Sum-sum-summertime

Today we attended Mars Hill for the second time.  The kids are still quite resistant, but this time, we bribed them with lunch afterward at Dick’s Drive-In, a famous Seattle fast-food place where they make burgers, fries (from real potatoes, as you watch) and old-fashioned milk shakes.  Aside from a little difficulty with directions  (we will not go into that), the day was a success.

For the record, our teenagers will still be attending youth group locally.  And our children went to VBS at our (former) church last week.  Mars Hill may very well be our “interim” church as driving an hour each Sunday morning may get to be too much, but you never know.  Meanwhile, I want to make our drive to Seattle each Sunday worthwhile and so, next week, I would like to drag the kids to the Woodland Park Zoo.

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My daughter and I spent the afternoon at my mother’s house, sitting on her front porch.  Grace and her cousin picked blueberries from the newly discovered bush while my mother and I chatted.  We’d had such perfect weather and the view from her porch of the Puget Sound is so lovely.  My mother has a vast bounty of junk food, so the kids ate Oreos, jelly-beans, Pringles snack-sticks and washed it all down with cans of lemonade.

And then, I took Grace and her cousin to swim.  The teenagers and my 10-year old stayed home, playing video games all afternoon.  They have no idea that they just squandered a perfect, beautiful summer day that they will never get back.  When you’re a kid, the string of sunny blue days seem infinite–but I know better.  I know that we will never get this perfect summer day back with its gentle breeze as the sun set.  They will never see the golden slant of sunlight on their sister’s five year old face.  Blink.  It’s gone.

But they sure made a lot of progress beating that Nintendo GameCube game.  (Oh, and my husband napped the day away.  And the 10-year old was conserving his energy for football practice tonight.)