my uncle's stronger than your uncle

Is that guy who was here last night going to be here again today? Davis asked, peering into the bedroom where my sister Celestia and her husband Si'i had slept.

The room's occupants were already on their way to Prague, I replied, but they would stop by again in a few days on their way home to Utah. 

Awww, okay, Davis sighing, before shoving his hands into his pockets dejectedly and shuffling downstairs. 

The evening before, as we watched Si'i and Kai playing ball with the kids in the garden while we lingered over the remnants of our outdoor dinner, Jane, Celestia and I had joked that Davis, when asked about his holiday in Europe, would say, It's so great! They have a guy there who plays this game called football, and throws kids in the air!

Nobody plays the Pied Piper like Si'i does, and nobody cuts my hair like my sister, even when jet-lagged and thirty-four weeks pregnant with her sixth child. Especially not Violette, who gave herself layers and transformed her brother's curls into a Euro-footballer mullet the week after Celestia snipped my locks into a rough-and-tumble bob. Short haircuts for summer, everybody!

When all the numbers were in for the summer, they read like this:

House guests: 17 (9 adults, 8 children)

Days without visitors or travel between 26 June and 1 Sept: 1

Countries visited, not including Netherlands:8

New countries visited: Austria & Lichtenstein

Rolls of toilet paper consumed: 56

Audiobooks/Podcasts completed while cooking or doing dishes:  Middlemarch, by George Eliot (32 hours); Wave, by Sonali Deraniyagala (5.4 hours); A Royal Pain, by Rhys Bowen (9 hours); Slate Political Gabfest (7.4 hours); Leonard Lopate (5.5 hours)= 59.3 hours total

Individual pounds gained sharing in regional delicacies: 6

Plants purchased at the beginning of summer: 19

Plants alive at the end of summer: 17

I had to put that last one in because it was my one definable success. Tucked into those numbers were all the narratives of late-night talks with old friends, exhausted tantrums and tears, the sounds of violins and pianos being practiced, childhood games, sleep deprivation, sage parenting advice and empathy, and lots and lots of food. We were so lucky to have so many of our dearest come to us this summer. We feel loved.

 
How did they do it? you ask. Besides finding a housekeeper willing to come two mornings a week and being perpetually forty-five minutes late for everything? Mid- summer self-loathing and redemption coming up in the next post.

Some Belgian waffles, Gouda cheese,  and American-style lemonade and chocolate chip cookies to snack on while you are waiting...

family portrait

Vampire Weekend's Cousins has been playing non-stop in my head for the past week. Not only are my children's cousins smart and adorable, they love being together, and our two little ones are so doted on that it takes days for them to adjust to the quiet afterward. The joy is infectious.

6

 

up north

And then we were off again, this time into America's Heartland, where baseball, cousins, and a week by the lake awaited us.

There was a time, well before I married my own Minnesota boy, when I thought I might end up in the Twin Cities. I spent a couple of summers there in college, taking long runs around the lakes, hanging out at Cafe Latte, going to independent films  Uptown. The weekend I got married I had to cancel my previous plans to go portaging in the Boundary Waters with my best friend's three very good-looking brothers. That was nine years ago today, in fact.

I knew I would make up for it eventually.