You Always Don't Hug Me

"Mommm!" Starling complained, as she saw me giving Mette a hug the other day. "You ALWAYS DON'T hug me!"

Always don't. 

In fact, I scoop Starling into a hug about twenty times a day. (She typically feigns tolerance for about seven seconds before I sense signs of wiggling beneath the surface and she asks, "Mom? Are we done hugging now?")

And now for a small heap of photos.

Jesse asleep.

Anders reading a book.

Penny doing homework (or, who knows actually).

Summer girl.

Anders fresh out of the shower. For Mother's Day he made me scrambled eggs and brought them to me in bed (with Starling hot on his tail waving a plain piece of bread and shouting, "Happy Mother's Day!").

(It was, as it always is, a great Mother's Day. The kids and Mike handled everything all day. There were gifts, and cards, and coupons, and pies, and genuine compliments. Mike had the kids create a small treasure hunt to various treats for me. And then he made me a lovely little dinner-for-one before taking all the kids off to his parents' while I enjoyed a few hours of quiet.) 

Little twirler.

Abe went to Vegas to visit his mission for a few days after finals week. One of his close companions happened to be going down that very same weekend, so he was able to go visit his mission president and make some other visits with him. He also went to a ward party and made a few other visits alone. My friend Jessica was actually in Utah at the time, but her husband and daughter very kindly let Abe stay with them while he was there.

Summer and Mette in some dramatic evening light.

Hans occasionally leaves notes for "Pirate Pete". I can't recall how this began, but Pirate Pete (who I'm guessing is about 22 and blonde) always manages to answer. (No easy feat for a pirate off at sea).

Oh how could she ever even say I don't hug her! I can barely NOT!

A few of us at my nephew Chris's wedding. (My sister Amy, my mom, my brother Rob and his wife Amber, me :).)

Texting a hello to somebody. 

This wall in my house is nearly always ... like this.

No, it's not Abe! It's my husband up there! (Mike had Abe come do a rock-climbing activity for the deacons last week.)

Anders and his little team building a timed stick tower at the Math-Science Olympiad.

A Friday movie night.

Starling looking rather long considering that she's still a baby!

Saturday started with some clearing out of the garage but, before very long, became ... everyone trying to lasso a stroller. (Heaven knows how we will get all the moving done if these kind of shenanigans continue. Mike is very good with a lasso though. ...) Abe said he learned that if you have a cow and it stands completely still only a few feet away ... you might possibly be able to lasso it.

We came across this old picture this weekend. It was the summer before Mike and I got engaged. I'd gone on a camping trip with him and some of his family/extended family. It was such an exciting stage of life! I love Mike so so deeply. I just snuggle up to him every night and whisper prayers of thanks for him. But it's fun to look back and recall this stage of such innocent falling-in-love. If we had a care in the world, I don't recall it!

Abe and Daisy gathered in our room for prayers. (Other kids were scattered about as well. We are beginning to have boxes in little stacks everywhere we go. Though certainly not nearly as many as we should have.)

Moving

We got rid of Starling's highchair over the weekend. She hasn't really used it for a year or two (other than as a ladder for climbing up onto the counter). Still, it felt strange to have that little spot next to the table suddenly empty. "It's the end of an era," Abe commented.

And the highchair era isn't even the biggest ending around here!

Mette's second-grade class is doing an alphabet countdown to the last day of school. (D for dance-party day, F for favorite-book day, etc.) Already they are to the letter N. N! Only a handful of letters left and the school year will be over. (Their college siblings finished up another year and poured back into our home with boxes and bags of dorm and apartment trappings earlier this month.)

AND, as if no-more-highchairs and school-years-ending aren’t enough, we are moving! How's that for an ending? (Oh I don't really know if it's an ending, or even if it's a beginning really! It feels like a muddly limboing thing between both of those.) Still, we are leaving this home where we've spent over 14 years. 

None of the children in these pictures even existed (earthside anyway) when we arrived here! (Well, that's not quite true, Jesse had just managed a few short days on earth when we signed on the home.)

And the ones we did have with us were just a tiny passle of babies really. There were five of them--the oldest only eight years old. (And look at Abe, Daisy and Goldie now! 22, 21, and nearly 19!)

We've known, for several years, that Logan is where we are headed, but we've waffled and bounced around so many ideas about how to do it, and when to do it, and ways to handle the limbo stage between leaving this house and having a new house ready for us, that I don't know that any of us really believed we would finally go; and we are all in a bit of shock to have, so suddenly, decided to seize an opportunity, make the shift, and get up there. 

Removing all 12 of us, in one great chunk, from the sphere of people we circle about and weave among feels like we are blasting an unnatural hole in the fabric of mortality! There are so many ties that form in 14 years of living somewhere--especially while raising so many kids (whose existences dramatically extend our own connections). 

But Mike says we all have to take a page out of seven-year-old Mette's book (rather, a page out of her journal). 

Once she heard the news of our upcoming move, she went to her room and carefully filled out several pages in her journal with the information we'd given her about the tiny rental house and her new school. She wrote down goals for herself. And then made several large empty boxes with spaces for new best friends, a possible crush, etc.

"She's heading into this with the expectation of every one of those boxes eventually being filled," Mike pointed out. "And we should all do the same."

So, off we go, with hopes and expectations for all the empty boxes we are leaving in the lives of those we love here, and all the empty boxes for us in the place we are going ... to eventually be filled. (And, in the meantime, we will just literally fill about eight million boxes! Haha. I have packed one so far. ONE! First step, I guess.)