Dirty feet!

We have been using our phone to use the internet but for some reason it has been so unpredictable as far as price (once it cost more than a dollar just to open up the juno page...my phone ran out of units before I could see if I had any mail or not) lately. It was awful when we had people here who wanted to check their mail...I would have a $10 card put into my phone and they would use it to check mail once, call to check their flights and then the next day when wanting to check their mail the phone would run out of time already! So, yesterday Joel hooked up the old system that we used for getting onto the internet. It is a prepaid card and we can use it for a month now without worrying. We might only get it during the evening hours during the week (we'll see how it works) since it was cheaper; at least yesterday and today (the weekend) it has been on all the time. We have found that hooking it up to the new laptop has increased the speed so much; we thought the connection was slow (ok, the connection IS slow...but not as slow as we thought) but it is just our computer that was slow. So, things are better than they were! All that to say, did you notice that this is my 2nd blog today! Since I am connected all the time easily and the pages load faster, it is a lot easier to post than it has been!

Ok, what I wanted to say was, just a minute ago I noticed Joshua and Jonathan playing with their favorite toy (the collection of pop bottle tops that the kids have been keeping since we lived in Brazil). They have them all spread out in the school room (which is now a packing room since we are moving to Zambia in about 3 weeks) making armies or something. Anyways, I noticed Joshua's dirty feet. I am also doing laundry today and I happened to just notice all of Joshua's socks that he leaves laying around...the socks that he wore to church were laying in the hall right outside the schoolroom.

Isn't it funny how life moves on, people grow up and change and we sometimes don't even notice it? Well, I wanted to acknowledge that Joshua is growing up. It wasn't that long ago that Joshua didn't like people seeing his little feet. This started long ago...I don't know why; in Brazil he would want to wear socks with his sandles. He would take his socks off right at the swimming pool in Michigan and put them on the second he got out of the pool. We had to force him to sleep without his socks, telling him that his feet really need to air out at night. His feet always looked like feet that had been in water too long. But always pretty clean. :-)

Well, one of the things that we didn't pack much of when we came here was socks for the boys. I know that I bought socks for them before we came; but somehow I put them in our storage stuff instead of our packing stuff. So, Joshua and Jonathan had about 2 pair of socks between them. That didn't matter to Jonathan because he hates socks and only wears them during soccer class on Tuesdays. I had to buy each of the boys a pair of socks for soccer to keep up for just that day to make sure they had clean socks for that day since they had so few socks. This was hard on Joshua because, as I said, he loves wearing his socks. There were many days that this was a big struggle and at times I remember wondering if he would ever just get over this strange dislike of people seeing his feet. (I mean, he would walk from his shower to his bedroom to get his clothes in front of us without any shyness, as long as he had his socks on!)

Well, somewhere in the past six months that has ended for him. I didn't even realize it. He still wears his tennis shoes when we go out (vs. Jon who wears his sandles or slip on shoes) and wears socks with them. But as soon as he gets home he tears off those shoes and socks (and leaves them in the hallway in front of the schoolroom) and goes barefoot. He plays outside all the time with no shoes...in fact, I think he only puts his shoes on when we are actually leaving home for church or soccer or something. And now he has dirty little feet, just like a normal seven year old boy. :-) That makes me so happy!