the bus and other things related

I took Rachel to the hospital yesterday afternoon. we took the bus.
I love Pamplona's bus system
I love that people of all classes ride on the bus
I love that people of all nationalities ride the bus
I love that I see well dressed women in high heals running to catch the bus
I love that I can catch a bus ten yards from my front door and take that same bus all the way into the heart of Pamplona.
I love that almost every time I ride the bus I see some sort of reunion - - people greeting a neighbor or a family member or an old acquaintance that they haven't seen in years . . .

I DIDN'T love it so much yesterday when the man that was behind me on the bus kept pushing me in the back and telling me to keep walking down the bus' narrow isle even though the people in front of me weren't moving and the bus was braking and curving at the same time.

but I DO love Rachel, and and I DID totally enjoy the time we had together as we waited for her to get checked in. we had coffee. (and then a chocolate croissant, and then she had a natural yogurt - - good girl, yeah? and I had a pincho - - a teeny tiny baguette with a slice of cured ham with a strip of roasted italian green pepper) all while we talked about things like the cute things we've seen on etsy and how we can't wait for Abi and Nathaniel to come and visit us for Christmas . . .

and I tucked her in, and took the bus home.

and today he is three

Happy Birthday to our three year old who likes to wake us up with his cheerful singing in the morning! (and although I don't always love it when it happens, it makes me happy when I think about it later in the day!)

hey Josu, what was your favorite present today?
was it the Peter Pan toy with the baby sword?
was it the books from Gran?
the blocks from Grandma?
the retro tin lunch box from Aunt Jamey and Uncle Noah?
the picture that David drew for you and left uncolored so that you could color it in?
or was is the super cute sock elephant with many wonderful accessories (that Mama spent hours and hours and hours toiling over)?

what!? the cake? it was the cake?

oh. I guess I'm not surprised. I love you.

because sometimes, you just have to:

the talk

right, so - - the talk.
it was awesome . . .
Sure, there was some disappointment - - lots of the friends and neighbors that had said that they wanted to come, didn't actually come. ok, none of them actually came. kind of stinky.

but the good, good news is that:
1. Joshua really did a fantastic job sharing; the way he was able to communicate the more technical elements of the historical Jesus, while still communicating a tender love and passionate fervor for this historical Jesus was astounding. I sure do like him.
2. aside from our Cristian community and a couple of exclusive invited guests, there were four individuals that came. FOUR!
3. the interaction time at the end of the talk was outstanding; I mean, how can you not get giddy about one of the guys there saying - - "there is so much indifference in our Spanish Catholicism; I can't help but wonder that if the nuns had taught us stuff like this, we might actually be excited about following Jesus"!
4. our Community got together at our place for pizza after the talk. we invited everyone at the talk to come and join us. and do you know what? someone did!

and yes, I know,this has already been a long post - - a bit tedious and cumbersome for those who insist on "fewer words and more pictures!" (Mercy Newton!) but I really must go on a bit longer to relate what may have been the greatest marker of success; read on my friends:

context: 3/4 the way through Joshua's talk, he made the point that the kingdom of God could not be advanced through violence . . .
Malachai (who brought along his paper and crayons and sat quietly during the talk): "Mama, I've been thinking"
me: "mmmmm? (oh my goodness, he's just like his father!)"
Malachai: "well, when I'm an adult, and if there is a war, I am going to get a loudspeaker and say to the soldiers 'he who lives by the sword will die by the sword, put down your swords!' and then I will invite them over for dinner. Will you make them dinner when I bring them home?"
me: "yes my sweet boy, yes. I would love, love that! I will make a huge, wonderful dinner for all the soldiers (oh my goodness, he's just like his father!)"

tonight. 8pm. be there.

there is this really cool thing about the Holy Spirit - - he gives gives the gifts that he wants to the people he wants, and his gifts are good.

there is this really cool thing about Joshua - - he is faithful to exercise the good gifts that the Spirit has given him.
Joshua will be giving a public talk tonight (8 pm) in our city's local culture center - - sharing about the historical Jesus and the revolutionary expectations that would have come in his context (it's fascinating; really, really fascinating!)
pray for him!
(p.s. Spain is 9 hours ahead of CA, 8 hours ahead of ID, and 7 hours ahead of TX . . . you still have time!)

I invited her in

because sometimes, caring for someone's soul and challenging her entire world view and self identity is easier to do over coffee:a JW woman has been coming over for the past few weeks.
In times past, I've had the darndest time actually engaging in profitable dialogue with a Jehovah's Witness.
it's been a little bit better this time. a little.
this Thursday, Silvia and I start studying the Gospel of Mark together - - something I proposed to keep us from jump, jump, jumping from proof text to proof text.
Please pray for me, that as I talk with Silvia, that I would listen carefully, question thoughtfully, and faithfully handle God's word.
and pray that the Holy Spirit would work wonders. he does that. I need that.

good social tips from Naomi

being on the end of a (rockin'!) Halloween party, and on the eve of a season of many more parties, I thought I would write up a bit of an etiquette guide for all you party throwers and party goers out there. if you have any questions about specific issues that I don't address here, feel free to email me and I can point you in the right direction!
party goer:
if the party thrower asks you to dress up, well then, by all means, dress up! your costume will (probably) make the other party goers have a good chuckle and have an extra fantastic time. It will make for outstanding pictures, and will make the party thrower feel really great about his super party.
(Rachel is a faithful adherent to this partying value and can here be seen dressed up as, and nearly indistinguishable from, the original Gwen Stefani)
party thrower:
if the party goer comes having payed no regard to the request to dress up, choose not to view this incident as a personal offense. remind yourself that party goer has indeed come, and that that is what really matters.
party goer:
when at the party, the party thrower may have put together a list of activities - - probably ones that he thinks are pretty fun. do your best to participate fully; laughing a lot, cheering other people on, and clapping others on the shoulder are all appropriate ways to communicate that you are having a grand old time participating in the organized activities.
party thrower:
if you find that a particular guest is reticent to participate in the activities or just seems to be "moping around", do your best to cheerfully involve that guest - - bring him a drink and a snack, and urge him about two or three times to come live the fun life. if he refuses, avoid thinking things like "boy, what a jerk", and instead, try to think things like " man, he must have had a long day; I hope he feels better soon"
party goer:
remember that, unless the party thrower has asked you to bring a specific dish, you should come without one! the party thrower has probably enjoyed putting together the menu and wants you to come without having to worry about details (other than your costume, of course)
party thrower:
If a party goer shows up at your cocktail party with a bag full of hamburgers that they picked up along the way, thank the party goer profusely, remember that your guest matters more than your menu, and then chop up those hamburgers into little squares, stick little toothpicks in them, and put them on the silver tray along side of the crab cakes!

and now . . . a couple more pictures from the awesome rocker-themed Halloween party:
Joshua - - with the sweetest mohawk evahhhh
what does Cindi Lauper's baby wear? leggings and converse, of course.

what my neighbors have to say about the elections:

Juan Luis: (a pasteleria contact) "I don't care who wins, I just hope that whoever wins brings success to your country - - because if you do well, we'll do well"

Begonia: (a friend - - and a mother of one of Malachai's classmates) "I was watching the news last night and saw huge, huge lines of people waiting to vote for your future president; AND I heard that in the United States, you don't get four hours off of work to go to vote like we do here in Spain; I could hardly believe it - - with the Unites States supposedly being a forward country!"

The general word on the street: "finally! George Bush is out!"

you and me, we make a good team

I teach our sweet children important things like: "when you brush your teeth and spit the toothpaste out into the sink, make sure to splash some water onto the trail of toothpaste foam and wash it down the drain."
You teach our sweet children things like: "Josu, where is God? yeeeees, He is everywhere; is he everything? noooooooooo . . . that's pantheism, and that is a false view of God"

Josu loves going to school. always. he loves it.
except
for
today.
As we walked out the door this morning, he grabbed my hand and said "Josu need Mama".
Now, as much was we work hard to distinguish between needs and wants around here, when Josu says that he "needs Mama",
my heart
just
melts.
So Malachai took over the stroller pushing, and I picked up my weepy boy and told him that he would, indeed, go to school ("with Malachai!"), but that when I picked him up for lunch, I would snuggle with him and read him a book
or two
or
three.
And Josu said "Malachai go school. Josu go casa and Mama read Bible!"
and I just fell to pieces;
but I took him to school. and he went - - crying.
and my heart was
very
very
sad.

the event, documented

several days prior: have Rachel bake a pie; make Selma beg her for some.
the birth-day - - it's been one year!:
in wee morning hours: spend a few minutes daydreaming about the day Selma was born - - remembering the way she came out with just two little pushes ("not even any crazy pushing faces", Joshua told me); amazing at how much we loved her from the very beginning . . .
that afternoon:
go to the toy store to pick out a gift; do other fun things while we're at it
find the thirty minute time slot in the afternoon when every one is home and awake; stick a candle (one, of course!) in the last piece of apple pie, and sing a happy birthday song!
then go to bed. The day after, have Selma play hard with the the sweet-awesome gifts that she scored from all the people wanting to celebrate her.

fusion

when truth number 1 (I must, must, must make a chocolate stout cake tonight!) collides with truth number 2 (Joshua is far, far away, and has taken the car with him):

well, Joshua is home, and life seems a lot more cheery and hopeful (even on a dreary day like today); I can face life with a glimmer in my eye and a spring in my step . . . you know how it goes . . . I mean, look at me:

here I am drinking tea and sitting in front of my laptop while Joshua entertains the rowdy brood (captivating them with the legends of Zelda - - it's totally, totally educational; they have to do like, problem solving and stuff)

so check out this little hat that came as a gift to Josu when he was born. he really didn't get to wear it much (I'm not sure why I didn't force it on him; it's as cute as all get out!), but we did our part making up for it when we took the family out for a walk and down to the pasteleria this morning. It got passed around and we all got a share of the wooly hat goodness.

(click on Malachai's picture to get a close-up of the fantastic smattering of freckles on that cute nose!)(Josu - - a bit miffed that I made him take off his superhero cape for the picture. I'm still cool with my quirky sweet wearing it everywhere he goes, but, hey now son, there is a fine line between quirky-fun and quirky-obnoxious; let's limit the cape's presence in photos, ok?) (even Rachel tried to join in on the fun)

wine country

Malachai was waiting for me out in the hallway to take him back to his post-siesta classes this afternoon when I overheard this chitchat going on with our next door neighbor, Ana:
Malachai: "I'm taking some grapes to share with my class"
Ana: "oh! of course! it's the vendimia!"
me: "wha? . . .
Malachai: "yeah, the vendimia - - the first day of the grape harvesting; did you know, Ana, that the grape harvest this year wasn't as abundant as it was last year?"
Ana: "yes, but the quality of the grapes is better"
Malachai: "it's because we didn't get as much rain as we did in 2007 . . . "
aaaahhhhh. the vendimia. that explains his passionate plea for me to buy his class some grapes when we passed by the market earlier today.
explains it perfectly!

So when I picked him up from class, I asked him if his classmates enjoyed the grapes. "no! we didn't eat them!" he told me
"oh no?" I asked "what did you do with them?"
"we're saving them for later so that we can stomp on them with our bare feet to make wine!"
nice.

the one in which my perfectly designed gift number two is used by God to refine me

our landlord came by today to pick up this month's rent. I wondered if he would notice the recently added "toasty orange" wall in our living room.
he didn't.
it may have been because of Josu (stationed in my bedroom "until the man leaves") screaming "I need go poo-poo!" over and over and over again.
yeah. I'm thinking that was it.
he just looked compassionately at me and said, "the transition from two to three kids is rough, isn't it?"

smooch. squeeze. sniff.

I sent Joshua off early this morning - - with a smooch and a butt cheek squeeze (you know, the squeeze that communicates "I'm sorry for being such a grouch last night" ?- - I'm pretty sure it did the trick)
he's headed to Hungary for nine days for a church planting conference. I have a list of things to do while he is gone:
1. tame the craziness in the boys room
2. tame the craziness in our room
(that's a short list you say? ha! you haven't seen the craziness! it's in the same family as this craziness - -
which has, since this picture was taken, been put back into order, thank you very much)
besides, whenever Joshua goes away I tend to get this insane notion that I'll be able to get more stuff done than usual, and then he actually leaves and I realize:
1. he helps me a ton with the kids and house, and when he's not around, I don't have more time and energy, I have less time and energy!
and
2. really cool people (like our Christian community, and my friend Ana) know that I will be home without Joshua and so they make a huge effort to get together with me so that I don't get lonely. so I really don't have time to get stuff done; it's awesome. I love it. but I just have to keep the list short, you know?

perfectly designed gifts

Look at him! isn't he cute? God carefully crafted and designed him; and then gave him to us for us to raise him!

and our Josu!
and this wee lassie!
God is good.

Last night, on the News

Bob (as we'll call him): "well, as you know, Spain is the only European country that allows even its 'respectable' newspapers to include adds for prostitution! Isn't that right, Sue?"
Sue (as we'll call her): "that's right Bob!"
Bob: "not only are there pages and pages of these adds in our newspapers, but often, these adds are accompanied by scandalous, explicit photographs!"
Sue (wagging her head appropriately at this outrageous national shame): "that's right, Bob, in fact we are going to show you some of those very images right here, right now . . . "

aaaaaand that's when my good husband changed the channel.
it's good to know, though, that public tv is doing its part to put an end to such inappropriate images in other mediums of public media. tremendously noble. really.

No, there are no pictures for this post. that wouldn't be right now, would it?

do remember that thing about Rachel? well, she did it again, look what she brought me back from a junk shop in England:
Once, when Joshua was trying to snuggle with me, one of the earrings almost poked his eye out; and another time, when we woke up in the morning, there was a little earring shaped hickey on Joshua's shoulder right where I had laid my head on him. And every time I take my sweater off, it gets caught on the little hook on the back of the earring, and I have to roll on the ground for several minutes to try and wrestle it off. well, all of that and I'm still keeping them! I like them that much!

by the way, Rachel, I do wish that you would come back from that little trip you are taking. Two weeks is way too long for you to be gone from us. Sure, it's nice that Selma can sleep in your room (and we don't have to deny ourselves our late night snacks or our mid-morning second breakfasts like we normally have to when her crib is set up in the kitchen) but it's not really worth it to us. and seriously, how often do you clean that bathroom between your bedroom and the boy's bedroom so that it doesn't smell like an elementary school boy's bathroom all the time? like, five times a day?

p.s. mostly, I miss you, but I also miss the 70% Belgian chocolate that you keep stashed in our kitchen cabinet! come home soon!

compliments. kind of. the mystery solved.

ha! you'll never guess what just happened to me!
we were having a bit of an afternoon stroll around the park, when a kindly older gentleman struck up a conversation with Selma; and we chatted it up about redheads
me: "yeah, I have three of them, can you believe it?"
kindly older gentleman: "in the pueblo that I grew up in, there was a whole family of redheads!"
me: "that must have been one good looking family"
. . . and the conversation continued on for a bit like that . . . and then he said it - - "and they don't have freckles!"
so I did my part - - "well, I have freckles, so you never know . . ."
and then he said - - "noooooo . . . you don't have freckles . . . you may have some zits, but you don't have freckles . . ."

well now, that explains it all.
and I'm taking it as a compliment.
on a completely unrelated note, I'm off to wash my face.
a picture of Selma, looking far into her future when people will think that all her freckles are just zits

compliments. kind of.

it is not unusual for us to be stopped by random strangers who dote on our redheads; it happens all the time. we don't mind - - it's fun, really. almost everyone has a story to share about a redhead in their family, or a redhead that they once knew or dated . . . we like the stories!

and not all the time, but often, I'll have someone nod approvingly and say something like "and your redheads have beautiful white skin - - they aren't the freckled kind"
and I - - my children's very freckled mama, smile and nod and say something like "well, my freckles really didn't start coming in till I was about five, and if they do get freckles, we really won't mind too much!"

what I like about you. #1 in a series of about a billion

on the days when I'm all tired and worn out from the ever-so-important duties of keeping this home a well oiled machine, you pull out the Chocolate Crunch cereal (the crunch cereal that has been sitting in the shelf for about six months and is all chewy and stuck together and that you recently swore to never eat again because of its general disgustingness)and are like - - "no really babe, don't fix me dinner; I really want to eat crunch cereal"
sigh.

we were walking down to the pasteleria this afternoon to buy milk when Malachai (who recently started taking some classes in Euskera - - the Basque language) told me "did you know that burdea means 'animal buns' in Euskera?"

me: "really? that's kind of a weird thing to learn to say in Euskera"

Malachai: "I know mama, the thing is that the Basques say really crazy things"

me: "oh"
(really, what else could I say? well, other than - - "come on now, son, a little respect please . . ." )

a day in the life of us living a day with Dawn

Our super cool friend Dawn was here visiting last week. While she was here we took a little jaunt up to France (you can do that when you live in northern Spain) where we did fun things like walk on a French beach (averting our eyes from the occasional French nudie), eat French crepes, check French mail slots for French bad guys,
and peer into French shops and wonder about the moral implications of spending ungodly amounts of money on French children's fashion.
p.s. how hard do you think it would be to draft up a pattern for that little jacket?

go ahead and touch, but please don't pull

Selma found her earrings today; let's hope she doesn't rip those little suckers out of her lobes.
Sometimes she makes this face and then it gets stuck there. really.

portrait of a scratcher

uh, what's that, Josu? what do you want me to do? why are you scratching your head? pointing at the camera?
scratch, point. scratch, point.
oh. you want me to take a picture of you scratching your head. of course - - it makes perfect sense that you would want that. alright, go ahead and stand there and scratch.
well now, that turned out nicely.

oh, and Yesterday we found out from Malachai that his English teacher speaks "half English, half gibberish" . . . . interesting . . . .

off to school, my boys! be educated!

people worry. often, people worry about their own kids. Sometimes people worry about other people's kids. I think that in our neighborhood a lot of people worry about my kids; they worry that since they don't go to preschool at age two, that they will be permanently scarred - - unable to socialize or fit into group activities or learn how to share.

we heard good news from Josu's teacher today as she delightedly told us that she was surprised at how well Josu had done on his first day of school; especially since he had never been to preschool!

good job little man; good job!

purposeful re-integration - - the ugly side of it.

well, two days back now, and I'm working hard to jump right back into life - - I'm excited about meeting up with friends and contacts here in my neighborhood; I'm looking forward to seeing what "strangers" might be willing to greet or be greeted after our summer's absence (it happens - - have you ever noticed? someone who you see on a regular basis, but who you're not quite on greeting terms with, is more ready to say hello or to respond to a hello after you haven't seen each other for a while; it's true! try it! try it! try it!)

So I was thinking about all this purposeful re-integration this morning, and as I was in my local coffee shop, I ran into a girl that I might consider a casual aquaintence. our friendly interaction went a bit like this:

me:"heeeeeeyy! how are you? where is your little boy this morning?"

her:"oh, he's not with me this morning. . . . he's with his mumble mumble

(I couldn't quite catch this last bit- - it's kind of loud in the pasteleria and I'm still clouded with jet lag; I assume that the gist of what she is saying is that she left her boy back home with her husband so that she could calmly read the newspaper and drink her coffee - - a common treat for many of the moms with small children that I know)

me: (with a warm, genuine smile) "ooohh that is so nice!"

her: "uhhh, I'm divorced. that's why I said he was with his 'son of a **** father' - - the one who cheated on me when I was still pregnant . . . ."

oh shoot. oh shoot. oh shoot oh shoot oh shoot!

so, as calmly and carefully as I could, I communicated my most heartfelt apologies - - both for her suffering was well as for the complete idiot I had been to her. and she was gracious, but obviously pained.

I will keep an eye out for this girl, and I will be praying for a clear way to communicate love and care to her. pray with me, if you think of it.