"I See the Moon and the Moon Sees Me..."

For the first time since arriving home with Kenny, we were all able to relax, hang out, and do as little or as much as we wanted. It was a much needed respite in an otherwise hectic schedule, and we all took full advantage of it! We slept in late (9:30!!!), laid around in our PJ's for another hour, and then the boys played "Fort" in their bedroom for a couple of hours while Dominick and I visited uninterrupted! "Fort" has become the latest cool thing to play, gathering every pillow around the house and stacking them up near the bunk beds, draping a couple of blankets from the top bunk to create a dark fort inside it, and then pretending they are in the Army. As this will be our last weekend with nothing going on for awhile, it was nice to just be lazy.

We finally got training wheels on Matthew's old bike for Kenny to ride, and on his first day out he already received a skinned up knee to wear with pride. He has been riding Joshie's little bike with training wheels but is much shakier on a larger one, but I am sure in a couple of weeks it will be old hat to him.

We laughed our hineys off later in the day as he was listening to an MP3 player our friends sent us for the trip, and all of a sudden busts out in song, singing at the top of his lungs "We will...we will WASH YOU!!!" Hahahahaha! Wish we had a camcorder in hand to get that one. I think we have found our new bathtime song :-) It was so funny and Matthew and Joshie also laughed like crazy over that one. Guess we need to work a bit on those old rock classics.

We had dinner than we all drove over to Delta to check on our Geocache, which is hidden in a park there. It is about a mile walk in and out to the cache (for those of you unfamiliar with Geocaching it is basically a treasure hunt using a GPS unit...much fun and free to do!), and Kenny did so without a complaint and seemed to really enjoy it. Confluence Park is beautiful and has many trails to walk on, and there is even a rope-type bridge you can walk on over the river, and much to his delight it even rocks! As the sun slipped down over the horizon we walked out of the park, stopping along the way for the kids to try and do chin ups on the chin up bars along the trail, and then we headed over to McDonald's for a cool treat of ice cream, compliments of Kenny and his vaccination reward. Both Matthew and Joshie were given gift certificates too by the nurse for being such caring brothers, and they both turned around this evening and said "Thank you Kenny!" because as Matthew said "Without Kenny getting his shots we wouldn't be getting the ice cream!" and then they both insisted that he get his first. While eating his ice cream Kenny indicated for the first time that he had a boo boo inside his mouth, as he called it, and he had to eat it very slowly. I know he won't like it that he is visiting the dentist on Tuesday, but I think it is quite necessry at this stage.

On the way home, we had a "moment", one of those wonderful summer evening moments that you hope your kids will remember forever. As we are driving along the highway, not too far from our home, the moon begins it's ascent into the evening sky, and we see just the very tippy top of it peeking over the mountain range behind our home. Dominick quickly pulls over and tells the kids to look out the window, and to notice how quickly the moon actually rises...Matthew in particular was astonished to find it only took about 2 minutes from the time we first saw the tiny sliver at the top until the entire moon was completely visible. We could tell that Kenny was confused, he asked us "Utra, Mommy?" (Dobre Utra is "Good Morning" in Russian), as he must have thought it was the sun! I wondered as we all sat there silently in the car if this was the first time in his 8 years of life that he had ever had the pleasure of watching the moon rise. I replied "Nyet Kenny, Noche...moon" and he thought about it and then said "Ahhh Mommy....sleepy???" as we each stumbled to find the words to explain what he needed to know and I said "Yes, moon...sleepy...noche...moon" and then he grinned as he finally understood this was the moon, not the sun! As bright as it was, I am not surprised he was confused!

We quickly drove the remaindedr of the way home, and Matthew broke out his telescope that Grandma Alice gave him for Christmas, and we all stood on our back patio watching the moon rise hgher into the sky, trying to keep it in the line of site of the telescope. Matthew was VERY excited and jumped up and down as he looked through the viewfinder, of course knocking it out of focus :-) He told Kenny "Tokie..quick...quick...come see!!!" and both of them were there taking turns with the telescope, each enamored of one of God's little surprises in this world. The warm evening, the moonlit field behind us, the outline of the mountain range serving as a platter for the large orb of swiss cheese dangling from the sky...and the voices of our children lifted in the lilt of amazement...it was a Kodak moment for sure, or I guess in this 21st century world we live in it was a CompactFlash moment...hahahahaha!

As I looked at the photos later this evening, I realized that there was some incredible symbolism that had escaped me earlier in the day but was struck by it as I saw it appear on my laptop screen. Tokie was wearing a shirt given to us in a batch of shared clothing from some friends of ours. Emblazoned across his chest is a fish and the phrase "I'm a Keeper". As I saw his happy smile shining above those words, I realized nothing could be more fitting than this.