A wonderful, marvelous distraction!!

John took a mission group to Japan today.  They left early this morning and I have been anxiously awaiting word that they made it their safely without too many difficulties.  John and a group of people from our church will be working over in Japan for 10 days with the clean up and relief effort going on over there.  We are trying to find ways to get our church involved so that while we are getting feed spiritually, we are also looking outwardly so that we are aware of the needs of others around us.

Anyways that little blurb was not the reason for my post -- part of it but not the reason for it.  I am trying to organize and clean my apartment -- or at least become better at reducing the clutter -- ugh I just can't handle it anymore and we just don't have the space to put it so if toys are broken, and papers (that we don't need) are hanging around I'm getting rid of them!  This week I have a list of things to do before the little boys & I go on vacation -- I want to get all the rooms cleaned up and stuff organized and put away.  So today I worked on our extra bedroom -- de-cluttered, put away (which we will have to figure out what to do with later), washed the windows, dusted, swept & mopped.  I got that room cleaned when I got a phone call from a friend inviting us over to go swimming.    I immediately said yes -- who turns down swimming and spending time with friends?

After we hung up I started to think of how I would get there.  The kids were sleeping and most likely would sleep till it was time to go.  So walking was out of the question -- the walk would probably take a 1/2 hour to get to their house.  I thought about taking our car, but I haven't driven over in Taiwan yet and to get to their house you have to go on a VERY, VERY busy road which I wasn't willing to try and do my first time driving in Taiwan.  I thought about finding a taxi but that made me nervous because I wasn't sure what the name of the apartment building was and I definitely didn't know what it was in Chinese.  Thankfully I have a number of a taxi guy who speaks English -- knows where we live and thankfully with enough descriptions of where I wanted to go and landmarks was able to easily get me to my friend's apartment building.  Oh my goodness if John had been around he would have been rolling his eyes in utter disgust with the directions I gave.  We got there and our friends were just pulling in so we walked inside with them. 

We waited by the pool for them while they got their swimming stuff on.  The boys decided that they were ready to ham it up for the camera and I knew that as soon as our friends were here I couldn't take anymore pictures -- mostly because I needed to be in the pool with my kids.  Both boys did great.  Little N had a blast -- going down the slide, being dunked underwater, trying to swim while I held his upper body up and just generally having a great time.  Little M was a little tentative at first not wanting to go in the water at all but by the end of the time in the water he was trying to go down the slide, kick his legs as I held onto him and just in general having a blast! 

We had a surprise invitation to join our friends for wii games & dinner.  So we showered -- I wasn't thoroughly prepared for that but went with the flow.  It's a hilarious thing watching 2 little 4 year olds attempt to play wii.  We went through 3 disks trying to find something they could play but sadly they were just too young to play wii.  We had pizza and even when you can speak the language you still get surprises.  The husband ordered pepperoni pizza and what we got was a interesting pizza -- corn, onions, mushrooms, sausage & cheese.  Thankfully we also had some noodles so Little N ate the pizza without toppings and noodles.  Little M ate the pizza but not all the toppings (kind of picked them out) and some crackers. 

Got a ride home -- we cleaned up our toys and the boys went to bed!  I stayed up long enough to find out that the mission team made it safely to Japan! Which made me happy!! 

So thankful that I got to have a fun day with swimming and hanging out with friends.