tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24649076713237456282024-03-13T08:23:54.971-07:00Croft Adventureswriter / explorerMeghanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15261238896920242933noreply@blogger.comBlogger630125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-21071334501958602562023-11-12T11:26:00.000-08:002023-11-12T11:30:23.522-08:00INCONSISTENT AND HEALING<p> <span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I clash with consistency. In particular,</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> writing </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">consistently.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-992c7027-7fff-9e28-7754-ee5d9a6eaeda"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why is this? Your guess is as good as mine, really. Am I a chaotic human? Is it trauma? Or is my lack of consistency reflective of my ability to </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">live</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whatever it may be, it is me. I am inconsistent. I live my minutes and days and weeks in all the chaos and joy and pain and annoyances and while I live it I let my thoughts bottle up until the words can’t be contained in my body anymore, at which point they start leaking out of me in bits and pieces. Jumbled sentences leak into my iphone notes app and my journals and my laptop until suddenly the dam breaks and full paragraphs flow and I feel so light, so full of relief for having let it all out of me finally.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But once I get all the words out, I’m dry. So I sit back and let it all begin to drip in the lake until the lake is full yet again. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is a vicious repetitive cycle that I’d love to free myself from, because wouldn’t writing </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">consistently</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> be just lovely? </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One day, I tell myself.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One day I will build a writing cabin in my backyard forest where I can simultaneously write and stare out the windows, finding an inspiration in the secluded space and watching my animals roam around the greenery.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Currently, realistically, my goal is just a simple writing date with myself and my laptop at a coffee shop once a week. But in juggling all of life in this stage, It’s stupid ridiculous how hard just </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">one night a week</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> becomes.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s a song on my</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Goddess</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> playlist by Olivia Fern called “Remember Why You Came”. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My favorite part is when she says, </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #434a56; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bring your voice, your hands, your heart or your drum</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #434a56; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whatever it is that you make your art from</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #434a56; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For if we don’t we may well choke</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #434a56; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On all the words we never spoke </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #434a56; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and all the songs and poems we never wrote, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #434a56; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and the fires within will turn to smoke.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #434a56; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For a vision, a dream, channeled through a brush stroke, a song or a scene</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #434a56; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Can be the spark that lights the dark we find ourselves in</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.8; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #434a56; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Art is and always has been a way for spirit to be seen.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #434a56; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I repeat that last line often when my resistance tells me not to sit and write, or not to publish something I wrote. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #434a56; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ART IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN A WAY FOR SPIRIT TO BE SEEN.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think about those lines often as a motivator when I’m hoping to find more consistency in my writing. Hope is all that I have sometimes, and sometimes it’s enough. (but sometimes it’s not.)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Life lately has been as follows:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have been settling into all the parts of what life becomes on the brink of winter. We prepped the farm by blowing out the sprinklers, digging up and tilling the gardens, piling leaves in the rabbit house and the chicken coop and the base of all our newest trees. We are prepping now for winter indoor projects like finishing the gym and painting the laundry room.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I bought Dan his dream Harley Davidson for his birthday this year. It was the most exciting present I have ever given and I will never top that one again.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We lost our last OG hen - Goldie Hen, the last of the good old girls. Three and a half years of free range living and then just dying naturally of old age is a good way for a chicken to live, I’d say. Now all four of the good old girls are buried side by side in our backyard farm graveyard. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thanks to a very strict and full football schedule we didn’t get to go camping much this year. It hurt so much, I could actually cry about it. I’m dying a little inside. This sounds dramatic, but it’s just true! I miss the simpler days when we camped every weekend because no one was in sports and we </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">could</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. In the same breath, I love watching the boys in sports and it fills me with pride to see how much they grow from them. So we win some and we lose some, I suppose.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have been healing.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By this I mean, I have been feeling my feelings - the ones that are hard and petty and rude and uncomfortable. I’m feeling them instead of hiding them or numbing them or distracting them away because I’m trying my best to break cycles and somehow it seems that the answer often lies on the other side of my triggers and shadows and big heavy human emotions.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But damn if it doesn’t hurt like hell!</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There’s this memory I have (and stay with me, this is relevant!) from a few years back when Dan and I hiked the tallest peak in Utah.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was the second morning following a day of hiking fifteen miles while wearing a fifty pound backpack. We had woken up at four am to get started on heading from our tent to the peak. I was sore and anxious and heading into the unknown without much sleep and without any of the conveniences from a pampered day-to-day life that I’m used to. And the moment that comes back to me so often now wasn’t the tip top of the peak, it was on our way </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the peak. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I remember it so well, and the memory flashes through my mind still to this day at random times. We had entered the top of a valley in the hike right as the sun was rising above the hillside next to us. We stopped then to filter water from the ice cold stream into our water bottles. I stopped and I stood right there, smiling, letting the sun rays wash over me like a warm bath and feeling so full of peace that I could have burst. It was so quiet there that for all Iknew we could have been the only humans on earth. Nothing mattered except right then and there where we stood in all it’s beauty.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because getting to that peak was one of the more painful weekends of my life, physically and mentally, the irony that this memory has become one of the best memories that I have is not lost on me.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I think that’s why I remember that very moment when I’m feeling my feelings. Because it’s a reminder that even when I am far outside my comfort zone feeling stiff and sore and painful and anxious and unsure if I will make it, there is massive reward. There are moments, in between the pain, where I can breathe it in and know it in my soul- this is peace. This is growth. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is healing.</span></p><br /></span><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUZrh1nyxO-ljhHSxL3c4dMWwJwTG90kisw40bgkA42fNj890qXc9f9SoVnsCO04Pw7k3Xy5ysrp_IfYK0M5gv2uV4xbK2G16EgtDgBcANHFp9Pfcs5nQJxY0jKZ5tBPQq1tpwtf6RUEawg_eZ10Y6DhIyJ24rbwqV4yyzw5Vm6imwENv0iHGVFVyB5K7b/s4032/0E22DC17-B334-4817-87A6-425745F2004E.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUZrh1nyxO-ljhHSxL3c4dMWwJwTG90kisw40bgkA42fNj890qXc9f9SoVnsCO04Pw7k3Xy5ysrp_IfYK0M5gv2uV4xbK2G16EgtDgBcANHFp9Pfcs5nQJxY0jKZ5tBPQq1tpwtf6RUEawg_eZ10Y6DhIyJ24rbwqV4yyzw5Vm6imwENv0iHGVFVyB5K7b/w480-h640/0E22DC17-B334-4817-87A6-425745F2004E.JPG" width="480" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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Indie music is playing softly from the outdoor patio speakers, a sprinkler is watering the grass next to me and the wet dirt smells like summer. I just picked cilantro fresh from my greenhouse to top my rice and plant-based-spicy-sausage dinner and I’m feeling the kind of contentment that doesn’t stay so I welcome it with open arms whenever it’s here.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-7d98f413-7fff-dbdc-2cce-8126449241ec"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the form of an update, I have a story for you today.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was the week before summer break and I had just arrived back home from a breath-work therapy class late at night when I snuck into the backyard with a flashlight to turn off a sprinkler that had been left on. As I turned the valve I heard a scurry-like sound near the coop to my right, and when I turned in that direction I was startled to see the eyes of a raccoon reflecting off the beam of my flashlight, it’s black and gray striped tail swinging back and forth as it shimmied up a giant elm tree.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Dan!” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I whisper-shouted to the back door, keeping the light shining on the raccoon so as not to lose it. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“HURRY GET OUT HERE!!”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Mom?” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Beck, still awake, popped his head out the storm door. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Get Dad, quick! There’s a RACCOON!” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I watched as it continued to stare back at me looking innocent, cute even. It stared at me from its perch halfway up the tree looking tired and overall completely undeterred by my presence. Minutes later Dan came out of the house still damp from the shower he had hurriedly jumped out of when he heard the news.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What followed was two hours of the most excitement the boys have had in a long time, and on a school night nonetheless! Two hours of Dan and the boys shooting bb guns at this raccoon, who I felt badly for but also understood that my chickens needed to be protected and so I allowed it. We watched it annoyed yet still somehow undeterred after every tiny bb popped it in the stomach, the butt, the shoulders. We watched it rub at its poor little eye after getting shot there too. We watched it begin to come down but then change its mind and climb alllllll the way to the top again at least ten times, before </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">finally</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> it came down and found some bravery to hit the ground running. We watched then as it ran beneath the fence, crossed the street and took for the river behind the baseball diamonds where we assume it lived.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yeah scram! And don’t come back here, these chickens aren’t FOOD!!”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was midnight by then and the boys slept like rocks after they came down from the excitement of the evening. I’m happy to report the raccoon has not returned (that we know of).</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In other homestead excitement, we have officially finished the chicken run so that the gals have somewhere safe to roam when we are gone! It turned out lovely, as all things Dan builds do. The pumpkin patch is overflowing and what was two pumpkin patches turned into three when we discovered a plethora growing from our compost pile! The salsa garden is also booming and I expect to be picking ripe peppers and onions by next week, with tomatoes and lettuce to follow shortly. I threw wildflower seeds around the rose bushes and am anxiously awaiting their arrival. In fact, I think I will be planting wildflowers all along the fenceline of our acre now - I think scattered wildflowers make sense for me and I would love to make this yard match my soul that way.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Look, these are the things I talk about at this age. I’m sorry, I don’t know what to tell you….it’s our joy! I feel I deserve that you know, having joy from something that’s really just silly in its simplicity, so I do not feel </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">too</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> sorry.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anyways, now that I’ve shared our homestead excitement, here’s some pictures from our trip to Hawaii back in April! Sharing these just in time to feel rushed to post about our next trip, which we will likely be on while you are reading this and I will likely not post pictures of until the Fall, while we are nearing another.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">xoxo</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvlgXHrQ71W3FcBx6wzgt5ag3dpCl76Gyxlt0L1nCleuBeX9phZBMqnR3UGU0oeRMoiIOmlnynACQIHr-tJPzQU305KMXQMmeZ_QF2AiMNI2d3PUtCUs73C-0IQK0aXjKp_PpHf0cWcOo5fuTsxxP6eD-KejsIEGGhuFGlSHznwPG2FTkQ_cf25rQGfKKg/s984/IMG_1127.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; 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font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-72242172579325542072023-03-20T11:14:00.007-07:002023-03-20T11:14:56.781-07:00GIVE AND TAKE<p> </p><span id="docs-internal-guid-343e23ee-7fff-3c6e-b827-ebf7adf3cb0d"><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A christmas poinsettia is currently wilting in our windowsill. About this time every year I confront this same crossroads - to water the poinsettia or to throw it in the compost. I’m always over it by march of course - spring is in reach now and I ache for her so much that anything to do with winter becomes practically nauseating. Yet evenso, I feel sad taking a perfectly good plant and throwing it out. I </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">accidentally</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> kill plants often, sure, but to do it on purpose feels heartless somehow.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have felt incredibly moody and for a good while I couldn’t pinpoint why, but as it turns out all I needed was a nap! Sleep!! Daylight savings really threw me for a loop this go-around when I woke up at 5:50 on Tuesday morning, which was only 4:50 a few days before that, and my body really struggled to catch up. I think I’m not fully caught up but I’m getting there, and when we see how light it is outside now at 7:00 at night I remember that there is a give and take to all things, and this give to the thrown-off-sleep take is really okay you know?</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We lost another of our OG hens, which makes two total losses this winter. This one was my white leghorn named Lucy who was three years old and starting to slow down a bit. She was killed both tragically and heroically by what we thought was a giant hawk but have deemed was actually most likely a young golden eagle who has been spotted about our town recently, foraging through town because the snow was so thick in the mountains that he was desperate for meat. (He didn’t get meat, I’ll have you know, because I looked out the window too late to stop the killing, but in time to scare him away before he took her.) I know that this is a part of life with free-range chickens but it doesn’t make it any less sad. Lucy was always a spitfire of a chicken, never giving any effs at all! She wasn’t top in the pecking order but she wasn’t bottom either - I daresay she wasn’t even </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the pecking order, she was in a world of her own! She was the hen who most loved my distant company, never wanting to be held but always nestling down beside my chair whenever I sat on the patio. She was strong and solid and brave and I loved her for it. I will miss her.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some good news on the farm is that we had only been averaging one egg a day since the eldest hens went through henopause, but now our newest flock have been laying and it has been much more exciting than it should be! Perhaps, given the current price of eggs, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">precisely </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as exciting as it should be. We are thrilled to have our fresh free-range eggs piling up on the counters again, readily available for german pancakes and omelets and cake baking!</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Listen, despite it being all I talk about here so far, I do have more in life going on than just chickens, although right now I can’t remember what…. Winter does this to me, I feel lost in a lonely world with emotions too big to hold inside of my body - but it’s the cold talking, it’s not real life. Spring equinox is next week, the snowstorms have turned to rainstorms and I see specks of grass showing. Soon we will be trading our snow boots for sandals and basketball shoes for baseball cleats, we’ll uncover the camper and dust her off for her first trip of the new year, we’ll start projects in the yard and spend mornings on the patio again…This winter was especially long! Do I say that every winter? Anyways, it feels true every year either way.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Recently we headed a few hours northwest to go snowmobiling in Yellowstone, something of a new yearly tradition that I like to call “sending winter off with a bang” - here are some pictures of that trip and a few more to boot! Life lately and all that! We are here, we are alive, we are trying our best and that is enough!</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ-Km9i9zsJ0sSZ_DosIJAMpsLcCmBz_6qoHxb6uITipoPcN72RzK55uRfT3tLzsOk3FyJdWH0JRzeUUxEiq-zxIowMljbmRMwMI6s7iFALsfBwhFfSA5i2iX87O9HRBD5W5adMSva__qq78e6xHeJxfOaUaHHrE5sHciRdULKhB_i9QPDWZbkewTBsw/s986/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="986" data-original-width="849" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ-Km9i9zsJ0sSZ_DosIJAMpsLcCmBz_6qoHxb6uITipoPcN72RzK55uRfT3tLzsOk3FyJdWH0JRzeUUxEiq-zxIowMljbmRMwMI6s7iFALsfBwhFfSA5i2iX87O9HRBD5W5adMSva__qq78e6xHeJxfOaUaHHrE5sHciRdULKhB_i9QPDWZbkewTBsw/s16000/1.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; 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margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"> </p></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT4DkOZt2tSopqK2r-szNAr42w-QL8XkGVQ5hWFNWrCzSQwpXRBxa2RCACXSp9wQHbmPE715HIs8nOIVsh3UAYORwUPhzjFi1THxEMNRt-8xJr3XC_wpk6oGytNFue8sGPYhWpDImmh_4AJ9IcJG8kpvlK2ZB8zCJH60yS6HywLXU5MIMC0xTsPIJe6g/s4032/HOME.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT4DkOZt2tSopqK2r-szNAr42w-QL8XkGVQ5hWFNWrCzSQwpXRBxa2RCACXSp9wQHbmPE715HIs8nOIVsh3UAYORwUPhzjFi1THxEMNRt-8xJr3XC_wpk6oGytNFue8sGPYhWpDImmh_4AJ9IcJG8kpvlK2ZB8zCJH60yS6HywLXU5MIMC0xTsPIJe6g/w480-h640/HOME.JPG" width="480" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It was the beginning of July in the year 2020 and the sun was at its peak point in the sky </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">while </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">sweat dripped down my face, my neck, my chest. My elbow was throbbing from the </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">heaviness </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">of the cement brush that I had been holding all morning. After researching </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">options and joking </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">that it sounded like a bagel topping, we had decided on a </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">“german </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">schmear” </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">technique to </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">change the old worn bricks of our newly purchased home </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">from red to gray. This is a repetitive </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">process of dipping a masonry brush into wet mortar and </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">then meticulously stroking the heavy </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">brush back and forth along the bricks. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Back and forth, dipping, repeating, again and again.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">We had started early in the morning when the air was cool but then the thick of the summer heat found us and the sun was drying each brick faster than the last, making it difficult to keep up. I considered driving to ‘aloha snow’ for a pina colada snow cone and then adding vodka (to simultaneously cool down and numb the pain) but because the schmear technique is extremely time sensitive I knew that was wishful thinking, and I instead staggered backwards to cry beneath the shade of our gazebo where my tears stuck to the salty sweat matted on my skin. </span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I fumed under my breath through sobs. All of my pain and all of my anger honed in on the half red half gray house in front of me, and in that moment that unpretentious sixties ranch house standing on one acre of unkempt land began to take all of the blame. The house that we had recently purchased for its potential to be our perfect oasis, the potential of which right then looked like staring out at a distant mirage in the desert. </span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">While directing all of my anger towards this house that wasn’t yet home, I instinctively looked down at my feet where normally my fur-baby Rockie would sit panting and smiling, ever at my side, always there to lift my mood with her perfect unlimited love. But instead all I had were weeds growing heartily between the uneven cement pavers that I stood on. Only days earlier, Rockie had died in my arms after being bitten by a rattlesnake on a family camp trip. It hadn’t even been seven days since we buried her in the mountains next to all of the other family dogs who had passed on before her, and after over a decade of my life spent with her I had completely forgotten what life was like without her always there by my side. I thought about how much my adventurous Rockie would have loved her freedom on this fully fenced land, but instead she was abruptly taken away from our world just weeks after we moved in.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">My sobs grew louder while thoughts ran through my head such as, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">why did we buy this house? What massive mistake had we made? How will we ever turn this cold emptiness into something that feels warm and breathable?</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Without bothering to wipe the tears from my face, or even to stop them, I mustered the strength to leave the shade and face the sun blazed brick again because this kind of visceral pain was not new to me and I already knew that moving forward was the only way. I already knew that I couldn’t move backwards because I wouldn’t survive there. </span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">So I went back to it. Dip the brush. Swipe back and forth. Feel the unbearable heat on my skin. Accept the pain. Repeat.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I couldn’t have predicted that the german schmear would turn out even better than we had envisioned it would, even despite an unexpected summer thunderstorm that rolled in suddenly the next day and pounded rain on some of the still-drying cement. I couldn’t have predicted just how much better it would look once the faded brick turned a fresh gray and we added board & batten shutters next to all of the windows. </span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">Honestly, I couldn’t have predicted </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">any </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">of it.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">We would pull heaps of overgrown lilacs, trim piles upon piles of branches from overgrown trees, rose bushes, grape vines and weeds - oh the fields of waist high weeds! We would use a sledgehammer to demolish decaying wooden shelves that were rotting inside the old blackened half-burnt shed, and then we would fill that shed with pine chips and tractor tires and turn it into a fortress of a chicken coop that would be filled with happy chickens and spoiled rabbits - animals that would breathe some life back into this land.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Dan would hand-build a wooden sifter that looked more like a soccer goal to sift and filter massive mounds of dirt - turning up things hidden beneath it like rusty metal, potato factory belts, torn tire bits, ripped chunks of green shag carpet, beer cans and candy wrappers.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">While we worked through it all that first Summer, we would find such random things that we began joking about the possibility of discovering a body in all of our digging. Sure enough, that Autumn we would indeed find a small tombstone deep in the dirt beneath some of those overgrown lilacs, the tombstone of a stillborn baby named Bert from 1905.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">For weeks and weeks we would move wheelbarrows and trailers filled to the brim. We would bring in fresh manure and fence the garden beds where there would eventually grow things like corn, tomatoes, peas, lettuce, onions and radishes, and all of that cement we cleared of dirt mounds would eventually become our very own half court with a basketball hoop and space for the boys to drive their dirt bikes in circles. </span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">We would pour a solid cement patio the size of some people’s backyard and then add a hot tub nestled warmly beneath our string lit gazebo. I couldn’t have predicted how much peace I would find on that patio, how sacred a space it would become for me.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I couldn’t have predicted that one year would turn into three years and that by then, as I sit now, I would be enamored with this space. I couldn’t have predicted that this old house would speak to me through the creaks in the floors, that it would somehow breathe a spirit all of its own, that it would thank us and love us and carry us for how we brought it back to life again.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I think a lot lately about how, so often what we think we want isn’t what we need at all, and vice versa. I started very young thinking I knew what I wanted and discovering something different.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">“I won’t be like them!”</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> I once said, as everyone says in the unnerving innocence of youth.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I won’t become a wife while in my young and free twenties!</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">But then at twenty-four I met this man who made me laugh and whose familiarity rattled me and I immediately knew that I couldn’t live without him.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">We won’t have kids right away though, we’ll travel and explore the world first!</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">But then I learned that no force, not even birth control, can stop fate, and less than a year after our wedding we were holding a pumpkin sized baby boy in our arms while discovering an otherworldly and life changing kind of love.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I won’t stay here, stuck in the town I grew up in!</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">But then, just as we were in the midst of potential job offers that would take us north to finally leave this town behind, we were hit with covid lockdown and potential layoffs in my husband’s line of business. So instead, we buy this unique property with an old house that needs a lot of love smack in the middle of my hometown. On a busy road right in the middle of the bustle, yet boasting a magnificent tree-filled one acre backyard that could be our dreamworld. A property that’s a little bit city, a little bit country. Just like me.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And now it reminds me of sunday dinners at grandma’s and the innocence of my youth. It reminds me of heavy eyes closing slowly beneath a sleeping bag on the couch, lulled to sleep by familiar chimes from her grandfather clock in the hallway. Of thumbing through a pile of newspapers as tall as myself in her hall closet, searching for the sunday comics or the weekend movie times. Of rusted squeaky swings in her backyard, picking fresh tomatoes off the vine, hunting for easter eggs, ‘the sound of music’ playing from her tube tv, purple petunias lining the front yard, always being able to depend on orange creamsicles in the freezer or poptarts in the pantry.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It reminds me of all the things a good childhood could be made up of. Comfort. Solace. Safety and life-sustaining love.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And then my kids ride their bikes to school every morning and walk to baseball games across the street for concession-stand cheeseburgers on summer nights. They take swimming lessons and play basketball games at the same high school I went to, with kids of parents I grew up with. We make a ritual of evening walks together beside the same river I built forts next to when I was only as tall as them. I watch from the kitchen window and soak in the sounds of their laughter while they play night games all evening and long past dark, using our treehouse as their home base.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And then driving to work in the mornings I listen to the very same country radio station I grew up listening to, with the very same DJ and his heartfelt anecdotes. And then I have a usual spot at my favorite sandwich shop, and the local friday night bartenders know my name, and when I drive main street or the backroads or the canyons into our mountains every turn and corner comes naturally, fluently, something I’ve always known and don’t have to think about doing anymore - like drinking from a glass or blowing on hot tea.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And then, the longer I stay here, the more I realize that I still see my little brother and my Dad everywhere I go. I see them where they once walked the halls of the school. I see them in the back booth of the same restaurants we sat and laughed at hundreds of times before - during ride-alongs in Dad’s police car, when James came home from Army boot camp, whenever someone in the family had a birthday to celebrate or we were all bored on a friday night. I see them at the summer fair, the marketplace, our old churchouse, the home not far from my house now where we all once lived. </span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I see them every morning in the sounds of the black capped chickadees singing in my backyard, the same birdsong I woke up to for all of my own childhood.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And then we fall into this rhythm of life that is what my dreams are made of. We go to sunday dinners at grandma’s. I have thursday writing dates with my sister. We camp all summer long with family and I watch my kids make the kind of memories with their cousins that they will treasure for the rest of their lives. It’s all perfect because it’s all simple, comfort, safety and life-sustaining love.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And then I realize that home isn’t a place anyways, it’s people. It has always been. It always will be.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And then I know in my marrow that for better or worse this place is forever a part of me. It’s engraved in me now, just like the curve of my nose or the lines on my hands. Wherever I go later on, once my kids have flown this coop, nothing will ever compare to the love and memories and people and heartache and joy I had right here in my hometown.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And then, slowly and suddenly all at once, I don’t ever want to leave.</span></div></span><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span></div></blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-19554068402489389082023-02-08T18:37:00.001-08:002023-02-08T19:51:26.782-08:00Fresh Start<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Dd6y6s2F8kl7tPl5lB3qksaxyfhJnKNZmyCXG-VnTmgXLcN0Uw_4EqH1ekPAWQK0_tYl8_vuRbire0lXvmzaoCXSsWfUfbMXOfFFw-ZqctswyAC2ICDt3ZaajmQLtFcQJDIY8eb19g_EtZkTN1YVdYHoN4qvXSiefp0BRNLHMbOxfdwIgIvt079rdQ/s4032/52BBC82D-5659-41DC-92BD-F935EFA86FF2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Dd6y6s2F8kl7tPl5lB3qksaxyfhJnKNZmyCXG-VnTmgXLcN0Uw_4EqH1ekPAWQK0_tYl8_vuRbire0lXvmzaoCXSsWfUfbMXOfFFw-ZqctswyAC2ICDt3ZaajmQLtFcQJDIY8eb19g_EtZkTN1YVdYHoN4qvXSiefp0BRNLHMbOxfdwIgIvt079rdQ/w300-h400/52BBC82D-5659-41DC-92BD-F935EFA86FF2.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Returning here has felt a lot like opening an old storage crate. I’ve been unboxing my old posts, wiping the dust from their words and bringing them back to life again.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-e2a90b6c-7fff-eeda-ee3e-a758c9f30193"><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s not that I haven’t been writing, it’s that I haven’t been </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">posting</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I needed to retreat for a while.The amount of events and the magnitude of life that has transpired during the past few years since I last posted here are so many that I have decided the easiest way to begin my return is to jump right in and pretend that I never stopped posting at all. Instead of playing catch up, for now, I will just start where we are. As it is…we just survived January! February is not much better than January, but it is shorter so I’m much more optimistic about it. Some things of note from late:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We lost our first chicken, Cafe. She was our oldest hen, a three year old fluffy rhode island red. Once she stopped laying eggs last autumn she began slowing down significantly. Every passing week she looked older and moved slower and because I saw it coming that way, I got to really spoil her for her last weeks of life. I gave her extra dried mealworms and took her on walks around the yard while cradling her in my arms and thanking her for being such a sweet hen friend, for spending her life with us, keeping the bugs away and gifting us her delicious protein packed eggs. She is the second farm animal that we’ve buried now where all the farm animals will go when it’s their time, beneath the elm trees in the backyard.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I started a Substack account for weekly newsletters and monthly audio recordings, if you’re interested in subscribing <a href="https://megcroft3.substack.com/p/why-we-tell-our-stories?sd=pf" target="_blank">here is the link</a>. And ooooh by the way! This is important! I have been writing a memoir! It’s my therapy: every week after I drop Beck at his weekly art class downtown, I sit at a back table in my favorite sandwich shop with a thick slice of buttered bread and a hot cup of tea and I write my heart out.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On a whim I cut my bangs. I did the very same thing this time last winter. It was a mistake, as it always is, but like clockwork I’ll probably do it again next year.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last Fall my dreams of owning a hot tub came true, and now in the dead of winter I’m really reaping the rewards of it more than ever. It’s frosty and frigid (30 degrees below zero not long ago!) and the fact that I can still sit on the patio (my happy place) and breathe fresh air while staying warm beneath the steamy bubbles of the spa has been intensely healing. Not enough to rid me of any seasonal depression, mind you, but enough to lift my spirits a bit and I’ll take anything I can get in the upliftment department these days.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve been drinking my coffee black most mornings, pouring honey to sweeten it only on the weekends. I feel fueled and rejuvenated in a way that I haven’t felt in a long time now, as though all of these years behind me are now pushing me forward with force.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve been listening to <a href="https://noahkahan.com/releases/stick-season/#/" target="_blank">Noah Kahan’s album ‘Stick Season’</a> on repeat.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My favorite shows right now are <a href="https://tv.apple.com/us/show/shrinking/umc.cmc.apzybj6eqf6pzccd97kev7bs?itscg=MC_20000&itsct=atvp_brand_omd&mttn3pid=Google%20AdWords&mttnagencyid=a5e&mttncc=US&mttnsiteid=143238&mttnsubad=OUS2019984_1-646063418337-c&mttnsubkw=146067015515__ueCl5gNV_&mttnsubplmnt=" target="_blank">Shrinking,</a> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758745/" target="_blank">Friday Night Lights </a>and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4789576/" target="_blank">The Path</a>.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Currently I’m reading these books by <a href="https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-lost-continent-travels-in-small-town-america_bill-bryson/246419/item/1958098/?gclid=CjwKCAiArY2fBhB9EiwAWqHK6otV0mIQQM6qs__PYBLIa9Kd3aiTaK3PmBtFVAnRJlnpqNuffX1EfRoCB18QAvD_BwE#idiq=1958098&edition=2336513" target="_blank">Bill Bryson</a>, <a href="https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/a-walk-across-america_peter-jenkins/249826/?resultid=169c1a49-7fd2-403d-af38-95ddb501510d#isbn=006095955X" target="_blank">Peter Jenkins</a> and <a href="https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/ask-and-it-is-given-learning-to-manifest-your-desires-by-esther-hicks-jerry-hicks/250957/?resultid=dbc4fbde-6307-4d25-90b1-d9b869cc1dd7#isbn=1401904599" target="_blank">Esther & Jerry Hicks</a>.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve been doing <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mindful-in-minutes-meditation/id1295718287" target="_blank">these meditations</a> and listening to <a href="https://audioboom.com/channels/5093794" target="_blank">these sleep affirmations</a> for subliminal messaging while falling asleep most nights.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That's about all I have right now... I know that this is a short and sweet introduction back into the world of posting life updates, but I’m just so glad to be here and so very glad that you are here too. I hope you are well, wherever you are, whatever season you are in.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I will leave you with a few pictures from recent days, and I will see you again right here very soon! </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">xx</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; 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It's Autumn! AKA: practically winter here in the West.<br />
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Does it seem like I always post about the weather? Historically, if you scrolled through my posts over the years, you would find a lot of them are indeed about the seasons we are in. I think the reason I write so much revolving around the seasons is because my soul transitions so abruptly in relation to them. It' so interesting to me, how that happens. And just like the changing seasons, inside of me it feels...natural, in an animalistic kind of way. Evolution and nature and the circle of life. Year after year my soul moves alongside of each changing season, molds and adapts to the new.<br />
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Autumn in particular is more of a halt than a slow down this year. Over the Summer we ran and we ran <i>fast</i>. You could count the weekends we were actually home on one hand. We spent all Summer running wild and free in our tiny home on wheels, coming back to home base only to work a few days and take wonderfully hot long showers and then BAM, we'd be back to the mountains again. It was so very lovely, perhaps the best Summer yet of my life.<br />
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But then Autumn came and carried with her the whisper of Winter in an especially brisk way! Hard freezes and winter coats, that kind of thing. So school began and the weekends shortened and the darkness crept into our mornings and evenings so quickly I felt I had barely blinked. When we winterized the camper last weekend in preparation for the hard freezes on the horizon I got emotional about it. Why does Summers end feel so crushing? And why does Summer go so quickly, like a tornado, before it's gone again? These are questions that will stay stuck on the tip of my tongue forever and ever, year after year.<br />
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The circle of life, you know.<br />
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Perhaps I have written enough about the seasons for today! Today, here and now, my soul has transitioned inside of me for the quiet and peace and slow down that Autumn has brought, and it feels needed. Isn't that amazing, how our bodies and souls know what we need so much more than our brains do?<br />
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But really, moving on.<br />
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The boys are BOTH in school, which has been a relief of sorts for me. I love watching them getting older. It brings its own challenges, but the kind of challenges that (at least for now) are much easier than the challenges babies and toddler brought. So I am taking it all in, these days we have, while we have them! The independence and the chance I have to really be myself alongside of Motherhood! Again, something I think I over talk about these days! Sorry not sorry! It's just very exciting, considering all of the years I had filled with diapers and no sleep and bottles and crying and naps and never leaving the house unless we had a sitter and HOLY CRAP HOW DID I SURVIVE THOSE DAYS???<br />
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Dan and I leave for Hawaii in three days. I could not be more ready for a relaxing trip filled with the beach and a good book and an occasional hike through the spectacular green forests of Maui! This is the fifth year that Dan and I have taken a long fun vacation, just the two of us kid free. It has been the best tradition for our personal wellbeing AND for our marriage. I am not a marriage expert, no sir, but can I suggest this for anyone who is married?? My advice, from me to you: GO ON A LOT OF KID FREE VACATIONS. You need it, your marriage needs it, and truth be told your kids need it. We all need breaks from each other! We are humans, afterall.<br />
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Over and out, and I'm sure the next time you see me here it will be pictures of a beautiful Hawaiian island! Don't be jealous player!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-11080072606428132012019-06-27T20:02:00.001-07:002019-06-27T20:02:21.049-07:00Dan the Gimp<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM-fmPqXzkqHPOdmsqy4wDwfMZeKxFOiu0LEwIkdR9WUiof0P7I0TvGomMVdanM5088C07V7IUQQN1OzuHtBQ0nI6YjA_gLKLjXbF4R1FnpIkUeBSJDHgNzSnQHX-4pFmM5MeyP55ad4h9/s1600/IMG_7940.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM-fmPqXzkqHPOdmsqy4wDwfMZeKxFOiu0LEwIkdR9WUiof0P7I0TvGomMVdanM5088C07V7IUQQN1OzuHtBQ0nI6YjA_gLKLjXbF4R1FnpIkUeBSJDHgNzSnQHX-4pFmM5MeyP55ad4h9/s1600/IMG_7940.JPG" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Good day to you!</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A lot has happened thus far this Summer. Although one thing that hasn’t happened yet, is it </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">feeling </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">like Summer. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">It has been a looooonnnng Spring in which we are very grateful to have a heater and a camper because we have been </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">camping our little buns off any way. But alas, I am feeling the heat break through the cool this week, that thick muggy </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">sauna-like heat that sits in the stagnant air and while you walk you practically eat it like a soup. Word on the weatherman </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">streets is that it is supposed to be Summer now, complete with ninety degree temperatures, and we will soon be camping </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">for nine days straight so I WILL LET YOU KNOW.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Summer is grand for so many reasons, but with all of the camping we do my favorite thing about Summer are the cool </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Summer nights that accompany those long hot Summer days. You spend all day sweating and sunburning and guzzling </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">ice cold water, but then the evening arrives and brings this cool air that is simply </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">sublime</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> in its refreshment. You pull on a </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">light hoodie and you sit around the campfire with an ice cold beer while the dusk fades and you tell stories and laugh until </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">your abs hurt, while the kids all run free in a little wolf pack playing night games, their laughs echoing in the distant air, and </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">nothing beats it. I’m just really truly convinced of that, NOTHING. BEATS. IT. I hope heaven is endless Summer nights </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">around </span><span style="white-space: pre;">the campfire.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Dan is a gimp, have I told you that yet? He is now, it’s official. A </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">temporary </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">gimp. Two weeks ago we were riding bikes through </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">the campground we were staying at. We had just passed the Poppy field full of beautiful brilliant giant poppies, and also full of </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">people with cameras, when suddenly there goes Dan right over his handlebars! The endo of all endos! He landed smack on </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">his shoulder (we assume, although none of us saw it, not even Dan who completely blacked out) and when we found him we </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">didn’t know the damage other than the fact that there was a very prominent bone sticking straight up on his shoulder, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">threatening to poke right through his skin, and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">it didn’t look pretty</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">. We took a trip to the ER, got a sling and some pills, and </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">headed back to finish the weekend camping.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Sidenote, years ago when Jace was just a tiny toddler, he fell off the picnic table he was climbing on while we were camping </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">and fractured his elbow. We ran him to the ER, got a cast on him, and ALSO HEADED BACK TO FINISH THE WEEKEND </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">CAMPING. So this is the kind of people we are, is what I’m saying.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Anyhow. Our Dan-the-gimp has a grade three AC Joint separation, no lifting allowed, six weeks in a sling, and HOPEFULLY </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">no surgery if all goes well.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">We are surviving. I’m surviving much better than Dan, I imagine, but </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">we are all surviving</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">. And still camping! Nothing will get us </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">down! All of that heavy lifting is proving to be a good workout for me, and also, I will never again take for granted all of the </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">heavy lifting Dan does when he can lift. There is reason that men don’t have to go the gym like women do.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">That is all for now. Here, have a picture overload! We haven’t had one of those in some time now! Heaven forbid I blog regularly.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-69183481631938445932019-06-27T19:55:00.001-07:002019-06-27T19:55:29.763-07:00Finding Myself Again<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Sometimes, being a Mom means losing yourself. That's a part of the job.<br />
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In the beginning, they will tell you this is beautifully selfless and necessary. But now, looking back at these past eight-plus years of Motherhood, I believe that's not entirely true.<br />
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Starting from a young, easily moldable and impressionable age, I was told who I should be and what my life path should look like.<br />
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Speak softly, don't be so chatty and bossy.<br />
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Wear long shorts to your knees and modest bathing suits with t-shirts to cover that modest bathing suit. Don't let the boys see those shoulders and thighs!<br />
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Stay kind and sweet, make sure everyone likes you. This is very, <i>very </i>important. You may have to give up some parts of yourself, but those parts don't truly matter because <i>you must be liked</i>.<br />
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Be a good daughter, and a good sister, and a good friend.<br />
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Babysit other kids. You can earn a few dollars while you practice for the future! Here, we will show you for the church youth activity this week! The boys are building their pinewood derby cars to race, and we'll stay at the church to have babysitting classes! We'll make babysitting <i>kits</i>, isn't that fun?!<br />
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Shave your legs, wear mascara, cover your freckles with this foundation, straighten your hair. Here, we will show you for the church youth activity this week! The boys are going out into the woods on four-wheelers for a paintball fight, and we'll stay at the church so that, after exchanging dinner recipes, we can teach you how to apply your eyeliner and flip out the ends of your hair <i>just right</i>! There, now the boys will like you! But not <i>too </i>much, of course. Cover those shoulders. And those thighs.<br />
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Your role here on earth right now is future Mothers of America, and it's the most important job. The men, they will do more and have more and be seen more and control more and sometimes you will wonder about that. But rest assured, it is only because you are <i>so very</i> sacred and special. You are so divine, in fact, that we won't discuss the Heavenly you, only your Father. You are so divine, in fact, that all you have is this one, sole purpose. It is what God created you for, and that is where your worth will be. Not in <i>you </i>and who <i>you</i> were born as, but in <i>the children </i>you will bear.<br />
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And of course, in how well those daughters you have will cover their shoulders. And thighs!<br />
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As it turns out, even when I bravely found my own path that felt right and good outside of that world...shedding deep rooted belief systems is hard.<br />
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I am a Mom now, and I have been for what feels like both an indistinctly short and astoundingly long amount of time. Whatever it may be, I am not inexperienced or naive to the fact that being a Mother is incredible. It is a miracle! I don't deny that. And even had I grown up in some other world where I was taught that being a Mother was merely an option, a road you could take only if you were <i>sure </i>that was the road you really truly <i>wanted</i> to take, I have no doubts that even then I would have chosen this life of Motherhood. I <i>wanted</i> these boys. It isn't pretty and every single day I am pulling from every ounce of every reservoir I have inside of me to do it, but I savor the experience of loving these humans that I grew and brought into the world. I <i>fight </i>for it, for raising them and being here with them and loving them.<br />
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Evenso.<br />
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I think that becoming a Mother was the way in which I lost myself most. I thought I was <i>supposed </i>to lose myself, remember? I was <i>told </i>that I was supposed to in all of the ways that I saw life being lived by all of the women I knew.<br />
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And now I know otherwise.<br />
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We order pizza a lot. I mean, <i>a lot, a lot</i>. (Stay with me, this is relevant.) For the past almost decade of my life, I would cringe to know how much money we have spent on pizza! Always pepperoni. Two pepperoni pizzas and an order of breadsticks! Leftovers for the week!<br />
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A couple of weeks ago, as we placed our weekly pizza order online, I suddenly blurted out to Dan, "Do you know my favorite kind of pizza? The kind of pizza I would choose, if I had the choice?"<br />
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He looked at me blankly, thought for a moment, then replied, "........Pepperoni?"<br />
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"Hawaiian." I declared, and then I added, "I actually don't care for pepperoni pizza much at all."<br />
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I could tell by the look on his face that he truly <i>hadn't </i>known that. And it wasn't his fault that he didn't know, because the cold hard truth is: I had never told him. Very early on in our relationship I'm sure there was a moment where we were ordering pizza, and I'm sure that in my aim to please everyone but myself, when Dan had asked what kind of pizza I wanted I had replied with something like, <i>well what kind of pizza do you want? </i>And when he wanted pepperoni, I would have replied without hesitating, <i>sounds great to me!</i><br />
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And that was that. The rest of our pizza ordering was history.<br />
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The two of us grew into four, the boys grew into toddlers and subsequently I had three boys who devoured pepperoni pizza at every opportunity and the next thing I knew a decade had passed of ordering the same exact thing: pepperoni pizza. I didn't fight it. It made sense. How could I eat an entire pizza alone anyway? It wasn't practical. I was doing what was best for the family by eating the kind of pizza I didn't much like.<br />
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And then on this day, the first day I told Dan what kind of pizza I actually liked best, he did a thing: he ordered one pepperoni, and one Hawaiian. The boys indulged in their pizza, and I in mine, all by myself. (Which consequently, lasted me an entire week.)<br />
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I have a lot of those moments lately. Maybe it's thirties, maybe it's feminism and being "woke"...but one day I just realized it. I realized that I was angry. I was <i>furious</i> that I had gone so long living a life that other people wanted me to live and in turn, putting myself on the back burner of my very own, my very short and very priceless one life.<br />
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There is no way around massive sacrifices when you become a parent. But if I could go back in time and teach myself something, it would be: it isn't your job to make everyone else around you happy first. That it will take a village to raise kids, and that you are not required to raise them alone in order to be respected. That you deserve the time to yourself, to nurture yourself and grow yourself and be yourself, just as much as you deserve the time with your children.<br />
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I didn't know it then, but I know it now, and I suppose that's enough. Better late than never! I am happier, more fulfilled, and a much better Mother because of this life I live now.<br />
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I love my children but also, I love Hawaiian pizza and I love myself as I am, and I deserve those things too.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-51584877720375432712019-04-14T08:38:00.001-07:002019-04-14T08:38:35.627-07:00This and That<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Some random things, in no particular order.<br />
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This Spring has been terribly long, longer than most it seems. It feels as though Summer should have been here five times over by now. I know that one day I will suddenly wake up to the heat having finally broken through the barriers of the cold, but when will that day be? Ten more years? Twenty?? And yet, the other day I was looking at the calendar to find today's date and was thoroughly <i>shocked </i>that it was already over half way through April. Wasn't it <i>just </i>March <i>yesterday?! </i>It is such a constant mystery to me, how time can go both incredibly slow and ridiculously fast all at the same time.<br />
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The other night we were out to dinner for date night, and as she was sitting us the hostess turned to me and very randomly stated, "You are so pretty." And I was sitting there with my unwashed hair tucked into my ponytail and my weary eyes lined with wrinkles, quite literally <i>shocked</i> to hear this from a stranger, so I said something really classy like "SHUT UP." But as I pondered this later, still sitting in my shock, I wondered many times if I must have heard her wrong, because I'm not at a stage in my life where strangers tell me I'm pretty. I'm a Mom, wearing the years on my forehead and in my eyes and, as of late, sometimes comfortably around my midsection. I don't feel <i>pretty</i>. I do feel strong, though, and proud and accomplished and optimistic. But don't get me wrong, it was nice to hear just the same.<br />
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Last week I took Rockie out for her first trail run of 2019, and how long the winter has been was most apparent on her. She lugged a large amount behind me the entire way, huffing and panting while the fat on her neck rolls bobble up and down. The entirety of the run I would call back to her every ten seconds or so, "Good girl! You can do this Rockie! We are so close! This is so good for us!" And I found myself wishing I had the kind of supporter on my trudging post winter runs as Rockie has in me.<br />
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We registered Beck for Kindergarten. Let me repeat that, because I imagine you think I made a mistake in my typing: We registered Beck for KINDERGARTEN. No really, it's true! He starts Kindergarten this Fall! I know, it's okay, I was in denial for a while myself. I made Dan take him to get his Kindergarten shots, because I hate watching my kids gets shots and also, it seemed fair as I was the one to take them both to <i>all </i>of their shots and this is the last one. So he did, and apparently Beck was just a champ who didn't shed a single tear, and only held his arm tightly and cringed while shouting "ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE" while they stuck him with a needle. Chocolate ice cream afterwards made up for it all.<br />
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I was listening to an interview with a Professor at Harvard who studies <i>happiness</i>, and it was enthralling to hear all of the science behind optimism and joy. In one long standing study, they were able to determine that by asking your child at the end of each day to name three things they are grateful for, you can change a child who is predisposed to pessimism to become an optimist. So naturally, I have been asking this to the boys each night. I noted it here solely for a selfish purpose, because in twenty years I'd like whoever is reading this to tell me how I fared. Are the boys optimists? Did it work?? If so, please remind them of when this started and how they have their Mother to thank for it all.<br />
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Camping season kicks off with a camp trip next weekend! We will hide easter eggs throughout the dirt in the mountains for all of the kids while we are there. We have every single weekend in June and July booked with camping trips, a different location each time. YIKES how did that happen? We may have been slightly overanxious during the longest approach to Spring (as I mentioned earlier) and booked up all of our weekends in anticipation for the warm weather, oops! But as it is, I think it will be fine. Hectic, perhaps, but doing the thing we love most and so, <i>worth it</i>. Probably, I'll let you know.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-43456668842347110332019-04-14T07:57:00.001-07:002019-04-14T07:57:30.813-07:00Spring Break 2019<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is going on the third year that we have made Las Vegas our Spring Break tradition. We stay in the same resort and we go with my side of the family. It's <i>perfect </i>timing for this road trip each year, just the right time to say adios to the rain and cold and to spend a week beneath palm trees in eighty degree weather beside the pool!<br />
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While every year we take the boys to all of their personal hot ticket locations on the strip (M&M World, Coca-Cola World, Hershey World...) this year was the first year that they got to see the Bellagio water show and the strip <i>at night</i> with all of the lights. They loved it so much, and I loved watching them love it so much, and after all of that would you believe that on the drive home when we asked what was their favorite part they said the McDonald's on Las Vegas Blvd? OF COURSE it was. Kids, they are so easy to please.<br />
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We have loved the Vegas tradition, especially with kids. Vegas is a melting pot of different cultures, different people and their beliefs. It is <i>vitally </i>important to me that the boys aren't wrongly shocked by the beauty of a diverse humanity one day because they were sheltered and bubbled in their youth. I want them to love people, and to know that we don't all have to look and walk and talk and believe the same. Vegas is good for that!<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-75408912174685516342019-02-22T16:16:00.003-08:002019-02-22T16:16:39.920-08:00fresh mountain air.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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President's Day weekend, 2019! We had high hopes for leaving the snow behind and heading to warmer weather. For reasons that are boring enough not to write, we did <i>not </i>leave the snow behind and decided instead on a "staycation", if you will. We had family from out of town stay at our house and we made the most of the long weekend.<br />
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I didn't take any stunning photos, but I feel it's important to share pictures nonetheless.<br />
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The Crofts (husband's side of the family) have a humble and authentic family cabin in the mountains that, I only learned last week, was built in the 40's! The Crofts have owned it since sometime in the 90's (I think?) and it is a real gem, just a real beauty of an old worn down rugged quaint and adorable cabin in the mountains. It's where the dogs in the family are buried each time one dies of old age (so far there are four graves) and I like to imagine them there, running free in the mountains and playing together. There is a firepit outside and a fireplace inside and a hiking trail up the mountain and even a sledding trail that Grandpa perfects in the winters!<br />
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This is all to say, we decided it would be fun to camp out at the cabin. We are missing camping season <i>oh so much</i>, more than I miss most things, and so this seemed like the closest we could come.<br />
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February has a way of dangling Spring on a string just out of our reach. Sunshine! Blue skies! Melting snowmen and patches of grass! Walk out in your t-shirts, feel that sun dance on your skin, close your eyes and shout hallelujah's to the heavens! And then...BAM, she pulls the string away, aka drops six inches of snow from the sky and takes us back to thirteen degree days.<br />
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She's so rude that way.<br />
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In classic February fashion, the weekend started with blue skies and sunshine and t-shirts. We drove our dirt bike in circles around the parking lot, the hollers of happy children echoing from garage wall to garage wall. We loaded the vehicles and drove to the mountains. We made it up the trail as far as the trucks could go, we parked there and we packed all of our things, sleeping bags and pillows and cots and food and drinks and electric heaters, hiking it all into the cabin. Only <i>seconds </i>after shutting the door behind us with the last of our things, BAM...there goes February, being a real jerk again. Blizzard and wind and buckets of snow falling from the sky!<br />
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But I'll give you this: it was beautiful, watching that snowstorm from inside of a quaint cabin, stoking the fire and plugging in electric heaters and wrapping ourselves in blankets while prepping hot dogs and chili, occasionally slipping on fur-lined snowboots to walk outside and gather more wood.<br />
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It wasn't <i>the worst</i>, you know?<br />
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The kids slept cuddled together in a giant sleeping bag of a bed on the floor next to the fire, and the adults in our cots beside them. Rockie snuggled into my sleeping bag with me and kept me toasty all night long, and Dan woke up occasionally to throw more logs on the fire whenever it faded. We left late the next morning, after a hearty camping-like breakfast of bacon and eggs and sausage and coffee.<br />
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It was so lovely, and so <i>needed</i>.<br />
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The rest of the weekend consisted of an indoor swimming pool / hot tub (that's the most important part of any swimming area for me, the hot tub), baking cookies and watching the classic 'Return to Me' (which is in the top five of our most quoted movies to date), taking the dogs on walks, and last but not least helping two of the four kids (one being mine) who inevitably came down with some sort of 24 hour stomach flu virus. That part was not fun, but nonetheless, let's call the weekend a win!<br />
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I am grateful, if nothing else, that I don't have to bear the weight of winter alone. Grateful for my people and for the memories we make together.<br />
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Also, <i>so so so</i> grateful that Spring is almost here!<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-81341468072740804602019-02-08T16:04:00.001-08:002019-02-08T16:04:27.358-08:00Blackbirds<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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After you left, and it was so strange how only then, I really started <i>noticing </i>things.<br />
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It's as though in being forced to confront the fleetingness of life I was suddenly massively awake to all of the things constantly surrounding me that I had never noticed before.<br />
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It was the January after you left that I first saw the blackbirds dancing.<br />
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There is an old four story rust brick building that stands on the corner intersecting Main Street and Center. I pass it everyday on my way home from work. I approach it heading West, sitting at the stop light as it lingers red for what feels like minutes at a time.<br />
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It was the January after you left that I first even <i>noticed </i>the blackbirds at all.<br />
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They sit on a tall metal sign atop of the bank, but not for long before one of them spreads his wings and begins to fly. And do you know what all of those other birds do then?<br />
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They follow him.<br />
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The entire flock follows that bird, where immediately they are all jetting through the sky in a perfect formation, soaring upwards and falling downwards, gliding right and slicing left.<br />
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A flock of blackbirds dancing beautifully in unison against an ever dimming teal and rose and amber flushed sky alongside soft paintbrush-like strokes of white clouds.<br />
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In my haze of desolation then, when I first started noticing the blackbirds dance, it felt as though they were putting on a show just for me. As soon as I arrived, slowing and stopping at that red light facing the sunset, only then would they soar from their perches and begin their dance back and forth in the sky.<br />
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I would watch them soar, and I would smile.<br />
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And I would cry.<br />
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Even still, on the coldest days, I watch them as I wait. Even now, throughout the thick of winter, when it is crisp and bleak and subzero and the sun sets early in the evening as I drive home from work, they are always there.<br />
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Always flying.<br />
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Always reminding me of you.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-23555781685202409432019-01-26T12:37:00.002-08:002019-02-08T16:07:00.732-08:00Civil Acquaintances<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The cold settles all around you.<br />
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It has fully moved in for this season and it isn't going anywhere. You watch it arrive, as you knew that it would. You couldn't have stopped it from taking up space in your life, in your soul, no matter how hard you would have tried, and so you don't fight it. What's the use? You open the door and you let it in.<br />
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You make friends with it, some days. Not friends, even. <i>Civil acquaintances.</i><br />
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You break bread with it. You know it won't stay forever.<br />
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Sometimes, you talk behind its back about how much you hate it.<br />
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Sometimes, <i>most </i>times, you say that to its face. You say, <i>go to hell, cold! </i>as you pull on your frost bitten mittens that you left in the car the night before, watching your breath turn into tiny droplets of ice, a sluggish white cloud filling the air in front of you each time you shiver, every bone in your body aching in misery while you wait for the cold air blowing from your vents to turn into warmth.<br />
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The dark closes in so early now, before the evening has a chance to begin at all.<br />
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But, you know this road. You know this cold. And so, you know it will end. You know that each day grows a little longer, each breath pulling in a closer moment until the long awaited arrival of Spring.<br />
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You know that you wouldn't love the Spring so feverishly, were it not for this cold.<br />
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You use the cold for reflection. For growth. For evolving as a human being. You do this beside a fireplace, holding a steaming cup of matcha, wrapped in blankets and suffocating beneath wool socks, consuming new books, contending with an inner thirsty urge for sunshine and road trips with a camper and dusty mountain trails and oak trees filled with lush green leaves.<br />
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For campfires that don't require digging out chunks of ice inside of the metal ring.<br />
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But you are experienced now in life, and with your added years comes the wisdom.<br />
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You know that you need the cold. It is a reminder of all the things you love, of how beautiful it is to have those things you love at all. A reminder, even, of how perhaps it makes sense that you can't have those things every minute of every day, because how would you grow at all?<br />
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And a reminder even still of how, even though it feels long and hard, it will mold you and change you and you'll soon have those things you love again.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-42325291898067919672018-12-10T10:45:00.002-08:002019-02-08T16:09:18.779-08:00Photodump!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is just a little (big) photodump of some pictures from Summer 2018, and some more from Fall 2018. It's terribly random. We had some camping trips, we had some Birthdays, we had the first day of second grade, we had Halloween, we had a corn maze, we had a girls weekend with college roomates, we had some sunsets and pine trees and beautiful places. It's all there, in no particular order, with no rhyme or reason for it other than to keep it all here for easy access to memories in some distant future time.<br />
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Looking back on pictures is such a humbling thing to do! It always slaps me in the face when I need it most, when I'm feeling low or life feels slow, when winter embraces me in her tight, cold death grip and I wonder if I might survive, as happens every year. Then I see these pictures and I think, oh that's right! Life <i>is </i>beautiful. I <i>do </i>have a wonderful, lovely, memorable life full of wonderful experiences and lovely people.<br />
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Pheww, I had almost forgotten there for a moment. Thank you, pictures, for freezing these moments in time and reminding me of what I needed so badly to be reminded of.<br />
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Anyway, here we are! Late to post, as always, but here just the same!<br />
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xoxoUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-83191686049358666082018-12-10T10:12:00.002-08:002019-02-08T16:11:26.579-08:00Fall Break 2018<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We headed South to Moab for Fall Break this year in search of warmer weather. I am happy to report that we found it! We hiked all of the hikes this time in Moab, and it is worth noting that we hiked the <i>hard </i>hikes, the ones that perhaps should be left for those over...eight? I don't know, seven I suppose because Jace is seven and he did just fine. But all that I know is, <i>NOT </i>for four year olds. Not for four year olds that are as active and mischevious and fearless as our Beck, anyway.<br />
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But we are alive! Despite all of the heart attacks, and all of the running away from me surrounded by sheer cliffs.<br />
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We made it.<br />
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It was a lovely trip! It was also a really hard trip, if I'm being honest. Exhausting, physically and emotionally. As is life often times with little kids, I suppose. Beautiful <i>and </i>exhausting, all at once, over and over and over again.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-84428208122287521632018-08-27T13:19:00.002-07:002019-02-08T15:36:37.184-08:00Washington<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This year our end-of-summer trip was to the Pacific Northwest, and I fell in absolutely massive amounts of love, allllll of the love that one can have for a place, in fact.<br />
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Which must sound terribly dramatic and also, I'm betting no one takes me seriously when I say this because I say something like this after every single trip we take. But I assure you that I mean it!<br />
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I had never visited this side of the states before, you guys. I had never seen the beauty or felt the magic that a place like Washington has to offer. It was truly MAGIC with a capital M-A-G-I-C! (Terribly dramatic, right?)(I am nothing if not terribly dramatic.)<br />
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We stayed on the farthest South island of the Puget Sound. We had to ride a ferry to get to the island from the mainland. I wish you all could have the excitement even once in your whole lives that the boys had when they rode the ferry for the first time! Such perfect innocence and ease to be purely and simply <i>happy, </i>kids.<br />
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We stayed in a yurt like tent (glamping!) which was so cute and perfect, in the way that you wonder if you could actually live in the thing. (Spoiler alert: I absolutely could) The yurt-tent was set on a five acre plot of land owned by my Mother's good friend who kindly let us stay there. The driveway to the land was lined with thickets of blackberry bushes, and often on my walk to the yurt I would stop and pick some luscious berries which were perfectly sweet, not a bit of tart in them! We also stopped to pick apples and although they were green, which is not my favorite kind, they held the same promise as the berries-all sweet, no tart. What is the rain there, anyway, and how do we get all of our berries and green apples to be so sweet and tart-less, is my question.<br />
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Although we were surrounded by coast, there on the middle of the island was a freshwater lake as well, where we spent some of our time lounging on the grass or kayaking around the lake or playing badminton at the sand volleyball court, or swimming from a land dock to some floating docks where you could jump from the railing or slide down a twirly slide or, even one that held a picnic table floating around, all while surrounded by layers and layers of this thick magical forest of trees. I mean really! I'm not making this up! It felt very dreamy.<br />
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(For the sake of remaining truthful, you should know that I had to google 'badminton' because I actually thought it was 'bad mitton' and that is the only way I knew it is 'badminton' not 'bad mitton' at all.)<br />
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We went sailing one day to another island which was an all day trip, because sailing is lovely but very, very slow. We saw dolphins jumping and at least a dozen jelly fish, we walked around gig harbor to sip tea and eat some fresh fish tacos and devour blackberry ice cream, and on the trek home Beck promptly fell asleep in my lap on the deck of the boat and slept for the entire ride while I laid back against the mast.<br />
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We spent half of one day in Seattle, just Dan and I and my sister and her fiance, while my Mom watched the boys. This was my first time stepping in Seattle, too, and it did not disappoint! I've been trying to get there for so long now and it was lovely. We had never met but all the same, being there felt like getting together with an old friend somehow. <i>Fate</i>, I'm just sure of it.<br />
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The beauty of the island was incredible and the only thing I have done every day since we got home is wished to go back! Washington, you temptress, thank you for the short lived but incredible whirlwind of a romantic love affair. I hope we meet again soon!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-88470571097124314122018-08-07T18:41:00.004-07:002019-02-08T15:36:55.349-08:00His story.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
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I suppose the thing is, it isn't my story to tell.<br />
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When I try to think about why it is so hard to talk about, why it is so hard to <i>write </i>about. It is because it isn't my story.<br />
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My story is the one where I suddenly and unexpectedly lost my little brother, who died by suicide two and half years ago now, when he was only twenty-six and I was thirty-one. My story is one of gut-wrenching heartache and overwhelming guilt.<br />
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My story is the one where, in those days and weeks following his death, I was constantly asked "Did you see this coming? Was he depressed?" Which makes me feel like shit because it is basically saying, "Do you feel like this is your fault?"<br />
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(I did, by the way. Of course I did. And even now, during the really horrible times of missing him so much that my ribcage aches, I still do.)<br />
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My story is the one where I cried so hard and so long that my eyes became swollen and red and raw. So I would sit with an ice pack held against my tender eyelids, and I would cry into the icepack instead.<br />
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My story is waiting for him to walk through my door any second, his long thermal shirt sleeves pulled up just below his elbows, his volcom hat overly bent, a crooked smile on his handsome face, saying something smart ass like he always did.<br />
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My story is seeing his body in the casket and knowing then that he was really gone. Of reaching in and grabbing hold of his stiff arm and sobbing how sorry I was. Of sitting in the cemetery amidst chunks of frozen snow, beneath a pure gray dim cloud filled sky, watching the man playing taps on bagpipes and shivering uncontrollably before they dropped the casket that held him into the ground.<br />
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My story is losing happiness and hope for a very long while. My story is stepping away from my desk at work to cry in the bathroom, to cry in the car. Coming home from work and crawling in bed and wishing in my bones that I could sleep forever and stop feeling this horrible pain.<br />
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My story is knowing that I was the last person to text him before he died. I texted him Christmas morning. He died just after midnight that night. I still have those texts. I still hate myself for not saying "I love you" in them.<br />
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My story is that I still had to be strong. My story is that I had a one year old and a five year old that still depended on me to live, and so I couldn't sleep forever, and I had to show up even though I did so terribly, with no patience and a lot of resentment towards where I was and what I had to do as a Mother when it was the last thing I wanted to do at all.<br />
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My story is dark and scary and lonely and ugly.<br />
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My story is also one where, over the course of time, after the very hardest thickest days of wallowing in misery and grief, I found that I could connect with him still. Somehow, he was in the air surrounding me. I started to find him there, through the cracks in my heart. I could feel him. He showed up in my dreams at night, he showed up by my side at the grocery store, he showed up until I couldn't doubt it anymore.<br />
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He was gone, but I realized that my connection with him could continue. And so I have spent the past two years working so incredibly hard to cultivate that space for him. I have worked hard by ridding distractions. By meditating. By connecting to a higher power.<br />
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And my story is now, that I have found that space and continue to find that space. That I have honed in on what really deserves my energy in life, and what truly does not. That I have found incredible amounts of peace and hope for the future.<br />
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My story is, that somehow, against all odds, I have risen from the ashes that I was then to find a larger, stronger, more understanding and compassionate person than I ever was before.<br />
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<br />
But none of that is <i>his </i>story. His story is one only he can tell, and he isn't here to tell it, so what a predicament we are in. I don't know how to tell it, because it isn't mine to tell.<br />
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I wish it could be told.<br />
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What you should know about my little brother, is that he was the most loyal of anyone I have ever met. If you were lucky enough to be considered his friend, he would stick by your side through it all. He would buy you cigarettes and drinks and loan you money and his car and help you move when you had heavy lifting and sit by your side when you were down.<br />
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He was always good for a laugh. He loved to joke. In fact, it's almost all that he did. He teased and prodded and in that regards, he was the <i>perfect </i>little brother.<br />
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He was my very best friend when we were kids. We did everything together, until I got older and got friends and started liking boys and worrying about superficial things like my outfits and my eyebrows.<br />
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He joined the army when he was only 18. Or was he 19? He was so, so young. He decided to do it all on his own and didn't tell us until after he enlisted. I remember finding out while working my job as a receptionist a lumberyard. I remember crying.<br />
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But from his years in the army, he grew and matured tremendously. I still have the letters he wrote me from Afghanistan. One time, I wrote his address incorrectly and apparently his Lieutenant made him do extra pushups that day. My favorite letter from him sits in my top nightstand drawer.<br />
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"Keep praying for me, it really helps. I love you. Love, James."<br />
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I took that letter to the tattoo parlor the Summer after he passed and had his signature permanently tattooed in black ink on my wrist, where I can always see it for the rest of my life.<br />
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And the thing is, I do remember the James he was <i>after</i> the army. I remember things differently, though, the way you remember things only in retrospect. I remember him crashing his truck and ending up in the hospital, and how scary that was, and how hard he fought to overcome that crash and those mistakes he made over the next year following.<br />
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I remember worrying about him then, but not in this way. I never, ever thought it would be this.<br />
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I worried about him because he had a lot on his plate. Because he worked grueling graveyard hours. Because he wasn't sure what to do with his life now. He seemed a little quieter, had a little less time, didn't attend as many family events.<br />
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But <i>I never, ever, thought it would be this. </i>That had never crossed my mind. Not once.<br />
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I remember, now, only in retrospect, those last few months of his life. How reserved he was. How he kept to himself at family parties, sleeping longer, staying in his room, leaving the group to go do Mom's dishes in the kitchen by himself instead.<br />
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My biggest regret now is not seeing it. Obviously it is, my biggest most horrible most terrible regret that I will ever have in my entire life. How could I be so blind? How selfish, that I could be so caught up in my life that I couldn't make the time to be a big sister anymore?<br />
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I have worked so hard these past two years to stop hating myself for that.<br />
<br />
It might be a work in progress, forever. But I'm trying, because I know without a sliver of a doubt that it is what <i>James </i>would want. He would never, ever, in a million years want me to feel that way about myself. He would never have wanted to hurt anyone. He <i>hated </i>hurting people. He was that way from such a young age. He was so caring and kind-hearted and tender that way, always.<br />
<br />
I don't know his story. I can't know it. His story is his alone to tell. But I think that his story is, that he was sick. There at the end, he was sick and broken. And his sickness made his mind tell him terrible lies and in the end, he believed them.<br />
<br />
And in the end he made a split second decision and now he is gone and it is the one biggest regret and heartache of my life so far.<br />
<br />
I miss him so much. We all do. And all that I can ever hope, all that I <i>keep </i>hoping every day, is that he knows now from wherever he is, from his ride on the wind as he keeps checking in, how loved and missed he really, truly is.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-63335198524701547982018-07-12T15:42:00.002-07:002018-07-12T15:48:26.073-07:00PerfectionismI am learning how to thrive in a life of imperfection.<br />
<br />
For years, I wasn't accomplishing the things that would lead me to be my best self, purely because I was waiting for the perfect time. Some examples?<br />
<br />
Writing.<br />
Meditating.<br />
Yoga.<br />
<br />
These things were just notions floating around in the air above me, waiting for me to reach up and grab them, but I often didn't because I had a full time job and two young boys and when could I find the time for peace and quiet and ease? WHEN?! Never, that is when, and so I just sat there waiting for those perfect moments. And they came, now and again, so when they came I snatched the notions as I could. That was a lovely yoga session in the quiet! It has been <i>months!</i> Or, I wrote another page in my book! It is coming along like a snail scoots to China but at least I had those twenty minutes of silence just now! Maybe I'll get that again in six more months, and I can write a <i>second </i>page!<br />
<br />
Do you see what I mean? Do you see why I was sleepwalking passively through life, waiting for perfection to fall in my lap and only then being proactive because, only then <i>could </i>I live as my best self?<br />
<br />
Do you see how silly that sounds?<br />
<br />
I stopped that thought process this year. I started doing things like yoga in the living room while my boys were in the next room playing nintendo, loudly calling out every five minutes "MOM COME SEE THIS!" to which I would calmly reply from my downward dog "I have twenty more minutes of yoga and then I will be glad to, please be patient." and they wouldn't be patient, but I would finish my yoga just the same.<br />
<br />
I started doing things like writing my book from my front porch while the boys ran in the sprinklers of the front lawn with loud screams of excitement, or writing from the back patio while they watched a tv show in the living room and, heaven forbid, letting them make their own lunches, or while they played on the slide at chick-fil-a and I sucked up the free wifi. And I would be interrupted, inevitably, but I would <i>write</i> and my boys would learn how important it is for me to write, and we would talk later about what I was writing, and about storytelling.<br />
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I started doing things like meditating in the morning chaos, shutting down my mind and sitting on my bed or the hardwood floor and closing my eyes to breathe. And when the boys would come in they would sit beside me, and put their hand on their heart, and breathe with me there. They wouldn't last as long but they would get enough in and I would think, well how lovely that because I am mediating with them here, they are learning the art of meditation themselves!<br />
<br />
And maybe one day they will remember all of this about me, how I was mindful and how I found moments to breathe and connect throughout the crazy-ness of life and how I would sit beneath the shade of a tall maple tree and write my book (that maybe once they are older will be published, god willing) and how I would stop every now and again to let them tell me a story or get them an apple, and how hard I worked and how invested I was in all of the things I was passionate about.<br />
<br />
And maybe one day that will make them want those things for themselves too.<br />
<br />
And how sad it would have been if I had only done these things when the boys weren't there, when it was perfectly quiet and easy, how they wouldn't have learned those things for themselves at all.<br />
<br />
And how sad it <i>really </i>would have been, because I would have waited for years and years and maybe never accomplished those things at all.<br />
<br />
So, goodbye perfection, and hello to this season of a beautiful, messy, chaotic, loud and ever-changing life that is mine.<br />
<br />
It is all about the journey, friends. Get out there and get you some.<br />
<br />
We are now in the thick of a hot and sticky summer and I took a few pictures of how we are surviving so far! I hope you are doing well for July and drinking a lot of water and staying up late and living in the moment as much as you possibly can! Don't blink, Summer will be over all too soon! Exclamation marks and all!<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-31970080965788418092018-06-29T06:59:00.001-07:002018-06-29T06:59:27.169-07:00Beck turns FOURMy baby had a Birthday almost THREE weeks ago and I am just now sharing some pictures, but my motto has always been better late than never, so...I'm late, but I'm here!<br />
<br />
Also, I didn't take many pictures.<br />
<br />
(Also, 95% of my pictures lately are photobombed by a seven year old dabber dabbing. See below.)<br />
<br />
Anyhow.<br />
<br />
MY BECK. What can I say about my Beck? Oh how I love this boy. He is happy and outgoing and adventurous and brave and quirky and funny. He is all himself in his uniqueness, but also, a <i>lot </i>me when I was four, and a <i>lot </i>his Uncle James, who I miss so terribly and so <i>that </i>makes me very happy. He has the Lewis genes strong, it seems. (Which fits, as Lewis is his middle name!)<br />
<br />
For Beck's Birthday this year, we did the same thing we did <i>last </i>year, which was to spend our party just the four of us at the local outdoor pool. (For the sake of recording, the very <i>first </i>thing Beck did upon turning four that morning, was to, while I was in the shower for a minute, run outside with a black permanent marker and draw a large picture on the stucco wall and our garage door. So that was a good start to four, I think.)(Also for future reference, it turns out rubbing alcohol is the trick to removing permanent marker from anything, so even though that was the last thing we tried I was very happy for it.) For the entirety of his Birthday afternoon and evening, we swam and slid and jumped off diving boards and then, as the sun began to dip, we sat on a blue plastic table beneath a pepsi umbrella to sing happy birthday and blow out candles atop a tiny ladybug cake (that beck picked out himself)(tiny because only two out of four of us even like cake).<br />
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I think I've said this before (that's sarcasm, because I say it a lot) but simplicity is my <i>jam</i>. Give me a four year old who doesn't need or want for anything other than us together as a family on a warm day with a pool and some pizza. No crazy chaos, nothing fancy. Simple, just us and for that one night, no one else in the world.<br />
<br />
It was perfect.<br />
<br />
And in honor of his Birthday (three weeks ago, I know!) I have a little story to tell:<br />
<br />
One of the most unique and special moments of my life so far was when I was pregnant with Beck, on the day that we found out that he was <i>Beck, </i>on the day of our ultrasound gender reveal. Up until that moment, neither Dan or I had any real instincts as to whether this might be a boy or a girl. But we did know that we would only have two kids, and so we discussed how nice a girl would be, you know, one of each! Perfect!<br />
<br />
I remember being nervous and excited. I remember the small room, and the kind tech who ran the sonography probe back and forth across my belly, telling us all about the healthy baby moving around inside.<br />
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And then, at the end, she told us. "It is most definitely a <i>boy</i>." And I can't quite put the feelings that overcame me into words. It was like...coming home after a very long roadtrip. Or, like remembering a memory from a very long time ago, recalling something you had completely forgotten all about and having it hit you so suddenly that it takes your breath away.<br />
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<i>Yes of course, a boy! </i>It felt so right, and so silly that I hadn't known that all along. All at once this massive emotion hit me, where I REMEMBERED HIM. I knew him! I had known him before somehow., and I was instantly ecstatic to have him back in my life.<br />
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I don't think I will ever forget the magnitude of those feelings in that moment. It was incredible.<br />
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And anyway, now he is four. FOUR. I love it so much, the ages of both the boys, how they are growing and independent and no one is in diapers or drinking bottles or waking up all night and we have so much fun together, albeit there is a <i>lot </i>of energy between them so don't fall under any impressions about it being <i>easy </i>or anything. ;)<br />
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And as promised, here are the handful of pictures I took on the day Beck turned four! (I didn't post a picture of the permanent marker fiasco, it is still too soon for that.)<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-34374687377892450372018-06-18T17:46:00.000-07:002019-01-26T11:49:40.857-08:00Nostalgia.Today we had a little bit of a cold front, which so far this Summer has happened quite often! And by quite often I mean, at least <i>twice</i> that I recall.<br />
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When I say cold front, I mean wind and occasional thunderstorms with the highs in the 80's instead of stagnant sitting heat with the highs in the 90's. That <i>is </i>a cold front, isn't it? Anyway, whatever it is it has been <i>lovely</i>. I always enjoy a good windy, scattered showers day to break up the heat of the summer here and there.<br />
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Currently, as I write this, I have tilapia baking in the oven and the back screen door is letting in bursts of cool air and I find this all to be very heavenly. The reason we are having fish for dinner tonight (we don't need a reason and it isn't unusual for us to have fish for dinner, but I'll tell you anyway) is that our freezer is in the midst of a crisis! Although that is dramatic, it really isn't a crisis, so much as...a mild malfunction, really. Two days ago we reached in the freezer to grab popsicles for the kids and found them to be slightly slushy juice instead. Nothing is frozen anymore, although it is all <i>cold </i>and so it could be so much worse, couldn't it?! But the point of this not-so-tragic and boring story is, I am cooking up all of the fish tonight so that we don't lose it to the thaw.<br />
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Summer so far (even with its cold fronts!) has been a dream. Almost every single weekend since Spring sprung we have towed our second home into the woods somewhere until we are forced to return. If not in the woods, we can be found spending our days first at the skate park, followed by a good cool off at the outdoor aquatic center, and then an evening winding down with some divine meat grilling on the back patio and some divine peach flavored something to wash it down with, and maybe a movie to watch after the kids go to bed!<br />
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That all sums up our summer-so-far quite nicely. I am always simmering in bucketloads of nostalgia from long summer days and, my favorite, easy happy country song worthy summer nights.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-38286768440244175202018-05-25T07:43:00.003-07:002019-02-08T15:40:57.232-08:00Banff National Park<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Banff National Park has been on our bucket list for <i>years, </i>and I am happy to report that we finally checked it off the list! This place is a dream of a place for a mountain girl like me. Everywhere we turned our breath was taken away by magnificent grand towering peaks surrounding us. I am so full of gratitude for this big, bold, <i>beautiful </i>world.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-23313276073261437482018-05-18T07:59:00.002-07:002019-02-08T15:41:08.690-08:00As it is.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So many things have changed since I started this blog.<br />
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That is to say, so much of ME has changed.<br />
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We <i>should </i>change, massively, irrevocably, evolving and seeing the world through bigger lenses on a daily, or at the very least a <i>yearly</i> basis, shouldn't we? In my opinion, our ability to continually change, to grow, to not be the same person we were next year as we are now, is possibly the reason for our human existence at all.<br />
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This new me is so new, that sometimes I find myself sitting in a daze, as though I were just punched in the face or something equally stunning, when I have to shake that daze off and gather myself, find my bearings, and get back to it! Because even after all the change and growth, I find that I <i>still</i> have so much more changing and growing to do in this period of transition that I find myself in. It's exhausting and exciting all at the same time. How is this possible? Life is a trip, really, it is.<br />
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Anyway, you might not have noticed this change in me, or you might <i>have </i>noticed. Either way it feels that I should apologize for it, but I will not because however this has or has not affected you, that isn't why I am here.<br />
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(Why <i>am </i>I here, other then to get all of my thoughts into words that ramble on and on until a mighty weight has lifted from my shoulders? Your guess is as good as mine, I suppose.)<br />
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The past couple of years has been a massive, huge period of growth. It has been the kind of growing that is really thick and painful and breathtaking and anxious and scary and hard, in a really good and needed way. Kind of like...having a baby. It is all of those same things, painful and breathtaking and anxious and scary and hard. And did I mention painful? Oh, so painful. But then the <i>baby </i>comes, a miraculous breath of fresh dewy heaven that ignites your soul on fire while you hold him/her (in my case, always him) in your arms and you forget all of that horrible heavy pain that you just went through! (For a moment, until the recovery hits. And all of the sleepless nights to come! This analogy may or may not apply, I've just decided.)<br />
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I want so badly now, after all of this time off, and say something terribly profound. But the fact of the matter is that I have <i>too </i>many things to say, and I truly can't say them all. Not in one lump sum. It just isn't possible. (It just isn't <i>probable</i>.) However, journaling and documenting my life and writing are such massively important parts of who I am, and because of that I <i>have </i>to have this space.<br />
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I still do a lot of writing, in a lot of avenues. But not a lot of <i>posting </i>of the writing. Which is fine and all, of course, but I was thinking about why I come <i>here, </i>to this particular space to write. (Or why I used to, at least.) And here it is: the reason I come back here is purely to record. I am not here for an audience, I am here for my future self, and for my posterity. I think that life is more than I know it is. I think that life is so damned awful and heavy and also such a magnificent masterpiece, in a way that I can't really even comprehend. And so, I crave documenting my life. Perhaps it is because I am acutely aware of how short life is. I am aware of my mortality every single day, and what will be left when I'm gone?<br />
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I want my life to be recorded in all of the places that I can find. And this! The internet! A website! This is such an easily accessible outlet for all parties. Like my biggest fans, Hey Mom! Wondering about life lately since I haven't called you in two weeks? Here you go! And for myself, Hey future self! Remember Beck's alf-alfa when he was three and Jace's love for that old game called Minecraft and Rockie when she had barely any gray hair yet and Dan's long sexy beard face that you begged him to never shave?? And remember when our life together was a transition of beauty and grace and messy perfection and lows and highs and memories that we crave to hold forever??<br />
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THEREFORE, I DECLARE: my official return!<br />
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If you are interested (I know my future self is), here is somewhat of an attempt at an update, and some things that have drastically changed me for the better since I have been MIA here:<br />
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- Deleting facebook! Good grief, I could practically dedicate an entire post to the complications of life with social media and iPhones. (Rest assured, I won't.) Almost one whole year ago now I deleted my facebook and in doing so I decluttered my social media drastically. My only form of social media has since been Instagram, the place I keep as my journal and creative outlet for photographs and poems and trips. Overall, I truly enjoy Instagram. It is something that does add some value to my life. (CHATBOOKS, amirite?!) But this decision, the decision to only use one form of social media, was one of the best decisions I could have made at this time in my life.<br />
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I can't fully explain why facebook brought me down so. It was a lot of things. It was an extra distraction in a busy world where I was trying so hard to remain quiet and still and spiritual, where I was trying to connect with my dead brother, where I was trying to be present in my own life. But also, it was a bit of a downer. It brought me pain, it brought me anxiety, it brought me...that feeling you get in your dreams sometimes, when you are trying so hard to run but you just. can't. move. your. legs. And none of those things it brought me were doing me any good at all, so I did a mental pros and cons list, in which the cons far outweighed the pros. I said "good bye" to that facebook world and I haven't looked back.<br />
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As it is, I am still continually working on the balance between social media and actually living in the thick of real life, with real people, not distracted behind a screen. My ideal balance is 95/5, being 95% LIVING and 5% relaxing and scrolling/posting on Instagram (because we all deserve some mind numbing distractions occasionally, yes?). I'm not there yet, but I am <i>close</i>. (Should I change that to 97/3? 98/2? Time will tell.)<br />
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Also, a side note for future posterity reading this: how <i>is </i>the future? You can't answer that, obviously. (Can you answer that? Has time travel been invented?!) I am truly dying to know how we survive this crazy apocalyptic-feeling phase in which the majority of people spending the majority of their lives behind a screen instead of having real genuine authentic human interaction. Watching the generation of iphones coming into the world full force constantly makes me cringe. I hope the human race survives.<br />
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-Meditation and EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques)! I can not sing enough praises to meditation and tapping. These have single-handedly been the best healing mechanisms I have used to fully love myself, to forgive myself, and to rise above and overcome my many broken parts.<br />
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When I first started I felt a bit loony tunes, just really very out of my comfort zone. But even amidst that discomfort, even that very first time I tried it, I really <i>felt </i>something. The way you feel something when you first listen to a new song that rocks your core and speaks to your heart, or when you walk into an old tall white church house with stained glass windows, or when you watch the sunset from the vast plains of the desert. That feeling that flows like warm water through cracks inside of you that you didn't know were there at all.<br />
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-Recent events! As it always is, the winter was long and filled with rest. It is the season for rest, without much sunshine, that is what they say. And it turns out rest is hard. But we made it! As soon as Spring began to show we hit the road running. We camped in Moab (see previous post!) and we spent Spring break in Las Vegas (and again! see previous post!) and both of those trips lifted us tremendously.<br />
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Some exciting news: we bought a brand spanking new camper which we have completely fallen in love with! We affectionately named him Harry, like Harry and the Hendersons, only it's Harry and The Crofts. (Jace likes to call him Harry Armpits.) We are spending all of our free time in the woods with Harry and it has been a worthy investment, a second home to take with us to all of our happy places any chance we get.<br />
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OH and of course, we just got home from CANADA, of all places, to check Banff National Park off our bucketlist (<i>finally</i>) and it was just a dream. Just a real slap-you-in-the-face-beautiful kind of place! (more pictures soon!)<br />
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Together, as a family, we are learning, and growing, and changing, and doing the best we can. Isn't everyone? I can breathe easier these days and I am greeting all of the hardest things that do come with more patience and compassion and I'm trying to document it all better, so here I am.<br />
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Thanks for being here.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-54325792614687608192018-05-18T07:24:00.001-07:002019-02-08T15:41:52.118-08:00Las Vegas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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(Spring Break 2018)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-62348806356990632102018-05-18T07:17:00.001-07:002019-02-08T15:42:22.332-08:00Weekend in Moab <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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(April 2018)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464907671323745628.post-14794294960490589262017-12-02T12:21:00.000-08:002019-02-08T15:42:37.725-08:00Fall Break in Zion National Park<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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