Challenges and Blessings

Of course, things have not been all fun and games. We're able to laugh a little now, but we got lost on the way to the village, and paid 600 Yen 3 times to get on an expressway that we ended up not taking to get there after all. We also had trouble finding dinner that night - Japan is a very cash carrying society and I had left my wallet home that day, so we were stuck with eating for about 1000 Yen or finding a place that accepted credit cards. We were just about to give up and drive home when Scott found a Japanese - Italian place that took plastic. Hurray! They even served up their pasta dishes from giant Parmesan cheese wheels.
Yesterday was a real doozy. After picking up the girls at school (Colleen had gotten sick after spinning out on the tire swing) I opted to head from the grocery (the school nurse said she was fine). I had all three at the end of the day, what was I thinking? You bag your own groceries here (Aldi style) so I thought I had it together with all 8 bags, but 1 fell out of the basket in the elevator (they only have tiny grocery carts here so we have to use two, which hold two baskets worth). As luck would have it, it was the bag with our eggs. I decided to tie up the bag and clean the mess up at home, but after being loaded into the van, taken out again, put into the double stroller to wheel to the elevator, taken out again because the stroller had to go up 4 stairs first, the grocery bag had all it could take, and dribbled out uncooked scrambled eggs right in front of our elevator all over the marble floor.
Wait, it gets better. I told Colleen to get the stroller with the groceries into the apartment while I sat there, trying to figure out what to do with the mess, and who should walk in but the wife of the professional baseball player that lives in our building. I had to tell her to watch out for the eggs. My kids were screaming in the elevator shaft, "Mom, we need help!" She said, "I just live on the first floor. I'll take the stairs. Nice to see you again." I dashed upstairs, pushed the stroller and the kids into the apartment, grabbed some Windex, paper towels and another plastic bag and shot downstairs again. I started spraying and wiping, when when I looked up to see the Australian Consulate. She also lives in our building and her husband is a stay-at-home-dad with their 2 year old. I hadn't met her yet. Only I didn't catch her before she... stepped in the eggs. The only comment I could manage after "sorry" was "I think we'll switch to delivery from now on" (Costco in the next city over does deliver groceries for a reasonable fee). I'll have to admit some embarrassed tears escaped in the kitchen after that.
But I did save the best part of the day for last: Bridget wandered off while we were at the store. Now, if you've been reading, Ashlynn's already done this once and we found her very quickly, so I wasn't as worried this time. After about two minutes of calling her name I started wheeling over to customer service where they make general announcements, and I found her on her knees on the green turf of the flower section. I started to scold, but after just a second, asked, "What were you doing waiting in the flowers?" She replied, "I just said a prayer to Heavenly Father that I lost my mom and please help me, and I was waiting for you to come." It was one of the sweetest moments I've had in a long time. I got to hold her for a full minute before we went back to shopping. So I supposed the moral is, maybe we're not always supposed to keep perfect track of our kids at the grocery store and maybe other people's impressions of us really don't matter that much. What really matters is that our children are learning to have faith, and we must be doing something right during these days of recycling dishes and laundry, even if it is only cleaning up eggs.