Monday is melancholy . . .

Hello, girls!

So, I picked an anticipatory theme for this week because I need to focus on something I’m looking forward to, as I’m kinda immersed in melancholy just now. My show just closed, my last show with Horizon and the students I’ve been working with for two years now. They did such an amazing job, and I’m incredibly proud of them, but I won’t deny that I sobbed at the final curtain call, especially when they all gave me a hand-tied yarn rug they’d all made together, and then enclosed me in a group hug and told me I couldn’t leave.

Yeah. So, happy thoughts are needed.
   
It helps that I’m currently writing this from one of my favorite places – Lakeside, Ohio. Every summer, I teach bible school for the East Ohio Annual Conference, and that’s where I am right now. I have eighteen kindergartners in my class this year, mostly good kids, but a couple of real hellions! Anyway, once we’re done at noon, the rest of the day is my own, and I love this tiny little town. I’m at my most peaceful and relaxed during my afternoons here. This is probably the only time you’ll see me on the Internet this whole week, to be honest. I like to escape for a while in Lakeside, get reading done and writing done and just spend whole afternoons sitting by the lake. It is lovely.

But onto other business.

Alexandra: I feel your pain in terms of makeup shopping. I hardly ever wear it, and it is so expensive!

Carlyn: Thank you, thank you, thank you for jumping in to assist my theatrical endeavors! Glad you slipped your post in under the wire!

Casey: You around? Still haven’t heard from you, and I hope everything’s okay.

Christina: I enjoyed reading your challenge, especially your breaking of the unwritten rule that strangers in movie theaters must sit an acceptable distance away from one another! Thanks for the recommendation – the movie sounds fascinating.

Now onto this week’s theme.

So, the biggest thing I’m looking forward to this summer would have to be my cousin’s wedding. She’s getting married in July, and my immediate family is taking two and a half weeks to do something we haven’t done on our vacations in years – a road trip tour of a new part of the country. We used to do this every year – New England, the east coast, the southern midwest – but with family reunions and weddings and lack of time, it’s been a while since we last set out. But we decided to drive out to Washington state rather than fly, and so we’re going to be making time to stop and see places like Yellowstone and the Badlands and the Wisconsin Dells, and other places I’ve never been before.

I’m excited about that, naturally (not quite as excited as driving cross-country with five people in a four-door sedan), but I’m also really looking forward to the week of the wedding itself, which is when we’ll be in Seattle, and I’ll reiterate: I LOVE the Pacific Northwest. Love it. And I get to spend a whole week there. I can’t wait! I’ve been to Seattle once, and it was just a drive-through visit, so I’m really looking forward to actually getting to know the city. I’d love to visit the Seattle Children’s Theatre, and there’s so much else I want to do.

And we’ll be seeing Harry Potter 7.2 out there, and then there’s the wedding. Carrie’s getting married to a great guy, and I know they’re going to be very happy together. They’re both world travelers, and they’re going to Thailand on their honeymoon, and I can’t wait to see pictures. I also love every opportunity to see my whole extended family – which I haven’t done since my cousin Erin’s wedding three years ago!

So that’s the event of my summer. The only downside of the trip is that it comes right in the middle of Horizon’s summer camps, so I have to miss most of those, which is unfortunate but inescapable.

It’s been a while since we had a question, so I’ll ask you all the following: How do you feel about kids? I mean in general, in your life specifically, whether you want your own in the future, etc. Personally, in case you hadn’t figured it out yet, I love kids and I’m a huge advocate for them. I love working with them, more than with adults in many ways, and I definitely want my own someday – though not for a while!

Alexandra, I’ll see you tomorrow!