rerouted morning

what a weird morning...
i had been looking forward to wednesday morning to get some serious laundry done and read the book my cousin, shelby, gave me "Is That All He Thinks About?" by Marla Taviano. my mother, however, had been working up a plan to "spend time with me" and was so cute about getting me to help her clean out her desk that i couldn't really refuse. it ended up being a time full of laughter - mostly me making fun of her, she was on a roll of goofiness (if that isn't a word, fake it). then, we found a ton of home movies from when alice and tony were little. there was a loose movie not in its perfectly marked case as my mother always does, so we decided to watch it.
omg my babies are so grown up! the movie was of Christmas 2005 when we lived in Maryland. it was the time when we went to Ocean City to see the lights and alice and tony had BOTH had major accidents and we had to buy them sweatshirts to wear as dresses! too cute. they were dancing on stage, they met santa, and then had hot chocolate and gingerbread man cookies. at the time i was exhausted and frazzled over the accident portion of the evening and i don't think that i had remembered all the magical parts of that night. seeing them so blissfully unaware of the chaos and simply happy dancing in their sweatshirt dresses made me misty.
i think that God gives us home movies to be windows into reality. we get so caught up in "handling" everything, that we miss it in the process. it was almost like getting that special night with my babies back. alice was four again and tony wasn't even two. when i picked them up from school and they were back in 2008 all big and everything it made me sad. where had three years gone?
the moral of the story is, when an evening turns to chaos and you feel like you are losing touch, STOP, PRAY, and take home movies :)