It is Back-To-School week at our house, which means Meet the Teacher night, trying to locate the lunchbox, and counting how many pairs of pants my kid has that DON'T have holes (how can it only be 2?  He has like 15 pairs of pants!)

Being back at work for me also means giving lots of updates on our adoption to my friends I haven't seen since June.  Since our Big Wait started, there isn't much to tell, except that we are WORKING.  A ton.  It may be hard to wait, but it's not hard to find things to do to raise some of that extra money we need.  We are working like crazy on Cackleberry jewelry to prepare for a couple of huge fall shows we are doing.  Someone pointed out yesterday we should have listed our house on AirBnB for the eclipse.  Such a good idea!  Why didn't I think about that before this weekend??

And this week, we are also SHOPPING!  My cousin Jessy is hosting an Agnes and Dora shopping event this week via Facebook (the internet is an amazing thing) with a couple of her fellow reps and donating a portion of their sales to our adoption!  The clothing is really beautiful, and Jessy makes shopping on Facebook (something totally new to me) really easy.  

If you want to join this event, click this link to join it on Facebook (make sure to say you are "going").   Monday at 8pm Jessy is doing a live sale there.  Tuesday, photos of all the goodies will be posted in the adoption group for 24 hours.  Wednesday will be a "lightening live sale" of leggings only.  Thursday will be outfits and Friday will be open shopping.  It sounds really fun!

So many Thank Yous to Jess and her friends for doing this for us, and for coaching me through all the social media skills you need to pull an event like this off.  Have I mentioned before that social media is not my thing?  Thankfully, Jess knows what she's doing. :)

If you've been following the blog or my family on social media over the last few months, you may remember that my brother Adam left us to be with Jesus in May.  It was not exactly a surprise, but it was unexpected and caught us all off guard.  We began this summer with the worst storm of our lives.  After his death, we sheltered at my parents' house for almost ten days: we slept, ate, cried, and tried to breathe together.  It was excruciating, but somehow bearable because we were together, and because of the hope of heaven.

It is fitting that during the last week of the summer (Sara, Robin, Andrew, and I all start back to our regular school schedules this week), we got away together again, this time to Oak Island, NC.  A family friend graciously offered us a place to stay to spend some time together and it was such a blessing.

Josh cooked every day.  We collected shells and jumped waves and colored in coloring books.  Hardly anyone got sunburned (sorry, Robin).  We talked and laughed and had a dance party.  Gracie celebrated her first birthday with a cookie with a candle in it and about a million choruses of Happy Birthday.  We watched Moana.  A lot.  And we sang Moana songs at the top of our lungs in the car, on the beach, and inside when it rained.  We watched baby sea turtles crawl to the ocean from their nest.  We found peace and joy in each other and in God's world, even if not quite complete.  ​ It was an echo of heaven.  It made me cry to leave.

I so want for the world to be like this.  My soul aches for this, for heaven, for healing.  I am so thankful that Adam is there, experiencing rest he so desperately needed.  For him, as Aslan says in The Last Battle, "the term is over: the holidays have begun."