Flexibility

Flexible, like a pipe cleaner, that's our strategy these days.  When we remember to be flexible, life is substantially less maddening.  Take last weekend for example.  We had plans to leave on our first real Nigerian roadtrip last Friday to visit another family.  We had it on the calendar for at least 6 weeks.  It was going to be the kid's first trip away with the exception of our short drive over Easter weekend.  Everyone was looking forward to a change in scenery.

Then on Wednesday we started hearing tidbits about some potential security issues.  By Thursday, the security concerns had been validated by more reliable sources.  We wrestled all day with what we should do.  Finally, we decided that it wouldn't be prudent to go.  There was nothing that we had to do that weekend which couldn't be done another weekend and with all of the warnings out, it just was wisest to stay home.

To say that the kids were disappointed is an understatement.  They couldn't understand why we would have to stay home for some danger that may or may not ever happen.  We were definitely wearing the bad guy hat at that point.
So, I suggested we try to make the weekend fun anyway.  I told them we were going to make a list of one thing that each person would like to do and we would do all of them sometime during the weekend.  So, that's what we did.  We had a campfire complete with s'mores, we jumped on the trampoline together, we paid a typically painful game of Monopoly along with some other board games and we had some time on the Wii.
Our other way of bringing fun to the scene was to eat fun foods.  We splurged and bought ridiculously expensive turkey breast.  We had seen it a few times at one of the Lebanese run grocery stores here (thank heavens for the Lebanese who import any yummy stuff we can get here in town.)   It was the first lunchmeat we had eaten since Canada and it was oh so yummy!  We also found real milk, which can be a rare treat here in town.
We used some of the milk to make pudding and to mix up some Dream Whip type stuff that we can buy here.  In the States I rarely made pudding.   It's just so gooey.  I like a dessert with some chew to it, ya know?  But the kids love it and we put a ton of it on the crate because everyone said we should.    Because of my pudding hatred, I had somehow never introduced my kids to parfaits.  So, I went all out.   Ryan bought a gas station sized pack of Oreos, we used that real milk, and TWO different packets of pudding.  To make them even more fun, we used some "fancy" glass dishes we had found in a storage unit here that was left behind by some other mission family to put our parfaits into.  I ended up with some major brownie points and some very happy kids.

After all of our precautions, the weekend ended up being pretty peaceful.  The security in our town was insane with uniformed officers and military checkpoints everywhere.  There was a no movement ban on vehicles for Sunday morning.  We stuck close to home, even worshipping on our compound instead of attending national church.  Apparently, all of that security paid off because and we are thankful that we stayed home for nothing.  Now we have our rescheduled trip to look forward to later in the summer.