Blazing Summer

The long silence is explainable. Really. We are having a wild ride of a summer, just trying to keep up with God who seems to be moving a hundred miles an hour in our lives. Here is a list of some of the events of our summer so far, and some still to come:

• A series of 7 baby and wedding showers, 4 of which I hosted, within a single month.
• Meals and visits for all the above friends and their new babies.
  
• Saying goodbye to best friends moving home to England.
• Visits from parents.
  
• A bizarre and unfortunate series of events involving a car-eating squirrel and a totally incompetent mechanic which led to the totaling of our beloved Mazda Tribute and the purchase of a cute little blue VW Golf, 2002, manual, which barely seats our family, but is really fun to drive around town.
• An intensive Old Testament course for me (a semester's worth in less than a month.)
  
• An extremely intensive course schedule for Dave: Reading Film Theologically, Spiritual Discernment, and the mother of all beasts, two semesters of Hebrew crammed into 7 weeks. He memorizes about 30-50 Hebrew words a day and spends 9 hours a day in classes and studying. Fortunately, he's amazing at languages, so he's not as stressed as most of his classmates. He just finished the first semester's worth with an A+, despite all the distractions, particularly two little ones, that his single friends don't have.
  
• A whirlwind 4-day trip to London and Nottingham for me, attending a conference with my thesis supervisor on economics, ethics, and theology, as well as a quick visit to the above said friends. David and his mom kept the household running and the girls fed (which was quite a feat with Hannah, who detests bottles.)
  
• A 12-week Wednesday night Bible study meeting in our home going through the book Sacred Marriage.
• All interspersed with all your typical kid stuff: playing at the beach and pool and free water park, picking huckleberries and salmon berries in the cool woods, gardening and biking; and the not so typical: an MRI and lots of doctors appointments (all of which confirm God's abundant grace in Cora's life!!)
  

And still to come within the next two weeks:

• A weekend trip to the Okanagan for a wedding, in which Cora and I get to be a flower girl and bridesmaid.
• A move. Only a quarter mile away, but considering everything must still be packed and unpacked, it might as well be miles. We're moving from an apartment to a townhouse that backs up onto a large green space shared by Cora's two best friends, Charlotte and Clay. We're continuing our trend: this will be our 8th move in our 8 years of marriage.
  
• A two-week trip home to Atlanta for the girls and me while Dave finishes the last two weeks of Hebrew--and makes the actual move on Aug. 4th. I'm hoping to have things mostly packed and cleaned before leaving, and then Dave and his friends will move us on a Tuesday afternoon, between his 4-hour classes on Tuesday and Wednesday.
  

So, I am excused for the absence, yes?