Jenny: Mom, are you going to sit with me, or what?

Isn’t it great, the phrases a 2 year old can learn when she spends all her time with older siblings? And, it turns out, she doesn’t want me to sit with her, because her bevy of Care Bears are neatly arrayed on the couch and there is no room for me.

I went for a one mile run today. My left foot protested from step one. I limped the whole way around my neighborhood and then limped home. I’ve rested for a half hour, and it feels fine (well, it hurts, but not excessively so), so I’m really not sure where to go from here. I’ll have to talk to my personal trainer…Bill. I can already predict his advice: no running for the rest of the week; try again next week. So, if I ask his advice, I’ll have to plan to follow it, and I don’t know if I want to follow that advice, so perhaps I’ll wait to ask.

My sister and her family departed last night for Fort Bragg, NC. They’ll visit friends there and watch the fireworks tomorrow night. Our insane scheme is for me and the kids to drive on Wednesday to Columbia, SC via Fort Bragg meeting them either in the Fort Bragg vicinity or in Columbia. We spend the night in Columbia and then finish our journey to Fort Rucker, Alabama on Thursday.

This will be a painful trip. Pete has finally hit that age where sitting in a car for longer than 20 minutes is torture to him…and to everybody else. I did get a DVD player installed in the van, which will be fine for all the other kids, but Pete won’t care. Since Bill was told to take Wednesday off too, I’ll have his help getting out the door. I hope to have everything loaded on Tuesday night. The kids are usually sleeping or sedentary until 9 am most days, so my plan is to pull them out of bed and put them straight into the car at 6 am. Between juice boxes and dry cereal, I hope to get 3 of the 7 hours under tire before taking a break. If I can make it to Fort Bragg by lunch time, I hope to take a long break for lunch and do a big switch around with passenger seating between my van and my sister’s car. Repeat process on Thursday and get to Alabama with no problems. Right.

And today and tomorrow are like a second weekend for us. Not much planned. The boys want to play baseball with Dad. Maybe we’ll all do it. Maybe we’ll go see the movie Cars. Maybe we’ll go to the pool. Maybe today I will try to teach my children the joys of lying on the grass under a tree and watching the clouds roll by.

Blessing for Going on Vacation:

Loving Father, during this time of rest and relaxation, please repair in me whatever is weary or broken and revive my drooping spirit…Let this vacation be a graced time of recollection and rejuvenation, of deeper self-awareness and eager self-giving. May it be an occasion of refreshment and reinvigoration for me – a time to reclaim my friendship with Jesus Christ, who is our Lord now and for ever. Amen.

Magnificat (July 2006)