what odila would do
when charles is travelling, as he is now, sundays are always a little harassed in the house. it is tough to load all our wet beach stuff into a taxi plus the tired kiddies when there is only one prompter and that same person is the taxi hailer and kid corraller.
and staying at home is no fun, and going to the club, although a good option, isn't always the one i want.
so today, i was up at 6am with jasper. nothing was wrong, he was just awake (might have something to do with the fact that i had him in bed at 7pm sharp the night before…and believe me we are headed in that direction tonight as well!!!) he crawled into bed with me and too tired for conversation, i turned on the television and let him watch something that might have been deputy dawg. he kept watching for half an hour, when sebastian wandered in and crawled in, enchanted by this odd turn of events. mummy? encouraging television? wow!
i heard the rustly jingle that indicates bebe being moved around and knew that carys was either up or would be very soon. i invited her to join us, and she was thrilled. by then it was 7.30 and it was only at 8am that sela joined us. sela was a little….disconcerted …. shall we say that there had been unequal television distribution, but over rice krispies and trying to discern what they were saying to us, she got over it. she also greatly liked her sunday school outfit, which went a long way.
we made it to church on time!!! how is that for impressive!
it was a good sermon. and afterwards i chatted to the kids sunday school teachers and hcaught up on curriculum and questions.
our next step afterwards was to walk up to bowen road to see if a sofa that was being donated to small world was in acceptable shape. YOU BET IT WAS! it needs new covers, but that just means we get to go to shenzhen and get new covers! so i am very pleased about that. afterwards, the kids and i walked from bowen road to hong kong park, and then strolled through the aviary. lots of gorgeous birds.
from there, we headed straight to the circular waterfall in hong kong park.
the circular waterfall has a walk through part where you can, wait for it…walk through, or around, as it may be, as it goes in a circle. and the kids love the circular waterfall. it was 30 above. within seconds, shoes were off, and they were running around the waterfall area, while i hoped they would remember the conversation i had with them minutes earlier about not running, and sebastian's 2004 stitches caused by running on a wet surface.
i have to say, they were pretty good. for 45 minutes, to the delight of tourists and locals alike, they circled around, eventually ducking their heads until the water, getting wetter and wetter and wetter. at one point, seb came out and i made him take off his shirt, which i wrung out and draped over a rock. i suppose a good parent would be worried about how clean the water was (especially as my four kids hung their heads and were doused by the water), but i asked myself…"on this boiling hot day, what would odila do?" and i realised that odila would let them play and splash in the fountain and that is exactly what i wanted to let my kiddies do. and i did. for a LONG time!! and they did not get tired.
my friend sheri's son olin came along and was totally impressed. it means something when an 18 year old calls you fantastic. "i was never allowed to get wet!" he congratulated me. jasper, sela, carys and seb invited him into the waterfall, but he declined. he did however give me some good advice on how to get the kids home.
"give them food and eat it in the sunshine. don't give it all at the same time. spread it out." (he also offered to go to one of the nearby hotels and get towels, telling them that i was a guest, but i said that i couldn't ask him to lie for me)
i recognised wisdom, and after dragging the kids out of the water, we squelched over to a nearby canteen and i ordered them two packets of crisps and one juice box each. the crisps were too hot for the girls, but not for the boys.
we sat on sunny steps and ate.
i then talked about the possibility of mcdonalds.
turthfully, there is a mcdonalds around admiralty, but i wanted to stretch out our walk.
so we did. and en route, we discovered it is hong kong's national musuems day, so we ended up watching a five minute play put on by university students (bless them) in the sunshine and then walked five more minutes to the nearest mcdonalds, which we ate outside! after that was pushed down in indecent haste, i walked us to the NEXT mcdonalds, where i bought them all milkshakes.
i decided i wasn't ready for our day to end yet, so i started to ask the kids how they wanted to get home knowing it would not be an easily settled debate. i was right, sela wanted the seatbelts that minibuses provide, while everyone else wanted a double decker bus because they have two stories.
to postpone our day, we walked up the escalators. talked about the environmental benefits of offering escalators.
and finally, we were on caine road, and we tried to hail a double decker, but it was only going to pokfield road rather than pokfulam road. so, we took a mini bus, the 28. we were the only people on it, which made it our magic school bus.
we talked up the twisty narrow road together with no one nearly getting hit, and then we were home. i dispatched the kids off to play immediately, because i wanted to write down just how gorgeous today has been. i want to put them to bed RIGHT NOW because i am so afraid something will happen that will mar the perfection of today.
will they remember running around in that fountain and how joyous they were?
i will.
always.
