Here. And there.

I'm here.
At the lake.
Enjoying an extra long weekend.

It's hot.
(Like really, hot.)
(34 degrees today)

I was born for this.
I wait all year for this season.

Unexpectedly. all 5 kids joined me. Some staying one night, others two, and Clint's staying for three.
(I'm here for four.) (Told you it was an extra long weekend.)

These are my favorite people and we're all together at my happy place, but I started a book a week ago, and while my body is here, my head is in Ravensbruk, Germany - the Nazi's concentration camp for women during the second world war.

Oh. My. Goodness.
Our capacity for evil knows no bounds.

This is a novel based on the real lives of 3 women during WW2. Caroline is a socialite in New York who spends her days volunteering at the French Consulate. Kasia is a Polish teenager who ends up at Ravensbruk with her mom and sister. And Herta is a young female doctor who lives in Germany, desperate for a job.

HOW DID I GET SO LUCKY?
To get to live this life?
To live in Canada?

I hope I'm not wasting it.

(So often when I read books like this, there's a point when the suffering woman says, "You mean the world knew what was going on? Why didn't anyone help us?" and it always haunts me.)



While my kids gathered logs, and chopped them into firewood, I tidied, did laundry, baked biscuits and brownies and read.

Once all the free wood was transported from the neighbour's place to ours, Clint went and bought some axes.

In some cultures, retrieving the sword from the stone means something. Here in the backwoods of Canada, it's Whoever Gets The Axe Out of The Log is King of Cultus.

Collectively, they thought hammering it in deeper was the logical solution:

Two.
Two axes are better than one.

Let's sink another one...

In for a penny, in for a pound...

Hours later, (after using a third axe), they surprised themselves (and probably everyone reading this) and got the axes out, were successful in splitting the wood, and managed to make a campfire with less than a gallon of gasoline.

Summer.

It's just the best, isn't it.


Three things I'm thankful for:


1. Books that make you think.
2. Boys that sometimes don't think.
3. And the girls who love them.


Happy summer, friends,
xo