mothers day, 2008

Woke up to rain.

Waking up to rain is actually nice, I think. I like the pitter patter (we also get the swoosh of the eight lanes of traffic below our house speeding through the traffic) and the way it slowly rouses you to the day ahead. When I woke up, josh told us we were heading to McD's for breakfast. Score. I'm all about the sausage.

The girls had matching curly-q bows in their hair, and if cute girls aren't enough of a mothers day present, I don't know what is.

I put this picture in because I'm always amazed at how well samantha eats with a fork. I mean, she eats like she's a real-life toddler. Oh yeah...she is! Somehow, I always think of her as this still-tiny baby - and it seems incredible to me that this still-tiny baby can eat, talk, and do the things that she does. Except that she's not a still-tiny baby anymore. She's a big almost-two-year-old who certainly has her opinions about stuff.After McD's, the plan was to go run a few errands and hang out at this pretty lake, but the rain kind of altered the plan. We did, however, put to good use the Dora umbrella that my parents brought the girls... We still ran the errands, and it ended up giving me a most unexpected surprise...

One of the things josh had to do was in an area of town that I seldom go to and have never explored. But I was amazed as we wandered down little alleys I had never seen before. It was almost as if I stepped back in time, to the asia I have read about and studied, not the asia I live in that is all about breakneck development and heaven-reaching skyscrapers. It was an enclave of quiet simplicity and its quiet simplicity was overwhelming to me. I felt a little like a wide-eyed kid walking around seeing things for the first time.

It wasn't that I'd never seen this kind of thing before - certainly some of the villages and country places we'd been in the South had traces of this kind of thing...and the capital is (trying to) making efforts at keeping these sorts of places safe from the wrecking ball - but for whatever reason, I loved wandering through these alleys.

I only had my tiny old camera with me - because it was raining, and I only expected us to go to McDonalds - so I hope to go back sometime and get better pictures, but I'm going to post these anyway so you can walk down the street with me...

I can't help but look at these old-style doors, with all their tradition and strength, and hear His words: I stand at the door and knock; if anyone will hear my voice and open the door, I will come in... Sometimes it feels like hearts here are like some of these doors - closed, locked, bolted.

...but then some doors were open just a bit, to where you could see a tiny bit down the alley, but nothing else. They felt so mysterious to me - willing to be open, but not to where you could see anything without prying.Maybe the overcast sky made the place seem more surreal than it normally would have been, but I so enjoyed myself. I loved the narrowness of the streets, even the narrowness of entrances past the doors - reminders of how the way is so narrow and easy to miss. I loved the quiet, reflective mood it created in my heart as I walked through the area.
By the time we reached the end of the alley, I had taken enough time snapping pictures that the rain started up again, but that worked out ok too, because then I had my camera out for this moment -

We walked around a bit more, let the girls splash in the puddles and then headed to an arcade to play before eating lunch at pizza hut. Two meals out in one day is pretty much a record for us! anyway, it was a great mothers day for me, and I hope it was for all of you too!