even did a good job.
David is very neat. At first he was constantly cleaning the bathroom. Then he gave up. He told me the tub is disgusting. He wears shower shoes when he uses the shower now. So this was very impressive. He couldn't get over it...neither could I.
Everybody showed up this night. They were all prepared and wondering what we were going to have. On the third night we had baked potato, carrots (fresh) and baked chicken and more chocolate chip cookies for dessert. On this fourth night I made a huge batch of homemade macaroni and cheese with hotdogs dumped in along with more cornbread. We had David's favorite no bake chocolate oatmeal cookies for dessert.
They asked me if I'd stay another week. When I said maybe I'd do this again next fall, even Drew who is ready to graduate said he'd come back. He lives in VA anyhow. Christian said he'd probably stick around since who knows if he'll really graduate anyhow. Later David told me how smart Christian really is. He's going to be some sort of Pastor or Youth Pastor eventually.
Another boy showed up this last night named Tim. While he doesn't live at the house he's a frequent guest/friend of them all. He's also in the National Guard and thoroughly enjoyed this homecooked meal even taking home his own extra pan for the next night. I had so much left over on purpose so they'd all have another meal when I left to remember me by and also to be able to have another "family dinner." This boy, has a sad family life. I wanted to adopt him. I got the feeling he really needs a mom. I guess he was kicked out of his home at 16 as all the kids in his family are and he's been bounced around. He went into the guard to get help with school. He's a hard worker David said, and he has a sadness about him that I didn't see in the other guys.
They all practically followed me out the door that last night knowing they wouldn't see me again. I was thinking what a great ministry this could be. I'm hoping to do this again next fall if all works out. My son David was very grateful for what I did. He liked having his mom around not only because we're pretty close, but also because he misses mom's homemade cooking. It also made him a very popular guy among his housemates. He said none of the other mom's have done this before. Aly enjoyed this as well. She gave me a letter on my last day telling me how she enjoyed the whole week. She's not a cook and I had her help me every step of the way teaching her a few tricks along the way. She also left me a voice mail on my home phone so when I got home I had a message from her.
David drove me the 3 1/2 hours back to the airport on Tuesday afternoon. He gave me more than one large hug and said more than once "thank you." I knew what he meant. This is going to be a lasting memory between the two of us and it was worth every penny to do all this.
Isn't that what Moms are for?