For three days, an enormous heap of Legos has been scattered on the family room floor.

This is a sure sign that I’m past the toddler/preschooler stage of motherhood.  The Legos can stay there because no one will pop one into his or her mouth.  (And also, I am just too busy to retrieve the Lego box from my daughter’s room where she is probably using it as a doll crib for a very small doll.)

I can’t say that I miss the worries that someone might ingest a penny or eat a stray marble at any moment.  I also don’t miss the early wake-up calls or shampooing an unwilling child’s hair.  I’m glad I don’t have to wipe anyone’s . . .  nose.

What don’t you miss?

Back in January, the ground began to shift beneath our feet.  I was shocked.  I thought our world was unshakable.

My husband loved his job, the kids were doing great and I had no real complaints.

But our lives began to shake, imperceptibly at first, then undeniably.

My husband applied for a new job.

A new job?  A new job.

At first, it was almost a lark.  We weren’t sure he’d make it past the first round.  When he did, we took another step forward.  And we repeated that process month after month.  Each time we were half-shocked, half-unsurprised that he was one step closer to getting the job.

We talked endlessly about the pros and cons and about the reasons we should go and the reasons we should stay.

Meanwhile, he answered questions.  He sent in audio recordings of himself.  He send in DVDs of himself preaching.  He had a video-conference.  He flew to meet the search committee one weekend, then flew another weekend to meet another group of people.  He provided more information about himself than we even knew we had.  The committee checked his background and called fourteen references.

I fully expected them to slide him into an MRI machine to check out his insides.

Months passed.

I admit that I worried a lot.  My biggest concern was how my children would adjust to a potential move to another state.  We’ve lived in this house for twelve years.  My daughter was born in the master bedroom.  My 12-year old son came here as a seven-month old baby.  My twins were kindergartners when we moved in.

We love it here.

We know many people who come and go since we live near a military base, but we never, ever, ever expected to be the ones who would be packing up and moving away.  We never wanted to be those people.

When I lamented about how my children would handle a move, my friend, Lisa, pointed out that if God had a plan for my husband in another state, God also had a plan for my children.  They wouldn’t just be dragged along into a hostile environment, but rather, they’d be walking through a door opened by their Creator.

Another weird thing happened.  My friend, Cindie, and her husband decided that they’d really like to relocate from this area to another state.  So, in January, they picked up their empty nest and moved.  They moved to the exact same area we were considering.

Maybe, I thought, God really was opening this door.

I flew to California with my daughter a week and a half ago to meet some of the people and to see the area.  (We loved it.)

Then, before we flew home, the church in California voted to call my husband as its next Senior Pastor.

We are excited about this new adventure.  And by excited I mean half-freaked-out, half-giddy with anticipation and half-way-too-tired to do all the work necessary to pack up this life and move it fifteen hundred miles down I-5.  Wait, that’s too many halves.

Well.  It is too many halves.

It’s too much of everything, really.

And I mean that in a good way.  Mostly.  (Have you seen my storage room?)

* * *

Because you will ask, I will tell you that my husband will be starting his new job in California in October.  The children and I will stay here until school is out in June.  Also?  Want to buy a house?

I always want to write a post for Monday mornings.  The problem is that I work until 1 a.m. on Sunday nights and I’m always ready to fall into bed after work.

It’s already 2:10 a.m.  And I want to collapse into bed.  So that’s what I’m going to do . . . but I promise (myself,  mostly) to write a post tomorrow.  We have big news, you know.

Happy Labor Day!

Tomorrow is the last day before school starts.  As always, I am shocked at how fast summer slid past us.  Did we swim enough?  Did we soak up enough sun to last us through a gloomy winter?  Did we sleep in enough?  (My teenagers most definitely did.)

I took my 7-year old to the school for Open House.  We met her teacher.  She chose her desk (middle-center).  We stopped by the Book Fair and bought some books.  (Every book she picks out features a dog on the cover.)  And then we came home.

She’s not excited about school.  My seventh grader dreads school.  The teenagers have already started their online school with great reluctance.

But I’m excited about school because this means I can go to the grocery store by myself.

The wind blew away any traces of summer today.  Rain fell.  The scent of fall–or maybe it was just the scent of rain on our dry lawn–filled the air.

Good-bye, summer!  We hardly knew you!

What a weekend it was.

This morning I could see the Pacific Ocean and palm trees and by tonight I was descending beneath the Seattle clouds and then later, cleaning out kitty litter boxes.

There’s nothing like air travel to discombobulate a person.

Except, of course, the idea of picking up an entire household and transplanting it.

If I weren’t so exhausted, I’d explain.

I wish I could hire someone to impersonate me for a few days.

Don’t ask.

It’s complicated.

I would tell you how I spent my afternoon (cleaning my 12-year old’s room, buying ten pairs of shoes, driving behind slow cars to pick up an extra kid because FOUR IS NOT ENOUGH).

But I don’t have time.

More details tomorrow.  If I survive it.

UPDATE:  Too exhausted.  Maybe tomorrow.

My parenting style may be described as benign neglect.  Or, as I like to think of it:  Preparing the Kids for Real Life.

I tend to think that good moms make a nutritious well-balanced lunch for their children each day, using homemade bread and organic produce . I wish I were that good mom.  But I am not.

My twelve-year old son left the recliner where he’d been viewing “Dog the Bounty Hunter.”  As he passed the computer chair where I sat working, he said, “Mom, thank you for neglecting me.  Now I will cook my own lunch.”

I replied, “You are a bad person.”

So, that explains why he was in the kitchen.  He is neglected.  But resourceful.  See how beautifully this is working out?

He decided to scramble some eggs.  So I double-checked to make sure our eggs weren’t on the recall list and he and his 7-year old sister began cracking eggs.  He added pepper to the pan and some bacon bits and some cheese.  “What temperature should this be on?” he asked and I told him medium.

Some time later, he’d gone into the back yard to check on something and I wandered into the kitchen (probably for more Diet Coke) and I noticed the eggs looked awfully runny.

That is because he’d turned on the back burner but the pan was on the front burner.

A big glass mixing bowl was on the back  burner.  I’d put it there after washing it the night before so it could dry.  Someone had perched a large pot (also clean) on top of the glass bowl.  And both of these items were quite warm since they’d been sitting on a heated burner for awhile.

I turned on the front burner and turned off the back burner.  Then I moved the pot.  I used a potholder to carefully move the hot mixing bowl to the other back burner.  I stepped a few feet back toward the sink, hurrying to I could get back to work.

And then I heard an explosion.

I screamed.

On the stove, the bowl had completely exploded.  It looked like a large quantity of giant diamonds had been dumped on the stove top.  It looked like the ice covering a pond in the winter after children stomp on it.  It looked like the aftermath of a windshield following a collision.  It looked like a disaster.

I stood and stared and felt my arms to make sure they were free of embedded glass.  Most of it stayed on the stove, but there were shards on the floor and on my daughter’s little table and on the counter and in the pan of eggs.

Then I swept.  And vacuumed.  I had to leave the sparkling glass bits on the stove until they cooled.

My son was quite impressed by this unintended science experiment.  He informed me that the bowl would not have exploded if I’d left it on the hot burner.  So it was my fault.

Also?  If I’d been a good mom and just made a homemade nutritious lunch in the first place, none of this would have happened.  But then my son would be utterly unprepared for Real Life and I would have nothing to blog about.  So, there’s that.

I was minding my own business, throwing together a salad for a late lunch when I heard a loud thumping crash.  I rushed to the foot of the staircase and shouted upstairs, “What WAS that?”

I fully expected a dismembered child to come limping out of a bedroom or for someone to explain that they accidentally blew a hole in the roof while combining a super-secret, yet lethal combination of Axe body spray and spoiled milk.

But no child appeared.  And no one shouted back.

And then a second house-shaking boom exploded, causing me to shriek again, “WHAT WAS THAT?!”

My daughter appeared at her bedroom doorway on the verge of tears.

“It’s okay.” I said.  “Sit right there.”  I motioned at the foot of the stairs.  A sleepy-looking teenager appeared from his room.

“Stay here!”  I said.

I went outside to see if a car had crashed into our house.

Nothing.

I accounted for the other teenager and ascertained that everyone was alive and well. (The 7-year old was at a neighbor’s house.)

I went into the back yard to scan the house to see if maybe the chimney fell off.  I walked into the front yard to see if I could see smoke.  Maybe something exploded somewhere, I thought.

A neighborhood kid rode by on his bike.  “Did you feel that?” he said.

“I did.”

I thought maybe a car had crashed a few roads over.  Or there’d been a natural gas explosion.

Google suggested that there had been explosions somewhere.

Twenty minutes, maybe thirty minutes later, the actual report came out.

Apparently, some clueless float-plane pilot didn’t realize that there were temporary flight restrictions in the entire region because President Obama was in the area.  Mr. Float-plane flew through the restricted area and two F-15 military jets were scrambled.  They created sonic booms as they raced from Portland to Seattle (in eight minutes, or so I heard).

That was just about enough excitement for one day.

Thank you, Mr. Float-plane.  I almost died from heart failure.

But at least none of my children were crushed by a falling bookshelf.

I have arranged my work schedule so I have Mondays off.  Well, mostly off.  I work at 9 p.m. until midnight.

During the summer, I try really hard to do something fun with my kids on Monday.  Since we have season’s passes to the local waterpark, that often means I drag myself out of bed (after finishing my Sunday night shift at 1 a.m.) and head to Wild Waves.

That’s what we did today.  The weatherman said the temperature would reach over ninety degrees (we’re having a little heat-wave here in Washington).  Perfect day, right?

We arrived at 10:30 a.m. and though the park had only been open for thirty minutes, every single lounge-chair was in use.  I usually spread towels out on a couple of chairs so we have a home-base, but that was impossible today.  A million people and their children and neighbors were all at Wild Waves today.  Were you there?  Because I think the entire population of earth was at Wild Waves.

We stayed for two hours and then headed home.  Even the kids were ready to go because it’s no fun to be at a waterpark when there are long lines everywhere.

Who wants to be outside in a heat-wave, anyway, when you can be home in the air conditioning?

I had a hair appointment this afternoon, but both football practice and soccer practice were canceled.  That’s good because  I was exhausted.  After a quick trip to the grocery store, I took a nap.

Then I worked and now here I am, about to sleep.  (I. Am. Boring.)

And tomorrow is a Sleep In Day.  I have declared it and thus, it shall be.