Olof’s sister, Anna, wrote to me last night saying that she’d be over at her parents’ place today with a big box of clothes that their youngest daughter, who’s 11, has outgrown, and that I could take my girls over to “shop” a little before she took the leftovers to the charity box. We found more than I thought we might–my kids can be pretty picky about clothes–and some of the best pieces, for me, were a few things that were Lydia’s back in the day. I took even the ones that my kids said they didn’t want, purely for nostalgia’s sake.

Speaking of the Lydia, she’s home now and staying over at least a night or two, which I’m glad for. Even before she moved out, she spent so many days and nights away that it wasn’t really much of an adjustment to have her gone pretty much all the time, but I’ve still noticed that when she’s here everything feels much more as it should be. I know we’ve got plenty of years left with kids in the house, but I can already tell that it’s going to be a strange, strange thing when Olof and I are empty-nesters.