1. My girl is home!!!!! She arrived home happy, confident and full of new friendships and so many stories. Like the one about this treehouse, and a boy named Mike that she was hiding from because "Mom, he was just too silly, you know, and I think he liked me. Like, really liked me."
2. Her room was completed on time, and she walked into it with a huge smile on her face and so much love and gratitude for it. I think the end result is so very her, and she agrees. Hooray! I'll show you the finished results in the coming days, once she's settled into it a bit more.
3. The day before we picked Adelaide up, we received no fewer than three letters from her in the mail. The postcard reads "Dear Mom & Dad, I miss you a lot. But then again, Camp is awesome. There's a lot of strange things written on the walls. I've learned how to twerk! The girls in my cabin taught me. Write back. Ada" That just might be my favorite piece of mail ever. When I picked her up, I asked for a demonstration of this twerking. She started cackling, "Na! I don't know how to do that, I was just messing with you Mom!"
4. Such is the weekends of our summer, we picked one up and dropped another off. Ezra is off for his own camp adventure right on the heels of his little sister. He went out the door with his ukulele, a fresh haircut, and a new bottle of hair gel. I'm expecting him to have lots and lots of fun, and for us to receive well, approximately no letters. That's okay too.
5. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, this one has declared this to be her last summer at home "because four is just too little and you still need your Mom and Dad and stuff, but not when you're five". Her constant stream of dialogue from morning to night is a true pleasure to hear right now, even when the eleventh hour of engaging with it approaches. "Can you pick dandelions upside down?" And so on and so forth. I do so love the mind of a four year old!
6. Harper? While he certainly loves being given the tours of camp from his older brothers and sister, he's decided that camp will 'never!" be for him. Instead, he'd really like to stay at home and "do whatever I want." That's a smart fella, I'd say. Right now, "do whatever I want" mostly involves the use of a hatchet. I think we can keep him busy.
7. Calvin and I continue to plug away at his "handmade dickies" using the Thread Theory pattern. We seem to be working on it in only one-step-per-night intervals, because that's about the maximum amount of time I can keep myself from swearing to a point far beyond appropriate for the ears of even my fourteen year old. That zipper fly? What the? But....I'm determined to save my sewing cred, and more importantly, have this thing that we created together, so we will persevere. I've got about 48 hours before he starts a series of his own summer adventures that will keep him out of my studio for a while, so we best get to it. And I will practice patience and appropriate language all the while.
8. Speaking of that child, is there skateboarding Mom in the crowd? Will someone explain to me how it is that he can go through a pair of skate shoes in just five weeks before blowing them out completely? Twelve pair a year seems excessive, but seems to be the track we're on right now. And each time I say "that can't be possible!" he shows me a completely falling apart shoe with a hole in the sole. Also? His feet are now so much bigger than mine, that I'm no longer getting any fun hand me downs (the non-skate shoes with holes in them, that is). This is very sad (and my eye is on you now, Ezra!).
9. We watched Harold & Maude with Ezra a few days ago. It was one of those movies Steve and I were cautious to share with him, only because we love it so and were afraid he wouldn't love it as much as we do. Thank heavens, he really, really got it, and it even made his top ten movie list of all time. Phew! But while watching, needing something that didn't take too much concentration, I pulled out the ongoing scrap blanket I haven't worked on since winter. Each time I do, I am reminded how much I love this project, and wonder just how big I should make it. It might just be the blanket that never ends. I've been knitting it for five years now, and I think there might be more years ahead!
10. The ocean. It's happening today, finally. Ah.....
