The Sounds of Silence

Well, as you might have guessed from the title of the post, my kids are not around. In fact, they have been gone since July 18, and they aren't scheduled to be back home until August 8. If you are trying to do the math in your head, let me help you - that is a total of three weeks. Now, lest you think I abandoned my children, let me clarify that they spent the first week at Mimi and Pepaw's house, at which time we went down to the Metroplex for the weekend to celebrate Gracie's birthday with a shindig at a local party establishment.


After the party the girls commenced week number two at Nana and Granddaddy's house, with the company of their cousins, Will and Carissa.


At the end of that week (last Saturday) all four of the cousins headed to Grandma and Papaw's house, where they are currently ensconced. They are having fun, although I get the feeling that the awesomeness of having cousins to play with may be wearing thin. I am pretty sure the oppressive heat, smallness of A/C enclosed space, and exuberance of said cousins contributes to the stir-craziness. I bet they will be as glad to be home as I will be to see them when the end of the week comes.

Until then, I am trying to enjoy the silence. After the first four days, I found it a bit oppressive, but I'm getting used to it now. Of course, I had many, many, many plans for what I was going to do with all my child-free hours. I had plans for mammoth scrapbooking marathon sessions, visions of getting one year of my backlog done for each week they would be gone. As usual, that was a bit ambitious. I have managed to get four month's worth of photos scrapped, but there's a long way to go, and I'm in the final lap of this kid-free time. Oh well - I'm still making progress!

Of course, creating a blog post was on my list of things to do, and really, I thought I would get to it before now. I admit, I cheated a bit. I wrote the title of the post in July and saved it, just so it would look like I posted in July. That way I wouldn't look like so much of a blog deserter, although, if you'll look in my sidebar, you'll see that I would be in good company. Perhaps blogging has become passe and nobody told me. I do tend to be behind the times.

It's not that I've had nothing to blog about, mind you. If anything, I've had too much to blog about. For instance, there's this:

This is Bizzell Library, at OU. I finally got my official welcome packet (after I called to ask about it) and I am ready to head to school on August 20. I did find out that I get to attend orientation in Norman, and not in Tulsa (yea). On our way back from dropping the kids off with Mimi and Pepaw, I took Jerry by the campus and showed him the library, which is where my department is housed. It's a beautiful building, and he was duly impressed.

I got an e-mail from my instructor with information about one of my courses (I'm taking three), and it said I needed to have my books on the first day of class - I thought that was odd, as all my classes are online and apparently asynchronous, but I'm not about to start off my graduate school days by arguing with my instructor. I got the list of books from the bookstore, and then I did some comparison shopping. My book that was $65 at the bookstore, I got used on Amazon for $10.49. What a difference! Too bad Amazon wasn't around during my undergraduate days! There were a lot of things that weren't around then though. Gracie made me think about that a few weeks ago. A friend introduced her to a website for kids, and she asked me, "Mommy, did you every play on website.com when you were my age?" And I had to say, "Honey, (personal) computers weren't invented when I was your age."

Anyway, I have other things to blog about as well - I got a new camera, and got a book on how to use it, and - get this - I am actually reading it! We'll see what kind of effect that has on my pictures.

Well, that's enough of a break from scrapbooking - I better get back to it, or I'll never close the 28 month backlog that remains! Wish me luck!

Happy Birthday, Miss Gracie!

Nine years ago today, the doctors plopped this gooey baby on my tummy and told me to start rubbing her. She looked up at me like, "What the heck just happened?!!!" and it was love at first sight. Happy Birthday to the youngest of my big blessings!

Patience

Last night, as I was lying in bed, unable to fall asleep, I was thinking about one-hundred different thoughts about patience. I had so many thoughts about it, I though, "I should write a blog entry about all these thoughts." Fortunately for you, all those thoughts about patience leaked out of my head while I was trying unsuccessfully to get a good night's sleep, so I can't write what I'm sure would have been a riveting blog entry. Instead you get the usual drivel.

Summer vacation is about halfway over, I think, and it has been a very busy one. After our week at family camp we had one intense week of laundry and yard work before Jerry headed off for a ten-day trip to Brazil with a short-term mission team from our church. While he was gone the girls and I headed to Fort Worth to see friends and family. The girls were happy to get in some playtime with cousin Korbin, who we don't get to see very often.

I can hardly believe how big they all are. Ugh!

Next we headed to the new Fort Worth Museum of Natural Science with our friends, the Whites. There was an exhibit of toys from Mexico there, as well as a new exhibit on Leonardo DaVinci. Maggie was not happy about that at all - last time we went the traveling exhibit was on CSI - Forensics, and she was looking forward to seeing it again. When she found out it was about old Leonardo, she got rather moody and informed me that she already knew EVERYTHING about DaVinci, thank you very much, and she would rather sit on a bench while the rest of us looked at the exhibit because she already read about him in a book. Eventually she reluctantly joined us, but I tell you what - if this is pre-teen, I don't know if I'll survive the teen years.

The only thing recognizable from the old museum (they tore it down two years ago to build the new) was the Omni Theater portion of the museum, complete with fiberglass dinosaur outside. Here they are on our trip. . .

And here they are the last time we took this picture (in 2004).

As I said earlier, I can hardly believe how big they are.

We headed back to Oklahoma City for the Fourth of July, Jerry's return date, and did manage to see some fireworks, despite drenching rains.


Jerry got home safely, and is full of tales from Brazil. He and another team member will be telling a little bit about their experiences in Brazil this Sunday at church, which has him very nervous. It is wonderful to hear all that he saw and did while he was there.

Since then we have had a very subdued summer, but it won't last long. Uncle Aaron is coming for a visit, and that will begin our four week marathon of activity until school starts. I better catch my breath while I can!