i am very visual. i am one of those annoying people that give landmarks instead of left/right directions. aka the opposite of my husband.
and sometimes in a brief moment, a visual reminder evokes the strongest of emotions. we spent two blurry days trying to finish up the girls’ visas (yet we are still not done but that is another story). then we called it quits and ate a 3pm lunch.
i took the girls to the potty and in one instant moment i was flooded with my sister sarah’s love for blues and grays, tiles and patterns. i remembered the various locations we had stopped just so she could take a picture of a tile+design.
and suddenly i just missed her.
so i took pictures of my kids in a bathroom.
all because of blue, gray, black and white tile.
whelp. camp didn’t start the way i expected it. at all. the week before was simply brutal for all of us. our usa team arrived thursday…the day mercy started acting weird and spiked a {random?} fever. pretty soon it was sunday and every time her pain meds would wear off, she would have a fever again. i blend a lot of natural medicine with western medical knowledge…so by sunday afternoon when i realized she was acting delirious and listless we decided to give her tylenol AND motrin to bring down her temp. thirty minutes later when it was still over 40 deg C (over 104 F), we knew it was time to go to the urgent care.
there really is a first time for every thing.
sigh.
since christian was teaching the lesson each day {something he loves!} it only made sense that i was the one to stay home with her. but in completely honesty, i was more than a little frustrated. all summer works towards camp.
it really was just two and a half days but it ended up being a super sweet time with my baby girl. it started chaotic…a rushed monday morning with christian and addy barely leaving in time:
but after a good kitchen cleaning…{please not mer’s little medical corner on the right}
i tackled cleaning/organizing the girls’ art studio/school area.
and finally made it to this {please note sunglasses hiding yucky looking eye…just another symptom of multiply infections running their course}
we got up bright and early wednesday morning, fever free…and made it on the half price {fără loc, aka southwest version} train to buzău.
sarah and ana picked us up there since they were making a town run to the grocery store. yay, because then we didn’t have to take a maxi-taxi to ojasca! we also found a pet store in the mall selling squirrels. SQUIRRELS. if i had been in bucharest, i would have bought one. and christian would have been shocked. but not TOO shocked, because he is pretty used to my impulse animal purchases at this point.
addy was doing GREAT except very, very sleep deprived. so the first thing i did was pull the mama card and get my bigger girl to take a nap. sometimes you just need mama.
mer did great although the first morning she slept until…uhhh…afternoon!
and they both made a few new friends.
we ended the week by taking the kids to the mud volcanos.
it was an exhausting, up and down couple of weeks…but it was GOOD and we were BLESSED!
bucharest has exploded with malls. seriously. so we do what most missionaries do {i think} and on family day we go searching for free fun.
this was some sort of free medieval set up at the banessa mall next to ikea. it was pretty sweet…including costumes, a diploma and being knighted. the *only* downfall was when mercy wanted to wear armour instead of a dress and they told her no. ha! don’t worry. the day will come when my little mighty girl proves that girls can wear chain mail too. daddy is thinking she should take fencing lessons, honestly.
this saturday started pretty good…i found a lady at muzeu satului that made cookies from almond and walnut flour. homemade+gluten free? yay!
but then we realized we needed to break down and take the girls to the doctor. addy was struggling with some bug and just not getting over it.
turns out they just really had a bug. a long one. soooooo, we took them to an old+cheap showing of frozen. then we realized that our kids have seen two movies in the theater…frozen in california in english and frozen in romanian in romania. go figure. pretty cool to be able to enjoy an entire movie in a second language as a family!
then we came home and ate chicken soup. and we ended a decently fun family day.
clouds rolled in.
on one balcony, it was dry and semi-sunny.
on the other balcony, it was pouring.
romania has weird summers!
p.s. all these pictures were taken with only my iphone…no coloring editing…nothing. iphone 5s’sssss rock! 😉 thank you honey for taking my old phone and letting me get the new iphone. you are kind of awesome.