I wish I could do that every night.

I had it all planned out. We would do school in the morning, have lunch and then head to Portsmouth for something with the local kids. I wasn't sure exactly what it was but thought my kids might enjoy it so that was the plan. I knew we wouldn't be home in time for me to make dinner so I made it before breakfast! Can you believe that? Well, I made most of it. I had the pasta and the dressing and the hard boiled eggs in the bowl and put it in the fridge before I heated up leftover pancakes for the kids. Then we had school - Ben, Marissa, Emily AND Xiomara were done before lunch. As the kids finished lunch I cooked the bacon and cut it up and put it in the salad so it was ready. Linda made our cinnamon rolls so dinner was done! So when we got back home all we had to do was set the table, use the bathroom and wash hands and we were ready to sit down. (We also had to put some laundry away so that delayed us a bit but at least it got put away.) Kevin showed up just as we were sitting down to say the blessing on the food. (That's what texting is good for.) Then we did our nightly routine and I put the kids to bed. The only dishes I had to clean were the bowls, forks, glasses and the serving spoon! It was so fantastically great that I can't even begin to explain it! I guess I just did. I wish every meal could be like that. With a little more planning and thought maybe they could....

So, this afternoon.... I'll have to give a little background. They are redoing the main road so it is closed from our street, past the Annex, all the way around the "curve of death" and past Tina's grocery store. I walked it on Tuesday and it was fine but I wasn't sure what kind of condition it would be in today so I opted to take the detour route. (I would have been really mad at myself if I had to turn around and back track.) It really isn't that big of a deal EXCEPT that the detour road is narrower than the other road and really has no "sidewalk" or shoulder room. Sometimes the cars have a hard time passing each other. It was sort of scary with so many cars traveling on it because of the detour. If I had thought about that when we left I would have just taken a transport to get to Portsmouth. Oh well. We did make it to the field by the Church without any mishaps so that was a good thing. (And we are really hoping that as part of the road reconstruction they are going to add a sidewalk all the way down! I'll keep you posted.) Once we got to the field I called my friend that we were meeting there and I saw her across the way so we headed over. I wasn't sure what we were doing but as we got closer all the local children gathered around us and sort of freaked my kids out. I'm not really sure why they freaked so much but they became very shy and clingy. I figured out that it is a Ross spouse's thing to volunteer and play with the local kids for a couple hours on Friday afternoons. So they played "duck duck goose" and had some rubber balls to toss and kick. My kids wanted nothing to do with it. Xiomara did sit on my friends lap and one of the locals did ask her if she wanted to be goose and she said NO. It was really strange to see my kids that shy. Oh well. After a while they played a song that says the steps and so we danced to that and my kids sort of got into that - Emily and Xiomara more than the others. The great things is, when we got home and the kids talked about it in their journals, it wasn't a big deal and Ben even talked about going next Friday because they are going to do the "chicken dance" and YMCA song and some other song so he seemed pretty excited and said he would be better next time. I guess we could try it again. It would give us more interaction with the locals and I think that would be great.