The little things...

I spent the day with some precious long time friends. It was a total surprise that they were here, they dropped in from Russia. Nope. I am not kidding.

They have three boys whom I spent the afternoon in front of the Berliner Dome with. They boys asked me where my favorite place to lay in the grass and jump in fountains was. And so we did. We played chase in the lush grass before the Alte and when we got hot we danced in the fountain at the door of the dome. We chased lady bugs, butterflies and shooed away ants and spiders and gnats that stuck to our sticky skin. We had empty bottle "boat" races in the water jets and tried to surmise ways to make our boats faster. We picked the most comfortable patches of grass to lay in when we were tired, and when they looked like they were melting I bought ice cream and apfelschorle because I can. We raced to eat the fruit hands as the sticky juice ran down our hands and on our legs and we licked as much as we could off of our salty skin so that none was wasted. When we were done we went and "showered" in the fountain so that we would be clean. The boys were stripped down to their skivvies and perplexed as to why I wouldn't take my little sundress off, one suggested that it was because it was really pretty and I probably didn't want it to get stolen. I got lots of sweaty hugs and relished in the big wet blotches their sweat and fountain soaked hair left when they walked away. We talked about really important things, like how to run fast and cut corners without falling. If Jesus was alive when they gate of Babel got moved to the Pergamon Museum on Museum Insel. Lego land and how we never, ever wanted to leave our favorite spot.

We did have to stop in a couple of churches for their parents, who seemed to be very interested in quiet, cool places (AKA boring to the boys) and I snapped this shot of this lady. One of the boys told me that when grown ups think of wings they always think of feathers, like on birds and angels, but we never remember bats and jumping fish who have no feathers at all.

All I know is that when I think of angels, I spent the day with three without wings or feathers, but it didn't matter because I still felt closer to heaven.

Here's a link to some of the fun pics of the day. Green grass, lady bugs, games of chase and cool fountains.