Summer's Last Gasp

Its been nutty around here, what with me finishing up a thorny rewrite (yay!), a trip home to WV (bliss!), snatching up the last bits of summer (grasp!), and preparing for Saroj's arrival (soon, please!). But here are the highlights.

We've passed the court process in India and are now waiting on Saroj's passport to be issued. Once that's done, we get to make plans to travel. Right now our hope is to have him home before Christmas. Your prayers are appreciated! Here's a photo we got this week:



And here's his room-in-progress. I wanted to do more orange, but cooler heads prevailed.



We've been enjoying some summer fun (and not so fun yard work). A few weeks ago we snuck away for a quick camping trip to Pearrygin Lake in the central part of the state with good friends Mike and Heidi and their year and a half old Grace. Wonderful to see them . . .


. . . to do a little canoeing . . .


and a bit of high flying.


Then we jumped on an actual plane to head home to WV. It was a work trip for me--doing school and library visits. The most fun was when I addressed 600 ninth graders at a high school and did a few writing workshops. All the kids had read SHIFT for their summer reading assignment and had amazing questions. Here I pretend that many ninth graders don't terrify me . . .


And hang out with some of Jimmy's wonderful former teachers. As expected, they only had good things to say about him. :)


But we had plenty time to enjoy family and friends as well. Evie especially loved practicing her jazz hands in the rain with Aunt M . . .


. . . checking out turtles in the creek below the house . . .


She dove right into the water and mud for her first creek foray . . .


. . . and then partook of another summer hill country ritual to follow up: the driveway spraydown-hoedown.


And now we're back home where its too cold (and too public!) to bathe in the driveway. But the good news is its just chilly enough to really enjoy a soup--something I plan to go do now.

Jen