Summer Vacation!

Hooray! It is summer vacation! Peter finished a first draft of his dissertation and will be sending it to his advisors for feedback and then he will have to spend time editing it over the next year. Brendan graduated from Kindergarten and had a good year. He loved his teacher, Ms. Elm and it was very hard for him to say goodbye to her. A few days before school ended, Brendan said he was excited that summer was almost here, but then he added that he also wished he could go back to the beginning of the year so he could have Ms. Elm a whole another year. Both Ms. Elm and Brendan were teary on the last day of school. In fact, Brendan cried the whole way home and for another fifteen minutes at home because he didn’t want school end. And Jason is also on summer vacation from art class, Bible study, and Kid Swap. He is collecting summer vacations and says he now has THREE summer vacations. Jason insists that I am on summer vacation as well and didn’t like my reply that moms never go on summer vacation!

We survived Peter being gone for ten days, with the help of lots of playdates and Grandma and Grandpa pitching in. Peter was attending the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University. When we move to Zambia, Peter will be teaching at MEF’s Africa Peacebuilding Institute which is based on this model so he thought it would be good to experience it himself. This is what Peter emailed about it while there:

"The class I am taking is called "The Natural Environment, Conflict and Peace." We are exploring how things happening in the environment create or exacerbate conflicts among people. It is quite complex trying to understand the intersection of environmental and social forces, but I am enjoying it. In my class of 13, I am learning from and with an Indonesian Muslim, a Ugandan Catholic, a Syrian Orthodox Iraqi nun, a pregnant Virginian environmentalist farmer, a Pakistani Catholic, an Iraqi-Kurdish Muslim, an Egyptian Coptic Christian, a lapsed Protestant Rwandan, a Burundian Christian, and a Presbyterian who works in the headquarters of PCUSA. Oh yeah, the professor is an Ethiopian who now lives and teaches in Kenya. Great people. Interesting discussions regarding how faith connects with peace, justice and responsible ecology."

We only had two minor mishaps while Peter was away. First, Jason rode his bike down the stairs to our backyard. I am assuming this was unintentional. I found him on the first landing with his bike on top of him. He cried really hard for about thirty seconds while I held him and checked to see where he was hurt. Through his sobs, he insisted that he wanted to get back on his bike. I insisted that it would be OK for me to hold him and comfort him at least for another minute maybe. But no, he wanted to keep riding. Then later that week, Brendan slipped off the diving board and scraped up his whole belly. I got chills up the back of my legs every time I looked at him. He wasn’t sure he wanted to swim the next time we opened the pool but the hot weather and seeing all his friends splashing was too much to resist.

The highlight of the week for the boys was a spontaneous camping trip with Grandpa. They left Friday evening and came back Saturday morning and drove about an hour away to a campground in the mountains behind our house. All three of them slept in the back of the van. The boys were absolutely thrilled with the adventure. I wasn’t quite sure what to do without them but I did my best!

And then there were all the interesting conversations we had over the last few weeks. Here is a sample:

On the way home from school, Jason and Brendan were arguing about whether or not Pluto was a planet. This was after we finally convinced Jason that Brendan wasn’t talking about the Disney dog. Brendan informed Jason that Pluto really wasn’t a planet after all, which was quite cruel after we just told him it was a planet as well as the name of a dog. They went round and round until Brendan finally said, “Well, if you don’t want to think scientifically, have it your way.”

A week or two ago I picked up the boys from their art class and went to what I thought was our van. I had the key in the lock but it wouldn’t turn. Brendan laughed at me and told me I should have looked at the handles because it obviously wasn’t our van. Our van was two parking spaces down. A day or two later, we walked out of the library and I was almost to our van but I stopped thinking somewhere along the way and went to a white car instead. The boys started laughing at me and they each had a pithy comment to make. Jason’s was, “You got forgot everything, Mom!” Brendan’s quip was: “‘Look at the handle before you turn it.’ That’s an old saying I just made up.”

Jason and I were running into Target to buy a few items when a homeless man asked if we could spare a bit of change so he could get something to eat. I was so focused on the task at hand that I said, “Not today, “ and kept going. I was getting Jason settled in the cart when I came to my senses and realized I could give him a few dollars. So I told Jason what we were going to do and got him out of the cart and went back outside. We gave a few dollars to the man who was very grateful and turned around to go do our shopping. Jason skipped back to the cart and said, “We just gotta do what’s right, Mom. We just gotta do what’s right. We have to take care of poor people.” So right.

When Peter returned from Virginia, we had a date night that started out wonderfully relaxing but ended with us both completely stressed out. We realized that we only had about seven days between our summer trips before we had to have everything packed up for moving it to Spokane at the end of July. This means we also have to have most of our Zambia things packed up so we can see what we aren’t taking and pack it for storage. And those seven days also have things planned so they aren’t wide open. Boy, did that light a fire under us! In addition to the tasks that need to get done, we also have goodbyes to say. Several of our friends are moving as well so we are going to farewell parties and helping others pack their trucks. Seeing how Brendan is very in touch with his feelings and is aware of the pain of saying goodbyes, this part of the summer will be very difficult for him, as well as for us. But we also have lots of fun things planned this summer as well to offset the goodbyes. On Wednesday we fly up to Winnipeg, Manitoba to see my extended family. We haven’t seen them in three years and won’t for another three so we are looking forward to time with them. We hear the mosquitoes are dreadful this year but at least they aren’t carrying malaria!