Tuesday, August 6, 2024
Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Birth-week for Jasper
This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.
Miles and Jasper will be with us parts of every day this week, before they start school on August 12. Yesterday they put together a Lego City Sailboat, a Jasper birthday gift from their cousins in Springfield. and the boys worked like a practiced team. The tiny pieces went together perfectly, as they boys put their heads together (literally) sitting and bouncing on our new living room rebounder-trampoline.
Miles and Margaret played Old Maid and Miles won. Then they played a memory card game with animal pictures. “Do you have a photographic memory?” Margaret exclaimed, protesting and praising the boy. He looked at her and smiled. “I’ve got it all, Grandma.” He won that game too. Going away.
It is true that our living room gets cluttered while they’re here. Today we’re swimming with Mike and Diane, who nannied Miles when he was very young. Diane’s goal, as she puts it, is to “make them happy.” That will include ice cream in the morning, pizza at noon, and a beautiful community pool. Both boys had swim lessons for two weeks and made strides toward competency. I hope they will show us what they learned.
We’ve been watching the fast swimmers and the faster runners in Paris at the Olympics. A little of that goes a long way for those guys, who want to watch Inside Out and Bluey and Paw Patrol and Star Wars. Jasper cleaned up in the Lego Star Wars category earlier in his birthday week, and now it’s time to put the sets together. A 484-piece starship is next. Jasper told us they got to pieces bag #3 Monday morning, after opening the gift Sunday night at his family party, eating sushi and turkey burgers, baked beans and broccoli, along with cupcakes topped with an inch of “elite” icing. Oh, and watermelon.
Tonight is our before-school sleepover, after the pool party. We’ll set up our Coleman tent and pull out some sleeping bags, watch Inside Out again, go somewhere cool like DQ for dinner, and have bacon and pancakes for breakfast. Miles will have to take a thirty minute break for an online Japanese lesson.
We left Urbana on Wednesday (Jasper’s 5th birthday) and on Thursday, the boys were filling up Margaret’s life while I finished the long drive. Friday we spent the morning together. Saturday we hung out with them at Bricks and Minifigs, putting together race cars from legos and eating pizza and cupcakes. And then Sunday our first day back to Grace Covenant Church, seeing so many friends to re-greet after two months. As Chet on Daytripper says at the end of each show, “What a day!”
What a birth-week for Jasper-guy, from Wednesday through tomorrow. We can’t get enough of it ourselves. Our birthdays, which mark our wearing out, don’t feel like theirs, which mark their coming in, coming of age, coming up roses. And spending a week celebrating just seems right.
After our sleepover and a couple of doctor appointments for them both, we’ll be together all afternoon on Wednesday and then most of Thursday and Friday. Andi wants us to not get tired. She wants the boys to not get tired. Margaret and I want to be with them as much as we can, before school spirits them away.
There’s no school on Fridays in this intelligent classical system of education. We’re planning some adventures on those Fridays.
Can’t wait.
Be attentive, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
(Daniel 7, Psalm 97, 2 Peter 1, Matthew 17, Mark 9)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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