At some point before my wedding, someone advised me to stop a few times and just…REMEMBER.  In essence, the suggestion was to take a mental picture of it all, to have a few moments that stand out from the rest that will surely be a blur.  (The phrase “mental picture” also reminds me of a hilarious FRIENDS episode with Alec Baldwin, and you can see a clip of that HERE. )  It sounds cheesy as heck, but I tell you what: it worked!  More than 12 years later, I still have three that stand out.  One was when my sweet mother blew off her plans to shuttle my bridesmaids and I to all get pedicures together the day before the wedding; one was when my dad and I stood in the lobby, looking at our bridal party getting ready to walk into the sanctuary; the third was when Trent and I were in the hallway outside our wedding reception, just looking at this handsome kid, knowing he was mine and we were about to walk in, be announced as husband and wife and dance the night away.

In fact, about three years ago, I blogged about a mental picture moment I had with my older two kiddos.  If you read it, I predict you will blow air our of your nose.

This last weekend, we had a moment.  I took a mental picture.  I’m pretty confident it’s a “you had to be there” kind of story, and you will not appreciate it like I do, but I’ve learned that my blog is my best record-keeper, so I must put it in writing.

We were on our way back from a fun weekend visiting friends and going to the wildlife safari, and we stopped to eat at BJ’s Pizza, which is my all-time favorite, so I was already in my happy place.  The kids had napped for at least an hour in the car, so they were in fairly good moods while we waited for our food.  Carson and I were thumb wrestling, and Asher wanted to try it.  At first he was just holding my hand and smiling, because he didn’t understand.  So, I re-positioned our hands to the proper game stance, and told him he should smoosh my thumb down.  This kid is a BRUISER in all areas of life, and we are constantly telling him to be gentle, calm down, be gentle, gentle touch, be gentle with your whole body, slow down, BE GENTLE, etc.  This is the only time I can remember us giving him permission to “smoosh” anything, and sure enough, he immediately had my hand in a death grip.  Not only that, but he instantly slapped his other hand onto my thumb and hopped up onto his feet in the booth to give himself leverage to SMOOSH my thumb down with as much force as his body could offer.  All the while, his whole face was in an intense grimace and his body was shaking with the pressure being exerted onto my thumb.  Which, by the way, wasn’t going anywhere.

The immediacy and intensity of his game play surprised and tickled us all, but mostly Carson, who was between Asher and me.  He fell into a fit of hysteria, literally rolling around in the circular booth.  He could NOT catch his breath!  Nothing makes Trent laugh harder than seeing Carson laugh hard, so soon Trent was having a hard time breathing because HE was laughing so hard.  His tell is that he hunches forward, his face turns red and he doesn’t make a sound, until a high-pitched girly laugh sneaks out.  Of course being surrounded by this, Sydney and I were swept away ourselves, and soon our entire table was shaking, mostly from the laughter, but also from Asher who was STILL SMOOSHING MY THUMB!

People around us started looking over, wondering what the heck was going on, which almost made it funnier.  We’re causing a scene! But we can’t stop!  Of course it was the best kind of scene and no one seemed irritated.  It took us quite a while to calm Carson down and to get Asher off of my thumb.  But as I was trying not to pee my pants from this laugh-fest, you know what I did?  I took a mental picture.  I want to remember that thumb wrestling match in that booth at BJ’s pizza for the rest of my life.