A Lull

Audrey pointed out the other day that it had been over 50 days since I updated this old beast of a blog. She knew this because my last post was about Will being gone 130 days, and we are now past the 180 day mark. Yes, it has been quite the extended break in our little world.

It's rather Twilight Zone-ish that he has been gone six months and is 1/4 of the way through. For your kid's whole life you think about those two years he will spend on a mission. As it gets closer, you start to count down how long you have left before he leaves. But you never spend much time thinking about what it will be like while he is gone. And suddenly here we are, smack dab in the middle of this time that we planned for and thought about for so long. It is weird that time is really passing, he is really out there tooling around the streets of Mexico, and these are his mission days. We just better buckle up and enjoy every moment of the ride, because it's already starting to seem like quite a fast one.

We have not been sitting around pining however. Life keeps happening here too, and while I for sure can't catch up on all the comings and goings of the past 50 + days, I will attempt to make a small accounting.

Duncan is a working man again. He got a part time job at McDonalds, making fries. And he is a substitute custodian for the school district, so he gets called in last minute to cover when regular custodians don't show. He is happy to be working again and is looking forward to a paycheck coming in one day soon.

Audrey, in addition to our big Paris trip coming up in June is also going to New York City in August with a group from her school theatre club. She has been busy working her tail off to earn money for this adventure She has been selling cookies and brownies, babysitting, and now has a temp job at a store that is closing. She has to earn another 300 bucks by the end of May. Yikes.

And perhaps our biggest news of the month is the arrival and departure of this kid:

 who came to stay with us from Germany as an exchange student for three weeks. In three weeks she managed to wrangle herself right into the middle of our family, going from complete stranger to adopted daughter and sister in 21 short days.

Nicole and Audrey hit it off right away. While she was here, she experienced Walmart, Zion National Park and Las Vegas, the mall, Target, Del Taco, Park City, Logan, Cedar Fort, Red Dot shooting range, the spiral jetty, junior prom, bagels, general conference, high school, school buses, Dr. Strange, Hot Topic, and so much more. She left for Germany last Friday, and we are all still recovering, but we have plans to meet for lunch in Paris for a grand reunion.

I have tons more pictures of all of the many adventures that happened, but we must pace ourselves on this the first day of blogging in so long.  Suffice it to say we really liked our German.

 We all bawled when it was time to see her off. I'm getting kind of tired of taking people to the airport and telling them goodbye. I'm going to look forward to picking people up at the airport. Or better yet, being the one to leave.

Which leads me right into  a nice segue of our next trip to California, planned for a few weeks from now, in which we will go to Alisa's graduation and then pack her and Erwann and two cats up and move them to Utah! Yeehaw!