The other day, sometime during the hazy first couple of weeks when we weren’t 100 percent sure where all of our shorts were, Troy was on the phone with our Internet provider while I made dinner.  He was on hold quite a while in the silence of our home, but right as someone answered his call Huck came barreling down the stairs screaming joyfully in the most awful high-pitched volume imaginable, as he’s really holding us to the promise that once we stopped living in an apartment he could be as noisy as he wants.  Troy had to interrupt the customer service representative to quiet Huck down, and right about the time he got back to his question, our kitchen smoke alarm went off.  Because of his superior height, the job is always Troy’s to yank that thing down and rip out the battery, plus my hands were full, so again he awkwardly excused himself to stop the even-worse-than-Huck noise.  And literally the very second he resumed his absurd conversation, our extremely heavy rolling pin fell off the top of the stove ledge and crashed hard onto the stove top making me scream horrifically, officially topping all the loud sounds over the last 60 seconds.

Sometimes that’s how it feels these days.  We are this awkward, fumbling family making loud noises as we try to figure out how everything works.  Luckily, there’s usually laughter involved.

People ask if we miss New York, and partly because of the destruction of our beloved church yard that happened almost immediately upon our departure followed by an awful heat wave and partly because of things like this   http://gothamist.com/2013/07/22/girl_just_trying_to_dance_in_her_th.php the answer is a resounding ARE YOU CRAZY?! OF COURSE WE DON’T MISS NEW YORK!!!  What we do miss very, very much are the friends we left behind, and we love to imagine all of them hanging out with us here in our back yard.

Last night I put together a scrapbook of the cards and notes we were given last month.  (The majority came from Troy’s play group moms and our church family who presented us with love notes one Sunday in June.)  The words are a little overwhelming to read and we’ll probably never fully grasp the loving sentiments written out by so many people, but I think my very favorite was written by a young friend of ours named Allie.  She writes:

“Thank you for all of the things that you have done for this community and for teaching us about the Bible and that peanut butter tastes good in smoothies.”

I think that (and this gigantic Adirondack chair) pretty much sums up everything.