moose

after such a serious post yesterday, something much lighter.....

MOOSE used to be an inside joke between handsome husband and me but now the word's gotten out - we're such big mouths and tell everything -  so i might as well tell you about it too!

'course i have to start with dictionary.com.

moose   [moos]  Show IPA

–noun, plural moose.

1.	a large, long-headed mammal, Alces alces, of the deer family, having circumpolar distribution in the Northern Hemisphere, the male of which has enormous palmate antlers.

back in 1996 our family took a road trip west and part of the trip was to go to utah and connect with my sis and her family and drive into yellowstone national park. what a wonderful vacation that was! A-merica is A-mazing! along the way we saw many moose and also were introduced to the state of wyoming. we decided we loved both!  we began to fantasize about having a retreat center one day in the future out in green, cool, low humidity wyoming (ignoring for now the frigid winters) where pastors and their wives could come for handsome husband (hh for short, and he's short, too) to teach and me to counsel and we'd just fix them right up and send them back out into the world to continue their ministries. wyoming seemed just the place. away from it all. we didn't know how anyone would pay to get there. or how we'd pay for a retreat center. that's why it's called a fantasy!

some years later, hh and i began to joke anytime we were tired, fed up, ready to run away from it all: we'll just go to MOOSE!! let's just go to MOOSE! that'll fix everything!!!!!! lo and behold, one day he decided to check the map or was googling or some such thing and found out there is actually a MOOSE, WYOMING!!!!!

so combine the fantasies of retirement, a retreat for others using our skills and gifts God's given us (thank You, Lord), getting away from it all and you have - voila! - MOOSE.

i have a stuffed animal now that hh gave me on one occasion who lives in the guest bedroom on a shelf to remind us of MOOSE. and a plastic rendition of a MOOSE on my makeup tray where i get ready in the mornings.  hh has a plastic MOOSE his friends purchased for him in seattle (see, we can't keep anything to ourselves) at his office to keep our hopes in mind. we're ready for MOOSE when and if it ever becomes reality.....until then it's our fantasy and it was our inside joke! now you can enjoy it, too! 

we've even had friends say they want to go to MOOSE with us NOW!!  when they're exhausted, fed up and just plumb tuckered out with this life here on earth -  and we certainly can't beam our way up to heaven, scottie -  surely we can get out to MOOSE, surely we can pull that off, can't we??