A lot of good went down this weekend at our home.

The house has once again been redeemed from its brush with Reorganizing and Rearranging With Lacey and the rooms are in basically pretty good order and walking around at night in the dark is no longer a fear-inducing obstacle course.  One of my friends with a pretty high tolerance for disorder stopped over during the height of the insanity and commented something like, “Wow.  Even for you – this is crazy.”  (Yeah, it wasn’t a compliment at all, of course.)

School ran pretty smoothly and we are already half way to our first six week break.  (Whoever suggested teaching six weeks on, one week off might be a genius.  I mean, surely I can find the motivation to do something for just six weeks in a row with a promised break at the end – right?)

And beautiful Piper Finnian Willow turned an astounding and shocking NINE years old this weekend.

My youngest daughter.  Entering boldly into The Last Year Of Single Digits.  It’s much too much to handle.

This sweet and rowdy girl was born on my mother’s birthday and shares many of my mom’s physical qualities – that nose and those freckles and the bent of her eyes.  She also boasts the lion’s share of my mother’s tenacity and my mom’s spunk is on steroids in Piper’s nine-year-old self.

For her birthday celebration she asked for horseback riding – western-style.  (It’s Lost Valley Ranch’s fault.)  She’s been wearing her cowboy hat to church, along with her boots.  (Last week she announced – “This year for Sunday School I think I’ll make every week a theme week.  Like a costume each week.”  I smiled as she assembled the jeans and the boots and the hat and the braid for last week’s church experience.  This week I most definitely recalled her prior plan but did not mention it to her as we left the house.  She was already wearing her cowboy boots but on the way out of the door she remembered her plan.  “Oh no,” she groaned.  “I forgot to plan my theme for this week!”)

The horseback riding worked out and she was able to invite a few friends with her to amble around in a saddle astride a horse on a rather hot August afternoon.  She was more than satisfied and I love that nine is still a number that thinks riding in a circle in a corral with two buddies is a celebration.

And she looks cute in a helmet or a hat!

Of course, we all celebrated when the birthday girl declared that yes – for the fourth year in a row she would rather have peanut butter pie than birthday cake.  It’s SO good.  And I’ve long since given up preparing the pie myself.  It used to be one of Riley’s signature dishes and now the honor has been passed right along to London.

And to top off Saturday’s festivities we really rejoiced because a new old dryer came to reside in our laundry room.

That’s a big deal you guys.

Our former dryer broke down three weeks ago, maybe four.  It had been a $50 purchase a few years back so it had served its purpose quite well.  I want a dryer, naturally, but it didn’t rank as high as you might think on a priority list because we had a clothesline.  Fresh air.  Crisp clothes.  Sunshine.  It all seemed fine.

Instead we had frequent afternoon rains, forgetful me, stacks of unwashed clothing piled in a hidden corner upstairs and a clothesline that also decided to break.  What?  You didn’t think a clothesline can break?  It can.  It can just fall right over onto the ground with your only set of sheets for your own bed right there on it.  That’s a thing.  It can happen.

Which, of course, it did.  Like probably a week or two ago.  And I kept thinking – yes, dryer.  Deal with the dryer situation.  For the love.

A very kind Facebook message appeared.  “We have an old dryer you can have if you can pick it up.”  Awesome.  Yes, I do want that dryer.  Thank you so very much.

But then there’s the no truck dilemma and the time factor and the forgetful me issue and the clothes keep piling up – or hanging on the grass in the rain or whatever state they keep finding themselves in and my broken dryer is still taking up valuable real estate in the laundry room and Bergen keeps telling me he’s completely run out of clean shorts and I don’t know why that suddenly bothers him when it never has before and I keep thinking about a dryer but I keep not really handling the problem.

And then the next over-the-top kind message.  “My husband and I have time today.  We want to pick up the dryer for you.  What’s the address?  Will you be home this afternoon?”

This.  This act of legitimate service and love.  Kindness and thoughtfulness.  From a woman one week past her due date with her first ever child.  (Was I that amazingly thoughtful with my first pregnancy?  I forget – but I’m pretty certain the answer is not what I’d like it to be.)  And her husband.  Who knows he will be doing ALL the heavy lifting of said dryer delivery with his beautiful and very pregnant wife.  A husband I actually have never met in person although his sweet wife has been our math tutor on and off for several years.

They recruit friends and they show up with a working dryer at my house.  (Friends I don’t even know.  Because people are actually really very nice.)  Of course there are complications.  Weird connection wire thing that has to be switched out.  Which he does.  With some sort of magic tool box he carried in his magic truck.  And then he takes my older dryer away.  Away from my presence never to bother me again.

Just the perfect sort of miracle that my Saturday afternoon was not expecting.  

The kids have been saying all day as I wash load after load after load, “Mom – this towel is not crunchy!  Mom – isn’t it cool that my shirt smells SO good?”  Soft towels and fresh shirts.  We are living the high life, you guys.

Really – I can only hope all of you had a weekend as full of life and milestones and knowing you are cared for as our family did.  (I do hope, for your sake, that your weekend included more birthday and less broken dryer, but hey – what better way for God to reach down and offer love and help than through broken dryers and generous strangers and thoughtful friends and couples who give up their time to lend a hand to one incredibly grateful now-smelling-clean family?)

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