Feeling Loved

Our family are not really Hallmark Holiday people. We don't tend to buy flowers or cards, we prefer things homegrown or homemade and heartfelt. For Mother's Day, what I really love is (if the weather cooperates) to head to a lake and do my first outdoor swim of the year. It's become a bit of a tradition and it's something I look forward to. So this year we headed to our favorite lake by the beach, with the kids' kayaks in tow and the dogs in the back of the van, it's quite a procedure just to get out the door!

It was my pup Sophie's first trip to a lake, and she wasn't too sure about getting in the water. Mackenzie is trying to encourage her!

Eventually she got the hang of it and even fetched the ball from the water. It took her a few tries to get the hang of grabbing it without swallowing water. It was like watching someone bob for apples for the first time.

My tri-buddies Carrie and Devlin and I got to dress up like superheroes and save the universe from certain disaster. Just kidding! We got to go swim in the lake, which was surprisingly warm and beautifully clear in the sunshine. To me, there's something about swimming outside that is just so joyful. I mean I always love swimming, but a pool indoors is like a pale substitute for outdoor swimming. Kind of like buying a slice of cheesecake at McDonald's. It's only good if you absolutely cannot possibly get real cheesecake and have temporary amnesia so you've forgotten what it really tastes like. Not that I've ever eaten McDonald's cheesecake, I'm just imagining how bad it might be. In any case, I always look forward to the first outdoor swim of the year and this year delivered a blue lake and sunny skies right on cue for Mother's Day weekend (even though a threat of rain on Sunday made us move the swim to Saturday instead).

On Sunday, I got these sweet straight-from-the-heart cards from the kids. Mackenzie made a point to hand-write me a message (even though he's usually the computer keyboard kid) and Asa gave me coupons for a massage, a manicure, pedicure, and hairstyling (I'll post photos of that last one!). Could a mother ask for anything more?

Wayne cooked me a yummy breakfast, I got a nice long phone call in to my mom to tell her how much I love her, and I got to go for a 10 mile run on Sunday in the sunshine as well. All in all, I'm left feeling blessed to the utmost degree, grateful for my hubby, kids, and friends, and hoping all of the mothers out there had a wonderful day too.

Two Weeks of Birthday

Looking at my beautiful sparkling now-10 year old girl, the song that always comes to my mind are these lines from Simon and Garfunkle's Bridge Over Troubled Water:

Sail on silver girl, sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way

She's definitely a big shining star in our world. And this year to celebrate turning "double digits" as she reminds us, it took us about two weeks. First of all, she had asked for a kayak (like big brother's) for her birthday. Since an October birthday didn't leave a lot of time for hitting the lake, we decided to give it to her in late September. That left us with a glorious fall day to go up to the water and try it out. This will definitely be a big hit next summer when we can camp a lot more and the kids can both use their kayaks.


Then, her two biggest bros Rob and Rick came into town to visit, along with their wives Kristen and Alicia. I think the only thing better in Asa's mind than having one fun big brother is having three! Especially when they're big enough to turn you upside-down.

So that was birthday celebration number two with our whole family together. She had been looking forward to this for weeks, and keeping Rick's and Rob's cell phones buzzing with anticipatory texts.


Of course, what tenth birthday would be complete without a gaggle of giggling girls in pajamas staying up late and making banana splits? Asa had a sleepover with some of her friends to celebrate.

Then finally on her actual birthday we went to the pet store to let her pick out a pet rat (her present from Mackenzie) and ended up coming home with a new puppy! This is the new family dog Sophie. I guess birthdays don't get much better than this one.

Touchstones

One of the things I loved most about my childhood was the sense of rhythm and almost of ritual, the notion that things would come around every year that could be counted on. I think predictability is one of our most basic human needs. Some people of course seem to need it so much more than others, and perhaps children more than adults. Having touchstones throughout the year brings a sense of comfort and a respect for the turning of the seasons of life.

One of the things I have most grown to anticipate this time of year is our annual camping trip at Waldo Lake. I know I've probably posted similar photos every year, of us doing similar things - floating in boats, swimming in crystalline waters, kids catching frogs, hiking through woods, the spectacular beauty that is Waldo. Every year the kids are changed, but the landscape is not. The frogs are different of course, but catching them is not. Perhaps the water molecules from last year's lake have gone up into clouds and traveled around the globe and rained in Botswana and the water molecules in the lake this year were a fog bank around Bristol at this time last year, but yet the lake looks the same.

This year we were blessed with a stretch of unbroken lovely fall days. The frogs were plentiful, from the tiny "fingernail frogs", just the size of my pinky nail, to these glorious golden bumpy frogs with sparkling eyes, to camouflaged tree frogs that you have to be eagle-eyed to spot. The water was warm enough for kids to swim and float in, and for me in my wet suit to hang out in (the perks of being a triathlete mom is having the wetsuit that lets me hang out in cold lakes with my kids all afternoon).

The kids brought bikes with them and took off en masse for a group bike ride led by mountainbiking mom extraordinaire, Maria. They suddenly looked 5 years more grown up setting off like that.




Of course, time does have a way of marching on and some things change. For years, we brought our faithful and wonderful camping dog Sabre on our Waldo lake excursions. In his final year, I even brought my Burley trailer and wheeled him on the trails around the lake when he was too feeble to walk. Then he was gone, and I spent a few moments last year crying when I saw people with dogs that looked similar to Sabre.



This year of course we have Callie, and its her inaugural year camping. As a small dog, she has the added perk of riding in the kayak (something Sabre surely would not have done, as fearful of water as he was depite his Labrador heritage). We say she's the "bow wow of the bow" and she enjoyed being ferried over to an island where she could be a wild leash-free dog for awhile without our worrying that she would chase a squirrel into the wilderness and never be heard from again.


One of the other things I value about this camping trip, besides the sense of the earth coming 'round again and the changing of the seasons and spending time with friends who we haven't seen enough of over the summer is that the kids get plenty of time to just be kids. Without computers and games and electronic distractions of any kind, they can spend hours in a happy mob keeping a balloon in the air, cheering each other on. Even my big 13 year old (who often vaccilated between the adult conversation by the campfire and the games of the children) was caught up in the excitement of chasing a balloon through the forest.

















In the end, the trip is really about everything important in life: family, friends, nature, beauty, fun, seasons, rituals, and appreciating the great gifts we are given here on earth. I am grateful for yet another ride around the sun, another season at Waldo.

Words, Apparently Fail Me

Blogging is a funny thing. It's kind of like a diary, except that you put it out there for public consumption. The really good bloggers are great at dancing a line of witty self-deprecation and a raw self-examination that goes almost, but not quite too far to make us uncomfortable at reading the intimacies of their existence. I don't think I'm one of those bloggers, and maybe the reason is that when an experience in my life gets too intense, it's hard to find the words to share it with family and friends, let alone thousands of random strangers. This is probably why, unlike the incomparable Dooce, you won't ever be reading anything near a birth story on my blog.

So it is that while days and events, blueberry picking and beach trips and funny moments with the kids have flown by for the last couple of weeks, I haven't really been able to write about them. I haven't written a word here since the weekend we spent in Washington with Wayne's family following the death of his sister-in-law. I've wanted to talk about that weekend, which was definitely full of emotional highs and lows, but just couldn't find the words. And then it seemed silly that I couldn't write about it, and then it seemed even sillier to write about some other trivial thing that was going on, so basically I did nothing.

So (deep breath) here goes.

Don't know where to start... Let's see, Wayne's whole family was getting together for a family reunion, camping at Lake Wenatchee, which was planned several months ago. When his SIL died, we knew we would go wherever his brother would be, whether that was home or at the reunion. He decided to go ahead with going to the reunion, so we packed up the camper and headed north.

I can't imagine grieving my spouse's death. It's such a huge loss, none of us wants to think about it. Being with someone who has suffered that kind of loss is hard too because you so much want to make things better and there's really nothing you can do or say that will make that happen. Everything you think about saying sounds dumb because words can only carry so much feeling with them and it's not enough. Still, it was good to be there with his brother and just be with him - sit around the camp fire, laugh at the funny things his dog was doing (one of his 11 Great Danes, this one thinks he's a lap dog), and just be present.

On the total flip side of the coin, the kids and I got to meet their BIG brothers, Wayne's kids from his first (very very young) marriage. And that's really the part that's even harder to write about because it was kind of surreal. I was really nervous because while I know I'm a mom to my two kids, it's kind of different to be a step-mom to fully grown adults (when I don't always really feel like a fully mature adult myself half the time). And the kids had been really excited about this forever and I didn't want it to be awkward or anything. But I shouldn't have worried, because Rick and Rob are really the coolest of guys and Mackenzie and Asa ADORED them, along with Rick's wife Kristen. Being with them was eerie because while of course I knew they'd be a lot like Wayne, they were so much like Mackenzie and Asa in different personality ways and even at one point Rick looked over at Asa and pointed out that they were sitting EXACTLY the same. Like I said, eerie. They were so much fun to hang out with and Mackenzie summed it up with "I feel like we've known them forever even though we just met".

So while we were grieving a big loss in the family, we were also celebrating the growing of our family as well. Which made for a lot of emotional up and down over the weekend. I came back feeling like I needed to sleep for a week and then mentally process for another month or two just to take it all in.

The kids of course aren't old enough to really fathom grief in a big way. But they are able to process joy in the straightforward way that kids do. For days afterward, Mackenzie kept saying "I wish Rick and Rob were here, then it would be more fun" (and I would say "What am I then, chopped liver?" - but of course I can't teach him how to throw a football or any of that other great big brothery stuff like they were doing). And Asa has basically been running up their cell phone bills with phone calls and texts and sending and receiving photos.

And now the little details of life are smoothing down all of that big emotion, so I guess it's easier to process. After all, there's still laundry to be done and dinner to cook and swim meets to go to, and maybe even a few blog posts to write.

Summer's Symphony Synergy

Have you ever seen an almost teenaged boy just begging to go to the coolest concert in town, the one act he HAS to see this summer.... and it's .... Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. I'm LOL because at this age my parents would DRAG me to the symphony but I would've killed to have gone to, say, an Eagle's concert. I'm so glad we all ended up going though. We are so lucky to have this beautiful outdoor venue here, right next to the river and the symphony gave a free evening concert with many gorgeous works from Bizet to Gershwin, culminating in Tchaikovsky. Said boy was wiggling out of his skin with excitement as the climactic moment approached (especially when he spied them wheeling cannons behind the stage to the right of the amphitheatre - there had been just a wee hint of disappointment when no cannons were spied on the stage).

It was a perfect summer's eve and it seemed like the whole town had turned out to fill the amphiteatre. A heron did several lazy circles above the audience (garnering some applause, but luckily departing before the cannons made their grand entrance), the clouds above turned orange then pink, and the beautiful early strains of the Overture wafted over us in time with a warm breeze that set all of the leaves on the tall cottonwood trees in motion. Sometimes life achieves a simple perfection, a synergy of every element from the people you're with to your surroundings to sights, sounds, textures, smells, touch. Goosebumps pucker up on your arms and tears leak out of the corners of your eyes from the sheer joy of it all. Such was our evening with Tchaikovsky. As the band lit into Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever for the encore, we decided to march our way out of the amphitheatre (Mackenzie discoursing on the similarities to ancient Roman amphitheatres and me singing something about being kind to web-footed friends) and down the trail along the waterway.

Thoughts On the Other Side of the World

We're back from our week of camping, kayaking, and adventure (for Mackenzie and I) and another great experience with Missoula Children's Theatre (for Asa). But before I delve into photos of our fun time, I wanted to take the chance to share with you my sister and brother-in-law's blog, East Meets West.

In the time that we were away in the sagebrush side of our state, the aftermath of the elections in Iran have been unfolding on the other side of the world. Since my brother-in-law is from Tehran and much of his family lives here, these events are no longer just news stories for our family, but involve the lives of real people who share many of the same dreams that we do - to freely elect their leaders, to have the rights of self-determination. Not only do Marisa and Nickrooz share their wonderful photos and description of their latest trip to Iran on their blog, but I hope you can take the time to read their insights into what is going on in Iran right now and how important it is that we support the people of Iran and not just think of them in terms of a few stereotypes.

Have Yourself A Mellow Little Christmas

After the insanity of this crazy year, it was nice to hunker down and just have a small our-family-only Christmas. We had virtually no plans, other than to open presents in the morning and eat something in the afternoon, and that was really nice.

The kids as usual popped out of bed bright and early, but in a ritual common to cruel and heartless parents everywhere, we kept them pinned down upstairs until Wayne had his coffee and I had my tea in hand and we were both more or less awake.


One very sweet thing I thought about this Christmas is that after emptying out their stockings and finding a candy cane or chocolate to chow on, the first thing they wanted to do was to open presents from each other. Both had done a stealth job of wrapping to disguise size and shape of presents, using multiple boxes, bags, tape, etc. This cracked me up, and reminded me of last year when Mackenzie swore for weeks ahead of time that he was giving Asa an onion for Christmas, and actually wrapped one up as a gag before giving her his true present.

After that was out of the way, they opened their Santa gifts. Well, opened isn't really the right word for Mackenzie has he got a note from Santa saying his present wouldn't fit through the chimney!


After a summer spent borrowing my mom's kayak at every opportunity, I guess Santa figured that he would really enjoy his own, and if you look at his grin here you know that he will.

And Asa's expression in this photo more or less spells out "A karaoke machine? OMG!" She was beyond thrilled, and has been singing day and night ever since (not that she doesn't sing day and night anyways, but now she's mic'd.)

And that, plus a turkey dinner in the afternoon was more or less our Christmas. Small, mellow, fun and family. In the week leading up, we celebrated the solstice with a progressive dinner with neighborhood friends, baked cookies, sang carols, decorated, read books about the Christmas story and in general just enjoyed all of the rituals of the season as well as celebrating the reason for the season.

Snowy Days

We've had quite a week with several days of good snow and great sledding. The kids are a bit disappointed that we didn't get the dumping down here that the rest of the Pacific Northwest has been getting, as in several feet of snow! But they're happy that we got enough to keep their school-going friends out of classes for almost an extra week and so there were lots of kids out sledding on our hill.

They were really really hoping for a white Christmas this year, and the weather reports seemed to indicate that's what we were going to get, but now it has changed to mostly rain. Still, we're hunkered down and ready for a great little family Christmas together. No traveling this year after our whole year of crazy travel. And all of our family is elswhere, so it will just be the four of us together. Wayne is planning on making Christmas Day cinnamon rolls with Mackenzie, and the turkey is already defrosting. I got another big package of the world's best Oregon cranberries to make some sauce with, and we should be all set for a nice mellow holiday.

My mom and I went thrift-store shopping together yesterday (50% off day at my favorite place!) and I took her to the train station this morning where she hopped on a completely full Amtrak to Seattle to spend the holiday with my sis and brother-in-law. We got a few little stocking stuffers and had a great time.

To all who are celebrating this time of year, whether it be Christmas or Yule, Channukah or Solstice, I'm wishing you a wonderful holiday time filled with family and friends, love and laughter, and maybe a little white fluffy stuff falling from the sky!

The Family Hug

Dorcas writes in Life in the Shoe about those mushy moments that younger couples share that may wane as people are married longer and longer. As always, she has such a way with words, writing "one learns to be knit together in mind and heart in many ways by the time you've been together 24 years, even if you forget to intertwine fingers."

Whenever hubby and I manage to steal a little kiss or hug or even a surreptitious bum grope behind the kitchen counter and away from little eyes, the kids' radars seem to go off. Wherever they are in the house, they come running grinning from ear to ear and shouting "Family Hug!!!!!" They pile into us, forming a circle facing inwards and squeezing us all together. Maybe someday they will turn their heads away with teenagerish expressions of disgust and excessive eye-rolling. Maybe they will think it just plain wrong for us older folks to embrace, but right now I love the way that they embrace us instead.

The Smithsonian.... Without Kids

It's kind of like a banana split without the banana. I spent last weekend in Washington D.C. by myself. I went for a triathlon coaching seminar, and just couldn't find an airfare low enough to bring the kids along. Wandering through the mall, the monuments, and spending an afternoon at the Smithsonian by myself was a little eerie. On one hand, it was kind of strange and wonderful to have a whole day where the only influence on my time was what I wanted to do (I even took a little break with a paperback in the middle of the afternoon - oh my!). On the other hand, it made me realize how much I love sharing things with my family. Being in the Smithsonian by myself, well it was cool, but I couldn't help thinking how Asa would love the animal exhibits, or Mackenzie would be fascinated by the section on asteroids. I only stayed a couple of hours and then wandered on.

One thing I did love was that I got up very early on Friday morning and went to see all the monuments at sunrise, by myself. That's something I wouldn't have been able to drag the kids along for anyways, and it was a very moving experience. The sun rises behind the Washington Monument and fills up the Lincoln Memorial with light. There was no one else around and I spent a good amount of time with Mr. Lincoln overcome by emotion. This monument is one of the most awe-inspiring places I've ever been on the planet. The sheer size and scope of it, Lincoln's words on the wall, and his statue that looks like it is ready to stand up and walk forth, it is a very powerful place. When it's crowded with people, it is still impressive. But when you can stand there in the hush of dawn and watch the sun fill it with golden light, and read Lincoln's words, which still echo forth in the issues of our day, well that is something else altogether.

So now that I'm back, I'm both grateful for the time spent on my own, and doubly appreciative of the small people that I get to share my world with on a daily basis.

Remembering

The kids wanted me to put together a slide show for our dog Sabre who died a couple of weeks ago. We had a small memorial service with friends who have known him for years (and even had him over to stay when we were gone). We planted a cherry tree, and buried his collar and sprinkled his ashes there, and I know every year when it flowers it will remind us of his sweet soul. If you want to see what he meant to us, you can check out his video: