What I Did with My Summer.

Did implies that the summer has ended. Which it has. Abruptly. Silently. Quite unkindly, if you ask me. It was such a nice summer, even though the weather wasn't.

I learned a lot and felt mostly that I was vacillating between lost and found. That's why I had little to put on this blog. I could have filled it with stories, but my thoughts were too far gone to sum it up without giving more of myself than I wanted.

I will attempt to end the cryptic speech now.

Haven, Maiya and I spent a lot of time at the lake, as we anticipated. Not as much as I would have hoped, but those sunny days of splashing and finally watching Haven wade in up to his shoulders were good enough for me. Maiya started walking toward the end of the summer, but her fearlessness around the water remained. One day my sister, Jes, was with me and noted, "I guess you don't go to the beach and read a book." I don't think I will do that for many years.

I took a 12-week course on personal finances. I learned more than I can say, and I think Dave and I will look back on this summer as the time that we made changes in our personal finances that were significant. The course covered issues from budgeting to giving to insurance and lot more in between. It's the type of stuff we all should have learned before we got jobs with real salaries (or at least before we quit our jobs with salaries to stay home with our kids). If anybody wants info on it, let me know. I think they offer classes nationwide at different churches and organizations.

Finally, and importantly, my baby sister, Rebecca, got married this summer. The sister I remember as an infant got married. The sister who made us all laugh and hammed it up every time she had a chance, danced her little butt off at her wedding reception and left a married woman. Her husband is a really cool guy (who Dave would have liked to wish "welcome to the family and good luck, you'll need it" in his toast if everyone had a sense of humor to accommodate that, but Dave wasn't sure). So, I have my first brother-in-law and the kids have their first uncle, well, by official relation that is. Congrats to Bec & Phil!

There will more posting on my part, I miss this blog. Thank you for coming back to read, if you have. Hope you also had a restorative summer.