Tomorrow - DPP2020 Days 8 and 9

 There is something spectacular and hopeful about the dawning of a new day.  The darkness of the land as the light begins to shine through the sky.  It is often calm and without wind.  Here, the lake is as smooth as glass and reflecting the beautiful oranges of the sunrise.  When I was young, I had the privilege of being part of the production of A Christmas Carol at the Omaha Community Playhouse.  That time of my life has some of my most vivid memories of my childhood.  My tryout song was Tomorrow, from Annie.  I still really like that song and K will sing it now if I play it for her.  This sunrise reminded me of that.  And today feels like a new day.  The light began to shine through as we meandered through Days 8 and 9 of the DPP project.  We only get one post for these days because there was too much work to be done for two posts.  We have been staying at my parent's house for 10 days as our wood floors and carpet have been refinished and replaced respectively.  We are so happy to be at the end of our home improvement projects.  

The children have been sleeping on the floors and in chairs (often by their own choice).  Lil b is curled up in a rocking chair and K has stolen her Uncle Tev's bed with Teddy's help.   Needless to say, I think K slept great that night but it was Uncle Tev that was relegated to a chair.  Returning home left us with a lot of work to put everything back where it goes and to start the work of putting my parent's house back as it was before our invasion.  Mostly washing bedding and doing dishes - but let's not forget the gluing of broken figurines.  Whoops!  Moving all the furniture and stuff on the top two floors of your house twice is quite the undertaking.  However, the floors look great and we are nearly settled.  Being in our own home, where the children all have their own space, and everyone has a bed has been good for the soul.  We LOVED being with Uncle Tev and are tremendously grateful he tolerated us for so long - but there really is no place like home.  Rich and I both felt our stress levels improving as we settled in.  More light shining in on the darkness.  

The only remaining work to do is getting the boy's rooms back together.  Here they both are working diligently to organize and find homes for all their stuff.  Sorting for what stays and what goes.  Spoiler alert - not much goes.  Big B is even multitasking while chatting with a friend whom you can see if you look closely. . . like Where's Waldo. 

I think it was good insight for my kiddos to have to move everything out and back into their rooms.  It was a visual representation of overabundance and even with their limited world view, they recognized how spoiled they are.  It raised in them a great appreciation and Lil b moved that emotion forward by evaluating how he could be better at looking to give and provide for others.  That made the upheaval worth it. . . well mostly.  

Truly - having a bed is such a wonderful thing.  Here she reads, snuggled up with her favorite puppy, reading Green Eggs and Ham out loud to her puppy.  She loves this book and has worked through the words she didn't know and now can read the whole thing.  She reads it multiple times every week.  She has begun to add inflection.  Her "I do not like Green Eggs and Ham" has some emphasis behind it.  

On final story - though it is a little humbling to share, it is the illustration of human kindness.  In addition, it brought out my husband's hilarious sense of humor in a follow up text.  On our porch tonight was this:  

This was a kind gesture from someone who has not been a center stage friend in my life.  We share mutual friends and in the last 6 months, through Bible study, we have begun to get to know each other better.  Interestingly, she was my junior buddy in PA school but I know her far better through our friends than I do from PA school.  While we had never been close, I have always been a fan.  She is kind, talented, fun, and faithful.  She had already offered kind words after the last posts which was more than enough and added light and sunshine to my day all by itself.  But here she came with a blaze of light and kindness in my world.  She didn't have to do that.  At first, I was embarrassed and humbled though that quickly melted to gratitude and some awe towards this friend.  I think I had a moment where I didn't understand what was going on.  A crockpot is easy to replace and likely, the carpet company would have paid.  But that isn't the point - it isn't about the crockpot and that is what I missed at first.  All wrapped up in this box with this bow is the gift of human kindness.  Of someone being the light to someone else when they needed it.  It felt God sent to me and let me know that even beyond my closest circle are those who care.  I knew that but in this kindness, I felt it.  It leaves me looking for ways to bring the sunrise to other's valleys the way she did for us.  Rich's follow up text was, "Maybe you should post on the blog that our TV is broken...."  That guy always knows how to make me laugh.

So yesterday's tomorrow came with a lot of sun in a variety of forms and I look forward to what tomorrow's sunshine will be.  All I know is that I am one lucky human to be surrounded by such great people - family that gives us a calm place to land while our home is in chaos, friends who go above and beyond expectations, a hubby that keeps his sense of humor, a home that feels so much more warm after being away, and children that are the ultimate light in my life.  This mama has her own overabundance to appreciate.

One bonus memory:  As I remember back to being in Christmas Carol, I remember a tradition that my Dad started.  In hindsight, now that I am the parent driving my children everywhere, this must have been a huge commitment on the part of my parents to drive us to and from rehearsals and performances.  Somewhere along the lines, my Dad would randomly declare it was ice cream night.  It would be late and McDonalds would really be the only option.  We always went to the one on Dodge and we would always order three vanilla cones (Dad, Kevin, and me).  The first time, we enjoyed our cones while declaring that this was a great idea.  The next time, Kevin no so subtly mentioned that maybe we should head to McDonald's again and Dad indulged his brilliant idea. We were told the machine was broken.  Bummer.  A week or two down the road, we decided to try again.   The machine was broken again.  Well shoot!  We let some time pass only to return to find a broken machine again.  We started to tease that we were cursed and maybe that we broke the machine.  Finally, we got to the drive through, the machine was functioning!  Hooray!  Our long awaited second ice cream cone would soon be on its way.  As we pulled up to the window, there were three workers inside, all of whom were covered in ice cream. The machine had blown up.  We had really done it that time.  We blew up the McDonald's ice cream machine.  For the sake of the workers, we saved our laughter for after we drove away.  My Dad is so skilled at making everything an event and finding humor in things - he managed to take two kids dying to have an ice cream cone and make it so that instead of crying that we didn't get ice cream that we would laugh all the way home at how unlucky we were in ice cream.   Oh and when those poor workers were covered in ice cream - we knew our talent was a special one.  As I look back now - had we just gotten our ice cream - I would likely not remember now that we stopped for an ice cream cone.  Sometimes, when we don't get what we want, we get something better.  And just so you know - our ice cream machine breaking escapades continued through childhood - the three of us had a special talent.