So tomorrow I leave to go to Philly and from there I will go on to prague. It is still surreal. But as I am finishing packing, organizing my last things I realized that this will be the last time I will ever sleep in my bedroom in this house. My wonderful jungle green room with my mosquito netting princess bed and all my pictures and things everywhere. and if I get the job in Colorado I will be permenately moved out of my parents house. So really, what is going on here is a lot more than a trip across the atlantic to another country. This is the leap of a bird from the home nest, a spreading of my wings. (but don't worry Mom I may be a yo-yo bird, I may pop right back to the nest again!) What great people and adventures lie ahead!

i have let you down megan, i am sorry. but if it makes you feel better, all i have been doing is painting and packing really. i constantly feel like there is tons of stuff i need to do so i have been compulsively writing and re-writing lists. but as soon as i finish an entire list, a new one is made and looming over me.

i am doing really good right now (because a. i am going to prague b. i am really going to prague in just over a week) and have so much floating in my head i can't possibly write it all down (thats what i get for waiting so long to blog, overload, lost stories) but oh well thats life.

i have to go get stuff done, but first a quick Bible verse interpretation by Hallsey the magnificent (age 4) :
'The faithfulness of brothers and sisters, if you have them, you can hit them'

preach it sister.

This evening I was watching children at the church while some sort of leadership meeting went on. The children were picked up in stages and with the last couple kids we played four corners, but with colors, because we had these giant foam squares in primary colors that were perfect for the game. well, some more children left and only little Parker was left (he was four or five) and he liked four corners so much he insisted we continue the game. He placed the four squares next to each other the told me and the other teacher to walk while he counted.
"forty-two, forty-five, forty, forty...., forty-five--Boo!"
"okay pick a color Parker"
"purple!"
"There is no purple Parker, you have to pick red, yellow, blue, or green"
"uh, lellow"
"Oh you got me, I was on yellow"
"okay Parker count again"
"forty-two, forty, forty-three, forty-five...Boo!"
"What color Parker?"
"purple!"
"There is no purple, pick another"
"Blue"
"oh, no one is on blue, try again"
"Purple!"

and so on. He even made sure that Miss Lindsey and I both had turns counting. what a great little boy.

nothing has happened yet today.

today my dad and i painted...a lot. and there is still lots to do!! but i really enjoyed it, because painting is one of those activities that does not take much talent, is condusive to thinking, and you can see the results of your labor very quickly. or quickly enough. so as i was painting the house my parents are going to move into i was thinking about when we built the house we are in now, how, before the dry wall was up, we placed pennies from that year in the walls, sort of like a mini time capsule to the future and a blessing on our new home at the same time. this made me very very glad that i could help my dad get the house ready, paint, redo cabinets and the like, so that i can take part in this new home i probably won't live in, because it is still my home because my parents are there and with them resides the heart and hope of our family. Have you ever watched swiss family robinson? I love that movie and watched it a lot when i was little (one of the few films that me and my brothers could agree to watch, that and Cheetah)-if you have seen it, do you remember the part where they have finally finished building the tree house and they blindfold the mother and walk her through their new home, showing her the luxeries they had eeked out of the unknown, to comfort them and shelter them as they try to survive in this new, unknown environment? That is what I felt like Dad and I were doing for Mom today, creating a new, beautiful place for her, because she has worked so hard, sacrificed so much of herself for our family and we love her so very much. i think my mom is one of the bravest people i have ever known, in life or fiction.

i love rainy days. today, while starting the atrocious task of packing up my room, i opened my blinds, something i rarely do because they are broken and take forever to coax them to let in the sunlight. but today i just took them down and delighted in the sunlight that managed to weasle its way past the clouds. My favorite part of having the windows open on a rainy day is that from my window you can just see the corner of the roof that covers the bay window in the dining room, and i love watching the rain stream down the roof, in the path created by the roof tiles, and gush into the gutter. i don't know why but i like it, maybe because its like my own personal suburban waterfall.

so my parents are moving to a new house--one closer to the university, so we are starting to clean out our house. well, in the attic mom found a victorian barbie, still pristine in her box. she asked me why i never played with it. I responded, surprised, that I was under the impression that i was not allowed to play with the doll, because it was a collectors item and therefore I had resigned myself to only stare at her through the box. well, said my mom, i don't think i ever said that but what do you want to do? do you want to give it away? save it? Heck no! said i as i began to tear through the box. So, after years of waiting, I finally get to play with my victorian barbie (and she has a real bustle!!!)






side note-what happened at the end of the Wagner opera?