I told the boys we’re entering a new era and we’re going to have a clean car now. It was more of a declaration than it was a direct order. We went back to the car place this afternoon and paid the money to buy this van. I had tightness in my chest for much of the day and wrote these emotional texts to my son about the history of our car purchases and how much of a huge blessing it was to have Papa giving us cars through the years. I was passing things along as he was also starting out.

The tightness passed when it was all said and done. I’ve been tempted to jog just to see if I could sustain it for any longer length of time. The boys completed their 1000 mile challenge today that they’d made up for themselves. This was the summer to do it as there will likely not be another summer where enough of them are running enough to make those kind of miles. It was wear and tear on my nerves but I am glad we stuck it out.

Josh took the kids to see The Odyssey this afternoon before the car trip. I stayed home to clean our room and made decent progress. I was distracted by the journals on my dresser that I had purposely set out so I would read them more often. They are the ones Josh wrote to me when he was in Seward and we were apart. Something about them makes me feel light and happy. Luckily I also remembered to drive in and pick up the keys for our car in the shop and to play with Zorro.

I feel like I have so much more I want to write but it’s stuck in my heart somewhere. I just keep giving these nonsense reports about kittens and we did see three baby deer on our walk this evening. I have not seen the kitten or the mom cat since the night when John and I were down at camp. I was walking around with Zorro feeling like my heart felt raw and thinking this can’t be what it feels like to keep on living like your heart is just out there.

We ordered takeout for dinner. We took a trip with the boys into town to pick up the food and bring it back. We were eating quietly for a moment and one of the boys commented on it being weird that it is just us again. Elianna was at a wedding with Miles. It technically wasn’t part of our diet but we are allowing ourselves some cheat days which I don’t want to do anymore, at least not with the takeout or Blizzards. It still just seems like there’s not enough time in a day to get everything done.