A Few Interrupted Moments

I've slipped into my room and shut the door--hoping for a few moments to pray. I have no delusions of it being a few quiet moments of course (always there is background noise ... and foreground noise), but I am hoping, perhaps, for just a few uninterrupted moments.

Fool's hope of course.

Within thirty seconds Starling bursts in, sees me kneeling, and shouts, "CAN METTE AND ME HAVE PUDDING?"

I tell her yes, shew her out, shut the door, and begin again.

Twenty seconds pass.

"CAN WE PUT IT ON THE FIREPLACE?"

Again I respond, again move her along, again return to my knees. ...

"MOM!" (It's Starling.) "CAN WE GO CAMPING SOON?" (It's currently 12 degrees F outside.)

And so it continues. 

Before long I have forsaken my fully-intent, kneeling prayer (wryly thinking of the hymn line: "he answers privately, reaches my reaching" and hoping that he doesn't match my reaching), I send up a few last distracted pleas, and get back to my home and children.

It's interesting how often I feel that if only I were given nothing that I had to do, I could really become something; while simultaneously understanding that the very things I have to do at this stage of life ... are somehow crucial to my becoming anything.

(Though just what I am becoming is not completely clear!)

But, whatever it is, I'm glad it's this particular passel of people involved in it!

(Abe getting together for pupusas with several mission buddies.)

(Some sort of nonsense going on between Penny, Anders, and my phone when chores were supposed ot be afoot.)

(I like the little markers being used on this math game.)

(Summer on a fieldtrip to The Environmental Center with friends Kate [who is also in our ward], Sawyer, and Eden. These cute photos don't show the part where I forgot all about the fieldtrip until Summer called me, nearly in tears, from the office about three minutes before their bus was going to leave to tell me I hadn't sent her with any snow clothes. Everything was quite frantic for a moment, as I dashed to make her a lunch, find gloves and a hat, and get back to the school before they left. I was helping her get snow boots and snow pants on, Starling standing by in her pajamas, while the rest of her class was loading onto the bus. But we made it!)

(Having a little fun with fridge light.)

(I don't recall how well these two were actually able to walk around with these lovely no-eye-hole masks they made.)

(Devin and Melissa invited Abe on an amazing ice-climbing adventure in Ouray, CO. Daisy nicely went along too--as babysitter to little Stella. Less adventure, but more money. :))

(Anders wasn't super thrilled about his first YMs fireside. I guess he'd had enough churching for one day. At some point he brought me this sticky note he claimed to have found on our front door. Hahha. Just like our bishop to not send a text over a cancelled event, rather, to go to every house in the ward to leave a tiny, hastily-scrawled-on, sticky note on their door.)

(One has to be pretty tired to fall asleep with a bowl of snacks and treats like that right in front of them!)

THE END.