Up and Down

Over the last few days, we've noticed  Savannah raising her arms in a little dance at random times and singing, "UP and down. UP and down." I've been racking my brain trying to figure out what song she is singing. It's obviously a song about opposites. She sings "up" in a high pitch and "down" in a low pitch. Do I sing a song to her about opposites? Is she hearing it on Sesame Street? On an app on my phone? In the nursery at church? I want to be invited to her little party, but I don't know the rest of the words! So last night watching music videos on You Tube, it dawned on me. She's not singing UP and down. She's singing UPTOWN! (Or maybe she IS, and it's her very first Ruttman Family Misheard Lyric... gasp! Sniff, sniff, tear... special moment... so proud.)

Super Bowl 2015: Just Another Excuse To Hang Out With Family

Super Bowl Sunday. Packed house. Excellent food and pretty good beer. My hands were free and I had just finished a most delicious hot bowl of beer chili. How on earth did this mother of five just manage to do that, I wondered? The conversations and laughter and children’s squealing melted together and faded into the background as I took a moment to soak it all in. The baby was being entertained by a couple of the teenagers nearby. The one who held him made cheerful eye contact with him and responded tenderly to all of his cues. I became curious and looked around. Sure enough, none of the babies were being held by their own parent, except one who was still pretty new. All the others were being tended to by somebody else. One mother instinctively grabbed a tissue just in time to wipe the nose of another mother’s toddler as he strode by. My toddler weaved through the crowd, going from one person to the next, pointing to whatever appetizing thing she discovered on each person’s plate, dazzling them with her cheesy grin and signs for “please”. Someone picked her up and took her to fill a plate of her own without so much as a glance my way. My two middle boys, along with several others around their age, found plenty to keep themselves busy upstairs: toys, costumes, you name it. But mostly they just wanted to play together. They chased each other in and out of rooms, thundered down the stairs, out the door, back in. Someone warned them all to slow down and be careful around the babies. My oldest bounced around, equally as engaged in conversation by the adults as he was in wrestling with the children and brain games with the other kids his age. Those who cared about the game kicked back in the living room, shouting at the tv from time to time and swapping sports stories that morphed into stories about life. Those who didn’t care about the game gathered in the kitchen, connecting lives, sharing experiences, and building community, one conversation at a time.

People often ask why we chose Trinity. Here is just one reason among many, and it’s not even the most important one: our pastor and his wife opened their home on Super Bowl Sunday, and it felt just like going home to hang out with family.