No place like home

Monday is wash day, Tuesday's picnic day, Wednesday's dessert night (usually ice cream), Thursday's game day, Friday's movie night, Saturday's pancakes, and Sunday is church day.

These were traditions we started in order to create continuity wherever we happened to be.  Traveling back and forth from the village to missionary housing in Guatemala City, we tried to be consistent about a few things, hoping it would instill confidence in my children that the world wasn't as crazy and random as it seemed.

Once we moved to Mexico, we finally settled down, and only Jim moved around from village to home.  Now we've been in the same house for 18 years with only trips to the U.S. every few summers to break up the monotony.  With no need to keep life steady and calm, many of our traditions died.

Picnic in a piano box

When we had been here about six months, the boys started asking when we get to move to a new house!  Ugh.  Once they asked me where I lived when I was growing up, and I told them I grew up in the same house where BJ and Papa live.  "But where ELSE did you live?"  I told them that was it, except one other house where I lived from birth to age seven.  "How boring!" was their response.  Maybe MKs are just born for adventure and change.

Nowadays I almost never add laundry to an already hectic Monday of home schooling, and I can't remember our last picnic or game day, though we still tend to watch movies (and have pizza) on Fridays and go to church on Sundays.  With only teens who are not interested in waking up on a Saturday morning for pancakes together as a family, we often have them on Sunday instead.

My fondest memories are of the little guys hunting up new places to have picnics.  If it was rainy outside, they would drag out the picnic blanket and have a lunch under the dining room table.  Above you can see them eating outside in my old digital piano box.  Below they are on the door jam leading to our garden in Guatemala City.

Another picnic, 1989

As they grew older, these boys wanted things to stay as they had always been. Even when they were old enough to go on overnight hikes in the mountains, they would come back early on Saturday, fully expecting pancakes for themselves and their friends.

Now maybe the pendulum is swinging too far the other extreme and we do nothing predictable any more.  Now it's my grandchildren who might say "How boring!" when they learn this is the only house Bekah, Jonny, and Debbie ever knew except for temporary furlough housing every now and then.

The older I get,  "boring" sounds more appealing to me all the time.  As we prepare to live out of suitcases for the summer in temporary quarters for the summer, I say, "Give me home any day of the week."

I stick to my not-so-original statement: There's no place like home.