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~ Highlight of the Day: Going through boxes of old stuff from elementary school ~

I was on a plane for a little less than 7  hours yesterday. Usually I'd be totally fine with this. . . but I was suffering from a particularly stuffy nose with a tendency to sneeze at inconvenient moments.

 

Seattle!

I did survive though, and I'm home in Washington. Green, cool, lovely Washington! The stuffy nose did prevent me from enjoying that wonderful it's-been-wet-for-three-months smell that I love so much. Not that it smells much like that at this time of the year - we do have a sunny season sometimes :)

 It's good to be with my girls :)

And these guys. . .

Well, I have 6 days and 3 goals.

1. Pack for Jerusalem

2. Pack all stored stuff into a small number of boxes

3. Enjoy Washington. All of it.

I'm doing alright at that 3rd one. Not so much with the first or second. I only got as far as opening up all my boxes and going through all the nostalgia found in them. It took my nearly all day :)

I did find time to do a little photo shoot with my siblings. Apparently they like steam punk! Who knew? I am no photographer, but they had fun dressing up. . .

  

Good Times

~Highlight of the Day: Attending a baptism - such a good reminder of the covenants I've made ~

I love Sundays :) I sleep in till 11, eat brunch, go to church for 6 hours (including travel time), then come home and talk with friends and family on the phone till it's time for bed.

So I was thinking earlier today how fast time has been flying, and then I was thinking about all the things I did last summer and had to marvel at the fact that it was a whole year ago. So here's what I did last summer, briefly.

Canada! I left the country for the first time. . . even if it was just a few hours north. Now I'm preparing to live across seas for a whole semester!

I went to Forks. And saw everything there possibly was to see in such a small place. Now I get to tell people I've been to Forks, and explain that, 'yes, it's small. there's not much to see.'

I got baby chicks (so cute!) We don't have Jack (the little black guy)

any more. . . he preferred crowing and strutting to laying eggs :)

I was tanner than my siblings. . . pretty sure I still am - they've all been in

Washington where it's been raining, and I've been in Pennsylvania working on my farmer's tan.

We re-carpeted our family room! Little did I know I'd be sleeping there the next summer after having been officially moved out of my old room . . .

I bought a Moro Blood Orange tree for a friend's b-day. I managed to keep it alive through a winter in Utah. . . then I killed it in the spring.

That was all a year ago. How does the time sneak away like that?

Summer Reading

~Highlight of the Day: Falling asleep on the porch on a perfectly lazy summer afternoon ~

It was quite a perfect day today. Hot enough outside to make you appreciate air conditioning, but not so hot that you couldn't enjoy a nap in the shade (which I did :). I also did a lot of reading. I have a lot of reading to do, and there's no way I'm getting it all done in the next three weeks, but I'm going to try!

Here's some of the lighter reading I've got, along with my lunch of leftover french toast:

I remember when I used to just read all summer long. . . I remember when I had time to just read all summer long back in elementary school when all I wanted to read were the books with horses on the cover . . . those were the days! :)