Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

I'm sitting in the basement with my shirt off, Blue Cheer's cover of "Summertime Blues" thumping through my head, trying to reckon how long I can delay getting ready to take Jack to his last Little League game of the season, and suddenly realizing how desperately I need to slow down sometimes. Summer is that sometimes. The quote for the title of this posting is from Whitman's Song of Myself, and it's helped me get in the right frame of mind as Chelsea and I hurdle our way through house-hunting, selling, packing, et cetera. 

I feel thankful that these moments of lassitude and clarity come at times because they enable me to love and appreciate what I have, namely, my two beautiful children. I love them more every day. Jack knows the whole alphabet and is counting and using ordinal numbers up to 20. Julia has a whole menagerie of stuffed friends that she regularly parades, pays court to, and medicates, not to mention the toad she has adopted that, no joke, has shown up on our back porch three times so far to visit her. My children read and play and joke and laugh and learn and make me want to do all the same things as well. Surely children are evidence of a loving God.

I hope you enjoy the pictures below, as we've enjoyed living them.

Lounging in the window of what may be our new house.

Julia only wilts if she doesn't get enough sugar.

Childhood memories of "NERD GIRL!" echo through my head.

Jack told me that when he grows up, he wants me to become a construction worker and he'll become Joaquin, the hero soldier from his favorite movie, "The Book of Life."

This isn't acting. She was this excited from the moment we bought corn at the store until we handed it to her.

Our last Friday at All-Pro Dads, a faith-based parenting meeting we attended throughout the year. 

Our little dryad.

Jack's end-of-year picnic.

Going to see "Cinderella" at the drive-in.

 Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John.

This is one of many pictures we have of Julia resting with her head on a pet.

We did take a serious picture of them, but this one was better.

How could I not include this guy? He's practically a third kid. 

Jack is as graceful a sleeper as his mother. 

Friends.