An explanation.

About what we've been doing this week...

First of all, on Monday the power was scheduled to be out for maintenance. We had been forewarned about it. So that when the actual power outage day come around, our children were nearly at their wits end in anticipation. What exactly would life in the 21st century be like with no power? It had been the main source of conversation in the intervening days.

Lucky for them their father has a lap top computer. They played computer games in the morning, watching the little battery life icon in the upper-right hand corner, as though it was nearly as exciting as the game itself. What would happen when the battery died? The battery finally died. After a bit of discussion, and realizing that Darin and I were busy moving all of our temporary furniture into a single bedroom to make way for our household goods, they realized they were going to be on their own. They turned to their final resource, toys, and each other. Novel.



By mid-afternoon we were all hungry. And life on the third floor with no a/c was starting to get hot. So we volunteered to take them to the bowling alley.

After a healthy game of bowling, we walked home speculating amongst ourselves about the condition of our electricity. Would it be on, would it still be off, and the conversation went around and around.

To our utter delight, the a/c blasted us with a refreshing blow the moment we opened the doors to the main floor lobby, and we instantly knew, life could resume.

Until we walked into our house and realized that life would not resume, possibly for several days, until we resurfaced from all of the boxes.


So there you have it. An explanation of the past few days. Somehow with all the packing up that was going on back in Colorado Springs way back in May, I had completely blocked the thought about all the boxes needing to be unpacked. I think now it was a method of self preservation. Had I realized that every box I authoritatively instructed a mover to pack up, would exhaustively be unpacked by me on the other end, I might not have come.

After spending this morning unpacking again, I finally told the children that since the sun was shining I would take them all to the outdoor pool and swim with them! No one wanted to come with me, until I agreed that we could have a taxi come pick us up. I managed to get everyone suited up, the taxi at the curb, and got us all the way over to the outdoor pool, only to discover that they are closed on Wednesday. Everyone wondered how I could have made such a terrible mistake on the hottest day we have yet encountered.

To cheer the children up, I told them that we should walk over to find some lunch at the food court. They all walked hugging the walls of the buildings trying to stay in the shade. And then wouldn't you know, at the food court we ran into Darin, who was a happy person to share lunch with. We were then further blessed to run into some new friends that we have made here, who invited us over to their house to wait, until the indoor pool opened at 2pm.

So the day turned out lovely. And I cannot help but marvel at all of the little mercies we receive along the way. There is always joy in the journey if you pause long enough to have a sense of humor about things (or something like that).