as of late

Hi folks.

There have been many blogworthy moments lately. but first, thank you for your kind words and thoughts and prayers for my family and I after grandma's homegoing. Almost daily the kids talk about her. Asking if she is in heaven. If there is lots of food for her in heaven. Checking again if she has new legs, eyes and pants in heaven. At the graveside as we watched her box (coffin) being lowered into the ground the kids crept to the edge and peered in. As we turned to leave Elijah said quietly, "her will come back?" ... "her will come alive again?". Yes. Yes she will. Please keep my family in your prayers, again, especially Grandpa, Mom and Mike. Thank-you.

And now some excerpts from life:

This afternoon I had a big chunk (a couple hours I think) of solo time. I walked up to the strip in our area and had a great time just snooping around in shops. I bought a couple things and am relieved to not have buyers remorse. I almost always regret clothing purchases, usually because they where too much money. Well, I got a skirt and shirt for $16 total and just love them and feel pretty in them. So nothing to regret there! I enjoyed looking in shops that specialize in locally designed and made clothing. Really unique and interesting clothes - some very expensive, so I just looked. There were some incredibly lovely dresses for Eva, but even for Canadian designed and made I wasn't going to fork of $85! Or $12 for natural kid friendly nail polish...not today anyway. I made small talk with store owners and instead of acting shy/cool (as in not interactive) I commented on products and told them I was new to the neighborhood. I popped into the library branch near us and got my card up to date (it hadn't been used in 7 years or so). Our library is a grungy store front hole in the wall. I spotted a lot of kids' DVDs and found out that there is storytime in the fall. We'll be back.

We've been enjoying summer holidays. Following the funeral on Friday we packed up and joined our friends the Andersons for a couple nights of camping near Mt Baker. It was our first time all five of us in a tent (the kids and I had done the tent trailer thing with mom before). It went really well. It was a good place for a first effort because Jonathan's parent had a trailer where we were staying and there was room for us if the tent turned out to be a disaster. I look forward to making many more camping memories.

Right now Eva and Elijah are playing house together in Eva's room, arguing over who will vacuum. Anders is happy to be undistrubed rifling through his siblings' toys in the living room.

Anders has learned how to wave and did his first confirmed waves at the funeral lunch waving to Grandpa and Mike. He is so cute. We say that almost every day. He's crawling and climbing up a storm, eating lots of food - just tried tomatoes from a plant Andy gave me. He also likes teething on zucchini.

I overheard this today as Eva was "reading" a book:

"once upon a time there was an Israelite woman named Franklin...."

Elijah has learned to do summersaults. They're not graceful but they are fun to watch and he is proud of them and we are proud of him. Eva does backflips. They're kind of a twist/roll with flailing legs. She said she learned from Ryan, Maddie's dad, who can also do backflips (and he can, but his are more of the traditional understanding of the word).

Lance is preaching at our church on Sunday and his folks are arriving on Saturday so they'll get to visit church and hear him preach. We are eagerly anticipating having them here for a week! And Jane will join us for the weekend. There will be a LOT of laughing, eating, and memories made.

Well, all of my children have been out of sight for quite some time, I should go and check on them.

bye for now.

Aimee