Visit us!

The Malms came to Vegas for a few days so Sofia could play in a volleyball tournament. It was fun to watch her and made me remember how much I liked watching Kenzie play. "Maybe I'm ready for this pandemic to end," I thought. "Maybe." And during the evenings, of course, we swam. 

And Mia and Timothy learned how to navigate the hover board together.

And there was lots of basketball, too.

Every time Mary comes to visit I watch her dive into honest and optimistic conversations with complete strangers. She talks and asks questions so casually and with such friendliness you'd think they hadn't just met twelve seconds before. She really does inspire me.

Next up was a visit with my cousin, Seth, and his family. 

After they left McKenzie opened her eyes wide and said, "I was *not* expecting that! My jaw *literally* dropped when he walked into the house and I had to consciously close it. I didn't even know 'jaw-dropping' was an *actual* thing." And then Carson and Miles said at the same time, "My first thought was, it's Hagrid!" 

And Hagrid he is. Such a kind and gentle giant. His whole family is wonderful.

Next up was Memorial Day.

I woke up in the morning and it didn't take long for me to start feeling all sorts of self pity that we had no plans. "I have no friends," is a common thought in my head and it never leads to anything good. Sometimes it takes a whole lot of effort to change it, though. Memorial Day was one of those times. "How can we have lived here for six years and have no one to party with on Memorial Day?" crept into my brain. "Everyone else has family around and they have no more room in their hearts for us," is another one. And always, always, always, "there must be something wrong with me."

I let myself sit in those feelings all morning and even let some tears fall before deciding enough was enough and that I was sick and tired of letting all those thoughts ruin my days. I tried to believe, just for a second, that there might be other lonely people out there... maybe even in my neighborhood. I always fight that thought, though, because it doesn't support my sad story and for some reason I'm really attached to my sad story. But anyway, I believed it for a minute which was enough time to get a text out to a few families to invite them over for a barbeque. And wouldn't you know, they said yes, so I tried searching for more lonely hearts... and it turns out there were way more lonely hearts out there than I anticipated and the party kept growing and growing.

Ah, look at all the lonely people. All the lonely people. Where do they all come from?

It was a good day. And ended up not feeling lonely at all.