The kid will take a tall. Make mine a Venti.

I don't even remember how it came up but I recently found myself saying:

My daughter is addicted to Starbucks.

And if I recall the other end of the conversation seemed to need a moment to pop her eyes back in her head.

"Starbucks?" she said, "You mean your three year old?"

Some how the funny of a story gets lost when you need to explain it. I hate that. Even as I back tracked slightly and then moved again to push ahead I knew the tale would fall flat.

"Well, yes, actually. Only she calls it Star-boo-cks," I mumble, before hastily adding in, "It's the cow-milk. She loves it. Well really I think it's the ambiance but she knows she's only drinking the cow-milk."

"The cow milk?"

"Right. You know, the little juice box milk with the cow on it...vanilla. She doesn't like the chocolate..ahh...hey look! Is it snowing?"

Speaking of coffee houses. . .

My church moved into it's current facility in 1969. Before that the congregation occupied a small, colonial style church building down town.

Sometime during my childhood our creepy, itty, bitty library migrated to a big, airy, spacious new building. The then 'new' library was built off the back end of the old church building. The old clock tower, the bell - all still there. The choir loft remained in tact. The stained glass that did not make it's way to the new building still poured colored sun light onto the floor of what was now meeting space. I always loved having story time in there.

Over the last two years that same library underwent another overhaul. It began with a busted pipe that left water damaged books, carpet and lord knows what else in it's wake. It ended up a brand new wing and a tremendous face lift for the old section. Today our library is buzzing with the sorts of services and programs that earn it on some national association's list of top 5 libraries in the nation. Seriously.

As a child I truly believed our library was the most amazing one ever constructed. It was a treat to go poke around the stacks of books. My children, luckily, agree. We make frequent trips and leave with large, over stuffed bags of books each time.

Last week was our most recent trip. The girl child was at preschool. The boy and I were ducking in quickly to return our previous stash and to restock. He was antsy. He wanted a slew of books but he wanted them quickly. We ran through, picked out, checked out and with Logan setting the pace, we hustled out past the circulation desk into the lobby.

He was pulling my hand and dragging me towards the front of the building - the old church building that still looks like the church from the outside while boosting bits and pieces of its history on the inside.

"Can we?" he asked, knowing what lie inside that former sanctuary is off-limits when Megan is with us.

I gave in, as I normally do knowing this is a rare treat for him. I let him jog two paces ahead of me and came to a stop in line behind him. The woman behind the counter smiled at Logan's exuberance and waited for him to stop waffling over his choices.

When he finally did, I said to her, "Ok, we'll have one vanilla frosted donut with sprinkles, one container of milk and one large vanilla spice coffee. Thanks."

Moments later the boy and I were settling into the iron backed chairs at our little table just feet from the overhang of the old choir loft. His donut resting on the bag as he licked the first bits of frosting from his fingers. I swirled the sweetners and cream in my coffee. . .and then I used that Dunkin' Donuts emblazoned napkin to wipe up the bit I had spilled.

If we're being honest, I felt a small nudge of guilt for not making the kid say grace before digging into that donut - or maybe that was just a bit of stain glass tined light clouding my mind.