Thinking Tree Thoughts

The Hiding Place

2011-07-08T12:25:00.000-07:00

Kip and me in The Hiding Place

I have both looked forward to and postponed writing about our 23 hour layover in Amsterdam. Like most of this trip, it was fun and challenging and deeply touching spiritually. I am almost afraid of slighting it by summarizing it in a few short paragraphs, but I don’t want to miss the opportunity to blog on it either.

So even though it has been a month ago now, I’ll try.

On the way back from Norway we stopped in Amsterdam. When we booked our tickets we could schedule anything from a 1 to 23 hour layover. Since we had never been to Amsterdam we picked the longest possible layover and decided to take in as much of the city as we could.

We found a cheap little hotel, a block away from the central train station. To maximize time, we checked our bags through to Los Angeles and just took my backpack. I had basic personal items, a change of clothes and my camera. Perfect.

After stopping by the hotel and dropping the backpacks, we got back on the train and headed out to Haarlem to visit the BeJe, the museum of Corrie Ten Boom's home. I felt bad insisting that we leave Amsterdam as soon as we arrived, but it was the ONE thing I wanted to see in the Netherlands.

Corrie's Story

Of all the real-life stories I heard growing up, nothing shaped my life as much as the story of Corrie Ten Boom, a middle-aged, never-married woman who chose to defy Nazi German occupation and hide Jewish people in her home.

She was an unlikely leader in the Dutch underground, a deeply religious woman who lived a quite life at home with her elderly father and spinster sister. But in the time of crisis they did what they had always done, loved their neighbors and offered hospitality to God's chosen people, "the apple of God's eye," until the day the Gestapo raided the house, searching it down to the floorboards.

Although the Nazi’s spent the entire day searching and interrogating the family, they never discovered the six refuges hiding in a special shelter behind Corrie’s bedroom wall.

Six people hid here for two and a half days while Nazis searched the home.

They did, however, find stolen ration cards. For this offense they arrested the entire family as well as several of their friends who were helping them. Corrie’s 84-year-old father died in prison and Corrie and her 59-year-old sister were sent to a harsh concentration camp in Germany. The work camp housed 50,000 political prisoners who built roads all day and were barely fed or clothed against the elements. Corrie’s sister died in the camp and Corrie only escaped after the guards mistakenly released her the day before they mass murdered all the middle-aged prisoners.

Through the entire ordeal, Corrie and her sister had one message: love and forgiveness. They shared God’s love with fellow prisoners and made their bunker a haven from the Hell around them. They preached love, including love for the guards who were mistreating them. After the war Corrie opened her empty house to people who had been displaced and needed somewhere to recover. Her guests included Dutch people who had betrayed their countrymen and cooperated with the Germans.

Then at 53 years old, Corrie began traveling the world, telling her story. She continued for the next 30 years during which time my parents heard her story.

One of the stories that I heard growing up was about how, during a speaking engagement, Corrie met one of the notoriously cruel prison guards who had beaten her and her sister. The woman stretched out her hand and asked Corrie to forgive her. It was a real test for Corrie, but she chose in that moment to forgive the guard. As she embraced her, God filled Corrie with forgiveness and love toward the guard.

There were several books written about Corrie including the Hiding Place, which I read for the first time last summer. Even though it was the first time I had actually read the book, I felt like I had grown up with the story because people in my church circles had always quoted Corrie. But I think more than anything, I was drawn to the book because it is one of the few stories of Hope in the Holocaust.

And so when I realized our Norway travels would take us through Amsterdam, I didn't want to miss the opportunity to go to the BeJe and see the actual hiding place.

The BeJe

Kip and I were the only people for the English speaking tour. We stood sheepishly in the alley outside the house and waited for someone to open the door. An elderly woman who had known Corrie personally greeted us in her own formal way. She took us into the parlor where she told us the story in her thick Dutch accent.

She showed us family pictures and took us on a tour of the home. More than anything I realized that it wasn’t just a story about Corrie, but an entire family who gladly sacrificed everything to do what was right.


Betsy, our tour guide, and me

This is the place in the stairs where the ration cards were found. Betsy told us that had the Gustapo found the hidden Jews they would have carted them off to a death camp and the Ten Booms would have been shot on their front step for the neighborhood to witness the public execution.

Betsy is using Corrie Ten Boom's embroidery to tell me the infamous illustration Corrie used to show that life this side of Heaven is messy and seemingly chaotic, but God is weaving a beautiful tapestry that we cannot see.

When I asked our guide how she knew Corrie, she said that she had known Corrie's family as a child. Her own father had died in a concentration camp. One of us commented how hard that must have been to lose her father, wouldn’t it have been easy to hate the Nazis? But she looked at me with her clear blue eyes and said, “There is really no other choice than to love.”

It was Corrie’s message living on.

On to Oslo

2011-07-05T14:40:00.000-07:00

The train to Oslo

The day after the epic bike ride, we took the scenic Flåm Railway, up to Myrdal. We could see the road we had biked the day before and were amazed that we had made it all the way up. It was a much quicker journey, and when we got to Myrdal we transferred to a more modern train to Oslo.

Kip loves trains.

When we arrived in Oslo, we were greeted by "John" a very friendly Romanian guy we had met in Flåm. Even though he had only been in Oslo a couple days, he seemed to really enjoy showing us around town. I was amazed at his ability to communicate in English even though it was his third or fourth language. Europeans always amaze me with their language abilities.

John and Kip

In front of the palace. The guards were stoic, but let us pose for pictures.

John took us to Vigelandsparken, a famous park with hundreds (ok maybe dozens) of statues by Gustav Vigeland. The statues seem to depict human relationships from birth to death. It was interesting.

Vigelandsparken

Is it super dad, or a man fighting off the responsibilities of parenthood?

After hours of walking around Oslo, Kip found some reasonably priced Indian food in the train station. He said it was the best meal in Norway. He is a man of spice.

Biking in Norway: Part 2

2011-07-01T18:10:00.000-07:00

The pictures speak for themselves. We just kept climbing up in elevation. It was turning out to be a very tough ride, but we were addicted to the scenery.

That is a real smile.

This is water flowing through a mountain.

And under a bridge..

This is a flock of goats, kept back from the world by a little gate with a polite sign in English "Please shut the gate after you go through." I love the implication that people will naturally be respectful and shut the gate. It's a glimpse of the New Earth.

I was a little nervous at first.

It took a little convincing these gentle animals that we really were going to shut the gate and not let them out.

You can see how high the road is climbing.

The train rumbles on up to Myrdal. We are less than half way there at this point.

Biking in Norway

2011-07-01T17:50:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while you see a movie that you had never seen a trailer for, one that your friends haven't told you the plot, one that doesn't fit the genre formulas; and it turns out to be the very best film you have ever seen, the kind of movie you can't wait to tell someone about.

Our bike ride from Flåm to Myrdal was just about like that. Kip called it one of the best days of his life. It started out with us deciding to rent bikes and go for a short ride to see 400 year old church. It was actually Sunday morning and that seemed like a nice thing to do. Kip had wanted to ride the Flåmbana railroad up to Myrdal and rent bikes back to Flåm. But we found out that the train ride would be $100 and we were planning to take it the next day on our way out of Flåm to Oslo, so we opted for just renting bikes and peddling around the area.

We through a couple of apples and a bottle of water in a backpack and headed out. It was storybook beautiful with idyllic farms with a few sod houses and contented flocks of sheep.

We found the church, took pictures and decided to go just a little further.

The door was open, but no one was inside. Can you imagine how many weddings and Christmas Eve services there have been here since 1660?

Sod roof

We decided to go a little further. The road was getting steeper, but we could see waterfalls in the distance and it was only just noon.

Ewe and her lambs going for a walk

That look on Kip's face means, wow, we just road bikes over a waterfall. Isn't this amazing?

By this time we were both hooked. Could we ride all the way to Myrdal? It was almost 3,000 feet in elevation from where we started. We decided to go a little further.

Waterfall Chasing in Flåm

2011-07-01T11:57:00.000-07:00

When we arrived in Flåm we headed for the Youth Hostel and took a "quick" 20 minute refresher nap that turned into another frustrating 2 or 3 hour half-night sleep. Even after nearly a week in Norway we were still holding a strange sleep pattern.

But the great thing about Norway in June though is that even if you waste half the afternoon sleeping, you still get another 5 or 6 hours of sunlight. So after surveying the hostel we took off on a walk/hike to see the surrounding area and get a closer look at the waterfall we could see from behind the hostel.

Beautiful, clean hostel building in an amazing location.

We could see the waterfall from the road. How close could we get?

If I were a sheep, I'd be happy here.

We walked along the road for awhile until we came to a little trail going up the hill. We later learned from our hostel host that it was a very old path used by farmers to get their sheep up to greener pastures in the summer months, just like in novels.

This little lamb has a big playground.

The name of the waterfall

View of Flåm from the trail along the waterfall

As we were hiking we met this wonderful woman, the youth hostel host. She was 61 and apparently having knee replacement surgery next year. You would never be able to tell though. She was taking the mountain faster than us.

Flåm from even higher up the mountain

The sheep watched us make our way out of the woods, through their pasture and on home. Storybook beautiful!

Norway: Up the Songnefjord

2011-06-24T10:18:00.000-07:00


It was characteristically gray and cloudy when we left Bergen, but even in the greyness the landscape looked rugged and beautiful.

After spending five days in Bergen we left for Flåm, a tiny village of about 400 people that serves as a crossroads for tourists traveling up the fjord by cruise ship or down the mountain by scenic train. Several companies shuttle people one way down the mountain and then through the fjord back to Bergen. We had heard that the average stay in Flåm is only a few minutes, but something about the little place intrigued us. So before we left LA we booked a hostel Flåm. But for some reason we waited until we got to Norway to decide how to get there. After too much contemplation at the crowded Bergen visitor's center, we chose to take a five hour ferry up the famous Songnefjord from Bergen to Flåm. And we were not disappointed.

When we left Bergen it was cold and overcast. In typical Kip-and-Theresa traveling style, we stopped at the fish market, just to see if we could get some last minute breakfast and ended up having to run as fast as we could, suitcases in tow, to catch the boat just as it was leaving.

On board we spent as much time on deck taking pictures as we could stand. It was extremely cold and windy, so I had to "borrow," the souvenir hat I had bought for our daughter. We ended up going into the cabin every few minutes to thaw out, and then back up top.

As we started out there were no mountains and waterfalls, but the shoreline was populated by picturesque red fishing cabins with docks -- a sanctuary of simple life for the weekend fisherman escaping the city.

On board the Fjordtroll -- they have a thing for trolls here.

As the sun breaks through the clouds it shines on a little mountainside church, evidence that this typically post-Christian country has a rich history of faith. And what once was can be again.

As the mountains grow taller, further inland, the melting snow packs trickle down the mountainside into beautiful waterfalls.

The sun breaks and shines on the mountains and flag like a postcard.

We were as happy as it looks. It's hard not to be happy when you are smiling, and it's hard not to smile when you are surprised by beauty.

What would it be like to live here?

Up close for one of the first really good views of a mountain waterfall cascading into the fjord.

We passed by this little summer skiing town on the fjord.

I would enjoy staying at this hotel.

The rest of these pictures are more gorgeous photos of waterfalls and happy us. They don't need much explanation. When I talked to my mom on the phone (free -- thanks to Skype on Kip's I phone!) I told her it was the most physical beauty I had ever seen in one day. But that was before the bike ride from Flåm to Myrdal.

Bergen: Running Mt . Floyen

2011-06-22T19:12:00.000-07:00

Beginning the run by climbing stairs, short cuts between the city's parallel, ascending neighborhood streets.

I mentioned in an earlier post that after the first day of rain and gloom and Kip attending his conference, I decided I needed to get out. And up.

I grabbed my running shoes, the warmest running clothes I could find and headed out the door, through the maze of switchback streets, out of the town and into the park above Bergen.

It was exhausting and exhilarating. When I told Kip about it, he decided he needed to experience it too, so we ran the same route the next two days. The sun came up early, around 4 a.m., every morning, so it was no problem for us to be up and out long before Kip needed to be at his conference.

The first day that we ran I took the camera. I knew it would slow us down, but the sights were too amazing not to stop and enjoy. And for blogging sake, I am glad I did.

Bergen is surrounded by seven mountain peeks, and Floyen (about 1,000 elevation) rises straight up out of the city. A tram carts visitors up the mountain everyday for it’s famous view of the city, the fjords below and the infamous cruise ships coming into port. We road the tram on the only really clear day earlier in the week, but everyday we ran it was overcast by the time we got to the top.

On the way down the mountain we were drawn off road to admire the natural hanging gardens, the cascading water filtering down the mountain at every turn and the lush greenery everywhere.

It was cold and wet, but a great way to start the day. Every runner should have a mountain like that in her backyard.

The first view, after just climbing a couple of streets above our guesthouse.

The floyen funicular track -- it takes the mountain in five minutes. It took us more like a half an hour.

Water runoff cascading down the mountain.

After we made it through the Bergen neighborhoods we ran up this steep road with switchbacks until we made it to the top.

The cloudy view from the top.

I'm feeling like a champion, and look, I am still a little double jointed.

More spontaneous waterfalls, rain runoff really.

Going dangerously off path just because ....

Lots of cool morning creatures to avoid on the road.

As we descended into the Bergen neighborhoods again we saw the steep switchbacks. It's a mystery to me how people drive these. Of course most people seemed to walk to work.

Almost "home" back to the guesthouse.

Back in LA: Catching up on the Sweet Simplicities of Summer

2011-06-21T12:43:00.000-07:00

We are back in LA, and there is still so much to blog about from our trips, but I'm hoping to catch up over the next few days.

I'm giving the kids a "real" break from school work, meaning I'm not asking them to do any classes, assignments, worksheets or lessons. But since most of our "school" is life learning anyhow, I'm assuming we will have a rich unschooling kind of summer.

So far our 9-year-old son has spent alot of time playing Monopoly with his stuffed animals and with us. Last night we finished the first game ever. I remember playing Monopoly alot with my sister when I was about that age. The game would go on forever and never finish. I always thought that was a tragedy, but actually playing out an entire game last night made me realize a truth about Monopoly, and maybe Capitalism in general: it's just not fun to play it all the way out. The richer the rich get and the poorer the poor get, the less fun it is for everyone. Even the rich guy felt bad cleaning everyone out.

We had a nice little discussion about socialism and capitalism. Our daughter suggested we play "Socialism" instead, but we all decided that would get really boring, really fast. It made me think of the Ungame. Is that still around? I guess so, since I just found an Amazon link. LOL. The cover looked different in the 70s and 80s when our family played it.

I'm planning to take the kids to the beach every week this summer with our homeschooling group. Our son may go to a Cub Scout day camp or a Vacation Bible School. And our daughter wants to go to camp with a friend's church youth group. But we really don't have alot planned for the next couple of months, and I am really kind of happy about that.

Simplicity is good.

Bergen: When the Sun Shines

2011-06-10T18:39:00.000-07:00

Apparently the daily occurrence of rain in Bergen is a national joke. Kind of like, "Ha, of course it's sunny in California! What did you expect?" So to anyone considering a vacation in Norway, if your itinerary includes Bergen, buy a raincoat and some sweet rain boots.

The lowlight of our Bergen stay for me was slipping on slick slate and tumbling down half a flight of stairs. It was pretty much my own fault. I was trying to dress up a little for an expensive, formal dinner that Kip had to go to for the conference. I didn't want to wear my running shoes, so I wore the dangerous black high healed boots. They were bad enough on wet cobblestone streets, but completely stupid on the slick slate staircases. I fell pretty hard on my shins and knees, but fortunately survived with minor bruises and smudged mascara.

Moral of the story: invest in cute rain boots.

Beware!

But it didn't rain the entire week. The last afternoon we were there the sun shone, summer dresses came out and Bergeners partied late into the summer evening. We went to Kafe Kippers, a restaurant recommended in our travel guide and made irresistible by it's name. We enjoyed the long sunset with a crowd of mostly locals.

I told Kip that Bergen seems like a bad high school relationship. When it pours with freezing rain, you kind of hate it. And then the sun comes out and it seems like the cutest little city on earth, and you forget about the rain.

Big, beautiful sailboat.

We missed the last sail of the day. It was our theme that afternoon.

Rosenkrantz Tower. 800 years old. Very cool for a homeschooling mom to see. But we missed the last tour of the day.

See me in the gate?

Bryggen in it's postcard perfection. Glad we got to see it like this at least once during the week.

This is the primary image of Bergen. Cool, but kind of touristy.

Yummy muscles. Food looks good too.

That late evening sun is strong! The sun deck and bar at Kafe Kippers was hopping at 10 p.m.

Just another interesting neighborhood around Bergen.

I took this picture while we were walking home, around midnight. People were still up, having dinner, enjoying the midsummer.

Kip found yet another kitty to pet.

This might actually have been from our first walk on the first day. I love all the colors. We saw more shades of rhododendron than ever before. It is the state flower in West Virginia, but I have never seen more than a couple variations there.


Purple rhododendron

Bergen: Rain, Rain, Go Away

2011-06-10T13:54:00.000-07:00

The next few days are a blur of rainy and sleepy. We got up every day before 6 a.m., an unheard of state-side event for us. And we went to bed after midnight. Consequently I was hit with an overwhelming desire to nap every afternoon and I felt completely justified by the relentless cold drizzle.

I had only packed two pairs of jeans and two sweaters, so I was frustrated by my wardrobe, especially the fact that the only close-toed shoes I had were my running sneakers and some dangerous high heeled boots.

Frustration turned to rainy day blues and by the second morning when Kip left for his work conference I laced up and ran up, nearly 1,000 feet through Bergen neighborhoods to a Floyan mountain trail with steep switchbacks.

As I ran up in my running shorts, the only running pants I own, the weather changed into a cold, whipping wind. Once I got to the top I enjoyed the cloudy grey view of Bergen below and turned around. I ran back home faster than I have ever descended a hill, hit the shower and went back to my napping.

But to be fair there were some highlights those first few days.

The first day that Kip and I were there we explored the city and found the fish market. We sampled everything the fishermen were offering, smoked salmon, smoked mackerel. Everything was expensive, but Kip discovered that because the mackerel was in abundance and less interesting to tourist, it was also a relative bargain. We picked up several pieces for a fraction of what we paid at the restaurant the first night.

Kip and the fish market

"Kipper" snacks, smoked mackerel, crackers and Norwegian cheese.... yummy budget food

The sun also broke that first afternoon and we rode Bergen’s famous Floyan Funicular up the mountain. The top of the mountain is covered in beautiful hiking trails, so we enjoyed exploring that too. It was our first real glimpse into how extraordinarily beautiful this country is.

The Floibanen up Mount Floyen is an interesting piece of engineering. This steep little railway uses the counter balance of two cars to pull it up 320 meters in a few minutes.

Kip loves trains and trams and everything like it. I love watching him love them.

View of Bergen and it's fjord from the top

Kip and the fjord below

Looking down on Bergen

It's finally clear in Bergen, but it is cold. I was so glad I had brought my winter jacket. It was an afterthought that I stuffed it into my suitcase. I am so glad I did.

The top of Mount Floyen is the trail head for several mountain hikes. We took a couple easy ones, but we saw serious backpackers heading into the woods with camping gear. In Norway it is legal to camp almost anywhere you want, as long as you leave things the way you found them.

Drinking from a $5 water bottle. I reused it all week. Norway has some tasty tap water. I think some of our bottled water here in the US is just Norwegian tap water.

And I had been praying Psalm 23: Lead me beside still waters. When I saw this mountain top lake I smiled. Still indeed.

This is a ceder lined port-o-potty. It's beautiful and smells like a hamster cage.

I just like taking pictures of him. He looks like he belongs here.

Bergen: Arrival

2011-06-10T12:56:00.000-07:00


Late night dinner in a 303-year-old restaurant. Looking out into the pale blue twilight. It's nearly 11 p.m.				.

We arrived at our little guesthouse in Bergen, Norway exhausted; as would expected, after traveling nearly 20 hours and traversing 9 time zones. It was mid afternoon, cold and rainy and the only thing we could think about was sleeping, if just for a minute.

Our home-away-from home for five days in Bergen.

We figured out the IKEA style Scandinavian bedding and collapsed. Like every other international trip, we intended to sleep a few minutes and woke up hours later. But this time, thanks to Norway’s long summer days, it was still light out.

We left the comfort of our new home and walked down wet cobblestone streets to find Bryggen, the 800-year-old, postcard perfect fishing village in the heart of Bergen. It was already late, nearly 11 p.m., but we found an amazing little restaurant with cobblestone floors and wooden walls and rafters. The server told us the dinning room was 303 years old. Our founding father's grandfathers could have eaten here.

When we saw the prices we ordered enough of the local tapas for one person and shared: pickled mackerel, smoked salmon, potato salad, fish soup. It was delicious and not nearly enough food, but a perfect taste of Norway. We made plans to find the nearest grocery store and stock up. We knew we wouldn’t be able to “eat out” every meal.

Our view from the bedroom window, down into the street. It's by now the middle of the "white night," Norwegian summer light.

Norway and the Netherlands

2011-06-10T11:47:00.000-07:00

At the top of Floibanen Funicular with Bergen and the fjords below

I have so many thoughts on our 12 days in Norway and Amsterdam. I am glad we took a ton of pictures because each part of the trip was different from the rest and I want to remember it all. This blog is my souvenir.

We explored Bergen, a small city/college town with modern aspirations and medieval cobble stone streets; Flam, the world's most picturesque rural country with it's abundance of physical beauty and purity; and Amsterdam, a busy city of trains and canals and bikes, it's notorious "coffeehouses" and red light district and surprisingly, also faithful people of prayer.

This trip, more than other International trips Kip and I have taken together, was difficult and challenging and surprising and rewarding -- all at once. But at this moment, as I put together my thoughts on every detail of our journey, I am overwhelmingly thankful to have been able to go.

It seemed like a “bad” time to make a big trip, but so much of what we experienced and discovered seemed perfectly relevant to where we are. God knows what we need and delights in blessings us. I am so thankful.

Warm Thoughts from a Cold and Rainy Bergen Norway

2011-06-01T07:37:00.000-07:00

It is cold and rainy outside, very cold and very rainy. From my vantage point I can see the wind whipping around a leafy green tree on the street below and I just didn’t pack enough warm clothes to motivate me to get back out there.

It’s no wonder Norway has the highest literacy rate in the world. I don’t think I just made that up. I am pretty sure I read that in a guide book. It’s also the third-highest oil producing country in the world. Which I find strange since it is the most beautiful, pristine environment I have ever been in. You would think the people who are afraid of drilling in Alaska would have set up camp here too.

Kip and I are here in Norway for a “computer nerd conference.” (That is his description to me, probably because he thinks I can’t handle a real description.) He is currently at the conference and I am completely enjoying being in our little room we rented at this budget guesthouse in Bergen.

Norway has got to be the most expensive country Americans can visit right now. Our dollar is worth 5 Kroner which sounds good until you make the conversion and realize that a simple bottle of water is $5, a “value” meal at McDonald’s $20, a beer at a local tavern $20 and a no frills hotel room $300.

When we discovered this would be the case, we began searching for bed and breakfast options. Most places were already booked, but we stumbled upon a little guesthouse that rents five bedrooms with a single shared bathroom and a tiny kitchen. Having never stayed in a youth hostel, we were a little nervous about the accommodations, but it has actually been wonderful.

There is no breakfast included here. It is like a bed and breakfast without the breakfast, but there is a market around the corner and it hasn’t been bad sharing the kitchen with so many different people. This morning the Aussies were frying up eggs and bacon, the family from London family were toasting bread with jam and making tea and I was making oatmeal. For the past two days I’ve been making porridge and adding dried fruit from home, but Kip has only put up with that for so long. He discovered the fish market the first day and was able to score local smoked mackerel for less than the price of two cups of coffee. Since then he has been making up snacks of dried fish, cream cheese and toast. It’s actually pretty amazing and compliments oatmeal perfectly.

Speaking of complimenting perfectly, it is our 17^th wedding anniversary this month. That is why I am here with Kip. My parents and Kip’s parents and my sister are hosting the kids in the Midwest. They were going to go to just one place, but everyone was eager to have them and so they are traveling between Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas over the next two weeks.

But with the kids in the Midwest and Kip at the conference and the nearly-freezing rain pouring down outside, that leaves me alone in the most quiet I have felt in years. It’s good for the soul.

The week before we left for Norway, I got an e-mail from one of my friends who just moved her family to China. She was writing about their experiences and their difficulties with cultural adjustment. In it she described meditating on Psalm 23 and taking comfort in God's gentle leading, "He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul and guides me ...."

When I read the e-mail it touched me because with all the changes we have been experiencing the last month, all the decisions we have been making, I have felt such a need to be in God's presence.I just wasn't sure how to get there.

So with a cup of tea, safe in a guesthouse, halfway up a rain soaked cobble street, half way across the world from home, I'm enjoying a moment of Peace.

Passing Through

2011-04-03T22:11:00.000-07:00

Drake, Rosesharon and Heather at Drake's theater performance a few weeks ago

Life is so precious.

We are here and then we are not. And the whole thing feels like a mystery to me.

On Wednesday my dear friend Heather texted me that her mom had taken a turn for the worse. She was expected to pass that day.

In some ways it was surprising. Just last week Rosesharon had been well enough to go to San Diego, spend a week with her pregnant daughter and young grandson. On Monday they had gone out to celebrate her granddaughter’s 13th birthday.

But we all knew that it was just a matter of time. Her 4-year battle with cancer was not going well. A few weeks ago the doctors had told her that there was not much more they could do. She opted out of the last round of chemo and entered a hospice program.

But I had still thought that it would be a long time from now. Last week Heather and I had even talked about how her mom’s cell phone plan was up for renewal and how she was considering signing a two-year contract.

But Tuesday morning she had difficulty walking to the bathroom, by Wednesday afternoon she had slipped into a comma.

By the time I arrived at their apartment she was unconscious on her pink sheeted hospital bed, in the center of the living room. Family members and church friends gathered around. People were taking turns sitting on her bed, holding her hand, telling her they loved her.

Heather had several copies of a hospice booklet she wanted everyone to read. It talked about what was happening, what we should expect. It was gently practical, describing the way the process could look, what was going to happen.

There were tears, I expected that, but there was also a lot of laughter as old friends remembered good times together. It was like a memorial service with her present. At one point the whole living room and dining room were packed and it would have been easy to forget what was going on. It felt like a party.

But as the family members and friends slowly filtered out, I realized that I couldn’t leave.

I had to stay.

Heather’s sister was experiencing early labor and could not come. There were no other close family members who could stay with Heather, so a handful of good friends from Heather’s church and I stayed.

We listened to her breathe.

We called the hospice hotline for advice.

We held her hands and prayed.

One friend read her scripture. Someone put on a soft CD of hymns and spiritual songs. I even sang a little.

It reminded me of the times I gave birth. Praying. Waiting. Pain. More waiting.

And deep into the night as I watched Heather hold her mother’s hand, and with tears gently sliding down her check, say, “I love you, Mom. You have been the best mom in the world. You can go now,” I knew that I was observing the other side of birth. Death. Daughter releasing mother. Passing into the next life.

And it wasn’t so different from being born the first time.

If you have never been at a place like this, seen someone’s body slowly shut down and their life ease away, I suppose it sounds like a euphemism to say “passing away.” But it was just that. She passed from this life into the next.

When I prayed for Rosesharon on Wednesday, even before I arrived at the home, I asked the Lord what He was doing. I do that sometimes. I want to know what the Lord is doing so I can pray in agreement with his Will. And deep in my spirit I always heard, “I’m bringing her Home.” So in faith I prayed that He would bring her home.

It was intense and I am still processing the reality of what happened late that night.

But what I know for sure is that we experienced the reality of God’s presence in a way I had never before. I was sure that He was with us. And He was taking our friend home.

Ida, one of the women who sat with us, holding Rosesharon’s hand, stroking her cheek, telling her quietly that she loved her; had been a stranger just a few years ago. She met Heather’s mom when she invited Heather and her family over for a movie night. At the time Rosesharon was not very open to visiting Heather’s church or any other, but a movie night and potluck was fun and not too religious. Over time the two started meeting regularly for lunch dates and Ida was able to share her faith through her life.

And so as I watched this new friend gently apply glycerin to Rosesharon’s parched lips that channeled those last raspy breaths, I felt like I was watching Christ Jesus in action. My spirit understood with clarity, “This is what it means to follow Jesus!”

Other women who stayed with us had been part of an intensive prayer team who prayed with Rosesharon several times over the last few months. Like me, they were praying for miraculous healing, but what they experienced was a spiritual healing as our friend was able to forgive people who had wounded her and experience God’s forgiveness and grace.

As we sat through the night they prayed God’s blessing over her, words my own parents whispered to me as a child when I went to sleep, “May the Lord bless you and keep you. May he make his face to shine upon you. May he be gracious to you and give you his Peace.”

By morning Rosesharon was still with us. Heather opened the shades to the light of another hot Los Angeles day. Kip had to go to work and I needed to be home with my children, so I reluctantly left, knowing that at least Ida would be able to stay until more friends and family could come.

The struggle continued for a few more hours and then our friend slipped away.

I know that this is just the beginning of grief for Heather, who has lived with her mom for more than a decade.

And yet there is some relief that the pain is over. I think death is like that.

I had not planned to spend the night with Heather, but I am so glad I did. It was a privileged to be a part of their lives like that.

I understand more now than I had before that death, just like birth, is a door that we all walk through. We always fear that it will come unexpectedly, and sometimes we know it is coming. We watch patiently as our friends linger and then slide quietly through. But someday it will come. Someday I will arrive at that door. And I too will walk into the presence of my Savior.

Marching On

2011-04-03T21:49:00.000-07:00

March ran through like both Lion and Lamb – with both a whirl of activity and very quiet, meaningful moments. So many experiences deserved their own blog entry, but I was too busy experiencing life to stop and write. Here is a brief recap.

Baseball

Hitting a line drive

Our son started baseball season, something he has been asking to do for years. He played a little T-ball a couple years ago, but this year he is in 5-pitch, which means the coach actually pitches the balls to the kids.I try not to gasp too loudly from the grandstand when the coaches accidentally hit the kids with the pitching.

Over the years we have watched our kids participate in many soccer and basketball games. It has always been a little difficult because they were so content to just wear the uniform and run around the court or field. Actual contact with the ball was rare.

And to be fair, I was always content to cheer on, or zone out, depending on the situation, during the game and praise them for their little successes. But as they got older it became apparent that other parents were more involved and didn’t always appreciate my laissez-faire attitude. When they quit asking to be on sports teams, I was happy.

So it was with reluctance that I registered our son for another season of Little League. But the funny thing is, we have discovered this time that he is actually a great hitter. His coaches call him Little Slugger and he has already hit a few home runs. And while I would happily support him every time he struck out, it’s kind of nice to have a winner in the family.

Girl Scouts Cookies

Our daughter sold girl scout cookies again this year. And while it wasn’t a big deal, over the month it began to take a big chunk of the calendar as she wanted to participate in every grocery store front table that was available. Glad she had the experience. Glad it is over.

Grandpa Jerry

Kip’s dad came to town for a medical conference and we spent a week running around LA, hiking, sailing, taking him to our favorite restaurants, visiting my brother’s new food truck. It was a busy week and deserves it’s own blog entry. But in the interest of time I’m going to include a few of our favorite moments in pictures and let that be it.


I think Grandp Jerry and "Gage" are telling a story


hiking at Solstice Canyon

Grandpa Bob and Nana visit

Just a few days after Kip’s dad left, my parents came for a week. Once again, our visit deserves a whole blog entry. I had so many thoughts about our time together. Once again it was visiting my brother’s new food truck, checking out a museum, sailing, and just spending quality time together. They were here to cheer me on during my third LA marathon, which also deserves its own blog entry (and may get it.) And once again I was deeply grateful for the wonderful parents God gave me. The world would be a far kinder place if everyone had parents like mine.

After the Marathon

My dad and my brother Tim in front of the Flatiron Truck

Coffee at the Commissary in West Hollywood. The Flatiron usually parks here on Sunday mornings for brunch.

Life Beginning and Ending

On Monday one of my dearest friends told me she was pregnant, an unexpected blessing celebrated by all her friends, and then on Wednesday another friend told me that her mom had taken a turn for the worse. The hospice nurses expected her to pass that day. When Kip came home from work I dropped by my friend’s house to spend a few hours with her and her mom. I ended up spending the night, a night I will never forget. But I will save that story for the next blog update.

This Fading Present

2011-02-25T00:15:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, over Valentine’s Day, I realized I couldn’t remember what we did for Valentine’s Day last year. I had no memory at all.

My daughter reminded me that we went sailing. Two of us wore shirts with hearts and she thought that was funny. And as much as I tried, I just couldn’t remember.

And that bothers me because I want to be present for everything and remember everything. It is one of the reasons I like to blog. It is why I take pictures.

These days are full of mundane details; dinner, dishes, laundry, conversations with friends, children’s heights penciled onto the wall like high water marks. It’s all so unimportant and yet it is everything because it’s our life.

I just checked through our old photos and calendar and I remember last year a little better. I think I ran about 12 miles Valentine’s morning last year. I had just started marathon training with Students Run LA. I guess we went sailing later that day, although I have no memory or pictures of that. Our friend Eric was staying with us. I’m pretty sure Kip and I didn’t go “out.”

But we somehow made up for it by taking a train trip to San Diego, just the two of us, for a couple days. My dear friend Kathleen adopted my kids for a double or triple sleep over and we skipped town.

I’m not sure why I didn’t blog about any of it.

This year Valentine’s Day fell on a Monday, and we were so exhausted from the weekend that we decided at the last minute not to go out for dinner. Kip made all four of us sandwiches and we had a picnic on a blanket in the middle of the living room. We took turns talking about what we liked about each other. It seemed perfect.


The kids examine their Valentine's Day cards from two different homeschool events and girl scouts. I don't think they have enough friends.

My lasts blog was Happy New Year, so what is life like now?

I feel like life is shifting under us and yet not really at all. Maybe it’s an illusion from watching our kids grow into adult-sized people. Maybe it’s saying goodbye to dear friends and acquaintances who are leaving LA.

We have already said goodbye to several friends this year – Kairos friends that we have know for the past 8 years, my Aunt and Uncle who have been our closest family in California, a homeschooling friend who moved her family to China. And it is just the beginning. Several other friends are packing up, planning their moves or putting their houses on the market. It’s a little like being in the waiting room near the end of the day. And it’s emptying out.

We have talked a little about our own options. It had never been our long term plan to live in a two-bedroom apartment with an almost teenage daughter and growing son. But I want to be patient, hold my peace. We came to LA with a clear sense of God’s calling and I’m not interested in moving anywhere, not even down the hall, until we have the same sense of mission.

So what else….

I’m running a lot and never confident that I am running enough to be ready for the LA Marathon next month. My weeks are full of shuttling kids to activities, different from last year, but seemingly about the same amount of time on the road. My homeschooling experience is shifting as my daughter is far more independent in her studies. I’m finding that my main role is often to help her manage her time and assignments. I’m focusing more on doing things with my son, but even that is different from what I did before. Today we played a long math game that involved super heroes and addition, multiplication. It even used negative numbers. It was probably the best way for any little boy to learn math. And I’m glad we had that time together today.

I want to remember that.

Happy New Year

2011-01-01T16:38:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year

I’m sure 2011 will be a good one, and if last year is any indication; it will be gone in a blink. Sometime this weekend I’d like to revisit the best pics I have from 2010 and do a little photo recap of the year. There have been so many gaps in my blogging.

I could write several entries on the last month alone: Christmas parties, Hollywood Toy Giveway, Christmas, our stay-at-home vacation, go carts with the kids, skiing with the family for the first time – riveting reading I’m sure.

But it’s not really for the readers. I have learned by now that blogging is for me to stop and recognize how wonderful our life is. But the problem is I have to take a pause from life to stop and write. And while it is easy to snap pictures, it’s harder for me to find time to write about them. Even to write this I have had to separate myself from the lively family action in the kitchen/living room and sequester myself in the back bedroom. Lonely is the life of a writer.

But my life isn’t too lonely and maybe that is why I am not really a writer.

But today is New Years and I have a guilty stack of half consumed journals, all started on New Years day years past, so I won’t waste any paper with this virtual, everyone-can-see journal entry. But I'll throw out some New Years resolutions.

Writing: This year I do want to write more. I want to finish the screenplay I started last January and I want to finish it by the end of this month, at least the first draft. And then I want to rewrite it a few times. I also want to journal offline more and blog more. Life is going by fast and I have so many thoughts on the moment that are gone the next moment.

Reading: I want to read a nonfiction book a month. I am going to give myself a little grace and include audio books that I listen to, because I seem to have a difficult time finishing books that sit beside my bed and help me fall asleep. But I won’t include the books I read the kids. There are too many of those.

BTW – right now I am reading our son Archimedes and the Door of Science and it is really fun. We took a break during our Christmas vacation, but I will read it to him every day when Kip goes back to work and our homeschool officially goes back in session next week.

Bible: I’m going to read it through this year. I haven’t tried to do that in a while.

Organization: We have lived in this apartment 5 and a half years and there are now multiple closet and drawer spaces that need to be organized and decluttered. I’m going to take one area on each week until I get it done. I’m going to start with the cabinet under my bathroom sink – next week.

Running: I want to run a marathon, probably the LA Marathon in March if I can keep up with the Students Run LA running schedule. They are pretty aggressive and it’s hard to make that much time for running, but on the other hand I can’t imagine running a marathon without the months of training. So I guess I had better just lace up and get out there. I'll start that tomorrow morning.

Spanish: I’m going to make a better effort to learn this year. We set up Rosetta Stone on the computer again and I’m going to try and use it for half an hour every day – on average – because somedays it is just hard to do everything.

So those are my thoughts for this next year. I'm sure it will be a good one.

Starbucks Coffee Cup Quote

2010-12-02T16:15:00.000-08:00

Next time Starbucks asks me for a quote, I'd offer this one for the married men.

"I am the type of person who has a deep need for authenticity and honesty in a relationship. I also have a high need for verbal affirmation. And when these two needs are at odds, I much prefer affirmation to authenticity." -- Theresa

Malibu Half Marathon

2010-11-14T22:42:00.000-08:00

Early morning sun heats up Point Magu before the races starts.

Kip and I ran the Malibu Half Marathon this morning.

It was my first half marathon, Kip’s first long distance race and our first time running in any event together; which also meant it was my first time not being dropped off at the start or chased by my family support team with fresh Gatorade, encouragement and personal paparazzi.

But we managed to run the race in 2:22, which I thought was great.

The beautiful bluffs along the Pacific Costal Highway always make the Malibu Marathon a challenging course, but today the sun was out in full force. It was blazing by the 8:30 half marathon start and nearing 80 degrees by the time we finished.

Of course the route was also as beautiful as Malibu can be -- sun shinning through crystal clear waves, dolphins jumping, surfers surfing, clear blue skies.

At one point, as we charged up a steep bluff overlooking a gorgeous surf break, I turned to Kip and said, “I think I picked the wrong sport.”

(Kip has a couple surfboards in our storage area, testimony to an LA time before remodeling projects, late night band practice and weekend sailing. Maybe it’s time to get them out again and try. I think I am almost brave enough to give it another try.)

Before

This morning, as we were rushing out the door at 6:30 a.m., I realized that we did not have any milk in the fridge for the kids’ breakfast. So we flew down to the convenience store and got milk before heading out to Malibu.

For some reason the chocolate milk looked appealing to me, so I ate frosted mini wheats in chocolate milk while Kip rushed us to Malibu. It was kind of gross, but I thought it might be the carbo boast I needed.

When we arrived at Zuma Beach to catch the bus to the start line, I immediately realized that the half marathon was going to be much more crowded than last year. The parking lot was full for miles and cars were squeezed in every free spot along the PCH.

We were barely making the 7:30 “last” bus, but we somehow found a free spot and ran to the bus.

We made it. And just like the LA Marathon in the spring, it became apparent that marathon officials were going to hold the race and continue to run buses until the crowd was at the start line.

There was something funny about riding in a big yellow school bus with Kip. We met in high school and shared some high school experiences together, but I don’t think we ever road a school bus together back then.

back of the bus, self portrait, high school style

During

The race started at Point Mugu, a funny little campground squeezed between the PCH and the ocean. The last time we were there, our family left the campground in the middle of the night after a wicked wind storm crushed our tent and sparked the Malibu wildfires. That was three years ago.

But there was no wind or fire this morning, just thousands of half marathoners lining up to start.

The race itself was about 12 miles of hills and one final mile-long descent into Malibu. By mile 10 I was glad that it was just a half marathon. And by the end I found it hard to believe that last year I ran the same course, plus another 13.1 miles of Ventura farmland. Of course I had trained for a marathon that time and training seems to make all the difference.

So proud of Kip!! You can give me my sunglasses back now, Babe.

After

Despite fatigue, Kip and I sprinted to the finish line and arrived .001 seconds apart. We weaved through the customary reception of medals and food, bananas, chips and water, to get the real treat at Malibu -- the finisher’s beach towels which look better than any race T-shirt at summer social functions.

And then we wasted no time in trying them out. We headed straight for the beach to stretch, take pictures and relax in the hot November sun.

Refreshing cold water

Yeah!

My friend Kathleen finished a little later and the three of us slowly made our way back to our SUV, which we had so hastily parked along the PCH before the race. We walked for several minutes and slowly realized it wasn’t where we thought it should be.

We kept walking and apologizing to our friend who likely wasn’t planning on walking an additional two miles after the half marathon. And finally I laced up my running shoes again and ran off in search of the car.

Fortunately the car was still there, just parked much further away than we had realized in our rush to make the bus. I was so very grateful that it had not been towed.

When we got home we decided to take the kids swimming, so instead of hitting the showers and bed, we dipped into the pool. It actually felt good to stretch in the water and I’m betting it will make recovery easier tomorrow.

And what is next? I’m probably going to run the LA Marathon in March. Kip says a half was good enough for him, but he might change his mind when he forgets how difficult it was today. I know I always do.

Open Window Distractions

2010-11-11T00:55:00.000-08:00

I start most "school" days with a plan, but we have a problem.

We are distracted.

Window staring is the worst. I personally have a highly evolved skill of staring, not only out the window, but at the ceiling and even at an actual blank wall for minutes, even hours, if inspired.

I'd like to claim that I'm involved in Zen-like peaceful meditation, but the opposite is true. My mind is not empty. I am not still. I am racing with thoughts, ideas, scenarios for apocalyptic movies starring ME as the hero. My overactive imagination is so busy that it shuts down my body and I stare.

My kids are the same.

Every open window is a distraction. Birds are interesting. So are the cars that drive by.

And nothing evokes the magic of the Great Outdoors like actual “school” work. Math worksheets entice squirrels to come up to our porch, draw their little rodent paws across their chests in an eerily human posture and whisper with their shiny black eyes, “Feed me, please.”

We feed two neighborhood squirrels: a skinny, formerly saber-toothed she-squirrel named “Toothy” and “Bruce” a big, fat he-squirrel whose cropped tail makes him look more like a beaver.

We feed Toothy because she is our walking, scurrying miracle. When she arrived several weeks ago she was nearly starved to death. She had patchy fur, a sparse twitching tail and a grossly misshapen face from two odd, overgrown teeth protruding from her lower jaw. She looked like a harelip squirrel.

So the kids and I talk about harelips and wonder if the condition occurs in squirrels. We Googled Smile Train and watched tear-jerking videos of compassionate doctors repairing harelips in third-world children. We talk about health care in third-world countries.

We talk about how people are doing small things to make a big difference in other people’s lives globally. We discuss the great questions of civilization.

And then it's lunch time and Bruce comes around.

We don’t actually like feeding Bruce. He is a fat little guy who bullies Toothy into giving up her factory-shelled walnuts. Sometimes we throw him a nut or two to distract him while our little squirrel nourishes herself.

Toothy is doing better now. She doesn’t have to cock her head to one side to painfully choke down her nuts. Her superfluous teeth fell out, and she almost looks normal now.

But the kids wonder where she lives.

What does her nest look like?

We look in the palm trees. We Google “where do squirrels live.”

My daughter disappears into her room to finish her lesson on negative and positive numbers -- added and subtracted, multiplied and divided.

It sounds easy enough until I have to explain how a negative number divided by a negative number becomes a positive number – every time. It is not enough to know that it happens. She has to know why and in what real life situations. I didn’t buy the teacher’s guide.

It comes down to a comparison with “I don’t have no cookies,” and she accepts that for now. I return to focusing on my son and his times tables. He has gone to wash his hands and returns 10 minutes later with a bubble delicately balanced between his thumb and forefinger. He is grinning.

“Look Mom!”

He explains how he did it.

I try to listen and not be irritated because I really had planned on him learning his times tables, maybe just one of them, this afternoon.

I had also planned on writing a little this afternoon. But of course, five minutes into the writing project my thoughts are interrupted by something important like a sudden need to fold laundry or update Facebook with a pithy little status about feeding saber-toothed squirrels.

I know that planning and taking deliberate steps toward a goal yield success. So I worry that all this distraction is hampering my children’s overall education.

There are those comforting unschooling “folktales” about children who follow their passions and arrive in adulthood with their creative energy and self motivation uninhibited.

But then there are also people who can’t keep a job because they are bored and distracted. Somehow I am hoping this is different.

Currently my favorite absolution on distraction comes from the highly imaginative writer, Norton Jester, who wrote The Phantom Toolbooth.

Apparently he wrote that book when he was supposed to be working on another project. Ironically his little escape became his greatest work. He has been quoted as saying “I find the best things I do, I do when I'm trying to avoid doing something else I'm supposed to be doing.”

So yes, we never get as much done as I plan. But I’m hoping that my kids schooling experience is better because of the distractions and not in spite of them.

Three hours later, my daughter returns from the bedroom, half-finished math assignment in hand.

“Mom, I just wrote the best song!”

More Distractions

And now more distractions to entertain you and keep you from what you should be doing.

He was suppose to be coping the paragraph from the whiteboard behind him. I left him alone and found him like this 10 minutes later. It's a Cheerio map to the treasure.

What do you do when you find your kids and their friends walking on the wall?

You try it too!

How much time can you "waste" on time lapse photos of the electric trains in the night? When was bedtime suppose to be?

And since when does "clean up your toys," mean wash and dry the entire army?

And if all else fails, quick, find a tree and climb it before you get too old.

Clay Confessions

2010-11-06T23:43:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make.

Once a week, I leave my kids and husband at home to eat dinner alone (which I leave in a nice warm crock-pot) and I go out and play with clay. And it is my favorite night of the week.

I started going to a ceramics class a few months ago. It’s something I have always wanted to do; I just never made the time to take a class. It always felt kind of frivolous and impractical.

Maybe I felt a little guilty taking time away from the family to do something fun. Maybe I was just afraid to try something new.

Whatever my objection was, I got over it late one night when I was alone and feeling sorry for myself. I decided if my husband can devote a night or two to playing guitar every week, I could try an 8-week clay class.

So I signed up for a ceramics workshop through our city’s parks and rec and almost immediately realized it would take me much, much longer than 8 weeks to learn how to make anything on a potter’s wheel.

And that is the problem with learning crafts as an adult. Everyone understands why something looks crappy when a 7-year-old makes it. Not so much when an adult throws a bumpy, lopsided “mug.”

“Oh, you made that?” They look suspiciously between me and one of my kids.

As one of my new ceramic’s class friends gently put it after glancing at my first “box,” "Nope, not a Christmas present yet.”

But somehow I refused to give up, to fail at throwing pots. If I can train and run a marathon, I can take a piece of raw clay and fashion a useful dish – maybe even something beautiful.

Several months into this adventure, my mugs still look pretty lopsided and “unique,” but my family loves them. And in their own way, I think they might look forward to Daddy night once a week anyhow.

C3PO and Other Halloween Tales

2010-11-01T01:16:00.000-07:00

When our son decided to be C3PO for Halloween, we probably should have thought about it for a minute before heartily supporting the idea. Maybe it was his cute rendition of the robot’s walking style.

”Wait, wait, for me!”

Maybe it was the fact that he picked something unique and representative of his current interests. Whatever it was, we said, “great!”

And then I started looking for a costume.

Nothing at Target.

Nothing cheap on-line.

So, no problem, we decided to make a C3PO costume.

First there was a box and some leftover wires for hanging out of the box. Then there was an idea to spray paint it gold, and one thing led to another and I was running out to the grocery store at 10 p.m. to buy 7 more 2-liter bottles of Diet Coke and other assortments of soda. This gave us the golden body, arms and legs. But the C3PO head was missing.

I started shopping around at Halloween stores. Nothing. I called a half dozen other stores around LA and slowly realized that the only way to get a C3PO head was to order it on-line. And it was Thursday. I refused to pay $30 overnight shipping for a $6 plastic mask.

So then we began to brainstorm how to create the same look. I found a white vinyl mask at Goodwill, which we cleaned up. Kip spray painted it and used a Dremel tool to fashion two spray paint tops into C3PO eyes. And finally, late Thursday night, we had a C3PO costume.

Our daughter wasn’t so difficult this year. She found a very authentic pair of 80’s punk rock pants at a thrift store. Then she added a pink feather boa and decided to be a rock star.

I settled on a Sacagawea costume, about 5 minutes before we headed off to a fabulous homeschool Masquerade Ball Saturday night. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the Masquerade Ball, but it was lot of fun and certainly showcased the LA homeschooling community's flare for creativity.

Winning most creative costume at the Cub Scout Halloween bash on Friday night, day one of our three-day celebrations.

Most creative trophy

We had an extra friend for the Halloween weekend. One of my best friends had an opportunity to get out of town for a weekend, so we said, sure, we would love to have an extra kid for a few days. Actually I was a little concerned about candy consumption because sugar used to be a big taboo for this kid.

But when I asked her mom how they were handling Halloween candy this year, she said, "I'm sending her to her friend's house." Thanks. : )

She was the happiest Goth I have ever seen.

C3PO and our serious rock star

I'm Sacagawea, not Pocahontas. He is C3PO, not the tin man. And she is a rock star, really.

On Sunday the kids dressed in their costumes for a third day in a row and we went to the Costume Carnival hosted by the Oasis. It was all-out fun with music, food, an inflatable obstacle course, rock wall and mechanical bull. It was totally free and also a little crowded, but still some of the best not-exactly Halloween fun this side of town.

C3PO sheds his constrictive shell and ascends the inflatable rock wall.

That kid was loving the upside down jumpy thing.

Racing through the obstacle course.

Kip, being an incredibly good sport, holding bits and pieces of the kids' costumes while they played.

Sacagawea getting in on the obstacle course action. It's really nothing after scaling the Rocky Mountains with a baby on her back.

This little cutie rode the mechanical bull like it was a penny pony.

Ready

Set...

GO!

No hands, Mom!

Then, despite being exhausted after days of costumed fun, and for Kip, running 13 miles in marathon training on Saturday and playing guitar at four back-to-back church services on Sunday, we took the kids trick or treating.

And finally the trick or treating. Everyone loved C3PO's costume.

I'm hoping this wasn't a bad idea.

And then they ate dinner.

Tim is a Married Man

2010-07-01T00:21:00.000-07:00

A little over two years ago, my brother Tim announced that he had met the woman he was going to marry.

We didn’t believe him, of course. He had just met Heather.

But he knew.

And of course he was right.

On June 7th they got married on the beach in Santa Monica and I had the honor of being my brother’s attendant, his “best man.”

It's not just that I'm freezing. I'm hanging on to the rings for dear life. I don't want to drop them in the sand.

I love how Tim is always amusing Heather. It seems like she is always laughing with him.

My entire family was in town for the occasion - my sisters, their husbands as well as my niece and nephew. All of my dad’s siblings were also there – his two sisters, their husbands and his brother and his wife, and several of their kids.

The wedding ceremony was simple and beautiful. We gathered at the end of the boardwalk and listened to them exchange vows to the backdrop of a dramatic cloudy sky.

And the reception afterward was supurb.

If you know Tim at all, you know he loves to throw a party. The food was exquisite, fitting the wedding of a rising chef. And there was wine and dancing too.

Our family comes from a long line of Baptist types, so the wine and dancing was a little new for us. My sister broke the ice with dancing at her wedding last month, and my parents even took dancing lessons to make sure they were in step for that one. So they were ready for the Beatles and Carpenter songs.

My sisters and me

It made me think of all the times Jesus described the Kingdom of God like a party – like a wedding reception. It’s kind of a hard concept to get unless you have ever been to a real party where everyone is completely enjoying themselves. And this was certainly that kind of party.

So congratulations to Tim and Heather!

Here are a few more pictures. Thanks especially to my sister Serenity who took most of these pictures!

Before the Wedding

My son getting ready to sweep up the sand before the wedding.

My mom and Kip's mom enjoying a moment before the wedding.

Getting ready ... That is my sister Kiesi and her family. Aunt Candy with the camera.

Kip and our son

The Wedding

Dad escorting me down the very long "aisle" boardwalk. I remember this from 16 years ago.

Watching the bride walk down the boardwalk.

Heather and her dad

Do you ....?

They do!

The three sisters and a very happy brother

Happy, freezing, but happy

Mom and Dad, a little windswept

The Married Couple

Tokyo: Lost in Transition

2010-06-29T23:50:00.000-07:00

EXT. BUSY TOKYO STREET -- 10 P.M.

The jet lagged couple emerges from their budget hotel.

Wide-eyed and conscious of their new tourist status, they fall into the nightly Tokyo pedestrian traffic - men in suits, women in dresses, teenage girls in school uniforms. 

The night glows in neon life. Zen went to war with capitalism and lost in this corner of Japan. Everything but the people are big and loud. 

ME

(sleepy and enchanted)

I love it!

I felt in every way that we were there, really there, and I loved it.

We had arrived just a few hours earlier after a marathon of activity. The week before my entire family had come to LA, my brother had gotten married, Kip's parents had stayed with us and then we had hopped a plane to Tokyo.

It wasn't quite hopped, but we had barely taken time to pack our clothes or read the travel guides I had gotten at the library. And we were surviving on very little sleep.

But we were thrilled to be spending a 24-hour layover in the world's biggest city, so when we arrived in Tokyo we immediately found our hotel, a little dive with tiny hotel rooms in the heart of Shinjuku, the "Time Square" of Tokyo, and fell asleep.

The 5-minute power nap turned into a couple hours and it was dark when we woke up. But not wanting to miss a single minute of our Tokyo adventure, we headed out to find some Sushi.

Believe it or not, we couldn't.

We walked around for hours until I literally threw my heels at Kip and refused to go any further until he stopped following the GPS around in circles.

It's then that we discovered two things about restaurants in Tokyo.

One, they are multilevel, so the electronic sign and plastic food display for one restaurant outside a building might just as well be for any one of the six stacked up on top of each other.

And secondly, restaurants in Tokyo close relatively early. As soon as we found one place that had been recommended in our tourist guide, it turned out to be closed.

It was approaching midnight. And I was very hungry.

So we eventually gave in to one of the many Japanese guys trying to hustle us inside. We picked what looked like a nice teriyaki barbecue joint. Unfortunately it turned out to be a smoky basement restaurant with mystery meat on the menu, something like chicken hearts on a skewer. So much for fresh sushi in Japan.
I was tired and disappointed. But we struck up a conversation with a kid from Denmark and a couple of his Japanese friends who gave us better advice on where to go and what to see.

Eating red bean pastry -- after the mystery meat disappointment

The next morning we checked out of our tiny hotel room and started walking around our neighborhood. We walked through a Buddhist temple area, several Western/Asian coffee shops, arcades with "doll eyes" photo booths and shops with overpriced cute stuff like sushi shaped candles for $20.

plastic food advertising the menu

You can buy almost anything in a Tokyo vending machine. Cigarettes here.

We made a pilgrimage to the Toto showroom in search of the world famous electronic toilets, only to find that it was closed. The public bathrooms, however, were open, and not disappointing.

Which button to simply flush?

With a little trepidation we took on the world's most complicated metro system, a myriad of train stops with unfamiliar names. We got turned around a few times, but it made it to Asakusa, not to be confused with Akasaka (which is also a stop), to see a famous Shinto temple and walk around the more tourist appropriate neighborhoods.

Here is a funny story. This poor kid obviously thought Kip was a movie star/rock star of some kind. He came running up to Kip, ecstatic, and said alot of something in Japanese. Then he insisted on me taking his picture with Kip with his camera. He seemed confused when we also wanted to get a picture of him.

It was Saturday and the streets were packed, although the tourists were mostly Asians, so I still felt like we were in Asia. And we resumed our search for authentic sushi.

We wandered around again for a long time and were just about to join a long line snaking around a very touristy joint when we saw a wooden door slide open next to the tourist line. A Japanese woman said in broken English, "good sushi here...." She pointed to the line of tourists and shook her head. Then she pointed to the closed door on the restaurant with almost no sign.
"Good"

We trusted her.

And we hit jackpot.

It was a real sushi place, the kind where you take your shoes off and sit at low tables. The kind with absolutely no English on the menu and a boisterous sushi chief shouting hello to patrons as they entered. Even the prices were printed in Japanese characters.

Thankfully Kip had taken karate as a kid and knew Japanese numbers, as well as "thank you." And we somehow ordered a tray of fresh sushi, the best I have ever had, and a plate of tempura. It was the best lunch ever.

Bride and groom at Shinto temple

Serious about recycling here

From there we headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags, explore that part of the city a bit more and then ride the complicated metro back to the airport. Kip was transporting the poster he was presenting at his conference, so while we were squeezing into the subway with our suitcases, I was guarding the poster, the reason we were even in Asia.

And then we were eating kimchi on an Asiana flight to Korea. It all happened so quickly.

It was amazing, overwhelming in a good way. If I could return to Tokyo, I'd go back in a heartbeat.

Summer Finally

2010-06-27T10:47:00.000-07:00

Summer is finally here.
When I was a kid growing up in the South and the Midwest and everywhere in between, summer started in May. By June it was hot.
Southern California, especially the coastal area, seems to wait for the summer equinox, as if waiting for permission to distribute the summer weather.
But it is here.
Most of the neighborhood kids are out of school. Our homeschooling friends have begun their weekly meet up at the beach and the days are long enough to enjoy almost warm afternoon sails.

Kip gave our son a surfing lesson Saturday afternoon.

Almost up

After taking several weeks off of "school" work for the weddings, family visits and travel, I decided it was in the kids' best interest to do a little summer school. If we don't do school for several weeks the kids actually seem a little bored.
So this past week we started having our two-hour summer school days. The kids spend an hour each on reading and/or writing and math.
I am picking our daughter's summer reading because I want to challenger her with reading and I'm hoping she will learn a little American history in the process. She just finished Hero Over Here and we had an interesting discussion about the Spanish Flu of 1918.
Our son is making slow, steady process with the reading. He still laboriously sounds out every word, and a single worksheet of 8 or 10 simple sentences takes him an exhausting 20 minutes with my help. I am walking the tight rope of gently pushing and helping, and backing off. If his brain is not ready to absorb the mechanics of reading yet, I don't want to push him. Reading is not the only way to learn about the world around you.

During our math time I played Countdown with our son. The game of dice involves basic operations -- adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. It's a good warm up for math time, and I kind of tricked him into doing double the work by letting him roll for Doug the dog.
Our daughter picked up where we left off in her Singapore curriculum and discovered the fun of solving for the unknown angle using basic rules of geometry. She needed lots of help, but often figured out the answers before I did when she called me over to help her.
So far it has been a good start to summer.

Back Blogged

2010-06-27T09:13:00.000-07:00

When I get back blogged, or back logged in blogs, it is usually because I'm too busy living things to blog. Or just as likely, my perfectionism is holding my writing hostage, waiting for the ransom of just the write combination of words to accurately express the imaginations of my heart.
uhhh ... like that one
(My 11-year-old daughter, reading over my shoulder just said, "No offense, Mom, but that is really cheesy." Poor kid, she says that alot these days.)
I have posts in process on my brother's wedding, which was absolutely beautiful, the 24-hour Tokyo adventure and even our trip to Zion National park in late May. But this time the blog updates are being held hostage by my computer which ate all the pictures.
Gasp.
I downloaded pictures from our better camera onto our desk computer, and then the power supply died. So, I am waiting on a new power supply. In the meantime, I will try to update with thoughts from the last few days ... if I can find the write poetry to put it all in motion.

Heart and Seoul

2010-06-21T15:33:00.000-07:00

When Kip heard he was going to Korea for a work conference, I was not particularly excited.

Korean food is ok.

I have been through Korea Town in LA a thousand times, and one of my friends who had recently been to Seoul described it as “Korea Town – just bigger.”

So I thought I would let Kip go alone, save our travel savings for a trip to Europe or South America.

Then we realized the conference Kip was invited to present a poster at was only a few days after my brother’s wedding in LA. If we worked it just right, we might be able to convince Kip’s mom to stay in LA with our kids while we were in Asia. And with a little more research we realized we would be able to work a 24-hour layover in Tokyo.

With Kip’s expenses paid for it became a half-price, international vacation. So in the midst of getting ready for my brother’s wedding and hosting extended family here in LA, we bought our plane tickets and decided to go.

I was thrilled to see Tokyo, but I wasn’t expecting a lot out of Korea.

I was so wrong.

I completely fell in love with Seoul in every way.

Seoul's history and future at an intersection. Dongdaemun gate at night.

I loved the city itself with its new high rises and old palaces, the quirky combination of ancient and trendy, the big-hearted Korean people with their infectious smiles and gentle laughter, the way Korean couples walk hand-in-hand down the lit riverside in the evening. I even liked the food.

We only knew how to say two things in Korean, “hello,” and “thank you,” and we managed to make our way all over the city, pointing, smiling and accepting the help of strangers who seemed to enjoy practicing their English skills.

But it wasn’t just the place. Seoul seems to be enjoying its moment too. The last decade of economic growth has redefined the city. New construction is everywhere. Shopping malls the size of Vegas hotels stay open 19 hours a day to handle the flood of young workers with expendable income. A municipal sewer that was once an ancient stream through the heart of Seoul has been redeemed -- restored into an open river with miles of protected walkways that stay lit for romantic evening strollers.

Cheonggye Stream -- an inspiring example of urban renewal

Even as we were in Seoul, workers were unveiling a multi-story banner sign welcoming the G20 Summit that will be held there in November. No longer a city devastated by civil war, it is a modern, clean, wealthy city in the heart of the Asian economy and it is ready to host the word.

And yet Seoul blooms precariously under the threat of Kim Jong-il 37 miles to the North. While we were in Seoul, the entire country shut down for a 20 minute military drill. Sirens wailed. Traffic stopped dead in the street. People rushed inside. All over Seoul. Apparently all over Korea.

Kip and I attended a Korean church Sunday afternoon. Years ago I had heard about Yoido Full Gospel Church, the largest church in the world, and since we were in Korea on a Sunday I wanted to see it myself.

When we arrived by taxi, we were a little overwhelmed by the strange curbside food stands selling stewed silk worm cocoons and the crowd of Koreans filing into the mega church. So when I spotted the only other American walking into the church, a crew-cut soldier in tie-dye, we followed him inside. He and his friendly Korean girlfriend took us to the “foreigner,” section where the church provided translation headsets in several languages.

Not exactly coffee and doughnuts for worshipers walking out of this 800,000 member Korean mega church.

It was a little difficult to follow at first, but when I got the hang of listening to the Korean and the halting translation, it was really amazing to be immersed into a completely different place with such familiarity. At the end of the service, when the entire congregation prayed out loud, I took my headset off. It sounded wonderful. Asian churches in places like Seoul have a growing reputation within Evangelical Christian communities for being places of prayer. I understood why. This particular church hosts all night prayer meetings six nights a week. They are serious about praying for their world. You can sense the presence of God there.

Sneaking in a picture from the balcony at Yoido Full Gospel Church. Familiar worship choruses lyrics are projected in English, Korean, Japanese and Chinese.

Over the next few days, Kip attended the conference while I took it easy. Both days I made it by myself across Seoul by metro, wandering through neighborhoods in the city center, drinking green tea, taking pictures and scoping out places to go with Kip.

When Kip was done with his conference, the real fun began in exploring. One night we must have walked for 8 hours. After wandering into a traditional Korean restaurant with absolutely no English on the menu, we managed to order something that was not what we were hoping for, but yummy still, and then set out to find Dongdaemun which we had been told was a great shopping area.

Kip is trying to get Korean barbecue. He points to a word in our Lonely Planet Korea guide.

The Bulgogi that arrived was more like stewed meat and mushrooms, but it came with the obligatory kimchi and we made the best of it.

We rode the metro a few stops and found a few narrow backstreets that felt like a very Asian market corner with traditional restaurants and street vendors. We turned down another road and wound up in a residential neighborhood with crowded narrow streets filled with pedestrians, motorcycles and occasional trucks precariously squeezing through. In stead of high rise condos here there were three-story apartment buildings with street level restaurants, the kind where patrons leave their shoes at the door and sit on the floor at low-level tables. Fish tanks outside the restaurant promised fresh octopus and squid. Tired shopkeepers kept the corner grocery stores open for the many Koreans walking home from work. It was a busy neighborhood street with real people, working, living, laughing, eating. It felt like the real Korea.

When we stopped to discuss what kind of meat was grilling on a giant grill, a flattered storekeeper tore off a piece and handed it to Kip. We were afraid it was dog, so we refused at first, but through a game of charades we realized it was pig feet and ate it. It was pretty darn good, for barbecued pig.

Getting lost in back street markets at dusk.

She will catch you dinner if you dare.

Kip checking out the freshest of the fresh sea food kept outside these very authentic, off the tourist map Korean restaurants. Does anyone know what the pink squiggly things are? They were alive. We don't know.

Flower store

We can't decide what the mystery meat is....

It looks pretty disgusting, but we a very amused Korean woman tore some off the grill and gave it to us to try. She told us it was pig feet. It was actually pretty good.

Neighborhood restaurant

Woman selling kimchi and other traditional Korean foods in her store on this narrow neighborhood alley just blocks fromthe modern high rise shopping centers.

Kip "talking" to a store clerk.

The neighborhood gets crowded as people come home from work. Pedestrians watch out for delivery motorcycles zipping through the crowd. Occasional trucks squeeze through slowly, barely clearing the store fronts that spill into the street.

Just blocks from the crowded neighborhood alley street is the ancient Dongdeumun gate towering over this very modern city street. Rapidly expanding high rise construction in the distance suggest that that Korea's place in the world is certainly not history.

Eventually we wondered out of the neighborhood and found the shopping district we had been told about. But we were not prepared for the size of this new consumerism Mecca. It was overwhelming, like stumbling into the Las Vegas Strip, only to find the hotel sized buildings were shopping malls, many of them filled with high-end designer clothing. I was too exhausted to enjoy much shopping by this point, but I convinced Kip to get a $20 T-shirt designed by a young Korean to represent his country’s war and rebirth of peace.

As we were leaving we asked how long the seven-story mall would be open and discovered it was open until 5 a.m. Like many other businesses catering to the massive 20-something population in Seoul, it was open all night.

One of Seoul's new fashion districts open for all night shopping.

We decided to walk back to the city center by way of the new Cheonggye Stream, the stream that had been covered with concrete 60 years ago after the war and had recently opened. It was past midnight by this time, and we were not alone on the walk. Couples holding hands and chatting were out, so were groups of women and groups of men. There was a profound innocence about the place. No graffiti. No hint of violence. Just people enjoying each other’s company. We later learned that the crime rate in Seoul is incredibly low.

Cheonggye Stream at night.

Refreshing cool water after spending a night walking Seoul.

We walked under an overpass. It was lit in gentle colored lights and with special lights illuminating children’s artwork. I wondered what Los Angeles would be like if we light up the underpasses at night and decorated them with children’s art.

The next day we explored Insadong, a traditional tourist area with plenty of souvenir shops with cheap and expensive artwork, pottery, handmade paper and the best tea I have ever tasted. We found an upstairs tea house and indulged in drinking tea and watching people walk past. It was mostly Korean couples, walking arm in arm. Often the men carried the women’s purses. I thought that was sweet.

Tea time

Artist shop in Insadong

After a heavy doses of people watching we decided we wanted Korean barbeque, after all, we were in Korea and we had been trying to get it all week. We asked our tea waitress who sent us in one direction and we wondered around trying to match her Korean pictorial writing with the lit signs on the street.

A semi-drunk man in a business suit stopped us and tried to help us. His English was questionable, but he was fun and we were not in a hurry, so we followed through blocks of restaurants with Korean-only signs. Finally, with much excitement he delivered us to a back alley restaurant with several friendly Korean grandma types who immediately made us sit down and began pouring us water.

It would have been an interesting experience, but Kip was really hoping for Korean barbeque, so we found a way to politely slip out. I think they understood.

We wandered around until we found a restaurant that had a curious hearth outside. A young man with tongs was transporting heavy round charcoals through the front door. We followed him inside.

Once again there was no English on the wall, door or menu. But the place was full of young Koreans watching the World Cup on the big screen TV and to Kip’s delight, tables of grilling meat.

Someone motioned for us to sit down and the charcoal guy gingerly dumped the burning coal into a pit in the center of our table. The delighted manager pointed to one of the Korean words and said, “Cow!” We ordered that, plus two beers. Within minutes we were sipping Hite, eating bean sprout kimchi with metal chopsticks and grilling our own meat. We felt completely immersed in Korea.

Korean barbecue in Korea.

Yes, I am really eating kimchi with metal chopsticks -- clearly not the same girl who moved to LA seven years ago.

Kip posing with the restaurant manager. It was awesome. We have no idea what the name of this restaurant is or where to find it. Many of the streets in Korea actually have no name, so directions get a little confusing unless you have GPS coordinates.

Back at the hotel we fell exhausted into our American beds at the Marriot. It was kind of like cheating, to stay at an American hotel on our Korean adventure, but sleeping well made our daily adventures possible.

In the morning we discovered the hotel’s sauna was actually a Korean bath -- a segregated mens’ and womens’ all-natural spa with hot tubs, cold tubs, sudsy showering areas and dry sauna.

When I got over the awkwardness of being naked in a room full of women who don’t speak my language, it was actually incredibly relaxing. Once again I appreciated the innocence of Korean culture that allows people to enjoy something as basic as public nudity without shame or fear of predators. I wondered how it would change American culture for girls to be exposed to a wide variety of naked female bodies instead of the few they see air brushed in our media.

The last day we were in Korea we made our way to the Changdeok Palace, arrived in time to hear one of the only two daily English tours.

Kip bows to enter through the small door. Only the king was allowed to walk through the gate upright.

When it ended we piggy backed on a Korean tour of the palace garden and made friends with a few other English speakers on the tour, two Irish kids and a girl from Ohio. We exchanged stories and ended up hanging out for several hours, wandering through another touristy shopping area with them and finding dinner at a very authentic, back-alley, Korean-only restaurant where Kip finally got his authentic bibimbap. It felt like a chance meeting that was meant to be. We exchanged e-mail addresses and wished them the best in their studies.

In the secret garden

Kip with new Irish and American friends.

We made our way to Seoul Tower, a relatively new tourist attraction, an old television tower a top a mountain overlooking Seoul. By this time it was a cloudy night with a disappointing view of the city and once again it was nearing midnight and we were exhausted.

Seoul Tower at night.

Laser show with fountains and light at Seoul Tower

A slice of Seoul from the tower ... more than 10 million people out there.

Kip took this picture of the inside of the men's restroom. No reason to let the need to pee interrupt the view.

We saw an artist making sketches for 10,000 Won, about $8, and Kip convinced me to sit for a portrait. The artist, who spoke no English, motioned for me to look in one direction and then studied my face for the next 15 minutes. It was a strange experience for me to be so carefully studied.

Kip loved the portrait and carefully carried it home on the plane the next day, wrapped between two pieces of cardboard. I didn’t think it was an amazing picture. But I have difficulty really liking any pictures of me. I appreciated how much Kip liked it. It made me realize again that he loves me.

Later that night, realizing that it was now after midnight and our last evening in Seoul, we decided to do the last thing on our wish list – visit the Foot Shop so Kip could experience the fabled foot message and nibbling fish that literally eat away the dead skin on your feet.

I was planning to watch and take pictures, but when we arrived at the massage parlor, a fancy little Korean/Japanese place hidden away on the sixth floor of a building two blocks off the main road, I decided to try having a massage too.

I have never had a massage before.

Kip has always wanted to have a couple’s massage. He has suggested it for an anniversary present, but we have never gotten around to trying it. So at 1 a.m. in Seoul, in a massage parlor with an English name but not an employee that spoke more than a handful of words in English, we decided to get a couples’ massage.

Upside down with a masseuse squeezing the tension out of my shoulders I desperately wondered how to say, “OUCH! STOP!” in Korean.

I was a little intimidated and willed myself to relax. I survived, and by the end it was even relaxing. I might try to get a massage after my next marathon.

Kip enjoyed it immensely. He got a 40 minute massage on his back and then another 20 minutes on his feet, before he tried the fish pond. In all it was near 2 a.m. when we caught a taxi back to the hotel.

We got in a quick night’s sleep, enjoyed the hotels luxurious breakfast buffet one last time and reluctantly left our hotel for our 18-hour journey back to Los Angeles. As we left I found myself hoping, even planning how we could come back. Like a new relationship brimming with possibility, I had fallen in love with Korea.

Road Trip Less Traveled ... part one

2010-05-25T08:12:00.000-07:00

With fourteen sandwiches packed and the foyer full of snacks and camping supplies to sustain us two days at sea, I watched Kip check the marine weather report.

Small craft advisory.

I gave him that look.

You promised, right. Not unless it’s safe.

"Of course, we will wait. Maybe it will get better."

I made a pot of coffee and snuggled up in the couch to read a castle book to my son and enjoy a lazy Saturday morning.

An hour later the report had changed to a gale warning. I have read enough classic literature to know that a gale is bad news.

Maybe we could go tomorrow or even Monday.

Hmmm … let’s wait.

Or we could go on a hike.

Or what? What else could we do?

And then somebody said, "How about the Hoover Dam? I’ve always wanted to see the Hoover Dam!"

We looked it up and discovered that it was an hour past Las Vegas, and the last tour was at 5:15. It was already after 10:30. Could we make it?

I stopped folding the load of clothes that I was working on and we started packing for the Hoover Dam and who knows what else. It reminded me of the time in college when a conference was snowed out in DC, so we looked on the map and decided to drive to Canada to see the frozen Niagara Falls. That was fun. Except that our only credit card was a Discover card and our good friends to the North had yet to discover Discover.

By noon we were sitting in traffic in downtown LA, eating sandwiches.
I was the first to say, I don’t think we are going to make it by the end of the day. I started mentally making plans to find a cheap hotel nearby. We could always see the dam on Sunday. They are open on Sunday, right?

We started listening to a wonderful audio book “I, Juan de Pareja” and we were in the desert before we realized.

Then I saw this sign.

If you have ever been a kid in the kind of family that think the alphabet game should be an Olympic sport, than you have to appreciate this sign.

All I had to say was “that’s interesting,” and Kip was taking the exit.

And driving down a lonely road into ….

What is that white patch?

Let’s find out!

The kids start protesting …. No, Dad!

And then Kip drove off the road and onto the ..

Our wheels started spinning.

I think it’s a lake.

Oh.

He stopped the car and we got out to see and take pictures, long enough to get bitten by some kind of lake insect waiting for fresh blood.

And then we headed back on the highway and oddly enough made it to Hoover Dam just in time to run to the visitor center and catch the last tour.

We took an elevator to the bottom of the dam, stood on a platform over gigantic pipes vibrating with the pressure of the river flowing through it.

The River runs through

And we walked through the power plant and heard how it was built, piece by piece on site.

Some of the electricity in LA comes from this room.

This is the view straight down. The electric power plants are at the base of the dam.

And then we went to the top of the dam and took dozens of pictures.

It was really amazing. I could write an entire blog entry on how the Hoover Dam represents the intersection of history and science, religion and sociology, modern and ancient civilization -- and the damning footprint our current civilization is leaving on the Earth.

And yet, there was something about the dam itself that was amazing too. One day, before the internet or satellite photography, someone decided to build that dam. He convinced others to follow and something as wild and mighty as the Colorado River was harnessed to create the opportunity for cities like Los Angeles to grow exponentially. Water. Electricty. Protection from floods. The essentials for urban life.

And yet it is all just concrete and engineering.

To think that people can change the natural pattern that has existed and brought life to half a continent for thousands of years, and not create problems, is audacious. I don’t think the world understood that 80 years ago when this dam was built, and I think that people are just beginning to really understand it now.

But what do we do?

On the other hand, I had no idea how “wild” the Colorado River was prior to the Hoover Dam. I didn’t know about the 1905 flood and how it “created” the Salton Sea in California (by the way, I think we need to plan a road trip there too.) I can’t imagine living in fear of a flood wiping out LA or wondering if there would be any water when we turned on the faucet.

We need infrastructure as much as impoverished nations in Africa, without it, need it now. We also need to keep thinking, keep improving the way we "manage" the Earth's resources. Why let the previous generations be the builders of society. I look forward to the solutions that ecologically-minded engineers will come up with in years to come.

So many things to think about, maybe that is the best part of pilgrimage.

And that was just day one.

Homeschooling by the Hour

2010-05-17T15:08:00.000-07:00

Homeschooling styles differ family to family, and in our family, I should say year to year, week to week, maybe hour to hour.

We have homeschooled independently and with a charter school. I have followed curriculum and unschooled. We have tried Thomas Jefferson education, Susan Wise Bauer’s Well-Trained Mind method, Charlotte Mason ideas, and just about anything else that my friends have been excited about at one time.

And I have found that while I glean helpful strategies from each model, I can’t commit fully to any of them.

So I am more likely to describe myself as Sonlight inspired or somewhat unschooling. I admire people who follow the full Sonlight curriculum, or allow their kids a rich unschooling environment, but I know it doesn’t work for us.

And what does work is always changing.

Right now we are trying a method I developed based on Oliver DeMille's concept of "structuring time not content," and an article I read about a large homeschooling family who uses Leigh Bortin's Classical Conversation. My kids call it that "timer thing."

It goes like this: We set the kitchen time for an hour and focus on one subject during that hour. No more. No less. Well, less if you are little.

During the language arts hour I sit on the couch with my 8-year-old son and begin with a basic 5 to 10-minute grammar lesson. Right now we are using First Language Lessons by Jessie Wise. I think it was written for first and second graders, so we are moving through it pretty quickly, but he is learning basic things like the definition of a noun and the difference between a proper and a common noun.

Today he worked on memorizing the Mother Goose rhyme that goes … “Thirty days hath September.”

My 11-year-old daughter didn’t need to go through a lesson book like this. We discussed the parts of speech one afternoon while we were driving around in the car.

Then she got into Mad Libs and has never really wondered what a noun or verb was since then. At some point in the next year I would like to go through a more intensive study of grammar with her, but for now, it is not a priority. She is learning other things on her own.

When my son and I are finished with the language arts lesson, he reads a short phonics book or we look at a couple pages of his Explode the Code phonics book. Once we preview the phonics workbook he can work through it on his own.

Then he copies a few sentences and draws a corresponding picture if he wants to. We often use ideas from the Draw Write Now books. Since we started this his drawing and his handwriting have improved.

He is not reading anywhere near grade level, and I am still committed to not pushing, but we do work on it a little bit every day. When he is finished with his assignments he gets to play for the rest of the time.

During the language arts hour, my daughter reads from a biography or writes. Both of these are independent. I sometimes ask her to read to me. Sometimes we take turns reading a paragraph, especially if the reading content is difficult for her and she needs some encouragement.

During the writing hour she works on something she wants or needs to write. Sometimes it is a response about something she is reading. Most often it is for a speech she is preparing for her favorite homeschooling activity, Speaker’s Club.

She likes writing, and so I let her writing time be free for her to just write without my editing. It can be filled with creative spelling and no punctuation, but it's amusing for me to see how much her writing has improved this year simply by reading more challenging books and writing e-mails using a spell checker.

For the math hour I once again work with my son for the first 20 minutes or so. We do math games, flash cards, etc. We also use the Singapore curriculum. Because he struggles to read instructions and the text in word problems, I sit with him and help him read.

My daughter tries to work through Singapore Math curriculum herself, and I help her when she needs assistance. She likes the challenge of working through it on her own, so as long as she is not staring at the wall, I try to leave her alone and let her figure it out.

She likes that there is a cap on how long math can take. If a lesson is particularly laborious, she is not obligated to complete it in one day. And if she flies through an easier lesson, she can go on and do the next one.

Reading, writing and math are the important core subjects that I think we need to purposefully schedule time to cover. But it is not a full picture of our educational experience. We take plenty of field trips. We listen to audio books. I read historical fiction to the kids every night. We watch historical and scientific documentaries. We do science experiments, art projects, etc.

If the hour-timer strategy is not working, sometimes I let the kids just play. Today my son got through his language arts lesson with me and came to me in tears after 15 minutes of “trying” to do his handwriting lesson. I told him to take a break and he has been building Lego models ever since.

Earlier in my homeschooling experience I would not have let my daughter get out of academic work to play, but I have learned to respect the power of play and imagination. Someday soon he will be able to read and write four sentences together without frustration. And someday, he won’t be quite so excited about building Lego models.

Whirlwind Wedding Weekend

2010-05-11T16:43:00.000-07:00

Serenity NOW!

Mother’s Day weekend was a whirlwind of celebration for our family: my little sister’s wedding, family reunions, my son’s 8th birthday, Mother’s Day dinner; and ironically we left Oklahoma City less than an hour before a deadly tornado blew through town, smashing homes, overturning cars, dropping baseball-sized hail.

Thankfully my parents and visiting aunt were fine. The rode out the storm in their windowless hallway, huddled under mattresses, giggling nervously as they listened to giant hail rain down on the house.

Two skylights, including the one above the bed I slept in Sunday night, were smashed. And my sister Serenity’s car, parked in the driveway while she and her new husband honeymoon in Mexico, lost a few windows.

But other than that, the tornado passed over my parents’ house leaving mostly minor roof damage and a lot to be thankful for.

As for the whirlwind of activity -- that began Thursday night when the kids and I arrived in Oklahoma and immediately rushed off to get the boys fitted for their tuxedos. And then there was a big dinner at my parents’ house, meeting with out-of-town family members and wedding guests.

I met my Aunt Janet from Bermuda that I had only met once before. She has become very close to my mom in the past few years, and it was wonderful to finally get to know her a little bit.

Then Friday it was off to get the girls' nails done, and some shopping, and checking into the hotel near the wedding site, and then to the rehearsal and the following dinner.

Serenity married an Oklahoma boy and his family provided amazing pulled pork barbecue for the rehearsal dinner. It was awesome and we ate the leftovers for the next three days. Yum!

Friday night I stayed up too late with my sisters and brother, hanging out with the bridesmaids until way past midnight. But when I stopped by my sister’s room at 6 a.m. the next morning she was awake, happy and half way through getting her gorgeous red hair styled.

“I’m getting married today!”

The wedding was beautiful.

The pictures speak for themselves, perfect spring weather, beautiful bride. Cute cousins.

But the best part of the wedding for me and my husband was hearing our fathers speak. Kip’s dad, who is a minister, married Marc and Serenity. In his jovial way, that reminded us of our own wedding nearly 16 years ago, he encouraged them to love each other selflessly.

And my dad gave a lengthy blessing – the kind of blessing that speaks to now and the future – recognizing the beautiful weight of the present and calling into existence the beauty of the future.

My sister wanted dancing at her reception, so she hired a DJ and my parents went to dancing lessons to prepare them for their role. It was the first that I could remember that someone in our family has had dancing at wedding.

After Serenity and Marc left in a horse drawn carriage, it was only mid afternoon, and plenty of time left to recognize our son's 8th birthday.

Kip, our son and I made a quick detour to the historic Guthrie train depot in honor of National Train Day, and then headed back to Oklahoma City to my parent's house for more pulled pork barbecue, a golf course themed birthday cake and a generous pile of birthday presents.

Kip’s parents stayed with my parents as well, so Sunday morning we were able to celebrate Mother’s Day with both moms. We went to church and found our way downtown to the historic Oklahoma City stockyards and ate at a world famous little steakhouse dive Cattleman’s Café.

Afterward we drove around and found some real cowboys unloading a semi-truck of cattle into the stockyard. We watched liked tourists and had a min-van discussion of whether or not we should be vegetarians.

Then Monday it was rest up, clean up, pack up, begin remodeling my parent’s bathroom, and head back to LA – just in time to miss the real whirlwind.

Mom pulled out her wedding dress from 1972 and let our daughter try it on.

The Rehearsal

Practice makes perfect

Sunny on a sunny day

It is really difficult NOT to get a picture of Kip's dad laughing.

Cousins .... my son and my sister's twins

Two of my favorite people in the whole world.

My siblings and parents together for the first time in more than four years

Before the wedding

Because the wedding was in the morning, the preparations started before 6 a.m.

Final ceremony preparations in the bride's room.

My mom and Aunt Janet from Bermuda

The Wedding

Dad should be used to this. It was his third time giving away a daughter.

Dad praying a blessing over Marc and Serenity.

The married couple!

A Few After Wedding Pictures

Kip's parents

Kip and Me

Dad and Me

The four of us kids

And then they were gone

Lost Opportunities

2010-04-24T23:01:00.000-07:00

I had a funny conversation with my 11-year-old daughter tonight.

I was being characteristically silly, singing, but really hamming it up.

My daughter looked at me curiously.

"Mom, if you practiced, I bet you could be a really good singer. If you were younger, you could be like a Real Singer…like a rock star."

I thought, “Oh goodie, like Hannah Montana?”

But I just said, "Really?"

Then she dashed my dreams.

"Yeah, but people in their 30s can’t be rock stars because they can’t sing cool lyrics. You know .."

That’s too bad.

She was laughing, but still trying.

"Well, if you were a teenager you could be cool."

I had to level it with her.

I wasn’t cool, when I was a teenager. I was too busy trying to be REAL to be cool.

"Oh…Then I guess you missed your chance."

The Great-And-Dreadful Day of Judgment On Mess

2010-04-12T22:51:00.000-07:00

This past week several of our regularly scheduled classes and activities were canceled due to rain and spring break vacations, and I found myself face to face with the depressing reality of our gluttony of stuff stuffed into our two-bedroom apartment.

During the middle of a math lesson I sent one of the kids into their room for a ruler. He came back empty handed.

“We don’t have one.”

Yes we do. We have several.

I pulled apart my desk, the homeschooling box, the junk drawer.

Nada.

I offered a dollar to whoever found a ruler – metric or standard.

Math was forgotten. We went on a quest.

I had to push piles of things out of the way to slide open the closet door, only to find that the closet was crammed with labeled boxes of disorder.

The bin labeled Lego, was not all Lego, not even majority Lego. There were Barbies, dirty socks, puzzle pieces, Lincoln logs, marbles… etc. And that was just the beginning.

I opened my daughter’s drawers, still in search of the ruler. In one drawer I found every different kind of clothing she had, plus books, games, craft supplies, my long-lost, good scissors and other things that had no business taking up the drawer space and evicting the socks into the toy bins.

I was getting mad. No one got a dollar.

And that was the beginning of the Great-and-Dreadful Day of Judgment on mess at our house. When I got over being mad about the cacophony of clutter we had created through our basic neglect, I decided to make April our clean-it-up-or-clear-it-out month.

For my own sanity I set some personal ground rules.

1. I would do one job at a time. I would not start clearing out one area and start another before one was finished.

2. I would not buy any new organizational infrastructure until I had “earned it” by substantially decluttering.

3. I would bravely give away things we didn’t need anymore – like the little blue wooden table I built for our daughter when she was two and the toys that she no longer cherished but reminded me so tangibly of my little girl so rapidly fading.

4. I would not even try to do it all in one day.

5. If I needed to, I would go to IKEA and buy all the organizational stuff I wanted, after I cleared out what we didn’t need.

I also kept the kids on my side of the battle by promising not to give away anything they were not ready to part with. And they surprised me with their maturity in giving up things they had outgrown.

That first day I cleared out the box of homeschooling books and supplies in our living room. But I didn’t get through it easily.

Luckily a friend called mid afternoon and rescued me from my freefall into despair. So reluctantly I stopped daydreaming about getting a maid, putting the kids in school and getting a job where I would be “loved, appreciated, well dressed and unharassed by messy children.”

And then I found three rulers.

Then the next day the kids and I went through their clothes and bagged up enough grown-out-of things to comfortably fit the rest of their wardrobe back into the drawers. (The games, books and craft supplies were given new, more appropriate homes.)

By mid week I had taken on the kids’ room full throttle and gone through every miscellaneous box, every hiding place under the bed and every corner of the closet. I re-labeled boxes and rearranged things in a better way for my son to reach his toys and put them away.

We excavated two bags of recycling/trash and six bags of give-away stuff out of their room. It felt great. I could see their walls and carpet. They loved it. We were on a roll.

I was so happy I even finished the taxes and filed them on-line.

I still have a long way to go. It’s easy for me to get frustrated when I realize how many more places need to be organized and decluttered, but at least we have started the spring cleaning fever.

Now tomorrow -- the cabinet of forgotten projects and unrequited love – aka – the craft closet.

My Numbered Days

2010-04-12T21:26:00.000-07:00

My freshman year in college I had a psychology professor, a seemingly ancient man, who always wore a beanie and shuffled absent-minded to the front of the class every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for a 60-minute lecture of basic human behavior.

I really can’t remember anything he said about psychology.

I can’t even remember his name.

But I remember how he began his class every day.

He opened a Bible, read a verse, said a prayer.

It seemed random at first -- a familiar one here, another one there. But there were two that he came back to frequently. And one that quietly took hold of my heart and became my life mantra.

“Lord, teach me to number my days, that I may gain a heart of wisdom.”

I have not blogged much this year as journaling has been crowded out by other activities, but I have missed it. Somehow recording life helps me to take everything in perspective. It’s not just a log of the events that I pass through – running the marathon, sailing, camping, vacations, Easter dinner, conversations with friends.

It’s about being thankful for the moments in life I get, being honest about failures and brokenness and need for healing. It’s about recognizing life now and living forward.

“ … that I may gain a heart of wisdom.”

LA Marathon Thoughts

2010-03-22T23:37:00.000-07:00

Getting game face on at the crowded start.

I ran the LA Marathon yesterday and 4 hours and 43 minutes later I remembered why the word “marathon” demands respect.

As I was pushing through the last three miles of the marathon, ignoring the excruciating feeling of my toe nail being pounded and slowly wrenched from my toe, it occurred to me that someday a scientist could do some kind of brain test on repeat marathoners to discover if we are missing something – a brain component that registers pain and reminds us to avoid it.

Remember. Avoid. Remember. Avoid.

Listen, it sounds like the cadence of feet running a marathon … remember, avoid, remember.

A couple of months ago, when I signed up for this marathon, I had recently enjoyed the Malibu Marathon. I had read Born to Run and just about every recent issue of Runner’s World cover to cover. I was feeling like a runner. I even flirted with the idea of ultra marathoning.

Everyone was talking about LA’s fabulous new “Stadium to the Sea,” mostly-downhill route, and I just didn’t’ want to miss out on the fun. I had finished the last LA marathon in what I considered almost great time, and I wanted to shave it down to 4 and half hours.

So a couple months ago I started training -- a few moderate weekday runs and regular weekend runs. I enjoyed my training runs with Kip, my daughter and friends from Students Run LA, but I didn’t really push myself much.

Which I realize is fine, but now that I have had 24 hours to process the marathon experience, I realize it is also why this race took me 13 minutes longer than I had hoped. And why it hurt so much.

I think running for fun is much better for the body than running competitively – even if the only person you are competing with is yourself. But I think my problem was that I trained for fun and then tried to run the marathon competitively. And that made it less fun.

So … I learned something.

It was also hot and I hadn’t slept well the night before. And I was getting over a slight cold. So maybe it was a combination of things. All I know is that it was more difficult than I had expected.

But maybe that was the problem. Maybe I just set my expectations too high. Two years ago I had never run four miles together and in the last 10 months I have run three marathons -- without much recovery time in between.

So today I talked to a friend about training for a triathalon. I thought about learning how to swim better so I could use that as my main exercise, maybe try pilates again or yoga.

Funny thing is, this evening I also caught myself saying, “next year when I run the LA marathon …”

So maybe I’m missing something.

My brother was there to cheer me on during the route. He surprised me near the end and rode his bike to the finish so he could be part of the marathon end chaos. Thanks Tim!

Running with my Daughter

2010-03-14T18:02:00.000-07:00

I ran 8 miles with my daughter this morning.

Last night I went to a fabulous little work day/dinner party, and consequently slept in, only to be awoken by my I-hate-mornings daughter standing beside my bed jubilantly singing along to my CD alarm clock.

“Take me above your lights…. Carry me through the night!”

I glanced at the clock. Owl City had been playing for 20 minutes and my daughter was fully dressed, running shorts and sneakers.

Are we still going to run?

I really didn't feel like running. But the Students Run LA team I have been training with were meeting in less than a half hour at their high school, and it was the last weekend training run before the marathon next week. So I got up and got out the door.

The sun was bright this morning, taking full advantage of a cloudless sky, and by mid run it felt more like a July afternoon.

Every few minutes I looked over at my daughter, game-faced, charging up the hills through Griffith Park, and asked, "How are you doing? Are you ok?"

And it was always the same.

"Great!"

We passed the trains at the south entrance and I told her how we rode those when we first visited LA seven years ago. When her brother was barely sitting up on his own. She didn't remember.

I pointed out the snow-capped mountains in the distance. The horses on the trails. The picnic area where we had her brother's 4th birthday party, complete with a jumpy and a pinata.

She showed me where her girl scout troop rode horses. I was not part of that trip and I had forgotten that she had done that.

I thought about how our memories converge and part and overlap. I remember some things and she remembers others. It's special to run together. It is only a few years that we parents and kids run on the same road.

By mile six she stopped saying "Great!"

We had been going uphill in the sun for the last few miles. Her cheeks were flushed. I gave her the last of our water.

It was my turn to tell her she was doing great, that I was proud of her.

Only two weeks ago, I had felt the same agony, charging up the same edge of the park, only then I had been near the end of a 20 miler. I could tell her with honesty, "We're not that far. Not that close either. But not that far. You can make it."

The road dipped into a gentle downhill and we ran under the shade of overhanging trees. She sensed the change and perked up for the last bit, but not without admitting, "this is alot harder than I thought it was going to be."

I understand that.

She was pretty wiped out at the end. Although a banana, more water, trail mix and promise of a barbecue with the students seemed to help.

I felt bad though. I was afraid I had ruined running for her. Letting her join me on a long run, a run much longer than I had ever attempted until about a year ago.

When we got home I asked her what was hard about the end of the run, what hurt.

I don't know. I can't remember. It was just hard. But I'm glad I did it!

Yeah. I understand that too. That's why I keep running marathons.

Running Along

2010-02-21T22:00:00.000-08:00

I’m marathon training again.

With less than a month out from the LA Marathon I have stepped up the running, squeezing in two to three hour-long runs during the week and a long weekend run.

This time around I have found a few more running buddies. A few weeks ago I started running with a Students Run LA group. Several of my friends from Kairos mentor teens through this marathon training group. For years they have invited me to join them on their long weekend runs, and this time around I decided to give it a try. I loved it.

Because I just show up for the weekend runs, I don’t feel like I really know the kids yet. But I have been driving them up to Griffith Park where we run and I’m beginning to get to know them. It’s funny, but I feel like its kind of an honor to be a small part of their world.

They are great kids. They all live in the lower-income, urban neighbors near downtown LA. Some of them struggle academically. Some are experiencing serious family heartaches. Some run fast. Others really slow. But they are working hard and they keep showing up to run 12, 16, 18 miles because they believe they can make it to the finish line next month.

I have started making them marathon cookies, my own half-breed cookie/protein bar creation. It’s still a work in progress (I’m adapting a couple recipes), but it seems to be boosting my popularity among the students – which other than nutrition was my goal all along.

Running with the girls from Kairos has also been a lot of fun. There are four of us near enough to each other’s pace to run together for several miles. It has been nice for me to have an excuse to spend several hours catching up with these old friends.

I have also ran a couple times with my friend, and fellow homeschooling mom, Kathleen. She is particularly inspiring because running is fairly new to her and she is training for her first marathon. We ran today, but fell into more talking and walking than running. But that is ok. There is a time for everything.

During the week I have been splitting my running time between running with Kip and running with our daughter. I usually run 3 or 4 miles with Kip and then another 2 and a half with our daughter. And she usually outruns me.

She seems to really enjoy our morning runs. It is one of the few things that motivates her to get out of bed with a smile. She has been talking about running the marathon next year. She ran 5 miles with Kip a couple weeks ago, so she may be ready to take on longer runs. We will see.

Christmas Vacation in Review

2010-01-28T21:45:00.000-08:00

I understand that Christmas past a month ago. But I just got some of my favorite pictures off my camera and I couldn’t resist sharing.

We spent Christmas Eve here, in LA with my brother Tim and his fiancé Heather.

Christmas Eve in LA with Tim, Heather and my daughter

We all got hats

Then on Christmas Day we flew out to the Midwest where my parents live. We saved almost 50 percent by flying on Christmas Day, and more importantly we missed the hundred year blizzard that ransacked Oklahoma Christmas Eve and shut the city down.

First day in Oklahoma we bought snow boots, found a "hill." Kip and co. built a snow ramp and made the best of it.

How is that shovel sled working for you, Kip?

Both my sisters arrived in Oklahoma with their own little families and we celebrated second Christms, complete with presents and the traditional reinacted Christmas story (which is always a delightfully bizare interpretation.) This year might have included angels with light sabers.

Three sisters celebrating Christmas in red -- not very coordinating reds, but reds.

Mom and her son-in-law to be. Welcome to the family, Marc.

And then we had enough of celebrating second Christmas inside. Mild winter weather and a foot of snow begged everyone outside. We built a distinguished snow man. The littlest ones made snow angels and then the snow war began. It was an all-out family snow feud with Kip fortifying his position behind the wooden fence and everyone else blasting him with snow bombs.

Look close. He is the guy in the green hat behind the fence.
There is his arm.
Taunting us.

"Mom, I'm a little nervous, standing here, posing for a picture."

"I should move. I know I should move."

Thanks, Dad.

Even the dog can't resist.

Massive snowball.

Newest brother in law with an evil grin.

My sister Kiesi's beautiful look-alike snow baby.

Kiesi and Serenity

Serenity

Lots of fun

Then we journey north to Missouri to visit Kip's side of the family. We spent New Year's Eve with them.

Our son and his cousin playing on a frozen creek that is literally in Kip's parents' back yard.

Throwing rocks on a frozen river. Why do boys love to throw rocks in creeks? Is it universal?

Light sabers apparently work in freezing conditions.

Another sweet cousin

After a few days we drove back to Oklahoma and enjoyed a quiet weekend with my parents. It was one of the best family reunions we have had in years, and it left me wondering more than once why we all live so far away from each other.

First Sail of the Year

2010-01-17T15:06:00.000-08:00

On Saturday we took the sailboat out for the first time this year.

As our son announced, several times actually, "This is the best sailing trip of the year and the worst sailing trip of the year."

The waves and wind were gentle, so our son was able to relax and even enjoy a new set of binoculars. Kip was happy because there was enough wind to sail and not have to use the little outboard motor.

Several months ago we realized that these little sailing trips were more fun if we brought along a friend for our daughter. We asked two different families this time and got two girls, so the girls had their own little party on the bow.

Girl time

It was a nice smooth sailing start to the New Year.

Kip and our little guy.
Kip, our son and our friend Jon

Jon's sweet daughter

Kip and me

Beautiful sunsets never get old.

Easing into the New Year

2010-01-17T10:31:00.000-08:00

It's a new year, half way through the first month, but still a new year.

We are easing into it here. We got back from the Christmas/New Year holiday trip to the Midwest, and then we all battled colds for a few days. And now we are getting back into life -- cleaning up the apartment, taking down the Christmas tree, reading all the Christmas letters from friends back East.

It has been a season of simplifying, cleaning up and organizing -- both stuff and priorities. Kip started organizing the kitchen last weekend, which was difficult at first to see him going through the part of our life that I usually manage. But once I realized the favor he was doing me, I embraced it. Now we are taking on everything, little bit by little bit.

With all this organizing and time managing, I thought I might take a blogging break. But I missed putting in little updates. So expect to see more here soon.

"Because my dreams are bursting at the seams ....."

2009-12-17T22:40:00.000-08:00

While my blog updates have slowed to a pre-Christmas halt, our life has been charging on.

There have been rain and soccer trophy parties, field trips and concerts, Disney Land trips and bike rides, laundry and drama, lots of Christmas baking and running.

Kip’s parents spent a week with us in early December. We took time off from our regular routine and ran around LA like we were on vacation. Then we jumped right back into school and work and getting ready for Christmas break.

This past week I’ve had some really nice moments with the kids, and I’m looking forward to spending some time in Oklahoma with my parents over the holidays. But for now, in lieu of a decent update, I wanted to share a little video Kip made last night. Where I express myself in written language, he loves music and images.

A couple notes on the video: a few weeks ago our daughter heard the song “Fireflies” by Owl City and instantly fell in love. I like it too, and paired with images of our kids and their grandparents enjoying life, it kind of chokes me up. I hope you enjoy it.

Riding Bikes

I'm Amazing

2009-12-02T23:38:00.000-08:00

This weekend one of my friends introduced me as “one of those amazing people who homeschools her children.”

Amazing?

I offered an uncomfortable smile.

I have been in this conversation before, and for some reason I always freeze at this point. I sense a trap. My instinct is to say, “It’s really not that big of a deal, anyone can do it,” which is what I truly believe.

The problem with that bit of humble honesty is that it disarms the flattery with a subtle accusation. “You could homeschool if you wanted to…”

There is a strange tension between successful career women and educated women who choose to forgo employment to spend more time with their kids. It makes me uncomfortable because I think I could probably happily be either.

I admire women who are successful in their chosen careers. At times I envy them. But I don’t regret my life choices. I love my life. I’m happy. My kids are happy. My life is full.

But selfishly, I really want to be understood.

So this time, I ignored the undertones and responded with my best logic.
“Homeschooling is not that difficult.”

Some people think you have to be a certified teacher or something like it to homeschool, so I was not surprised that her defense was “Well, I just didn’t learn enough in college to homeschool.”

At this point in the conversation I should have perceived that she was convincing herself that she couldn’t homeschool because she didn’t want to homeschool. And I should have said something graceful about “it’s not for everyone,” which I do believe.

But instead I said something else that I believe.

“It doesn’t matter what you learned in college. I’ve learned more homeschooling than I did in college. I learn with the kids.”

Maybe I need people to understand that it is intellectually stimulating to be surrounded by children. It is not the same as being a 50s housewife, eternally ironing the man’s shirts.

But I guess it really doesn’t matter what people think. I should just accept the compliment.

I am constantly learning.

This afternoon I learned what it means to tessellate (Squares do. Circles don’t. Google it.) I also learned how Eli Whitney changed human history by more than just inventing the cotton gin. And incidentally, it only takes the space shuttle 90 minutes to orbit the Earth.

But more importantly, I got to be there when my daughter excitedly showed her brother a diagram in her science book of how “bees” see differently, specifically how they “see” flowers differently than humans. She asked me, “but how do scientists know what bees see?” My son looked the pictures over and said, “But who is right?”

They want to know the answers, of course, but the undertones of their questions amuse me too.

Her excitement doesn’t fully mask the skepticism that guides her learning style, “how do they know what bees see? Can they ask bees? Can they “see” inside bees heads?”

And his question, “who is right?” reflects his life stage. "Tell me what is right, Mom. Make it black and white and simple so I can know the rules and win this game of life."

On afternoons when we are home I like to read The Landmark History of the American People to the kids. It is a fascinating historical text. My daughter loves it when I read it to her, but it is just a little over my son's head.

Almost accidentally I discovered that my son remembers more of the story if he is playing while I'm reading. The Lincoln Logs seemed like a good tie in that day as I was reading about Western expansion, and it has somehow became a tradition. Today I read about how Eli Whitney set out to create a mechanized process for creating guns, to fortify America against the perceived threat of Napoleon, and incidentally created an entire system of mass production. It was exciting to see my kids understand how technology shapes history as much or more than wars. Why do we always teach history like it was a series of wars?

I'm not amazing. I just love having the time to enjoy learning with my kids.

Thankful for the Weekend

2009-11-29T10:20:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning chess and coffee -- does life get better?

Something about this past weekend reminded me of long holiday weekends in college when Kip and I packed our laundry in our little station wagon and drove through mountain roads home to wash the clothes and let our parents worry about being the adults. We would inevitably spend the weekend sleeping in and play cards with my younger brother and sister who were still living at home.

Even though we are adults with two kids and a mortgage now, it has felt relatively carefree this weekend: watching movies with the kids, reading books, playing cards, having Thanksgiving dinner with LA extended family including my brother, his fiancé, her family, my cousins and aunt and uncle. We even helped initiate my brother's fiance into the family with an "enthusiastic" round of Nurtz.

This weekend Kip has also been finishing a home improvement project that he started a month ago. And I’m finally happy that he chose to do it himself instead of spending the thousands it would have cost to hire it out – although a month was a long time to wait without a sliding glass door. It is a good thing it hasn’t rained here.

Almost done

My daughter and I even did a little Christmas shopping together. I am not really a shopper. I go to the mall/store when I have to and usually at the last minute. My daughter is more “gifted,” at picking out special presents for people. So she was my helper.

We also tried to go sailing Saturday. Kip was pretty excited to get out into the steady autumn breeze and crisp sunshine, but there was a high swell advisory that we didn’t know about. As soon as we left the marina and faced the 8-foot waves rolling our boat parallel to the surf, I freaked out.

I know logically that it is very unlikely that the boat could capsize, but I couldn’t feel that knowledge as we were being tossed around and blown over. It is kind of like walking past a chain link fence with a snarling, angry Pit Bull on the other side. You know it is very unlikely that he would be able to jump the fence and attack, but it doesn’t make walking past him any more comfortable.

So I guess my lack of adventure ruined Kip’s. And that was depressing.

Chilly wind

But we came home and made Jambalaya, watched the Incredibles on TV and played Nurtz with the kids.

Simple days.

Advent began this weekend too. The kids really enjoyed helping put the Christmas tree together at church.

Death of a Pet Rat: Part II

2009-11-25T00:15:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I posted about my daughter's pet rat dying.

When my dad read the blog entry he sent my daughter an e-mail response with his thoughts on animals and death. My dad is not a theologian or a pastor, but a physician who deals with life and death daily. His love for scripture and life and everything in between came through so beautifully in this response that I asked him if I could post it here.

So here are Dad's thoughts.

We're sorry to hear about the premature passing of your beloved pet.
It was nice that you were there to comfort him at just the right time.

May I give my opinion about animals and heaven?
It is, of course, just opinion, but based on the Bible, so I think you can trust it.

God's Word (the Bible, words Jesus said would never pass away - see Matthew 5:17-20, for example) talks about animals living together peacefully, not hurting each other. When Jesus brings in the new heaven and new earth, I believe that everything that is wrong with the world will be corrected and restored, like it was in the garden of Eden, before Adam and Eve sinned. At that time there was no reason to be afraid of a talking snake, until Satan deceived them. Anyway, here's a picture of the kingdom of God, from Isaiah's prophecy, chapter 11:

11 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,

and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,

and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;

and a little child shall lead them.

7 The cow and the bear shall graze;

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,

and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.

9 They shall not hurt or destroy

in all my holy mountain;

for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea. (esv, copied from http://bible.logos.com )

So, I think all the animals and insects, all the life-forms God created will be there, but restored to their original, beautiful, harmonious purposes, including rats and spiders.

Once I heard a man talk about having a vision of heaven in which he walked across a field of beautiful flowers. He was afraid to step on them, but when he did, and turned around to see where he'd walked, the flowers stood back up and smiled at him. Jesus knows that we love our pets, and I trust that he'll satisfy our desire to have them restored in heaven. It may not be exactly the way we imagine it, it will be even better.

God will comfort you about losing George. He even comforts us about people who have died. In fact, I think God lets us go through grieving about losing pets to prepare us for losing people. It is especially comforting to understand that we'll see them in heaven, restored, never to get sick and die again. Isn't God good to us, to give us those promises? Jesus even went through death for us, to show us a glimpse of what it is like on the other side (we're told that our new bodies will be like his).

I love the pictures you've had on the blog of you and George.

Love
Grandpa Bob

Seeing Purple

2009-11-24T23:53:00.000-08:00

It has been nearly 10 days since the Malibu Marathon, and I have a purple medal hanging from my bedroom mirror and a matching purple toenail to remind me of the good times. But it already seems like a long time ago.

I have only been running once since the big race. I took a few days off and then I caught some kind of fast-moving, flu-like virus that only made me miserable for about 12 hours but left me with a stuffy head.

Saturday Kip and I took the kids on a bike trip down the coast along part of a 20-mile route I ran last month. It still seemed like a long trip, even with a pair of wheels. Feeling the distance like that made me realize how big of an accomplishment running a whole marathon is. Which is probably good, because the way my mind works I had already started thinking about how it was only a marathon, not like a 30, 50 or 100 miler. I’m not sure why I do that.

I am thinking about running the LA Marathon in March. There is a new and improved race route from Dodger Stadium to the Ocean. I’m sure that it will be cool. I am just not sure I need to run it.

Malibu Marathon

2009-11-17T00:24:00.000-08:00

The Malibu Marathon in brief: beautiful sunny day, amazing ocean view, challenging hills, least crowded marathon ever, wonderful personal support and encouragement from my ever faithful friend Kip, and overall the most enjoyable long run that I can remember.

I finished in 4:57, just barely under that 5 hour mark, and nearly 20 minutes slower than the LA marathon, but not too bad considering I had trained less for this race and the course turned out to be significantly more challenging than the LA race. Most importantly, I finished the race feeling fine. I was certainly ready for the race to be over as I crossed the finish line, but I was strong enough to enjoy the rest of the day.

Unlike the LA Marathon in May which attracted at least 15,000 runners, only about 370 runners ran the Malibu Marathon, which made it feel comparatively like a quiet, laid-back run along the beach, sort of. I’m not sure 26.2 miles will ever really be “laid back.” But it felt relaxed, and I ran it feeling relaxed.

The race began just after dawn in Ventura County, along country roads in a sample of California’s beautiful farmland. My marathoning partner from the LA Marathon, Jon, and I played name-that-plant/vegetable for the first hour. Having spent some of my childhood in rural farming communities, where rolling acres are devoted to the same crop, tobacco or cotton in Alabama, corn in Wisconsin; I was delighted by the diversity of plants growing at every turn – artichokes, cabbages, celery, and strawberries.

El Caballo really wanted to run with us.

When I passed mile 10 I remembered that 11 months ago my goal had been to run 10 miles before the end of 2008. I ran that on New Year’s Eve and was so exhausted that I zonked before we were able to ring in the New Year. I could barely walk the next day, and here I was, less than a year later, passing mile 10 with a smile.

About half way through the race the route turned along the Pacific Coastal Highway, and the runners were treated to the world famous views of mountains and ocean. Sometimes the wind blew against us, and at one time I had to turn around and chase my hat.

Let the hills begin!

Up hill ..against the wind

Around mile 18, just when I started to really feel tired, we hit a series of challenging hills that continued until mile 24.

Jon, who had been taking it easy, (he is training for more challenging races over the next few months) decided to speed up around mile 20 and he ended up finishing quite a bit before me. But being alone for the last few miles gave me time to focus on the run and dig deep for that perseverance that makes runners into marathon finishers.

Through the whole race Kip was the most amazing support person ever. At the beginning of the race he noticed that I had dropped my energy snacks, a little stick of strawberry-flavored jelly chews that stick to my braces and give me that little extra boost. And by the time I rounded the first big intersection, he was there, camera and energy snacks in hand.

I had not expected to see him often along the route, but he was able to follow me all the way, driving a few miles ahead and waiting for me, taking pictures, offering Gatorade, smiling, cheering, doing his best impression of Chariots of Fire – which actually became less funny around mile 22. He even changed into a pair of running shorts and ran up a hill or two with me.

Because the hills were so difficult, I forgot about the actual mileage at one point and just focused on running. I was actually surprised when I passed the Malibu fire station and someone yelled, “just two more miles to go.” I thought about that in terms of circles around my neighborhood park, and I knew I could make it. It was helpful that the last two miles were mostly downhill too.

The foot I sprained about a month earlier was throbbing by this point, and I just wanted to make it to the finish. Focus. Finish. Focus.

I also started listening to a podcast of This American Life at this time, which made me laugh. I realized that it was probably not a very competitive strategy to start listening to NPR in the last leg of a marathon, but it was relaxing in a way that helped me zone out of my discomfort.

finishing at 4:57

At the finish line, after receiving my medal and commemorative beach towel, I took my shoes off and waded into the chilly ocean water. It felt great on my swollen feet.

Calling Mom and Dad to tell them all about it.

I told one of my friends today that I really don’t want to see myself as a 5-hour kind of marathon runner. I think if I run another marathon I’ll work on improving my time, but for now, I’m happy that I enjoyed this run. My constant prayer had been, “help me to run well and finish strong.” And I felt like God helped me do that.

My sister asked me a few weeks ago why I wanted to run a marathon, and I wasn’t quite sure how to answer her. Maybe I run marathons (hey, I can be plural now) because it feels really great to set a huge goal and accomplish it. But it must be more than that because I don’t quite get the same feeling from finishing my taxes or organizing the hall closet. Maybe I just like the medals.

Not sure why, but I think I want to do it again.