Summer Break Day #51

• Oxbear leaves for the worship service to direct sound and video again, leaving me to direct three clowns at home
• Yali finds one of the baby woodpeckers still hanging around the felled tree; he names her “Violet”
• Take Yali and Patience to the Wild Bird Sanctuary; had no idea what, or how crazy big a “Steller’s Sea Eagle” is
• Pick up bad stuff like fried fish sandwiches and cheese curds on the way back for dinner
• While the kids get ready for bed, Oxbear drains a sinkful of rice and watered-down blue paint into a tub from the bathroom pipes

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During the morning worship service live stream…

Patience was busy scribbling freckles or “ants” all over her legs with a brown marker, singing to herself, “La la la la,” which made Puck laugh – “Are those beauty spots, Patience?” – while pulling open his money box paint can with a pair of pliers – “I just like to open this” – and reminding me to remind Oxbear over text to mute our pastor’s mike during the hymns, as Yali took a bathroom pass, where I finally walked back upstairs to find him soaking rice in the sink, as Puck asked if he could get a pet raccoon, and Patience began sucking down a banana yogurt on the coffee table that I wasn’t sure how old it actually was until it was too late, just as Puck waved two twenty dollars bills in Cheese the kitten’s yellow eyes, declaring, “You cost this much. You’re the perfect little beast,” … and yet I think I still pulled a line from the end of the sermon that went something like, “If you love God, you will obey His commandments with pleasure.”