I’ve been saying all week that it feels like my to-do list is longer than my day.  Mostly this comes from the things that make our summer days busier– playing at the beach and with friends, preparing for and participating in all kinds of weddings, and the fact that amid all that wonderfulness, there are still household chores to be done, children to be taught and trained and to laugh and snuggle with, cookies and muffins to be baked, ( i mean, i guess i don’t hafta bake, but you know how much i love to) dates to go on with my husband, and then sometimes i just flop down on the couch and watch Wipeout and laugh till my guts hurt, and then wonder if i’m terribly immature.  I think you get the general idea. Also i’ve started working part time (more accurately, part- part- part-time.  It’s editing and it’s at home after the kids are asleep= perfect for me).

So this explains what’s keeping me busy.  What else is going on?

We’re still looking for a house.  Our townhouse is under contract (thank you, Jesus!).  But after putting offers on four houses, we have still not bought one.  The last one we found that looked promising was under contract before we even got to see it, which just made me laugh.  We’ve prayed for clear signs each time, and we have received just that, so for that we are very thankful.  It feels like when i was pregnant and overdue with each of the boys, and had gone from thinking, “Any day now!” to, “Okay, it’s never going to happen.”  And in that way, it makes me laugh and feel hopeful that after enough false alarms, sometime we will buy a house.

In prep for moving someday, i’m sort of casting my eye around the closets and stuff, and thinking, “What do i love enough to pack and unpack again?”  I realize I have potential-seeing eyes, because i keep a lot of things based on what i could do with them someday.  Many of those things are getting the ol’ heave ho:  baby food jars i might use for a craft with the kids, the stack of magazines i was going to go through and cut out my favorite pics, the broken toys i might fix, the running clothes i’ve had since high school with elastic that’s gone all brittle with age… all that stuff.  It is good.

We’re preparing to head to camp with youth group.  Brian is speaking there, and the rest of the Few crew are along for support.  Both to support him, and because we need the support of Daddy, rather than being without him for four days.  Seriously, you should see how these kids flip for Dad these days. Oliver saw him arrive home from work the other day, and did the old, “Hey!  My dad’s home!” only to see Brian then walk away from the house (to check the mail) and wail “Oh no! My Daddy leaving!”  It’s pretty sweet.

I’ve been reading some great books on parenting.  Part of me thinks, why didn’t i look for this stuff earlier, and part just thinks, better now than ten years from now.  A few I’m loving are Toddler Wise and Preschool Wise (Ezzo), Don’t Make Me Count to Three (Plowman), and Heart of Anger (Priolo).  All of these are SO helpful at translating Biblical principles and words into life with small kids, which i’d felt pretty overwhelmed about since reading Shepherding a Child’s Heart (Tripp) back when Stella was a baby.  A great book, but a lot of it left me feeling, at the time, like “okay, now how do i explain the Bible to a ten-month-old again?”

Last week I got baptized at church, which was exciting and great, and i’m going to have to save the rest for later.  There is just too much going on in this post and my brain already, which is also why i’ve gone ahead and saved all the stuff about the kids for next time.