Fall Festival
“Mom, what’s Daddy gonna be for Halloween?”
It was Zoe’s question.
“I don’ t know, Honey, but he did say he wanted to be something funny.”
Zoe paused to consider this.
“Mom? Is Daddy gonna be a banana? That would be funny.”
Some of you will remember that last year, there was a big campaign to get Daddy to go as a piece of fruit.:)
One of the things I love the most about Kevin is that he approaches life with such a great sense of humor. Even though our children don’t know how to put it into words, they already cherish that about him as much as I do. He brings all of us so much joy just by making us laugh every day. Just this evening, I heard Riley giggling from her bedroom as she said her night time prayers with her dad. At 8, she loves to laugh. Hers is an eccentric brand of humor–silly and giggly with an autistic twist just for flavor.:) She thinks it’s hilarious to substitute some inanimate object (or some nonsense word…right, Uncle Tergerhn?) for your name when she addresses you. Lately, she’s been calling Kevin “T.V.” She can hardly get it out before she bubbles over with laughter. Kevin just joins right in with her without missing a beat. He volleys by addressing her as “couch.”
“T.V., how are you doing?” At this point, she’s holding her side she’s laughing so hard.
“I’m great, couch, how’re you?” As far as Riley is concerned, the only thing better than her jokes are Daddy’s jokes. He says this one time, and she’s rolling on the floor.
Tonight, Riley had outdone herself. She could barely finish her prayer because she was so taken with her own humor (inspired by her dad). “Dear God, please help T.V. have a good day at work tomorrow. And help couch have fun at her flu shot.” Aside from the fact that flu shots are anything but fun, this prayer made me laugh just because I understood how much joy was wrapped up in Riley’s humor. Every time Kevin plays along, she feels more confident. If no one else appreciates her eccentric jokes, her daddy always does. Anyway, I digress mostly just to say that Kevin’s sense of fun is a blessing to all of us.
So, on Fall Festival night, when Kevin decided to go as another friend of ours (also named Kevin), I knew that laughter would follow us all around the festival. It did, and that made the festival even more fun for all of us. Kevin Kolbe is one of the funniest guys we know. Kevin K. often offers the announcements at the end of our Sunday morning worship services, and we all look forward to the humor with which he will deliver his comments. He always starts with an earnest, “Hello, church!” Kevin K. also often wears Hawaiian-style shirts. So, our Kevin donned his Hawaiian shirt as a clue for other church members, all of whom he greeted with a cheery, “Hello, church!” Some knew him right away, others took a while to figure it out (one of our friends thought he was Garth from Wayne’s World), but everyone laughed. The best moment was when we encountered the real Kevin K. at the festival. He didn’t realize that Kevin was dressed as him, but he said, “That’s what my hair looks like in the morning. Pantene really works wonders.”
He was still clueless when we snapped the picture above. Sunday morning, he stopped Kevin in the hallway and said, “Were you me last night?” Fortunately, Kevin K. truly has a great sense of humor and appreciated the joke. I’m not sure that Zoe ever really got it. She probably would’ve found it funnier had Kevin gone as a banana.:) Her comment a few days later was, “Mom, remember at Fall Festival how Daddy kept saying, ‘Hello, church?!’ That was funny, wasn’t it?”
On our way home from the festival, Kevin suggested that next year we go as Adam’s family (as in Addam’s:)). Adam really could care less about wearing a costume (he just plays along with the rest of us), so Kevin thinks next year we should just let him go as himself. I will be Morticia, Kevin will be Gomez, and the girls can both go as Wednesday. When I told Mom about this idea, she told me (after she finished laughing) that she and Dad would come as well. She volunteered Dad to be Uncle Fester and herself to go as Cousin Itt. Now that will be funny.
p.s. This year, Riley chose my costume. She wanted to the two of us to go to the festival as “pink ladies” after she found the costume in a catalog. I extended the invitation to my sisters at church, and several of them joined us at the festival as pink ladies. That was so much fun! Zoe declined to go as a pink lady and opted to be Tinkerbell this year (When she got dressed, she said, “Mom, I don’t have to wear my costume on top of my clothes, do I? ‘Ecause if I wear my costume on top of my clothes, no one will think I’m the real Tinkerbell. Everyone will just say, ‘Look, there’s a girl with a Tinkerbell costume on on top of her clothes.”), and Adam went as a fireman (just to appease the rest of us). Pictures below…
