Flip...flop

Dinner has been a bit of a challenge here in Uruguay, because we are in language class 3 afternoons a week (M-W-F), we have church Wednesday & Sunday, SILOS on Thursday and Brandon and Kaitlin have youth meetings every Saturday. And when Kaitlin had mallets for her bells she had orchestra practice on Friday's. You can see that makes our schedule full and makes the dinner meal difficult.

Being a perfectionist and type A personality (so I've been told) I don't care too much for a system that doesn't work. So I ponder it in my mind for awhile looking for a way that works. Sometimes my new ideas only make the system jam up further, but other times the ideas pan out and are quite productive.

After pondering the dinner time stress I flip flopped the meal times so every day is like Sunday. You know, where we have a large meal for lunch and a light meal or snack for dinner. I've been fixing a big lunch all week and it's worked great. I enjoy the unbroken time I have in the afternoon to work on projects - like translation work for Spanish class, or even better a scrapbook page and hand stamped thank you cards. Plus, I have all morning to make yeast rolls or something else requiring more than an hour. Now I don't need to worry about whose meal is going to be cold when they get home.

I truly am thankful to the Lord for giving me the gift of working out the kinks in my daily life. I know I got through much of deputation because He allowed me to think of better ways to do things - like dressing the girls all in one color each day (Monday's were pink, Tuesday's were purple, and so on) of missions conferences.

Tomorrow is my first birthday in Uruguay! And my first birthday when it's been in the 50's instead of the 80's. I'm hoping we'll have a sunny day because we are going to BBQ, American style! I can already taste those slow cooked ribs slathered in Texas style BBQ sauce. MMMMM.