Wave your little hand and whisper, "So long, dearie!"

This morning Grandpa picked up our "youth" (Rachel and Miriam easily qualify in this category, but Benjamin will be joining the young men in January, so he's close enough) to go clean the church. Ordinarily we all go but, uh, when our team leader put forth 7:00 am as a non-negotiable start time, I blanched a little. 

I'm tired, okay? 

Phoebe has slept "through" the night perhaps five times in her life. Phoebe doesn't nap anymore (not typically). Once Phoebe gets up, my day lasts until she goes to bed (and then I have to stay up and take care of other things). 

Waking her (and the rest of the kids) up at 6:00 (or so) in the morning so that we could get all the kids fed and dressed and out the door sounded like a terrible idea. 

And Andrew's been burning the candle at both ends to play Thanksgiving host and attempt to keep up with his work projects, so he's beyond tired...and...

Anyway, we just didn't go. We may have gone if a compromise on the time could have been found. But we sent our kids to represent, so that's got to count for something, right?

*****

In the mid-morning, Grandpa showed up with Emily and Katherine so that we could all say our goodbyes before he (and Zoë and Alexander) took them to the airport. 

Here is everybody except for me:

And here are all the grown ups, including me...and Phoebe (who is not a grown up, but who got to be in the picture, anyway):

And here is a picture that took me a minute to figure out because I have bunny ears:

I wasn't sure what was going on because Emily has her arms down and Andrew is holding Phoebe. Neither Reid nor Katherine would be able to reach me. So where are those fingers coming from?!

It took me a minute to see Benjamin standing behind me, but he's there alright!

After they left, Andrew and I went to the neighbour's yard with Rachel and Miriam (Benjamin watched Phoebe in our backyard, where we could keep an eye on them, but where they'd (mostly Phoebe) be safely away from any power tools) and we detached the roof from the walls. Knowing we'd be far too weak to lift the roof down on our own, we used ratchet straps to hold it onto the frame of the clubhouse until we can get a few people to help us lift it. 

As far as I can tell, it's only two roof sheathing boards, plus the frame, and the shingles...so it shouldn't be too terribly heavy. We'll see...