"I go back to AIRRRRRRPORRRRRT!!!!"

I'm now two weeks into my three-week stint as a single mom. For anybody who doesn't know -meaning anybody who has not been close enough to hear the blarring music at my pity party or felt the earth-heaving sighs - Benjy has been in Africa for the last 14 days. Or "Aferkuh", as Riley says. He is there to help in the building process of a new hospital in Togo, West Africa. So far he has completed 3 kitchen installs and a few other small jobs, mostly in missionary housing and the guesthouse. He sounds tired but happy.

And we are here.

Thanks to family and friends, we haven't had too much down time to ponder our loneliness, although Annie does remember it once in a while and gets carried away to "the depths of despair."

Riley is persistent in believing that every time we go to church, daddy will be there. And every time we pull up to the house and he sees the red car parked in the driveway, he yells out "Daddy's home!" Poor kid. I really should take that car and park it down the road, out of sight. But there's only a week left. One week! And then the day will come when Riley shrieks "I go back to AIRPORT!!!" and I'll be able to scream back at him "OKAY!!!"

There's been a lot of screaming. And a lot of Curious George. Not a whole lot of cooking, though. I think I've only cooked twice. The first week we just steadily made our way through mountains of leftovers from the early Father's Day, early Birthday, and Last-Meal-Before-You-Leave feasts that I had made for Benjy. THAT was a LOT of MEAT!!! And this week we've been living off of handouts from all the kind people that have taken pity on us and invited us over to eat. I have not had to resort to mac-n-cheese once! NOT.EVEN.ONCE! {Not that mac-n-cheese isn't my secret favorite and I don't have 50 different ways to serve it.That's not the point. Focus.}

But like I said, we've stayed really busy. There was cherry-picking:

And a theme day:

A trip to the cabin:

And an over-night with the cousins, a day at grandma and grandpa Beck's, an outing to the Benzel Plantation, an evening at the magical Kert House of Fun, and a trip to Amy's Garden Farm. We fall into bed exhausted every night.

We've got some more fun things planned for this last week. Possibly even a home-cooked meal! I don't know, let's not dream too big.