Giving Thanks for Another Great Performance

It's so quiet around here. I feel as if I'm sitting in a theater long after the play has ended and the audience and all the actors have long since gone home. It was a great performance so I have no reason to complain. But I find myself fighting off the inevitable depression that comes from having something so good end so soon. Still, if this this is the price to be paid, I wouldn’t change a thing.

What a great weekend. Things really couldn’t have gone better. I think I spent the majority of my week in the kitchen. It started with baking cookies before anyone else had even arrived home, and it continued on with sweet potatoes and pies and pancakes and eventually the Thanksgiving dinner. And I loved it. As I was cooking on one of those nights, I stood for a moment and listened to the kids in the other room. Jake was playing cards with Sam and Rachael was entertaining Helaina. I used to experience this type of moment every weekend when they were younger. It’s a quiet happiness and a profound feeling of warmth that only comes when everyone is together, safe, happy, and enjoying each other’s company. When they were younger, I would try to soak it in as much as I could. I knew it was special back then, just as it is now.

We managed to pack a lot in. Not only did we have our traditional dinner with the entire family at home, we also managed to pick out and decorate our Christmas tree. The only blip being that the fuse on a string of Christmas lights kept blowing out, which in turn, almost caused my fuse to blow. Minor glitch though.

But that's behind me for now. Helaina's gone back to her boyfriend. I brought Rachael back on Saturday, and I just finished bring Jake back today. I come home to two people, each wearing headphones, each in their own worlds. All that's left is to head upstairs, close the heat vent in the girl's room, and close their bedroom door... and wait for the curtain to open again for the next performance.