life changes and yeah, I cry...

Look at this little girl. My baby, Camille Anaya. She's like a mini-teenager with a baby face. Evelyn calls her, "Christmas cookie face". She's eleven and a half, and this was last night at the end-of-the-year party for Activity Club. She's the oldest kid in A.C., when she turns 12 she'll be in the youth group. The other kids were splashing and swimming, and she was sitting with the adults. To me, that's sad. She doesn't see it that way though. And I can't make her just be a kid, but believe me, ha, I have tried.


Sonja K. had a rough time at the beach. She cannot swim yet, with the leg, and it got hot up there on Lake Ontario. See, we went up there around one o'clock...got a nice picnic table in the shade for our cooler and snacks, then sat on the beach several feet away...the girls were just lying on towels relaxing, reading books, I was in my comfy chair...sunglasses over reading glasses, reading my book while watching all the action around us. I am a people watcher, and I do not get bored. My girls, however, were getting hot, didn't feel like swimming, and Sonja K. was miserable. She wasn't being rude, she just wanted to go home because she couldn't swim, and she was hot. And, she didn't bring a book.

The reason we went up there was because there was the Activity Club party, and we thought we could go early and enjoy the day. Well, the party didn't start until 6:30, and they were not wanting to stay until it ended at 8:30. So. Yeah. I drove them all the way home. Okay, it's only 26 minutes, but still. Camille and I went back up, by ourselves, and joined our friends.


Poor me, ha, two trips to the beach in one day.

This fine day, is part and parceled all up. Physical therapy for Sonja, grocery store, strawberry picking. The girls do not want to go shopping, don't blame them, but...

The thing is, here, this summer, is it's different. I told myself this morning that I can't just live in the past, and compare these days of more quiet, and wish it were more like it used to be. This is NOW, and it's life, and I want to be thankful for it.

But oh, how my heart aches with nostalgia for when the kids were all little. Every single summer day was an adventure. Now, in contrast, well...it's quiet. Mostly quiet. Jonathan is working full time during the week and stays at our friends' house, comes home on weekends... Evelyn works full time and lives with Margaret and Adrian during the week, so we only see her on weekends. Kathryn is married and living in Oregon. Joseph is married and living in town. (Emily, Abigail, and Mirielle live in a big old house in town, five miles away, Benjamin lives ten minutes down the road, Aaron lives in Oregon, Mali lives in the city, Sam is in Virginia...) so here at home we only have Suzanne, Sonja, Char, and Cam.

I know, some people have four kids and think four kids is a lot of kids. But it's only 25% of MY kids. And it seems so quiet. They aren't clamoring to do this and that, and sometimes we can hear the clock tick. They all do their own laundry, sometimes I even wander into the laundry room and nope, there's not enough of anything for a load. This is the SAME FAMILY, same house, that sported a LAUNDRY MOUNTAIN in the doorway of the laundry room....for years. And don't forget about the couch monster, that pesky rotating pile of clean laundry that was routinely dumped on the couch when the older kids (or Paul!) needed the dryer. (No matter how busy I was, I hung everything up when the dryer buzzed, but if I wasn't right there, dang it, someone would dump it on the couch.)

Days were so busy, but kids were so easy to please. Freeze pops and popsicles and afternoon movies with towels hung over the windows to make it dark and cool in here...back in the day when we had one television, and there was no such thing as streaming Hulu or Netflix.

Sonja is going off with her friends after physical therapy, to the mall. Suzanne is going to be here for a while, but then she's going strawberry picking with Molly and Josh and little Lydia and...her boyfriend. Yes, Suze has fallen in love. It's not easy here, for us, because we don't do the whole dating thing. But Suzanne is 18, and she gets to choose, and she chooses Zech. (He's been a family friend all of his life, our good friend Dave of the Cancerchronicles was his dad, who passed away in December).

So things change, and she's gone a lot, and mostly it's just the three girls and I. I promised the little girls we would still have a really good summer. And Danielle will be here quite a bit, too.

Tomorrow starts our church summer conference. We won't be staying in our camper. The roof leaked over the winter, and though it's patched now, it's too musty to stay in. I'm not sure if it's worth the work of ripping it all apart and replacing walls and ceilings and flooring, either. So we'll still keep our food in the refrigerator there, and use the yard, but dang it, we can't sleep in it. It makes me too nervous. Emily told me of one healthy man who was a patient years ago when she worked in the hospital, he died of fungal pneumonia. We try so hard to keep healthy, why take a risk like that , and sleep in a place with possible black mold?

So a new (used) camper is now on the list. The one we have is 35 feet long, and hasn't been towed in years. I'd like something smaller and lighter that Paul and I can use on weekends, since our kids seem to be busy doing so many things. Well, one we can fit a few of them in, of course...

After summer conference, next Friday, we're off to a cabin in the Adirondacks for three days, ahhh. Paul and I and Mirielle and some of the kids. Then a few weeks after that, Norway! Then the week after that, camping for three days. So I can't complain, can I?

Our pool is not clearing up yet, those dang cottonwood trees blowing all the fuzz and hulls into the pool. We can't leave the filter running when we're not here because it'll clog up so quickly. We need to continuously empty the basket. And, the sand filter has a broken piece, and has sent a good pile of sand into the pool. Paul already took it apart and fixed it once. I could have gotten a filter on facebook marketplace, but he said this one's fine, ha, he is a glue-er and a fixer, but oops, it's not really fine.

Ah, the story of my life. Sometimes I think everyone else has everything fixed and working and has their poop together and I'm just flailing around pretending.

Sunny is turning into a maniac. She chases shadows on the walls, the reflection of the sun or a person walking by, or whatever. She jumps up on the couch and scratches the walls trying to catch the shadows.

Anyway...Char is up, and is telling me her dream...:)