This is the fourth in a series of posts that explain the details and the how and why we do Friday Nights. You can read the backstory here, part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.

Gettin Ready!

You know when you have guests coming over and you rush around the hour before they arrive and clean the house in order to make it spotless? You yell at the kids to get off the TV and help clean the floors, wipe the table, take out the trash, and dust the cobwebs? You want everything to look awesome and like you have everything together?

Yeah…we don’t do any of that.

Really. Faking how we really live, what our house really looks like, and how we do or do not keep it up is just too much work! We’re not interested in impressing you. We have nothing to offer you except our hospitality and cheap food…and Brandy’s great charm!

And great community.

We have no reason to try and impress you. So we don’t.

The Basics

What we do take care of before Friday Nights are only the very basics…

1) We make sure the bathrooms are clean and well stocked. Truth is…nobody wants to use a stinky or dirty bathroom…unless it’s your own, then its okay…right?! So we make sure the toilet is cleaned, stocked with paper and there is soap and towels by the sink.

2) We pick up the dog poop in the backyard. We actually do this daily anyway, but we double ensure there won’t be any mishaps with the kids running around…sometimes in the dark. When someone steps in the poop and then also steps on the carpet…everyone is embarrassed. So we take care of this early.

3) We lock the fence gates and the front door. Admittedly, this is more because of our own child who is an autistic wanderer. But we try and keep everything locked up anyway since not everybody knows or understand this. Besides, nobody wants their kid to go missing in a neighborhood they don’t know. With so many people showing up each week, we don’t want anyone wandering off.

We also sweep the floor downstairs (sometimes)…but we generally do that most days anyway because we have a huge messy family. So you can’t count this one…we don’t do it just for Fridays.

That’s pretty much it!

Look, we’re ordinary people. We have good days, bad days, and really-bad-just-want-everyone-to-shut-up-and-leave-me-alone days. Sometimes our house is spotless…I’m sorry you missed it. (It probably wasn’t on a Friday anyway.) And sometimes it looks like a bomb went off in every room of the house.

I don’t think I ever remember someone showing up on a Friday Night and tried to impress us with their life. So we won’t try and impress you. Our house is not generally messy, you can typically navigate the halls without doing a dance. But the point is, we just try and keep it real. It’s who we are. This is the house God has given us. And we offer it to others once a week.

Let’s just all be real.

You can be real with us on Fridays…