A June Whirlwind

I can't believe it's July already.
June was a blur of activity.
We hiked in Spain,

Me with Earl and Maurice as we crossed the Pyrenees

 bought a house in France,

It needs a little love, but it has a garden

 said goodbye to all of our friends in France before we left for the summer and spent a night in Paris,

Always love the dramatic sky in Paris

flew home to the States,

Always love spending time with Mom and Dad.

At the Gulf of Mexico with Earl

drove from Florida to Ohio

Dinner with two of our three kids

 then Ohio to Massachusetts.

This is actually a view in Vermont, I think. Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire are all very close together here.

And here we are for most of the summer.
It's rural and I am sure to have lots of time to write, but less to write about.

Changes

Everyone's life changes in 10 years. That's just life.

Little boys who run through fields pretending hockey sticks are guns, turn into big boys who total their cars and worry about ACT test scores.
So everyone's life is different now than it was 10 years ago.
Kids grow up. Wrinkles appear on our once smooth faces. Our concerns about getting them to sleep in their own beds change to worries that they may be sleeping in someone else's beds.
But the attack on Sept. 11, 2001 gives us all a marker from which to measure our lives. As a culture, we'll always look back at that moment to consider what life was then and what it is now.
Our family homeschooled in 2001, so we waited for September to take a vacation to Mackinac Island, Michigan. The island doesn't allow cars. We take a ferry to it and transport our bicycles. Our kids were 9, 7 and 5 that year.
We were preparing to ride our bikes around the island on an 8-mile path. We went into the bike shop at the hotel for something and they had the television on. A plane had flown into the World Trade Center.
Reports were early and it looked like a small plane. What a terrible accident, we thought as we continued to the smooth path that stretches around the island.
By the time we completed that road and stopped in town for food and drink, life in the United States was transformed. Some people half-heartedly looked through the shops in town, but most people retreated, like we did, to their hotel rooms.
We had a family room with one sleeping room for kids and another for Earl and me. We tried to keep the kids on their side so they wouldn't see the scary images of the buildings collapsing, the smoke pouring skyward, the terrified faces of the people watching the destruction. We searched out cartoons for the kids to watch while we were unable to turn away from the carnage, the image of that one plane striking the World Trade Center over and over.
Even without cell phones, families managed to contact each other. Mom and Dad were in North Carolina. Craig and family in Texas. Kevin and family in Ohio. Everyone was safe.
We came home from our vacation a few days early. Enjoying ourselves seemed impossible.
These are the images I'll always remember from Sept. 11, 2001. The day life changed.
How about you? Where were you when you heard about the attacks?