Yes. We are.

Home.

Safe. Sound. Tired.

Well, friends, I’m leaving on vacation. I will miss you.

Blogging should be minimal, if at all. I am bringing an armful of books to read, and I plan to get through them all. I plan to practice relaxing. My goal is to do nothing for at least 30 minutes per day, hopefully working up to a full hour by the time I get back in 2 1/2 weeks.

See ya!

I didn’t mind so much when Fritz didn’t remember what Independence Day was all about. It has been a year since the last Fourth of July.

I didn’t mind so much when my explanation of it being the day the founders of our nation read the Declaration of Independence to the masses drew a blank stare.

I didn’t mind so much that the name Thomas Jefferson failed to stir his soul and once again drew a blank stare. That biography we read together about him was read at the beginning of the school year last year. That was a long time ago, I suppose.

But when my litany of names, places, and events – Revolutionary War, Boston Tea Party, “One if by land, two if by sea,” “The British are coming! The British are coming,” George Washington, the crossing of the Delaware river, the founding of of nation, Betsy Ross, Benjamin Franklin – continued to elicit glazed eyes and not a shred of evidence that a single brain cell was functioning, I became a bit annoyed.

Oh, that’s right, I sarcastically thought to myself, it’s summer. Schooltime is for knowledge and summertime is for killing as many of those little gray cells as possible so mom’s job is that much harder in September.

So, I pulled from my shelves a small book on Thomas Jefferson that we didn’t read last year. It has only 64 pages and lots of pictures.

We will have no fun today until we have read this book and thanked God for the giants upon whose shoulders we now stand, by golly.

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)

I love this picture that my sister took of my daughters.

Movie night. We watched the Narnia movie finally. Notice the empty chairs? Yes, my kids all prefer the safety and comfort of mom’s and dad’s laps when things get a little tense.
My BIL, Bill, and my nephew and neice Jack and Morgan.

And my sister, Barbara. Barb and I are in close contact all the time. We talk to each other at least once or twice a week on the phone. I hadn’t seen her in seven months, though. Just over a year ago, she embarked on a life-changing mission to lose weight. When I saw her last Thanksgiving, she had lost over 60 pounds, and I thought she looked good. When I saw her last Monday, I started crying. She’s down over 125 pounds total and has only 25 more to reach her goal. She looks awesome and I’m so happy for her. She is half the woman she used to be…isn’t that great?

The mandatory baby-eating-cake photo.

Pete was very expressive when we opened his presents. This look, captured by my BIL, had us all chuckling. Hard to decide who liked his presents better – Pete or any of his siblings or cousins.

And the day after his birthday, we gave him his first haircut. He looks like such a big kid. Notice my piling laundry in the background. Went to a water park instead of doing housework!