I came back from Tokyo on Friday early evening and loved being greeted by Eric, Owen, Annie, and Olivia. Then, we packed up on Saturday morning and went camping with our neighbor friends, the Ito family. It was good to have these kind of shared experiences together. We had a good time with a river nearby for swimming (and falling into – see Annie below)…the Itos grilled some great squid, I taught them how to make perfect roasted marshmallows (seriously- they were enlightened); this morning by the river we tried the Coke and mentos experiment (we only got 2 mentos in so it wasn’t too big an explosion) and we were thankful for a good tent and perfect camping weather.

Tomorrow we get to finish unpacking from camping and my Tokyo trip, do ten loads of laundry, and get ready for Owen’s school to start on Tuesday.

Putting Owen to bed tonight, I started to pray with him, and he said, “Mommy, we haven’t said our Bible verses for a while.” So we started to review Psalm 23. When we got to “He restores my soul,” Owen asked what this verse means. So I tried to explain, “when we are tired God wants to refresh our hearts.” And Owen looked and said, “Or can’t you just go to bed?”
We’re tired – it’s been a LONG August. We need God to refresh our hearts – He can do that. But we also – might just need to get some sleep. We can do that.