A dream about a family vacation

I dreamed we went on a family vacation somewhere, and stopped at a lodge to spend the night. There were two rooms available--one with eight beds, and one with two. At first we thought we'd take both--the big one for the kids, and the little one for Erick and me, but the little one just had two twin beds so we decided to just go for the big one. Several of those beds were just sofa beds, including one that when you pushed a button on the arm of the couch a sleeping bag popped out onto the floor, but we figured it would work. But on the main bed, there was vomit across the bed and halfway across the floor. It was really nasty--big chunks of minestrone. We weren't sure if Axton did it or someone else who had stayed there.

I said, "It's okay, we'll get the maid to clean it up." But Sarah just grabbed a broom and dustpan and started sweeping up chunks of macaroni. I told her she didn't have to do that, but she sweetly said, "It's okay, I don't mind."

Then I went to buy some food. I bought ice cream for the kids and me, and since Erick couldn't have any, I bought him cottage cheese in waffle cones. I stopped at the Vision Center on the way out of Walmart and made eye appointments for the kids, and then left. Halfway home I realized the safety seal on the cottage cheese was broken, so I decided I should be on the safe side and return it. As I went back through the neighborhood where I had purchased the cottage cheese at a yard sale, I realized all of the yard sales had closed up and gone home. While looking for the yard sale, I inadvertently ran a stop light. A cop was sitting at the intersection. Panicked, and knowing we could not afford a traffic ticket at that time, I pulled over to the curb and ordered everyone out of the car. We ditched the car and ran up an alley to hide from the cop, and then ducked into the first door.

The first door just happened to be the door to a store that sold used cars, which seemed to be the perfect solution for our problem. We would just buy a different car and not have to worry about getting a traffic ticket. Lori VanMeter was selling the cars. We picked out a station wagon, thinking we could give it to Sarah when we were done with it. I asked Erick if we could afford another car payment, and he suggested trading in the Suburban. I explained to Lori that it was totaled, but that otherwise it was in good shape.

And that's about the end of my dream.

A dream about a stressful morning

I dreamed that we were going to church at the church where I grew up in Shadeland, Indiana. Shannon and Axton were coming with us. Because we didn't have enough room for everyone, Shannon just held Axton on her lap instead of buckling him into his car seat. Unfortunately for Shannon, Axton had a bad dirty diaper on the way there and it leaked all over Shannon's dress. She had poop all over her, even on her face.

I asked Shannon if she had a change of clothes, which she did, and offered to let her use the shower in the annex that had been built onto the church. I told her that Betty Snellenberger (the treasurer at our old church in Clay City, who passed away last November) used to live in the annex and had a nice apartment with a shower. In fact, it had a shower, two bathtubs (a claw-foot one and a modern tub/shower combo) and a jacuzzi. So I left Shannon there and went back to the church.

However, there were swarms of small children all around the church dressed up as little ghosts carrying pumpkin baskets. I asked, "What are all these children doing? Halloween was yesterday!" and someone told me that since it was still dark out, they were out trick-or-treating. They like to trick-or-treat until dawn. They had put up barricades around the church, so I rode around the church on my Big Wheel removing barricades. There were also a lot of other children waiting for the doors to open to the Presbyterian church next door, which obviously had a way cool children's program since the kids had color-coding matching t-shirts on.

Then Betty Snellenberger came walking down the sidewalk, not in her power chair like she used to be. I said, "Betty!" and she cried, "Lisa!"and we ran toward each other and hugged each other and then I said, "Wait--I thought you were dead." All of a sudden she got a really sheepish look on her face and she ran off in the other direction.

Then it was time for church. My family was there and so was Erick's family. I couldn't find my music. I looked all over and asked everyone. Timothy was on Minecraft and didn't answer me. Erick was in a theological debate with his dad and didn't answer me, either. The girls wanted me to run to Walmart and buy a curling iron for Shannon, and I said I didn't have time. I found last week's songs, but I didn't want to sing the same songs I sang last week, so I kept looking.

Finally I found them on Joyce's dining room table under a stack of unopened mail. There were five songs, and I hadn't made any copies of them. The song on top was one I had never even heard of and it was written in three languages. I decided we shouldn't sing that once since we didn't have time to practice, so I grabbed the old stack from last week so I could switch out the first one for "Testify to Love." However, someone had stepped on it in the van and it was so torn and dirty I couldn't even get a decent copy of it.

That's when Erick woke me up, which I was actually thankful for because I was really getting stressed out about the whole situation.

The secret life of the pastor

A few nights ago I dreamed that I had been having suspicions that my husband was sneaking around behind my back. I had no idea what he was up to at first, but one day I discovered a clue: I found an orange curly wig in the bathroom. When I confronted him, he confessed that he had taken a part time job as a circus clown. It was Gus Autry, our children's pastor, who had talked him into it, which did not surprise me in the least.

A concert in the mall

I dreamed there were some bad storms coming, so we were trying to head out of town, when we remembered we needed to go grocery shopping. We turned around and went back to the mall to go shopping. There was a man outside of Staples selling coupons where you could get anything at Staples for only $5, but we needed groceries, not office supplies. We dropped the kids off at the play area at the mall to play so we could shop. We had Axton with us, too, as well as the cat. Then we remembered we didn't have any money.

We decided that in order to make some money to buy groceries, we would hold a church service in the mall and take up an offering. We began to set up our sound equipment, but then the mall owners told us there were two bands scheduled to play before us and that we would have to wait our turn. The first band was Altared, led by Donny Osmond, and he had the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir singing backup for them. They sang, "We are the World" and I could see Keith and Karen Taylor on the big screen, as well as the outreach pastor from Calvary Temple in Springfield waving around their cell phones in the air.

Since there was standing room only, we decided to go yard sale shopping while we waited. There was a yard sale that had a lot of small appliances in bright colors, and we bought a pink can opener, a yellow fry daddy, and an orange toilet seat for Axton.

Then I realized that we were up next, and I suddenly realized I didn't know where my music was. I hadn't seen it since we'd moved! I asked Axton to go check in the van to see if it was out there, because I couldn't find my shoes, either. I looked all over the house and finally decided to borrow my sister's shoes, but the tongue was hanging on by only a thread. Frustrated, I pulled the entire tongue off the shoe and then ran out to find the music because Axton didn't know where it was. Sure enough, my music was in between the front seats of the van, so I grabbed it and hurried back. I also had to chase the cat all over Walmart because she didn't like being stuck in the cat carrier and we had to let her loose.

I never did get to play, because Erick woke me up.

A church service on a Friday morning

I dreamed that we went over to the church for a cleaning day, and lots of people were coming in and sitting in the pews. We had as many people show up as the day of Mark and Pam's concert. We kept asking around if anyone knew what was going on. Did we have a special service scheduled today on a Friday morning that we forgot about? Nobody seemed to know. Erick wasn't sure if he was supposed to preach, or if a guest was coming, or if it was a community sing. Some of the people started getting up and singing songs. Some of the people I work with at Walmart were there and started to sing, but it was terrible. I was mortified. Mark and Pam said that they'd try to come up with something to sing, but didn't have anything prepared. Erick decided to pray for a long time so that they'd have time to prepare. While he was praying, I remembered that some of my songs were in the piano bench, so I quietly tiptoed up to the stage to look for them. Not only did I not have a single song that I had ever heard of in there, I ended up dropping the lid to the piano bench on my cell phone and breaking it into two pieces.

Realizing it was getting late and that I was scheduled to work 2-11, I tiptoed out of the church, tossing my phone into the trash can on the way out. Halfway to work I stumbled across a truck full of worms that had overturned on the highway. I got out to help the man sort out the worms. He said that all I needed to do was scan them with my telezon. While I was helping him, I noticed that his fence was made of these unique, hollow wood, and he said that he got that from Freda Clendenning's house in Sedalia. I agreed that even though Freda was dead, her trees were legendary.

I tried to scan the worms, but I couldn't figure out how to work the telezon. It was touch screen and didn't look like the ones at work. Finally I looked at the clock and realized it was 3:40 already and I was late to work, so I apologized and left. I looked at the road and realized it was snowing. The roads were terrible. I didn't know if it was safe to go to work, especially without a phone. I thought about borrowing the kids' phone but realized Joy took it with her when she went to Momentum.

I stopped by the Hummels house and delivered some whipped cream to their poor, starving children. That was when I woke up.

A fast car and a flying picnic table

So this is actually one that I had a week or so ago and just never wrote down. Hopefully I can still remember it.

I dreamed that I went to a car dealership and bought a really awesome car. It was a silver convertible (although not old like Jay's). It was so fast and had tons of power. I put in reverse to back out of the parking lot, and went so fast in reverse that by the time I got it back into drive I was completely lost way out in the country. Since I don't really know my way around Illinois yet, I drove around for awhile looking for a familiar sign or landmark. I drove past a park and saw some people in lawn chairs sitting around in a circle playing musical instruments and I thought to myself, "Ah ha! Those must be the Spellbrinks! I know they like to play music in parks!" So I knew I was getting close to home, because the Spellbrinks live somewhere in the area.

I came to a town and drove down a little cobblestone road, and there was husband and kids, sitting in a restaurant eating pizza. I parked the car in the alley and went to join them. After we finished eating, I realized that we still weren't sure how we were going to get home. Finally, I had a great idea--we could fly home! Each of us took hold of the picnic table that we were sitting at, and tried flapping our arms. We tried saying every magic phrase we knew from every Disney movie that we'd ever watched to get that picnic table to fly, such as "second star to the right and straight on 'til morning." We finally got the picnic bench to fly, but not very high. We almost hit Terri Autry in the head.

That was the end of the dream. I don't know if we made it home or not.

Having my parents over for Christmas

I dreamed that we invited my parents to come to our house for Christmas, and they showed up really, really early. Like this month. We were not even prepared and didn't expect them to be here yet. In fact, when I answered the door I wasn't even dressed--I just had a sheet wrapped around me. I scrambled around trying to find clothes and ended up wearing an odd assortment of bras, aprons, and sundresses, and then let in my family. There were a ton of people. All of my siblings and in-laws and nieces and nephews and people I didn't even recognize were there, including several babies, and I wasn't sure where I was going to put them all or how I was going to afford to feed them.

We decided we should set up some extra card tables. I remembered that there were some card tables in the garage, so I went out to get them. I went down the hallway to the girls' room and went out the door, and there was another bedroom that I didn't know about it! It had a crib and a nice bed with a quilt, and I thought I could put some of the extra people in there. Then I went through the next door and I was in another room. This one was huge with lots of giant TVs on the wall, and they were all turned on. I thought to myself, "Well, now I know why the electric bill is always so high!" The room was decorated for Christmas, with several Christmas trees, and tables decorated with tree-shaped glass candy dishes, and red tablecloths and doilies, and large pillar candles. I grabbed as much stuff as I could to take back with me.

When I was back in the hall, an old man met me and told me not to go out to the garage. I don't know who he was or why I couldn't go there, but I shrugged my shoulders and headed back to the livingroom.

After we got everything set up, I asked my parents if they wanted a tour of the house. Mom said no, but Dad said sure. So I showed him around and discovered that our house was even bigger than I had realized. We had a big library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and thirty leather armchairs, and a planetarium, and a great marble hallway that led to the front door. Outside, I showed him the stables and the servant's quarters and the big stone front gate.

But once we were in town, I realized that everyone else in town lived in these horrible slums. There was this awful apartment complex with drippy, black walls, and naked and dirty children lived in it with sad eyes. I felt terrible that I lived in such a mansion while they lived in poverty. Then someone told me that I owned the apartments, too, and that I was a slum lord. I felt awful about it. Then I woke up.