What A Summer!!

For those of you who we may not have checked in with recently, and even for those of you who we have touched bases with recently, I would like to make one thing very clear. If you asked me how I was doing, or the prolific, "Whatcha been up to?", depending on how well I know you, I would say, "fine", and then field the questions back your way so that I could avoid actually talking about it, or I would scream "AHHHHHHH" and then say fine and be less aggressive in fielding the questions back your way. I will leave it to everyone's interpretive facilities to determine where they might fall on the spectrum.

This has been and will be a summer I will never forget. For more reasons than one. For starters, I changed jobs, committed to a major, (2 of them, actually,) and as a good friend puts it, I am starting to see choices I make really rule out other possibilities. I was fortunate enough to go to New Zealand(!!!!) and spend time with my family that I either haven't met or haven't really spent as much time as I would like with. Needless to say, between the great food by my Mother-in-law, the fun with my family, and the great surf, I felt like a (rather large) kid in a candy store...

Called Raglan, by the way, and the little spec on the peak of the breaking wave over my left shoulder, a surfer... Thanks again to Uncle Terry and the boys for spoiling me and taking me there! Also, disclaimer on the food. Not really Mum's, but as close an approximation to the daily grandeur as I could find in the first three pages of Google Image results.

Were I at a slightly different juncture in my life, and a little richer, I would seriously consider setting up camp there for a while. But, like my wise friend once said... the choices we make now are starting to affect some of our possibilities down the road. For me that means that my second kid will be born! For him, among other things, that he wants to have his first!

Which brings me to my second humongous event of the summer... I'm going to be a daddy!!! Again!!! As you can see on the ticker on the right side of your screen, there are about 34... 33... 32... days left, and it is going way too quickly. If I wasn't ready for Alena to come prancing (see her in the Olympic Fountain above) into our lives, I am definitely less ready for Baby Boy. To complicate things, I get to worry long-distance about how my sweet wife is doing and attempt to make a last-minute dash to get there in time for the birth, while hoping that Oliver's timing doesn't make me miss my final.

Third herculean feat of the summer - remodeling five 950 sq. ft. apartments in 3 weeks, while taking finals, and hoping that my little boy and precious Hannah both make it, healthily, through the month of August. Also, that Lena doesn't kill one or both of them out of jealousy over lost attention.

All in all, I can't begin to describe the amount that I have learned over the past 6 months - year though, and am very happy. Anyone who has a child, more kids than one, has ever gotten married, or just waited for something big before, may be able to understand a little bit of the anxious excitement that I feel right now. Much more than Christmas, or a birthday... a new little one to attempt to teach and to play with and to love!

But even more, the feeling after a long bout with a great boss, a rough semester at school, and a round in life's school of hard knocks, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and its actually quite close. I am excited for the rest of this summer.

Did I mention that the desert where I have chosen to go to school is hotter than Hades right now....?

"How are you doing, Evan?" Just freaking great.