Summer Update

It's been just over a month since I last wrote on this blog and I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do.

First, the twins are now 4 years old. They will readily tell you this -- both verbally and with a display of their fingers (sometimes with the correct number, sometimes not.) We had a backyard BBQ for them in mid-July, with lots of kids and adults. Let me just say, it was a lot of fun, but much more exhausting when you actually do the hosting of one of these things versus just showing up, which I've done for the first 37 years of my life.

The next major event was our vacation back to Massachusetts. We were back East for almost two full weeks. This meant the following: the kids' first airplane ride, meeting a slew of my family and friends, and living in humidity that just doesn't seem to exist in Seattle. They got to swim in the Atlantic Ocean, visit the Swan Boats and ducklings in the Boston Public Garden (twice), and generally get exhausted by a ton of new experiences.

It was great because KLC and the twins both got to meet many of the people that are so important to me in my life. (KLC had met some of them before, but others were just the subject of stories until last week.) It was by no means a complete census of all of the people I miss from back East, but it was a good start.

I think I'm a little extra thankful for this because almost to the day of our getting on the plane for Boston, I heard some horrible news. A friend of a friend of mine in DC, who I had dinner with several times and spent a few quality days in Maine with, had a completely random, tragic accident on her bike. The bottom line is that she is gone, through absolutely no fault of her own -- or really anyone else's as far as I know. It was just one of those unexpected, unpredictable events that takes someone out of this life before anyone who knows or met them wants to accept.

So, in honor of this extraordinary person, I want to say how grateful I am to everyone in my life wherever they might be. You never know how much time you or the people you love have, and I hope I can make a decent -- even if sporadic attempt -- to remind my friends, family, and friends who are family ("framily"?) how much they mean to me. And I am particularly glad that we had an opportunity to go back to Massachusetts this month so that some of those important people to me could at least start to get to know each other.