Happy June!

This is the blogging equivalent of going to the store in your PJ's, with yesterday's make-up still smeared all over your sleep-worn face because you finally reached the end of your toilet paper supply. I haven't found the perfect system for updating my blog regularly, but by golly, it's important to me so I'm just going to do it without the perfect system. Sometimes toilet paper just needs to be bought.

Polly and her favorite stuffed animal, Sparky. She bought Sparky with her total life savings of $14.36, plus the help of a very kindly grandfather type when we discovered, at the zoo gift shop, that I had somehow forgotten all of my credit cards and cash, and they didn't accept check. Thank you, unknown man who stepped in to help a tearful little girl!

This is my little "Mommy of the Woods," as she calls herself. She loves having me lift her into this tree where she can dream and observe and pontificate safely above the rabble on the sidewalk below :).

Polly, wanting to replenish her life savings now that she has realized how much more cool stuff she wants to buy, decided to open an art gallery in the front yard. She has a lot to learn about market demand.

We try to invite over a set of missionaries to join us for Sunday dinner just about every week, and this was the week of the riots in Baltimore, so the Spanish ward elders were staying with the Baltimore County elders. A great group!

Happy Birthday, Auntie Arielle! Dave's youngest sister is staying with us this summer while she does a super smart internship at Johns Hopkins. She had a birthday just a week after arriving, and we are ALWAYS looking for excuses to eat more cake around here.

Oh, Nature. Everything falls into place in my soul when we are outside (and not in a place where the kids can run opposite directions toward on-coming traffic).

Oh, Nature. Apparently everything falls into place for Dave, too.

I love that look of bliss on her face. She was a happy girl all day long in her native environment.

Polly lives in an intense world of imagination. Not sure what she is here--a pine tree? A witch? A returning conqueror?

Hey look! A family picture? These are few and far between. Too bad Joshey's sort of reaching down my shirt. The woes of a mostly-weaned Mama's boy...

Although really, his woes can't be that great--look at that smile!

Life proceeds well and full around here. Last Wednesday, my wonderful neighbor, a good Christian lady with a very different background than mine but something of a kindred spirit nonetheless, called me over as I was returning home around 8:30 pm from having played the harp at the funeral home (I do that several times a month--it's an evening gig so Dave can handle dinner and bedtime while I escape to play music for 3 hours!). It had been a busy day. We had gone to the gym, then driven around for a couple of hours making visits to the ladies I visit teach. After lunch and some semblance of naps and a shower, we ran out again to go grocery shopping, followed immediately by grocery shopping, driving Sebastian home (he's the little boy I babysit), and changing into harp playing clothes. I was a good kind of tired as I drove home from playing the harp, and a lovely evening outside. Marcia, my neighbor, called me over and said "I was watching you come and go today and chase after your little kids, and I just wanted to tell you that you lead an abundant life." That meant a lot to me. I knew that she was giving me one of the ultimate Christian compliments. And I felt it, too--that abundance of worthwhile things to do while the sun is shining. Not every day feels like that. I'm not that busy every day, for one thing, and some days are slower and more contemplative. Like today, when I'm blogging as a means of procrastinating the necessary task of steam-cleaning the carpets upstairs (Polly spilled honey on the carpet. Honey! Argh!). I think about the people that I love that are in a different stage of life than I am and that perhaps do not feel that great abundance of little kid-busyness and house-keeping. I wish I could share some of this feeling with them. But perhaps they wish they could share a little of their sanity with me :). Okay, little kid screeching at me from his high chair. Must go.