Busy Busy Busy

My missionary friend, “Louise,” who lives in the Bahamas, called me up the other day.  When I answered the phone, this is how it went:

“Well Mickey, I thought you’d died and gone to heaven!  You haven’t posted anything on your blog for so long, I was sure you were dead.  I was calling up to give my condolences to Kory and to tell him I have a long line up of friends down here that would be happy to take him on.”

After I stopped laughing, I had to apologize for not keeping the blog up, but I’ve been kinda busy, I told her.  I asked how she was doing and she replied with, “Well, I’m fine, now that I know you’re not DEAD!”

I’m not dead, but at the end of some days, I’ve felt that way.  We’ve been home from Norway for a little over a month now and each and every day has been non-stop motion for me.  First it was unpacking the 400 pounds of “treasures” I brought home, then it was tackling the spider webs that invaded both inside and outside the house while we were gone.

I hadn’t washed windows in a few years and we had Norwegians coming to visit just weeks after we got home, so there was more than a little housekeeping to attend to.  Fortunately, I have a friend who loves to bless people and she came several times while we were away and weeded our flower beds (above), otherwise I might be dead.  The housecleaning alone was enough to do me in.

Since we haven’t been home for the bulk of this past year, there were several house maintenance items that also needed doing.  I pressure washed the house, the garage, the outbuildings, the trampoline, the deck, the patio and summer kitchen.  Kory put a sealant on the deck and patio and concrete slabs here and there.  He also sanded and put a new surface on our dining room table as it was looking shabbier than anything in our house.  I bought flowers for the pots on the deck and planted them, I trimmed bushes and raked up cedar droppings.  I was poetry in motion for nearly three weeks straight.  The week Kory and Kaleb went to scout camp, I didn’t even eat a thing from Sunday to Friday, as I didn’t want to stop and make food or clean up the mess afterwards.  The day they came home from camp, the Norwegians were here waiting for them.

Kory’s mom’s first cousin, his wife, son and two grandchildren (above) came for their first ever trip to America.  Their first week here they spent with Kory’s brothers, as Kory wasn’t home to help translate (their Norwegian is of a dialect I’m not too familiar with).  Once Kory got home, the party started.  We took them water skiing, they went for a scenic flight, we had a BBQ with some relatives that flew up from Mexico to meet them, Kory took them to Canada to meet other relatives, we went shopping and to the beach and we took them on a four day RV trip around Washington State (most photos here are from that).  It was a whirlwind trip for them, and by the end, I needed a nap.  They just left last Sunday so I’ve been restoring the house to it’s original “upright and locked position” as they say on the airplanes.  

Kaleb’s been away on a mission trip this week and we are heading out Sunday on another one to Mexico for a week.  So there, that’s my excuse.  Recovering from one trip - and preparing for another.  Life will certainly slow down one of these days, I’m just not sure when.  My friend Dani called and when I told her what I’d been up to she just said, “Well you know why the rest of us are a bit lazy?  Cuz God gave YOU all the energy.”  Ha ha.

I’ve spent time this week getting Kaleb’s school schedule ready for fall and realize just how routine our lives will become, as every Monday will look the same, every Tuesday has it’s locked in activities and on it goes throughout the week.  I’m not looking forward to that so I’m trying to grab all the special and unique moments I can, while I can. Getting out my two articles every week for the local paper is about all I’m good for in terms of writing anything, but my brain is going gang busters all the time with ideas – just no time to jot them down. I even hobbled around with a sliver in my foot for two weeks because I didn’t have time to sit and have someone pull it out.  Uff da.

So far this summer has been great though – lots of sunshine and outdoor activities, but now that we finally got a little rain today, I realized just how much time it saves me, as God is doing the watering for me so I have time to update my blog.  Hallelujah.  It’s good to be home.