1. Graduate from Sac State
2. $ub
3. San Diego part 1 for Cori's high school graduation
4. La Quinta/ San Diego part 2 for Girls weekend a partial family reunion
5. Beach House weekend with friends!!!!
6. Frontier Ranch with some of the best junior high girls EVER!
7. Palm Desert adventures at the Nest and Dino Land with Sam and Sara
8. Breakway crazy day camp with cute 1st graders!
9. Olympics and pool parties
10. Neil Diamond's magical concert experience
Throw in some house sitting, pool time, river floats, card games and you've got a recipe for a fantastic summer of great memories and even greater friends!
But what else is life right now? I went back to San Ramon for a few days and had not a lot to do.. With both parents working hard all day, I had no one around to entertain/annoy depending on who you ask! ;) I started to do a puzzle because I haven't done a puzzle in what feels like AGES! I don't mean a wooden puzzle with a kindergartener, but a real one. With 1,000+ pieces, tiny pieces, similar colors and shades... that kind of puzzle. There is something about being in college where space is a premium that makes it hard to dedicate an entire table surface to completing a puzzle when you or one of your many roommates might need it for a late night paper writing session.
Anyway, back to San Ramon puzzle-doing.... I sat down at the dining room table where all puzzles are built at Cree Court! As I was sitting there, turning over pieces, separating edges from non-edges, starting to think about the colors of the puzzle (because piece shapes were not going to help me with this one!) and looking for matching pieces (you know the ones where the innies and the outties matched up and the colors made it obvious) and I just started to relax a little. I'm a complete, self admitted nerd when it comes to how relaxing puzzles are for me. There are nights in high school where my family and I would start a puzzle and I would sacrifice precious teenage sleep to find that "one-more-piece." So my brain is relaxing and I just started to think about how doing a puzzle was particularly fitting to where my life is at right now.
This summer has been nothing but connecting pieces together. I don't have an apartment in Davis right now, but somehow God had this awesome plan for me to stay and house sit all summer. And the weeks and weekends that I didn't have a place to stay, I had summer camp, or beach houses, or generous friends to fill the gaps. All the while, I've been searching for that "what's next in life" puzzle piece. Kinda a big piece I've realized... I'm so excited about the possibility of having my own classroom but that piece of the puzzle hasn't fallen yet... and I've been given a crazy amount of patience as I wait for that to come together... definitely not my own source of patience because there is no way that I could do this on my own.
Anyway, long story short, I've realized that the "what's next" piece is actually its own mini-puzzle within the larger puzzle of life. And, I'm okay with that! When I think about being in Davis or being in San Ramon, I can get excited about different things in both places. Realizing that that is really a lucky place to be has been a huge gift. Normally, I get caught in trying to make the best decision that is perfect in every way that could possibly matter (admittedly, these things are pretty superficial, but there is some depth involved!) What I've realized is that deciding to make an adventure out of each and every day is what it is all about, no matter where I'm at from a location standpoint. So often I want the "where" of my life to matter. But the reality of it all is that no matter where I'm at or who I'm with, I will constantly be filling in pieces to the "what's next" puzzle. And in the same way that doing puzzles at the dining room table in San Ramon relaxes me, I can find and feel a sense of relaxation as I wait for the next pieces to fill in!
Also, while writing this.... these songs came on in my iTunes library... pretty fitting and it might have something small to do with the fact that I have bought all these songs within the past week!
