The Mama Had a Birthday

My Mom had a birthday a couple of weeks ago...and because of some events going on at her church that weekend, she wasn't able to get together with any of us to celebrate her birthday on time.

So...Ryan and I called her up to see if we could bring over her gift {all the kids went together to buy a gift} and some dessert to celebrate.

First, an explanation of the gift. My parents still have a home phone. You remember those, right? The things that attach to wiring in the walls? Yes. Those. When I was growing up in their house, there was one phone, and it was in the kitchen. All teenage gossip, boy drama, and dirty laundry had to be whispered in the kitchen, with the deepest, darkest secrets being uttered just outside the door to the utility room, which is the farthest the phone cord would reach.

They have since moved to cordless phones and added a second phone line in the house. We will NOT discuss the fact that this second line was added in the room that used to be mine. I begged and begged and begged for my own phone for my entire teenage career. I moved out and they installed one.

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!

The good news is, I'm not bitter about that. TOTALLY okay with it.

So back to the story...Mom wanted to look into installing more phone lines in the house so they wouldn't have to come running from the far reaches to answer the phone. {Ironically the same argument I used as a teenager and NO ONE listened.} My sister mentioned to her that you can purchase phones that have extension sets that just plug into a charger in a regular outlet. No need to install more lines.

This both baffled and amazed my mother, and she put this phone set on her shopping list. But we beat her to it. Ryan and I went to the store and picked out a phone with extension handsets and wrapped it up.

There is, however, a possibility that before we wrapped it, Ryan got the brilliant idea to pre-record the answering machine message.


It was quite the production. We wrote it all out like a script and read it ever so carefully. And THEN we wrapped the gift.

After dessert, we handed Mom the gift bag and watched her discover her new treasure. I've never in my life seen her SO excited about anything. {Not even a beach wedding in the middle of winter!}

She dug those handsets out right away and started playing:

THEN she said to Ryan...

"Can you show me how to record the answering machine message?"

I hid behind my coffee cup while Ryan kept a perfectly straight face and said, "Ummmm I think it came pre-recorded. Let me look, here." And then he started pilfering through the manual.

I'm not sure how I feel about being married to such a good liar.

He "messed around" with the phone for a minute and soon, our melodious voices belted:

RYAN: You’ve reached MIL and FIL!

BEKAH: We’re unable to get to the phone right now…

RYAN: …for several potential reasons. We might be at the Golden Corral

BEKAH: or we might be at a funeral home. We go to LOTS of those.

RYAN: or we might be trying to figure out how to answer these crazy new phones our kids got us.

BEKAH: It’s really hard to say.

RYAN: But if you’d leave us a message, we may or may not get it. We’re still getting the hang of how to retrieve them. Play and Delete look an awful lot alike.

BEKAH: But leave a message anyway. Goodbye, be good, do your best, think think think and BE SWEET!

(Background Bekah: what are you DOING?)

(Background Ryan: Looking for a BEET!}

As a manner of explanation, Ryan and I have six parents between us, so we have to have different names for all of them. Mine are MIL and FIL, which is short for mother-in-law and father-in-law. 

My Dad would eat at Golden Corral every day of his life if left to his own devices.

The goodbye message is what Mom said to me every day when I got out of the car for school.

The background part at the end pays tribute to the first time Ryan ever came over for a meal at their house and after eating about an 8 course meal, Dad started pilfering through the fridge. Mom asked what he was doing and his answer was "I'm looking for a beet!"

I'm happy to report they loved it and if they didn't need a slightly more professional message, they'd probably keep it forever. But they did keep it for a while - and told people to call just to hear it.

We tried to teach them how to use the intercom feature. That went well.

But in the end, Mom was a happy girl with all her phones and her funny new message:

As for Ryan and me...well...this summed up our evening: