Summer and Three Weeks til Abe Leaves

We are now in the thick of summer. It seems like it only just began, but somehow Abe has already been to Moab biking with two of his best friends for his senior trip. We've had a quick "check on the cabin" trip to Bear Lake. Daisy has spent a few days at our cabin with her friends. Abe has attended our stake's missionary training camp that he was asked (months before he'd started his own actual mission paper work) to help head up. Our local parade and fireworks are this very weekend. And the three oldest girls are, as we speak, off at girls' camp. (Penny's first time away from home without either of her parents. She was a little anxious. I've been praying she won't feel homesick, and I'm so glad she has her older sisters with her.)

(Here are a few of Abe's texted pictures from Moab as well as a bunch from our quick Bear Lake trip.)

(Starling has just begun loving to entertain herself by batting and grabbing at her little mobile. When we realized we had nothing for her to bat at up at our cabin, Abe jimmy-rigged her this little mobile out of tape, a kitchen stool, and a few random cabin toys. :))

As I typed this, a friend who is off at camp with my girls just texted me these!

And, of course there has been a lot of routine, run-of-the-mill, ordinary time. Most of my days are overwhelmingly filled with just . . . feeding Starling and getting little people ready and taking care of the demands of our home, etc. In fact, I honestly don't know if life has ever been so completely unrelenting in the demands it's placed on me. And I feel it. But, in the middle of all of those demands, and even when no grand adventures are afoot, it's comforting to see that there are still just . . . kids living out their daily existences in a fairly happy manner!

Here we tried to jazz up a fairly uneventful day with pop-its. There are never enough. Next time I will just need to throw thrift to the wind with my pop-it purchasing. :)

And here this little angel is. Only days away from three whole months!

And the girls. Of their own accord. Off on a hike together. (Goodness seeing them just . . . being friends and choosing to do daily bits of life together makes me so happy! It reminds me of growing up with my own sisters. What a blessing it is -- them having each other!)

And . . . a few other ordinary things from around here:

Summer asked me the other day if she could have one of the Kit Kats we had in the cupboard. Not wanting to incite a riot, I told her she could get one if she could be sneaky. She looked at me sadly and said, "I'm not very good at being sneaky." (Admittedly, it's dreadfully hard to be sneaky when it comes to treats around here. The kids seem to have an acute "someone is eating a treat without me" sense.)

-------------------------------

Mette recently asked me for something and then informed me I better give it to her quickly because, she told me, "I just can't wait very long." That sentence was, perhaps, one of the truest things she has ever said about herself.

--------------------------------

Daisy was recently teaching Anders how to play Clue. When she explained that someone got murdered and we had to discover who had done it, Anders asked, "Murdered? What does murdered mean?"

"It means they got killed," Daisy stated.

"So we have to figure out who got murmured or we have to figure out who murmured? Anders questioned.

Daisy laughed that it was Laman and Lemuel who murmured while I chimed in that it was everyone in our family before correcting Anders on the word.

Then Anders said, "But it's sad that someone got murdered."

And Daisy comfortingly suggested, "Well, OK. Maybe they didn't get murdered. Maybe they just got attacked."

Anders leapt on that alternative. "Oh! I know! Let's say they got an uppercut!"

"OK," Daisy laughed -- shaking her head. "So we have to figure out who got the uppercut and what weapon they used to give them an uppercut."

---------------------------------

Anyway, enough of all of that. All the while that I am typing I feel like there is an elephant in the room. An elephant in this blog post? An elephant in my thoughts? It's there all right. And it seems to me that I can't talk about anything at all without it feeling a bit crowded by this other THING.

Abe leaving.

Three weeks from today.

That phrase: "Three weeks" is so familiar to me. Only . . . it has always and always been in relation to a child COMING. Never before has it been three weeks 'til a child leaves.

And I feel like I am ten again. I'm on the Colossus roller-coaster at Lagoon -- chugging up that steep incline before the inevitable hurtling down the steep other side to zip around slanting corners and zoom through those huge upside-down loops. 

I know all the hills and loops are technically the scary parts, but that hill at the start . . . just edging closer and closer to the real ride ahead . . . that was always the scariest part for me.

Abe ironing all his new white shirts, us going through the temple with him, he and Mike watching a late-night movie together, etc. etc. All of these things -- the readying things, the routine things, and the lasts -- feel just like I'm on that upward hill on the Colossus again.