last hurrah

Packing to move (just across town) is taking most of my time but I miss blogging too. There were words I wanted to put down here - nothing too profound or progressive, but still needed for mental clarity on my end. 

I can still taste Summer when I look at this picture of my sweet boy - a Summer tasting like chunky backyard adventures, splashed with sparkling aqua pool-water and drizzled with melted Popsicle, with a heaping side of freedom sprinkled with snorting laughter and a liberal scoop of creative energy. Sometimes now, as I send the kids off to school, I have a momentary flashback and the ghost of that taste pops into my mind. I crave the spicy and delicious tang of Summer's glory in all her signature sweet and sweaty sauciness.

But while Summer is a tasty dessert, I am welcoming the reintroduction of 'schedule' and 'routine' to our daily family menu. They are the main-dish of my days and leave me feeling full.

Thank-Full.

***

For a last grand Summer adventure we went to visit my sister in The Big City. There is a good hunk of Metro in that girl and I see how she fits in that life just as I see why I like my small town version.

For the most part we spent the days at her apartment in two places, the pool outside and the couch inside. We are cool like that and super motivated. [ha!]

My poor children spent precious little time at the public pool this Summer. This could, or could not have had something to do with the unpredictable age of the the youngest one. He has ZERO fear of water and in the second it takes to turn your gaze to check on the other two, he can be gone and jumping into deep water without a backward glance. He is no Michael Phelps, cannot swim and must be rescued repeatedly. 

So when they started into harping on me about their swimming-depravity, I blamed the three year old and then I let their auntie swoop in and save them from their supposed swimming-shortage. Aunties are good at that.

Regardless of, or maybe because of, their lack in this Summer-activity-department, they had a blast.

Maybe a little too much of a blast.

Well, all except this kid. He was a bit bummed to realize he simply cannot compete with his uncle Lan in water-acrobatics.Which is totes fine with me, by the way.

Here is what happens on the couch. These are my dear sweet vegetable-children. This is another auntie-thing with which to spoil the off-spring of one's sister... Send them home with fried brains and way too much electronic stimuli, I always say. Okay, I've never said that and actually it was kinda fun to kick-back and have an actual uninterrupted conversation in the kitchen with my sister while the hoodlums were engrossed in the living room.

Conversation about about things like why it is never a good plan to try to frost a cake with a gigantic chef's knife, dear sister.

Paolo, I'm so glad you had a birthday and my sister decided to host a surprise party for you while we were visiting. Not only did I get to break out my party planning skills, enjoy watching your enjoyment, and celebrate your special day, I got to show my little sister a thing or two about decorating a cake like the Brazilian flag. After all, nothing makes this girl feel more like a big sister than giving her little sister a good bossing! [wink]

***

Dining room

This was the first time I had seen this apartment since my sister moved in. It is beautiful. She has added so much personality to the otherwise blankness of a typical apartment. I felt at home there and yet touched by the difference of her space and my own.

Living room

Her style is different than mine and yet, familiar and comfortable. Sort of like we are different people, both comfortable in our own skins and yet connected  in that way sisters often seem to be.

Kitchen

So I lied. There is one thing that makes me feel my position as the older sister even more than bossing... it's the pride. I am proud of the way she is growing, how she cares for her space and how she spreads her own brand of creativity like a blanket across her home. Metro she may be, but I am proud to call her my little sister.

{Love you, girl! Thank you for having us. --R}

***

These are my sister's babies.

These are mine.

But as different as the two sets are, they all got along, no one was wounded in the process and they all sat in a big pile raptly watching the squirrels.
I have dubbed them The Cousin-Cats.

***

When we did find a moment of time to steal away from the pool and the couch, we went for a picnic at the lake. I didn't even know Omaha, Nebraska had a lake. But it does and (thanks to GPS) we found it.

It was beautiful and hot.

And beautiful...
And hot.

Beautiful...
Hot.

Okay, so the two elements were warring for ultimate description of the afternoon. I am not sure who was winning because they were both pretty far up-there.

And then we found these guys. They had fallen out of their nest in the rafters of the picnic shelter and their mom was pretty much freaking out because the things couldn't fly back up yet. They could only really Flyp, which is sorta a flutter and a flop with out any flight. So my brave brother put them back up in their nest and the mother stopped dive-bombing us and settled back into her nest. I was thankful because I'm sure she was feeling about like I do when my baby hurtles into the deep-end of the swimming pool and I'm 30 feet away and helpless to grab him before he inhales his first lung-full of water. Where would I be without the blessing of someone who's closer and has the ability to get him back where he belongs, above water? Sometimes you try to be a good mother and bad things still happen, out of your control - bad luck. I'm sure that mother bird was thinking those very things as she scolded her babies about rough-housing in the nest.

Happy ending, right?

Yeah, until we found the poor dead baby bird that must have fallen out of the nest much earlier in it's life. At that moment I decided 4 things in quick succession:

1. I do not like baby birds.
2. Forget bad luck, that mama-bird needs a serious lesson in good parenting.
3. Turkey roll-ups no longer sound good for lunch.
4. Hot trumps Beautiful.

Time to go home.
Onward! To the couch!

***

And so ended our last hurrah.

The Couch
3 siblings
3 am
3 children asleep
37 Chuck Norris jokes
[insert hysterical laughter]

The end

Love,
Roundhouse Kick in NE