A Quick Visit from Claire Before Lucy Left

There was one magical week in between summer and the beginning of college where the stars aligned and Claire came home to work for me for a week. Not only did she come home to help out, but she came home to delight her dwindling family. Especially this younger sister of hers:

We didn’t tell her she was coming and Claire jumped out from behind the bookcase to surprise her. The pictures tell the story about how they both felt about that…

Claire filled our house with music and fun and gratitude and extra life for a week.

Maybe you had to be here, but I can almost feel the love oozing out of those pictures. Man, I adore that girl! She calls regularly just to check in and is just so grateful for everything.

Lots of Work Got Done

During the day we honestly put our noses to the grindstone and worked our hearts out, me finally having a chance to focus in on my blog SEO physical, and her getting to work on some of the nitty-gritties of a giant to-do list of things to be updated (can anyone even tell this is happening?? Not sure, but hope it’s going to make things easier to find and maneuver here on the blog in the long-run!). It felt so good to be able to focus in on how I want this space to evolve after all the summer hoopla.

Here we are hard at work at the library.

…which is sometimes the best place to get down to business in my opinion.

Nightly ENtertainment

We played games every night, cooked together, Claire and I did face-masks.

Dave helped Lucy discover a great tool to help her see the cards of one of our beloved games, as you can see above.

Headlamps for the win.

Also, Claire was half-marathon training in the 115 degree weather.

Yikes.

It was still 105 one night at 9:30pm when we went out on a bike ride. Claire went running before the sun with our neighbors one morning, and I thought that was the sweetest that they invited her and that she accepted.

One Night on the Lake for Sunset

We went to the lake one night, just the four of us, the rocky cliffs glowing gorgeously in the sunset, and realized we forgot the surfboard.

Thankfully we had a “trainer board” that we had borrowed for Lucy and improvised out in the glory of the earth and basking in togetherness.

There is something that happens in a mama’s heart when her kids are like pieces of a puzzle fitting together once again.

It’s like all is right in the whole wide world.

It was hard to say goodbye to that girl so full of life.

And even harder to imagine that they are BOTH up at college, learning in ways they never have before. Yes, Lucy is still there! More updates on her coming soon.

So thankful for this special week.