1.My oldest went away for three days with a load of 5th graders. She had a blast. She was treated kindly. She came home safely. This was a huge mountain crested for me; not so much the going away, she has done that. What consistently seems insurmountable for me, the mother, is trusting others with her. So, while this 14er is behind us, there is a complete range ahead. Now that we have one climb behind us, I pray the next will be that much easier.

Little’s only lament was that she thought she was going to miss the school book fair.

2.  A new season of Dr. Who started and within the first 10 min. of the first episode the writer had posed an incredible ethical question. THAT is why I love Dr. Who and don’t mind if I am called a geek; good writing, tough questions, and humor can be a real gift.

3. It is too late in the night for me to blog – I will write something personal and sad. So I will pause here until tomorrow when I can be pensive and funny. (Let’s see if I really get back to this tomorrow or in a month!)

4. I’m back. KB’s class has been studying insects; each child was given a mealworms to care for and watch as they turned into Darkling Beetles. KB names hers Chocolate. The teacher’s plan was that once one worm turned into a beetle all the kids would take theirs home. Chocolate came to live with us this week. He did great for a few days but as of this morning and I afraid Chocolate has gone to meet his maker (Either that or he is in the pupa stage, but  I doubt that.)  I found myself praying over a mealworms this morning, asking Jesus to please let him not be dead. KB is going to be crushed; she is so tender-hearted.

5. I quit my job; first time I’ve ever done that. This is a whole post that I am preparing to write.

6. I love selling Jamberry. It’s funny – in high school you take those tests that tell you what you should do as a job in your future. Mine said sales and I giggle about that when i think of how much fun I am having.

7. We went to the movies as a family today and Lily made it through the previews and one sentence into Hotel Transylvania 2. She and I got our money back and went home until the show was over. (This goes on my list of positives for living in a place as small as FoCo. After the movie we all went to Chickfila and turned in kids’ meals toys so that everyone had free ice cream. We also all wore sports team shirts and all went home with a free sandwich for dinner. This frugal mama was LOVING that.

8. Mom, Bubba said today that he wishes we had a cool porch on our house like Memom has at her house. Apparently he is convinced it would come with a hammock. He has forbidden KB to ever talk about swinging on the hammock over Labor Day. Hilarious.

9. We are reading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe aloud. Little and Bubba let me read it to them when they were six but KB has never made it past the first chapter; she is my sensitive one. So now, finally, I told her we were going to push on and she would see what a lovely book it was. Her eyes have been the size of saucers each night and she begs to read “one more chapter”. We just finished Peter’s First Battle and it is has one of my favorite passages in it. It led to an amazing conversation with my seven-year old and that is probably going to be a post as well.

10. Bubba has joined the Run/Walk club at school so every Monday and Thursday he can be found doing laps outside for an hour. I never thought, in a million years, that my son would choose to be active for an hour but I am overjoyed. He has a goal to go 100 miles during the course of the year and three days in he has done 5.75 miles. When I picked him up on Monday of this week he told me that he had a new strategy. He realized he would go further during the hour if he would run more, so he was running a little bit of every lap. I held back a giggle and asked if he had worked out a pattern to run the short ends and walk the long ends or something of that nature. He responded, “Even the short ends are too long to run the whole thing, mom.”