Today was the day. The day that I had the boys by myself in a strange city with no car, and no cell phone ( yep, it died on me first thing). Talk about a little nerve wracking, or maybe the foothold Satan needed to shake me up a little.
Since our move it has been a daily, if not hourly struggle to shake his hold on me. In all these new areas of our life in the West, its as if Satan has found the uncertainty he needed to pull me down. It's been frustrating, depressing, and an all out struggle each day. This morning imparticularly I was shaken up. Again, in a strange city with no phone or car.....just me and the kids.
We started off the day a little slow as the boys had slept in till 8:30am (thank you heavenly beds and black-out curtains). I honestly don't think this has EVER happened. I was so thankful I had not ordered room service breakfast to be delivered at 7:30am. I had been very tempted to do that the night before. We enjoyed cartoons in the bed until I could muster the energy to get up and get dressed. I think the quantity of sleep the night before actually made me more tired. I could barely get moving and if not for the motivation to eat I might still be there with a boy on either side watching cartoons. Which wouldn't be too bad - except for all of the fun we would have missed out on.
We ventured out around 10am, and stopped at the front desk to ask if there were any fun events going on. (The Children's Museum I had been so excited about was closed for the long holiday weekend). Thankfully they directed me to the downtown area park. Certain Wednesdays of the month they have a community "Out to Lunch" with all sorts of vendors and music going on. Today was a special day, because the US open canoe races were also taking place. The boys enjoyed watching them so much. They did all kids of flips and tricks in these little tiny canoes. At first I thought they were kayaks, but was then corrected by the mother of one of the contestants. Oops!
After watching the OC (Open Canoe) races, we perused the food vendors. Everything looked and smelled delicious but we all settled on a big shaved ice instead. The boys thought it was such a treat - and a perfect thing for a warm day. We listened to the band and enjoyed our ice and the gorgeous weather. It truely was heavily and I couldn't help but thank the Lord for us being here on such a perfect day!
Just past all of the food vendors was the carousel and playground. Thankfully the front desk had given us passes to ride it for free. It was a large carousel and all of the horses were hand carved of wood. They were spectacular to look at and even more impressive to ride. I was thankful that I had jumped on one horse with Drew - that thing really zoomed and he would have for sure been thrown off of it! As if the carousel wasn't enough fun, they added a twist to it for the 'older' kids on the ride. There was a dragon with special rings in its mouth - and if you were big enough you could grab one as you zoomed by. Of course the boys thought that the rings in and of themselves were fun, and giggled as I grabbed each one. The real treat was that there was one gold ring, and if you got it, then you'd get a free ride. The competitive side came out of me, and while I never got the gold ring, I did make sure to get a ring each time we passed (which was quite a feat given the speed of the carousel). We had such a wonderful time that afternoon I couldn't wait to bring Dan back later that evening after dinner so he could share in some of my fun.
Little did I know, that after 14 hrs of working, riding a carousel isn't on the top of the list of fun things to do. Poor guy, he tried to enjoy the evening with us but he was just so tired. After riding the carousel, we opted for a swim in the pool and a soak in the hot tub - two things right up his alley after such a long day.
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