The past 2 weeks of my life have been....harried. Most of you would be bored with the exciting details of my 2 weeks so I'll try to give the boy version....there's no hope. Sorry guys.
We got sick while Ryan was out of town last week. I didn't get much time to get over my illness as I was tending to the needs of the others'. Ryan came back and we had guests on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I was cooking most of Friday, while people in the living room consumed much of it. On Saturday we hung out with some fun friends and went to a meeting. Saturday night we played games. Then SUNDAY happened. Wow.
I must say that I started Sunday with about 4 hours of sleep. Then we had a wonderful doughnut breakfast. After that, we came home and relaxed a bit before I took Selah to her school to get ready for their "recital". I had been asked to drop Selah off at 12 PM and the show was going to start at 1:30 PM. In the mean time, I was going to come home, let Ryan take our friends to the ferry boat and come back to get Eden and I on the way to the show.
However, when I arrived at the school, the teachers ask me to wait downstairs with her until 12:30. I think that I literally heard a record scratch at this point. I felt like we were in our groove for the day's schedule until this request was made. I knew I couldn't wait til 12:30. Our guests would be late and so would we! Reluctantly, I said, "okay", and walked downstairs hoping to find a mother of one of Selah's classmates whom I would ask to watch Selah for me while I left. I found mom that I had only been introduced to in the past, but it worked and off I went.
We made it back to the school in time to find that the show will be poolside and in the sun. I forgot a hat for my bald baby Eden's head. I coat her head with sunscreen and run for the shade. The show starts only 15 minutes late and then the gymnastics group come out one. at. a. time....doing the same routine. Ironically, the song they played for every gymnastic performance for the day had about two lines. One of them was, "time goes by so slowly."
Yes. it. did.
Selah finally came out in her costume. She looked a little odd. Oh, of course, they did not take the white undershorts she was wearing under her skirt off and just put her white hose on top of them. What were the teachers thinking? Probably that those are the weird foreign family's version of panties. Who knows? No other kids had biking shorts on with their hose. Anyway, I tried to video the whole thing, but because Eden wanted to hold the camera too, my already bad skills were even worse. I think Ryan can't fathom how he married someone with such terrible videoing skills. She was a cute, little dancing butterfly (that needed the older butterfly to remind her of the steps to the dance).
I then went upstairs to look at the display of all the kids' artwork. On the wall was a poster board of pictures of all the kids in the class.
[Background info: I had been asked over the past few weeks to bring several things to school. I didn't know what even 1 of those things was before asking my babysitter for help. It turns out that she needed a jar, a white undershirt and panty hose. At the last minute they asked me for a picture of Selah and used hand motions to show me the size they wanted. I went home and found one of Selah and Eden from Christmas. I gave it to them, explaining that they should just cut Selah's face out of the picture. ]
So, I look up at the poster board and see that all of the other 20 kids' pictures are wallet size pics.
Then I see it.
Selah AND Eden's 4X6 picture in the bottom center of the poster board. They hadn't cut Eden out. Awwww...so cute, right? Wrong. Once again, we are the weird foreigners. Sometimes, we just want to be normal...blend in. This seems to be an impossibility at this point, which is normally fine.
I run back to downstairs to watch Selah's final performance, where she did almost nothing while she looked at her dad taking a billion pictures of her. So after Selah's last performance, time starts going. by. so. slowly. again and we realize we have to leave because our church is meeting at our house in 15 minutes! I ask if Selah is finished and the teachers say she should stay for the last song and wave flags around. I take her anyway, declining to attend the expo following the performances. The teachers smiled and said, "OK," as they looked at me like a foreigner. Grrr. I wish I didn't have to leave early.
We get home and our church is waiting for us outside our building. We come up the elevator and my downstairs neighbor is waiting for me on the staircase. She wants me to come talk to her granddaughter. I go, unhappily, and sit for 5 minutes. In this amount of time, my language is a bit jumbled because I can only think of my house full of people, my hungry Selah (it's 3:45 PM and she hasn't had lunch) and my tired Eden. My neighbor then proceeds to tell her granddaughter that my language has gotten worse because I don't talk enough or go to class anymore. I get mad. Yes, my language has gotten worse and I don't talk enough. But, the reason it was bad in that moment (as far as I was concerned) was because she was insisting on me being in her house (she is quite persistent) while I only want to be in my own house. So, I respond with a cranky, "Actually, my language is worse because I got 4 hours of sleep last night and I don't ever sleep that much." I sit for 1 minute longer and leave.
Deep breath.
I come home, vent to my friend who has graciously taken on the role of house host and go nurse Eden and put her in bed. Then I realize it was my day to plan worship for church and I totally forgot. We make different plans and the evening ended with a wonderfully fancy dinner with some other ladies that wanted to treat a departing friend to a nice goodbye dinner. It was a good end to the day.
Thank you, God, for Monday.
Now, I need to go get groceries!
