Not Waiting

When the people you love are all off doing things without you for the entire week, you can choose to sit at home and watch movies and mope around...or you can get the heck out of the house and do something else.  

Craig and McKay are having the most amazing week fishing in Idaho and Montana with Grandpa and the uncles and a couple of cousins.  

The girls are at the most perfect Girls Camp I have ever seen with the nicest YW President I have ever met.  I had the chance to drive one of the van loads of girls up on Monday morning and when we stopped for lunch, instead of checking and checking and checking for emails from my missionary, I decided to put the phone down and do what my missionary would do and just CONNECT with the person sitting right in front of me.  And oh, was it worth it!  She was delightful.  She was refreshingly forthcoming about the details of her life and I laughed hysterically and cried all in the same 20 minute conversation.  That's a sure sign of a riveting new friendship.  I am so looking forward to working with her in this new calling.  

And so while everyone else is doing super fun things, I decided to go to Scottsboro, AL to visit my family.  I have an aunt and uncle who live there and four cousins.  My mom happens to fly in to visit them a couple of times a year from Hawaii, and guess what...she's here this month!  

The great thing about NOT WAITING is that the days still go by, only it feels like they go a little faster and a little more enjoyably because I haven't been sitting around counting them.  It's still been the same number of days since I dropped people off at the airport and at Girls' Camp, and I still have the same number of days until they all come home.  But this time I have tons of stuff to TELL them when they get back, instead of just doing that thing where I listen to all their adventures and marvel at how awesome their lives are.  

My life has been pretty awesome this week, too.

I drove on a BRIDGE this week...over water!  TWICE!  Once by accident and once by choice!  Who knew there was SO much water in Alabama?  I drove 6 hours all over Alabama and I have 4 more hours of driving left to do before this week is over.  I took long ways and back roads and played extended versions of stuff and sang really, really loud.  I hung out a TON with my mom!  I also hung out with my cousins and met their cute families and held a super fat, super adorable baby.  I had lunch with the Chief of Police (who happens to be my uncle) and his amazing wife.  I bought furniture for my house and hauled it inside all by myself...very creatively.  I learned how to make Hawaiian food that I never bothered to learn how to make when I lived at home and ate it every day of my life.  I survived living with two giant dogs and five cats for three whole days (unfortunately Zyrtec can only do so much, though, and after 72 hours it was time to go back home and breathe my animal free air...)  

I took a few pictures...but some things I just saw and they were breathtakingly beautiful and I didn't bother to capture them.  I just had to enjoy this beautiful part of the world all by myself because there wasn't a place to pull over and shoot it or a spare minute to blog about it or post it anywhere on social media.  

So instead of doing what I usually do, and sitting here writing and reflecting on my life, I just decided to LIVE IT this week.  And that was a good thing...much, much better than sitting and waiting for people to get home.