It’s about time for my post this morning, but I have only 8 minutes before I go upstairs and wake my oldest grandchild, Ephraim, and his friend Carter.  Ephraim, 14 and a long-distance runner in school, wants to run a timed mile this morning (actually, every morning), so I’ll drive the two of them to a high school track and watch. Possibly I’ll walk a 1/4 or 1/2 mile. We’ve doing it early because the forecast temperature today is over 100°.

Last week, we had the three youngest grandchildren with us, and had a good time with them. I meant to do a couple of posts about that, but haven’t. They played and read and spent time on screens. A trip or two ago I established a rule: 30 minutes reading in a book each day (each morning) until they could get their screens. All but the 5 1/2-year-old, who can’t read yet, seem to embrace this rule well. Ezra, the second oldest, does a lot of reading in books without being prompted. He found my book, The Kuwait Years In Letters, and found pleasure reading in it. Elise did too. Of course, they both laughed at their mom’s juvenile letters, at spelling and grammar errors. But, hey, their mom wrote letters as a 7-year-old, and they don’t. End of story.

Last week we had the three youngest. This week the oldest and his friend. We made the switcheroo on Saturday, driving halfway to their home in West Texas and meeting up with their dad. That was a lot of hours in the car, but time well spent.

So this post is a bit short today, and not focused at all in writing. I have a longer post planned for Friday. We’ll see if the week allows for completing it.