School is out and the lazy days of summer are upon us. Whoever said summer days were lazy was nuts! Melissa does swim team Monday through Thursday at 8 am, Kolby is doing B.E.A.S.T. (Bomber Endurance And Strength Training)Monday, Wednesday and Fridays at 8 am, and Camer
on is doing yard work for a friend every morning before it gets hot. Then there are trips to the library, friends houses, and soccer continues on in the evenings. At least there is not the pressure of homework due and lunches to make ahead every day. So, yeah, summer is a bit lazier than the school year. We are also spicing it up with Cameron and Kolby going on the Scout Encampment at Camp Fife for a week in June and EFY in July. Melissa is going to a Steel Drum Camp as well.
on is doing yard work for a friend every morning before it gets hot. Then there are trips to the library, friends houses, and soccer continues on in the evenings. At least there is not the pressure of homework due and lunches to make ahead every day. So, yeah, summer is a bit lazier than the school year. We are also spicing it up with Cameron and Kolby going on the Scout Encampment at Camp Fife for a week in June and EFY in July. Melissa is going to a Steel Drum Camp as well.The biggest excitement of the summer comes smack in the middle: Braden enters the MTC on July 21st. We are planning a week trip in Utah to take him down so he can see Darci and Joe and Grandma and Grandpa Andy.
All these milestones: Melissa graduates elementary school, Kolby leaves Middle School, school's out for the summer, Encampment Week, one month til MTC.
The other day as I was taking Melissa to swim team, there was a lone jogger along the path on Keene Road. He didn't look like Braden, but I still got a lump in my throat. It kind of hit me all at once that he was leaving. I guess as long as school was in, his departure was a long way away. Then school let out. I had a "moment". My friends with missionaries out say I will have more. Just carry kleenex, they say. I will. I don't think it was even the thought of him being gone that made me sad. How can I be sad for him when he is doing the Lord's work, something he had looked forward to and prepared for all his life? No, it wasn't that he would be gone and far, far away. It was that this chapter in his life, running easily along paths he has run so often, for so long, is coming to a close. I know it will never be the same for him. It wasn't for me when I left home, it wasn't for Darci when she left. I just have to remember that it won't be the same...it will be better. And we will both have the memory of a young man with so much ahead of him running down the path.
