Ahoy! A catch up

Hello, N+L friends. It's been a minute (or a million), hasn't it?!  What a ride January-July 2017 was! Humbling and wonderful and exhausting and faith-blooming and stretchy and rewarding and can-I-do-this and yes.

I finished my inaugural profess-ing semester in May and, between that and our international move and the changes in our family I just now feel like I'm emerging from a cave into the bright sunlight. (I was going to say cocoon but I'm not sure I can claim the majesty of a butterfly at this point.) 

A quick catch up on the cast of characters in my family life: 

As I mentioned back here, in our new setup G works in DC during the week (with, thankfully, every other Friday off).  Although we thought we would alternate spending weekends in DC and Lexington, G looks forward to getting out of the city so much that we pretty much have made Lexington our consistent home base even when (during the summer) we have both been in DC all week together. He's been traveling internationally every six weeks or so for work which has brought a new dimension to his career. We love our time together--it's definitely helped us to not take the other for granted. Life is good, y'all. Mostly, truly incandescently good. 

Lauren and Patrick live in Atlanta where they've just bought their first home, a condo in a neighborhood they love. Lauren's been doing online coursework toward her sociology degree; recently she's decided to just bite the bullet and go back to BYU for a semester to wrap it all up and graduate in December. It'll be tough to be apart for a few months but I'm proud of them both for making it a priority. She's been teaching early morning seminary and doing some good nanny gigs for several families in the area, too. 

Maddy just returned from Ghana, where she did a 3-month summer internship in microfinance. She and three other studetns lived in a village and traveled around the area, supporting and training small business owners. She had some cool and unique experiences--lively music and dancing at a series of Ghanaian funerals and listening to the fisherman sing as they pull in their nets and gleeful children dancing in rainstorms and navigating chicken soup with every part of the chicken floating in the bowl. She's back at USU this week and has a full semester ahead.

Speaking of Africa, this spring Sam received his mission call to Angola (on the west coast of Africa) and left in July for six weeks at the training center, arriving this last Friday in Luanda. The six months leading up to his mission were unforgettably dear ones. Six weeks in, we still miss him d e e p l y and yet feel simultaneously blessed by and proud of his service. I love our letters back and forth and the window they are to his mind and heart. Still, I'm in denial about how long two years will be. I just don't let myself go there yet. 

I will say this: I miss resident mothering. I have lots of thoughts on this post-parenting transition that I'll share in coming posts. Here's the deal: It's part wonderful and part heart wrenching and part lonely and part exhilarating and all completely part of the process, as much of the motherhood story as baby showers and childbirth classes are--except we don't get parties or classes or what-to-expect-when-you're guidebooks about this side of things. We need more preparation and candor about this part of the path and if I can find the words to articulate some, I'll be happy to plant a few guideposts on the map to help anyone else navigate this liminal space.

Also, I just really miss this. How are you? How's your heart at the end of this summer? What are you hatching and nesting and launching these days? Do tell--I've got a lot of bandwidth to hear about it these days :)