After 962 invoices, 12 books, 14 essays, 4 days of Jury duty, and 221 hours of movie-watching, summer is officially over.
I kind of made up the number of invoices.
We leave for Florida tomorrow! Beth, Sonya and I always have great times on our road trips, usually making
a stop or two at fast food restaurants where we sit and eat and cry because we already miss our mothers.
And then laugh becuase we're practically adults, and shouldn't be doing such things. Actually, we only did that once.
The Olympics are so cool.
I am blessed with a good home, and friends, and family, and more prosperity than I could ever deserve. God is truly good.
Called your Mom a little while ago to see if you had made it to your house. She thought you were very close. I'm glad you and Beth got to spend time with all of us this summer. It was great having you here for Sunday lunches (doing the dishes) and playing "Take Two". We will miss you. Love you bunches.
I actually have a 1.5 years of school left. As of right now I don't have any plans to visit FL even though I would Love to. I'd also Love for you to come and visit us, also! That would be so much fun :)
It seems like summer is always almost gone before I even realize it's here. This has definitly been a busy summer, full of lots of unexpected, eye-openening experiences. It has been nice to be with my family and be reminded what home is. But, I am also excited about going back to school. I am excited about living in a beautiful apartment with 5 beautiful roomates. I am excited about being on Alpha club, and about seeing old friends and meeting new ones. I am excited about being copy editor for yearbook, and Mrs. Atherton's SI leader again. I am excited about learning, and challenging myself, and growing closer to God. FC is a pretty great place. And yet I am also excited about it being my last year at FC; the freedom and options that come with graduation are thrilling.
Apparently it is crunch-time for my classwork. My mind informed me of this yesterday afternoon. So I went to the public library to do some research for my term paper, and as I sat reading I found myself not entirely absorbed in whichever article about the political ramifications of the Aeneid that I was perusing at the time, and so I looked up. The library was full of people; most were on computers, several were standing around talking with each other in fake-quiet voices that echoed around the room, one lady was sitting at a table beading jewelry, and another woman was sewing something garish. I realized with shock and slight terror that I was the only person reading, in fact the only person holding a book. Or anything slightly resembling paper. This disturbed me. But I chose to let my mind glaze over the issue, and return to Virgil.
The last few weeks have proven that 8-10 hours of work, followed by 5-6 hours of schoolwork, is not condusive to a great deal of sanity.
But I really am enjoying myself. We've been getting to spend some time with Sonya and Heather; we had a singing at church Saturday night that was incredibly uplifting. One evening last week Beth and I took our youngsters Micah and Jake to the Mosquito Festival (fair thing) and rode intimidating carnival rides and ate cotton candy and pet kangaroos, it was amazing fun. I really love those kids. And the kangaroos were pretty swell company, too.
I found out something weird on Sunday. I wrote a while back about a trial I was a Juror on, that ended in a hung Jury. It was a pretty hard thing to deal with at the time. Well, this past weekend the defendant in that trial was shot four times and killed, in a freak accident that had nothing to do with his charges (which were going to be retried). In a kind of horrible way I am glad, becuase it means if he was guilty then at least he cannot hurt any more children, which was something that has been bothering me. And yet, if we had convicted him, he would have been in jail and not in that bar to get shot. I think you can probably think too much about things, though, and so I have decided that the whole thing was in God's hands, and what happened is what happened. Odd how long it took me to resign myself to that.
Ovid's Metamorphoses just cannot wait for me to absorb myself in it once again, so I suppose I had better go appease it.
I understand what you say about the non-reading people in the library; it took me two years before I could bring myself to use the library at FC as a place to socialize; it just seemed wrong to hang out with friends in the library.
Your reflections on the jury duty issue are quite interesting.
"The last few weeks have proven that 8-10 hours of work, followed by 5-6 hours of schoolwork, is not condusive to a great deal of sanity" ! That's great.
Kati, I loooved the happy mail you sent to me! I recieved it just as I was finishing Elizabeth George Speare's The Bronze Bow, so it was a double perfect way to finish the ending of a marvelous book. Later the same day, while I was shopping, I found something small that made me think of you. It's small enough to fit in an envelope, but that's not very safe... by the time I got a bubble-wrap envelope, I think it would be too late to send it. So I'll just bring it to FL! :)
I kind of liked Ice Princess. Maybe because I always wanted to be an ice skater when I was little. Her mom was really annoying, though... And I don't like sweet tea, but I am definitely addicted to Cherry Limeade. My mama and I got some during Happy Hour today.
Um...we couldn't get your car to start. I think the battery may have died. The lights wouldn't come on, the gas lid wouldn't open, the auto locks didn't work. Is there some trick to starting up the engine? We got the key in there, but we couldn't turn it. Sorry! Probably NOT the kind of news you were looking for.
Nah, it's not a problem. Caleb A says Jared has some jumper cables and they can jump it. It has been "marked" though, so we took the sticker off--hopefully maintenance will think there's still someone here using it!
I just got back from a great weekend trip to Dallas with my mom and sisters, who are the dearest people in the world! We went to the American Girl store and ate lunch with our dolls, saw some good friends, and shopped until we literally dropped (well, almost).
Every day I realize more and more how wonderful life is. Some of my goals for this summer have been to grow closer to God, build better relationships with all of my siblings, and to not fail my Great Books class. The first 2 are going great, and luckily those are really the only ones that matter. Beth and I are the close friends that we were before the different directions and stresses of school kind of pushed us apart, and it has been such a joy to get to know my younger siblings better as their newer, more grown-up selves. Micah is a fun, vivacious girl who likes eating "corn on the dogs" and hates watching gymnastics becuase it hurts her. Jake is a quiet, wise young man who has a fantastic yet subtle sense of humor and a great capacity for public speaking. They're really quite clever, sweet kids. But most of all, I have become a stronger Christian, which is a richer blessing than anything else I have experienced this summer so far. I only hope I can overcome my weaknesses and laziness and continue to grow, as I have SO much room to do!
Work is still busy but fun, and about to get a lot busier because my Aunt Sharon, who I share the workload with, is about to go to Russia for 2 weeks. I am getting dreadfully behind in my class work for Dr. Bingham and discovering once again that there is definitly such a thing as too much philosophy. We got to go to the beach with the Deville's while Aaron was down visitng, and that was pretty amazing. They're great people, really. Michael Bacci is coming to visit this week to go Scuba diving, which should be great fun. It's been nice getting to do more of that this summer, too.
Hey, Kati! Your summer sounds awesome! I really enjoy seeing how my little siblings have changed, too, when I go home for vacation (are we on vacation, though, since we have jobs?) And by the way, I don't suppose I was too terribly dissapointed to find out that my dad is not a secret agents :-D
