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The Three Musketeers.  That's what we've been for the last three years.  Glo, John and I.  We do everything together, and the thing that Glo said she would miss the most?  Sitting on the couch between us at night, watching TV. This week, I dropped Glo off at BYU to start her undergraduate journey.  It might have been less painful if someone had just reached inside my chest and ripped out my heart.  Everyone keeps telling me that it's going to be hard because I won't have any kids at home anymore, but I can say with certainly that it's going to be hard because I won't' have GLO at home anymore. Glo's and my special relationship started seven years ago when I broke my ankle.  Ethan was on his mission, and Mark and Hannah were at Interlochen.  John was at work all day and building a pond at night.  Glo was everything to me.  She would fetch me anything I needed.  She raised puppies, and she did everything necessary to take care of ...

As of the beginning of August, Johannah has been on her mission to Ecuador for six months.  Little did we know back in February that she would have a small pit stop. At the end of July, Johannah wrote us her weekly email and mentioned that she had been at a playground with the other missionaries and had gone down a slide.  It was one of the old-school slides--high and made of metal, and because it had been raining, wet.  At the bottom of the second time going down the slide, she stopped herself with her feet (naturally) and heard something "pop".  She insisted in her email that she was sure everything was fine, but that she was going for a set of x-rays the next day. We waited a week to hear that she had fractured her ankle in two places (the ankle itself, and the fibula).  She had been placed in a boot. I try to be a very low-maintenance mother, but this was definitely stretching that ability.  I could hardly believe that I hadn't heard anything fr...

I can't write about this summer without writing about my friend, Jackie Becker. Jackie is a fellow health assistant of mine, and that is where the similarity between the two of us ends.  She's only 20 years old, and she's currently studying for her RN from a small liberal arts college in Ohio.  She and I spend a lot of time together, because in all honesty, she drives most people up the wall for one reason:  she has ADHD. Disclaimer:  I have never spent any amount of time with anyone with ADD or ADHD.  I have seen kids who have been diagnosed with it, and I pretty much run the other way.  Having grown up a musician, concentration has been a key component of any success in my life, and I have no concept of how anyone with ADHD even functions.  ADHD scares me. Well let me tell you.  I have definitely been missing something in my life, because Jackie is my favorite work colleague this summer.  She is the most interesting, exciting, spontan...

You know, I don't have a lot of friends.  I tend to make one or two really close friends and call it a day.  For the past couple of years, it's been pretty lonely for me.  I just haven't been able to make friend connections in State College.  For this reason, I always enjoy working at Interlochen because I'm generally surrounded by friends all day long. A really bad incident happened this past weekend here at camp.  Without going into a lot of detail, Glo was threatened by a camp staffer because she was breaking a very small rule (which I had told her to break), and when she was approached by the camp staffer...and threatened....I lashed out at him.  Unfortunately, I knew him from past bad experiences, and I had a feeling he wasn't going to let sleeping dogs lie. He didn't.  He reported both Glo and me.  And I pretty much fell apart.  I'm a rule keeper to a fault, but I do believe there are a few times when rules should be broken.  A...

A friend of ours in our old Bitburg ward used to rename "trials" as "growth opportunities".  That phrase and idea has stuck with me over the years, because it's a great way to take something difficult and put a positive spin on it. Glo was stretched and pulled and pushed this past week at Interlochen.  I do believe there were a couple of times that she wasn't sure she was going to be successful at the end, but to her credit, she kept going through the necessary motions, and she did indeed make it. She sat Concermaster of the Interlochen Philharmonic (IP) this past week.  It's a huge honor to be first chair, first violin of any orchestra, because in essence, you are the leader of not only your section of 14 violins, but of the entire orchestra.  You are responsible for tuning the orchestra at the beginning of any rehearsal, and you work closely with the conductor. Originally, Glo was disappointed in being placed in the "lower" orchestra of...

Since I made this blog private several years ago, I feel as if it's become more of a journal of my own personal thoughts than a collection of writings of the family.  I have lots of invited readers, but really only Sarah and Ethan are regular readers of it.  With that, I feel the need to record my feelings tonight. Tomorrow, John leaves State College behind.  He'll be driving from Port Matilda to Ypsilanti with four dogs in Greenie.  He's spent a lot of time this week, trying to get the house ready....for nothing. I never honestly thought this day would come, but it has.  We are officially leaving our house behind, and we don't have a buyer in sight.  Our beautiful house full of so many memories.  Our land, a veritable Garden of Eden in the middle of the Commonwealth.  Even our trusty goldfish friends who are now trained as hand-fed creatures. Nobody wants our house.  It is either too expensive, or too small, or too much land, or too ne...

I have the best job in the world.  And surprisingly, I'm not talking about being a mom. I just love my job here at Interlochen.  In a world where I could choose what I would do each and every day, it would be working here. People know that I'm a "Health Assistant" here, but that description leaves a lot to the imagination.  Kind of like people who work in "Compliance". :-) I wake up each morning around 6 a.m., shower, throw on my uniform, and leave for work by 6:45.  I walk up to our tiny health service cabin in the woods around 7 a.m., and prepare for whatever the day will throw at me. I fill three coolers of water and place them around the cabin.  I make sure all the patient beds are made and ready.  I do a bit of clerical work.  I catch up from the previous day with my friends...conveniently around the water cooler :-) Then, around 7:45, campers begin showing up to take their daily meds.  It's like a dance between the nurses and me. ...

Oh my goodness, I need to find a way to stop time!  It's moving way too quickly for me, and I feel at times as if I'm losing my footing. Today, the last Kennedy kid checked into Interlochen.  Yep, this was it.  Little Baby Glo is beginning her ninth (and final) year as an Interlochen camper. I have had so many thoughts today about those past nine years with the Babe.  Here are just a few: The first year Glo came to Interlochen, she didn't want to do anything with violin.  Instead, she filled her day with art classes.  Ceramics and painting are the ones I actually remember.  They were held in the old Junior Arts building (that has since been torn down). She loved Environmental Science with Coggin.  She would come home daily with new tidbits of information about the Michigan backwoods, along with mosquito bites covering half of her body.  One year I got really good about spraying her down before she went to class, and she came home with ...

I love the hymns of the church.  So many times, they are sermons unto themselves.  There is a hymn with these words: Sweet is the peace the gospel brings to seeking minds and true, With light refulgent on its wings it clears the human view. Its laws and precepts are divine and show a Father's care. Transcendent love and mercy shine in each injunction there. Faithless tradition flees its pow'r, and unbelief gives way, The gloomy clouds which used to low'r, submit to reason's sway. This past weekend, Mark, Allison, Glo and I headed to Philadelphia one last time.  It was ultimately for one more lesson with Amy, but we turned it into a mini-party seeing as it was Markie Boy's 24th birthday, and Glo's graduation weekend. Goodness, it was so good to get away and have a little bit of fun! We shopped at King of Prussia mall for Mark and Glo.  Mark got Levi's from an actual Levi's store (and yes, they actually carried a couple of pairs in jeans wit...

Imagine a spider web.  I know, I know--there are several Kennedy family members who would rather not think of spiders, but you can't deny that the webs spiders create are pretty fantastic.  All those long tendrils of silk leading to one central point of the web.  Just imagine that.  You can even imagine it in a lovely meadow with dewdrops hanging from the strands if that makes you feel better :-) I have a lovely tender mercy which sits at the center of several tendrils of experiences that I would like to share.  It might take me a minute to get around to that "core" of the web, but please bear with me. I don't know what it is, but in our current ward (and stake), and in the Bitburg ward, I have had some serious issues with some of my priesthood leaders.  Before we moved to Germany, I had served as Primary president in our ward in Dayton without a single hitch, nor had I had any problems before that, so I'm not sure what has happened.  I can't ...