Our Highlight Reel

I've been thinking about writing this post for a little while.  It really, really pressed upon me a couple weeks ago one night when I couldn't sleep.  However, I thought maybe I was just being silly.  But, here I am again feeling pulled to just put this out there.

We are having a great time exploring Japan.  We think the culture here is great.  I do not whatsoever miss the minivan.  Not even when I have to go to the store in the rain...well maybe a just a little, but only because I didn't wear flip flops.

But, this blog is our "highlight reel."  Behind the scenes things happen everyday.  We still struggle sometimes with the girls arguing, someone crying, someone not listening, sometimes bribing them to eat dinner and with missing all of you.  There have been days we don't leave the apartment.  There are still often nights I fantasize about a button you could push to just make them fall asleep right now.  Jim leaves the apartment at 7 a.m., returns about 7-8 p.m. and then works for 2-6 hours more while sitting on the couch listening to some program on TV (and talking to us too).  I'm not making this up.  He walks a mile to come home with a heavy laptop backpack and steel-toe shoes, sometimes in the rain.  Now this crazy schedule seems to be coming to an end...2 nights this week he got home at 6:30 p.m., but this has been true for about the last month.

And we ARE having a great adventure.  There is no doubt.  We can get to the beach in 30ish minutes, the Kids Plaza place is awesome, we saw where they make and created Ramen Noodles (right here in Osaka), we fed monkeys, went to a tea ceremony, a Japanese Baseball game...all among our favorites.

We've made a couple friends which has helped our experience tremendously.  Community and fellowship is important anywhere you go for an extended period.  What I don't post on the blog is that yesterday, when I stopped at our fruit stand the lady put an extra peach in my bag and said, "service" and I went on to the market and got all teary.  I love our fruit stand people, I love Miyuki and we love our friends on the 10th floor.  And it's 99.9% likely that we will never see these people again.  They are the reason, for the girls and I, that our experience here has been so positive during the week and our time here is coming closer to an end.

And all that does not mean that we aren't looking forward to being home.  Not at all.  We do (very much) miss our life at home, but knowing this is temporary makes it easier to wait.  We want to be in America, to be with our family and our friends.  Very much.  We miss our activities, our family and best friends, my MOPS mamas, our church, our cat (well, the girls and I miss the cat) and flavored coffee creamer (that's just me).

But this is our highlight reel.  We are blessed our summer has been filled with so many highlights and new experiences.  But, we have real life behind the scenes too.  And, even those moments are blessings.  Just ones I don't share very often because they certainly are not always camera-worthy and they are probably very similar to your behind the scenes moments too.