The Third Segment of Summer

My summer could be broken down into three parts. Kingdom Kids proper ended before Memorial Day. The first segment of my summer was two weeks long, and I stayed right at Kingdom Kids for it. I taught two one-week classes, exploring the topics of construction and space with delightful groups of preschoolers. Wow, those two weeks were action-packed and a ton of fun! Immediately after that, R.J. and I headed out on our 30^th anniversary trip to Prince Edward Island. It was an amazing blessing to have those next three weeks on the road, together. I have already written extensively about that trip, so I won’t bother going on more about the second segment of our summer.

Robots, created during Construction Week

Another creation from Construction Week at the preschool

One of my happy places on PEI

It has been six weeks since we returned from our trip. This final segment of the summer has one more week in it. At the end of that week, I will be back in training for another year at Kingdom Kids. So what has filled these past six weeks? In a typical summer, I would have had lots of early morning hikes at Quarry Hill and Silver Lake. This summer was different. I have only been out on that kind of walk a couple of times. In a typical summer, I would be scouring the internet for new ideas for my classroom, or working ahead on little projects, or at least reading. Nope, nope, and nope. So what have I been doing?

I have been deep, deep cleaning, dejunking, organizing, and fixing things. I did some deep cleaning and dejunking a couple of years ago, and I am thankful for that. A good friend of mine describes the process of dejunking as peeling an onion: when one layer is gone, it’s time to look at the next layer – and there may be tears along the way when letting go of things. I’m attempting to remove a few more layers of that onion. I made another pass through our kitchen and got rid of more things. I scrubbed our vinyl flooring with a toothbrush-sized brush to get dirt from all the textured hidey-holes where it lived. I took two loads of electronics to the Olmsted County Recycling Center. I have at least one more load to go. I took one load to the toxic waste center and again have another load to go there. I took two trips to Salvation Army and one to Goodwill, with more coming up there as well. I have filled the garbage and the recycling bins (both full-sized) each week – and sometimes overfilled them. R.J. and I cleaned the garage and worked on the basement. I sewed new curtains for one room and have been figuring out what to do for window coverings for at least two more rooms. I prepped for painting. I organized storage areas. I spent a significant amount of time scrubbing each tile in our shower to get the hard water residue off them. We hired contractors for jobs that required skilled labor, and still have more hiring to do.

Here's the curtains I sewed....

But here's the reality of the chaos in the space around the curtains.

It would be easy to think of this segment of the summer as drudgery. My right shoulder and hand ache every morning from all the scrubbing of the day before. I work out the kinks and start again. There always seem to be more jobs to do, stretching on to infinity. But just when I think it will be “same old, same old” every day – something entertaining comes along to make life more interesting.

One joy along the way with all this work has been that my brother Jon has offered to help with some of the odd jobs we have around here. On "Day One" of that process, Jon and I walked around the house. He offered suggestions of what to do and then we went shopping at Menards. It was a fun process. We had walked out of the house through the garage, and because I rode along with Jon, I just left the garage door open. R.J. was home, so I thought the house would be secure. It was, or at least it mostly was. Later that day, after R.J. had gone to rehearsal, I was in the garage to throw something away when I heard scurrying. I do not like to hear scurrying in the garage. I got instant goose bumps. I stepped inside the house and left the big garage door open, hoping that the “scurrier” would take a hint and leave. I thought he must have, so I closed the door about an hour later when I saw no movement and heard no sounds. It turns out he did not take advantage of the opportunity to exit. Later I peeked in again and saw some woodchuck eyes peeking back at me. I reopened that garage door and Mr. (or Mrs.) Woodchuck promptly ran to the opposite side of the garage. I guess the door is scary. By the time R.J. arrived home, I had a tale to tell and a task for him to complete. Get the woodchuck out of the garage! We discovered that Woody was hiding under the lawnmower. And by we, I mean R.J. I hid in the doorway to the house, directing him if I saw movement. In the end, R.J. opened the back door of the garage and used an old storm door to guide Woody to his freedom. I hope that our furry friend is terrified and never returns to the garage. I love seeing critters outside, but don’t like them getting in where they may feel trapped and aggressive. That’s not good for me or the critter, right? So that was a moment of excitement in the midst of all the work here at Traff Central, but weirdly, I have no pictures. I guess the task of removing said “beast” overshadowed the urge to pick up the camera.

On another day, I was getting ready to scrape the peeling paint off the lamp post in our yard. I was stopped in my tracks by the most intricate web with a very proud spider right smack in the center of it. Inside our house, I wouldn’t have thought twice about destroying that bad girl, but outside – it looked like an amazing work of art to me. I didn’t have the heart to touch it. Instead, I took pictures. The spider only stayed for a couple of days, but I let her keep her house as long as she wanted it.

Just look at that beautiful web!

Sorry about the close-ups for your arachnophobes, but this is beautiful to me!

Amazing artistry!

And then, just yesterday, I was busy down in the basement scrubbing super gross walls and trying to work some magic on our utility sink while R.J. organized the tool shelf. I had used up a scrubbie sponge, so I went upstairs to get another one (I bought the 12-pack). As I got upstairs I looked out the window, and in my front yard was a family of deer. I already had the long lens on my camera from the spider incident earlier in the week, so I peeked my nose out the front door and got a few pictures before the three deer scampered off across the street. I got a few more before they headed into the woods and out of sight. God is so good to encourage me when it seems that there are an impossible number of tasks to complete. There is always joy out there for me to see if I just look for it, and most times I don’t have to look very far or hard at all!

All three just in my front yard. Too cool.

Hello, little one!

Family time

So sweet!

I came across this “Rose is Rose” cartoon a LONG time ago (2002). It kind of sums up how I’ve been feeling.

If you also need refreshing, please take a moment and look up from what you are doing. Thank God for all He has given you, and notice what He has for you in this moment. He is faithful and loving and He will NOT disappoint. And if you need a hand in the many tasks on your plate at this moment, ask around. We are a community, and we help each other. May God encourage you, even as you tackle the messy tasks in your life.