I Fell Off the Wagon, and the Wagon Wheeled Away (July 2023)

 

I dreaded how fast three months would disappear, but I didn't account for variables that would make days fly even faster, and crunching numbers makes it worse.

Everything became wedding preparation. I stopped counting hours spent weeding at the farmhouse once I hit 30, I only count hours spent cleaning and setting up the venue there because it earns income to put toward the wedding, and I never even began counting the hours spent sitting on my duff in front of a computer doing wedding stuff because I can't count that high. 

By the time they return next week, Millie and Annika will have spent 35 of the last 71 days down south or out of the country. I know because I just counted. When they're home, they're gone at work for half the time, and Susannah has joined the ranks of working women, too.  Garden produce sits neglected in the autumn garden, fruit flies rule our kitchen, the songbirds have flown, cricketsong grows strident, and Annika gets married and moves in a little over a month. Our family rhythm is broken, and I'm lost somewhere here in the middle waiting for a new song to start up.

I'm grateful that at the beginning of the year, John planned some specific family days for this summer, because they've allowed scattered time to soak each other up before these days are gone. I want to slow down and savor what we have left, but we're careening helplessly along, and the rowers keep on rowing (and they're certainly not showing any signs that they are slowing).

So have at it. 
July's on deck, and August is in the hole. 

July Fourth, 2023

Our extended Owen family and Grandma J. came over to celebrate Independence Day with good food and Grandpa's traditional box of explosives.  It was our first Fourth without Millie and Annika, who were in VA, so we ate their share (of the food, not the explosives).

Sarah took half of these pictures on my camera, including this exquisite one of her angelic-looking son Zion. 😉

Lucinda Hope's Big Party

Two days after Millie and Annika got home, we had almost 100 friends and family here for Lucinda's thirteenth birthday party. We didn't start preparations until the day before, I stayed up almost all night, and I still don't really know how it all came together. I think the guests deserve praise for covering the tables with good food to supplement what we had here. If they hadn't brought what they did, we would have all had to survive on hot dogs, pasta salad, and cupcakes. (And water, if not for Evan's gigantic cooler of fancy drinks in glass bottles!)

I took these pictures at the tail end of the party, so the daisies are worse for the wear, but her simple desires for decorations (daisies and yellow) came just in time for us to scrounge the very last few handfuls of roadside daisies.

We nearly always have a guest whose actual birthday is close to these fake summer birthdays, and this year Hannah had her turn. Happy birthday to these girls who still could pass for sisters!

 

As has become tradition, Grandma Owen bought a birthday piñata for the birthday girl. As I hope will NOT become tradition, Ransom had an inexplicable meltdown when people began lining up to hit it.

Rebecca graciously organized all the piñata- bashers because I just didn't have the gumption. She lined Luci up after all the younger set had gone through.

BOOM. That's all it took, and candy showered down, because in addition to being smart, kind, and lovely, Lucinda is also strong.  Happy birthday to our lovely Light, Lucinda Hope. You are a gift to us, Luci, and we love you so much!