"The Bad" of "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly"... Well, Sort Of.

If I were blogging "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" of the trip to San Antonio, then I guess my last post would have been "The Ugly" -- the part where I didn't necessarily want to show off my nasty underbelly. But to show what God's up to, you have to show what's being cleaned up, right?

So today we'll move on to the only part of the weekend that made me a little sad (i.e., "The Bad"). I didn't get to attend the "Siesta Fiesta" portion of the weekend. There are two reasons for that. One, apparently I live under a rock, so I didn't know about it. (That's what I get for not reading Beth's blog.) The other reason, which would have overridden the Siesta Fiesta anyway, was that a good friend of mine had a significant birthday, and I had to be back in Austin to help her celebrate.

I mean really. Could you possibly say no to this face? No way.

Yes, that's right. Jo turned 29 (or was it 21? I can never remember ages), and I got to be there with her to celebrate out at a friend's ranch, one of my favorite places on earth.

This is her husband Randal admiring the table with her, who set up the whole surprise party. I was so impressed by him! He got a party planner, called lots of people for email addresses to make sure he invited everyone, and even set up a smaller decoy surprise party for the day before (which was her actual birthday) in case anyone slipped up and blabbed the surprise. He hired a band, brought in a bounce house, and had the whole thing on the ranch where there is a creek, a wading pool for the smaller kids, and all sort of food and fun.

This is a man who loves his wife. And Jo is a good friend and has been for ten years (since our church started). So if attending Jo's party was the "Bad" part of the weekend, I'll take it!

Next up: the "Good," i.e., my notes from Beth's talks.