Day #180-#181

*September 10., 2020*

I’ve fallen behind. School has been difficult and easy and taken a lot of time and also not. Life is very discombobulating lately. We spent all our time living on Emmi and spending time with Lexi. Life is full and hard and wonderful and I am working hard to keep up with it all. Jen Hatmaker (Queen) hit it out of the park today with this post:

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After a week of virtual school (kids) and six interviews for the #forthelovepodcast (🙋🏼‍♀️), we rented bikes and went ham all afternoon yesterday.

At one point, the kids were all ahead of me (as I was batting cleanup in case anyone went yardsale) through a canopy of aspens just starting to turn yellow, all chattering and whooping and laughing, and I discovered that I was both grinning from ear to ear and bawling. These things can happen at the exact same time apparently.

We can be deliriously happy and unthinkably sad at the same time. We can be full of gratitude and full of sorrow. We can be carefree as a kindergartner and as burdened as we ever imagined. We can love God and be so mad at him. We can adore every single thing we are looking at while suffering over every single thing we are remembering. We can hold tight to impossible mercies and rage over impossible losses.

This is life! Apparently this is life. We get it all. We don’t get the good without the hard. We don’t get the love without the risk. We don’t only get the wins. We don’t only get the losses. We get it all. Our only choice is to hold our hands open to everything. It all gets to come in. It all has to be felt and lived and experienced. This makes up a human life. It also makes for good humans, the real ones, the ones who refuse to live an edited life, only the good half, because the other half is just as real and just as valuable. What a terrible system, but here we are. 

Anyhow, don’t get too precious about these pics. I also broke up twelve fights, forced the posse off a steep trail against their will where Remy was just going to “walk her bike up a mile and a half instead of ride,” and brokered a complicated peace treaty over a hostile standoff about water and backpacks.

Here is to all of us living both sides of the story at once. We can do this.

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I feel this in my soul. This is life right now. Thankfully, I started this blog post back on the 11th. 

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We are loving our inter-generational house! Lexi the mathematician has been the math helper. So far Frankie has needed a lot of support and it’s been so nice to be able to turn over my least favorite subject over to lexi so I can play with Emmi. 

Math, or this cutie? This cutie all day. He loves being outside and loves the baby pools we got him. 

It rained so much  that we had flooding and roads closed all throughout the county. 

We had our usual lake in our backyard. The girls love playing in the rain, and they were sliding all over the place. 

We’re so grateful we haven’t flooded. We are working to understand how to fix our yard issues, but we’re not there yet. 

Addie practiced taking pictures with my Apple Watch. 😂

Today (9/11) Alli was off and we decided to go on a field trip. We looked at lots of different places, and then decided to let lexi choose since they are leaving next week.. 

She choose the zoo!

It was Emmett’s first time and he LOVED it!

#always

These girls will always climb if they can. 

Tween sighting. 

And then Lu. All the girls in real time. 

It was Emmett’s first time at the zoo! All the pictures!

Half of the zoo was closed. We were hoping to see the new baby panda, but sadly that whole area was closed. 

For his daddy, whose favorite animal is an elephant. 😍

Zebras! (I think)

This was our first time wearing masks for a prolonged period of time and the girls rocked it. 

It was a perfect weather day, but when the clouds cleared it got a little warm. The girls loved the sprinklers all over the zoo. 

A better elephant shot. 🤗

We hit up every sprinkler we saw. 

We saw this cool orangutan teasing us into thinking he might go out on these lines. We sat and watched him for a long time, but he eventually backed down. 

More sprinklers. 

He loved the whole day! He didn’t sleep at all and was happy and interested. 

Even though there wasn’t much to see, we still had fun. 

Prairie dogs!

We love playing at the Zoo sign. It’s always a favorite place to climb and play. 

It was too wet to stay and play. 

But we grabbed some pictures and let the girls climb for a few minutes. 

Everyone got to crush a penny. 



This was my favorite part of the day. We got to chat with the zookeeper who was luring this giant tortoise back inside. 

He told us all about her and was so friendly. 

She’s between 85 and 200 years old - or something like that. 

More climbing. With so few animals out to see, we let them spend a lot of time climbing. 

“Take my picture!”

This is her new pose. Head cocked and hands adorable. 

We almost forgot to crush pennies for these girls. 

We had to walk up the hill right before we left. 

We came home tired and happy with our fun field trip adventure. 

Sarah texted me that night to go look outside and we were able to see this cool tribute for September 11. They set up in the governmental center. 

It was a cool thing to see. September 11 felt different this year. Everything feels different this year. But at the end of the day, I love this country, this Great Experiment that she is.