Someday I Will Look Back...

...And say, "What were we thinking?!?!" Or maybe, "How did we do all that?" Or, "Too bad we were so busy we are all now insane." Or,  "I'm sure glad we were able to do all of those wonderful things."

September 11th

Lizzie wanted to see some footage of 9/11 this morning. I started to show her some and it made me cry. You think you have processed something; the fear of that day with Grant working in D.C., across the street to the FBI building and within three miles of the pentagon. Relief that he didn't take the job in New York that would have been RIGHT THERE, uncertainty for the future...

I realized that processing takes a long, long time. The important thing is to process, not ignore. The thing I feel most of all is gratitude. We survived that day when so many others didn't. Our nation is still strong and the freest place on earth. God bless America!

Some Notable Things

This is a post I wrote more than a week ago but kept forgetting to publish:

Sam asked for a longboard for his birthday. He picked it out a month ago and I hid it in the most amazing hiding place of all time! I will never tell...William and Lizzie have been pretending that they know where it is and are not telling either. Sam, the tortured one is doing everything he can to either find it himself or bribe the others to tell him. The other day I heard him say, "William, I will give you my birthright if you tell me where my longboard is." 

Last week I had a whole day of errands to run for school needs and to get ready for our backpacking trip to the Wind Rivers. Anna had been an absolute dream to have along, very sweet and patient but apparently I pushed her a little far. We were at REI getting long underwear for Lizzie (among a few other things)  when Anna discovered some pants she wanted. 

I informed her that she didn't need any and so we left that area and started looking for the next thing on our list (a footprint for our backpacking tent). She was pretty annoyed that she didn't get the pants and for some reason she REALLY wanted them. (They were long underwear for goodness sake!) A few minutes later she told me that she wet her pants and that we needed to buy her some new ones since hers were wet. I had this sinking feeling and then felt her pants to see how wet she was. I was imagining urine running down her pant leg and puddling on the floor but was relieved to find that she had just barely leaked a little out.  I told her with great encouragement (thinking she was embarrassed that she had wet herself, never imagining that she had done it on purpose!), that it wasn't that bad, that it would dry in a few minutes and asked if she needed to go potty. She said she didn't. I kept shopping...Less than five minutes later she opened the floodgates and totally wet herself (just like I imagined at first). She said, "NOW can I get those pants?!?" 

She most certainly DID NOT get those pants.

School started last week. This summer has been amazing. Truly amazing. But also very exhausting. I erroneously thought that life would be less exhausting when school started. We get up at 5:30 am M,Th, F, 4:55 on Tuesday, and 6:45 on Wednesday (our blessed sleep-in day!)