Seasons

I've always been a summer person.  I love the heat, and the sun somehow warms my heart & and makes life more fun.  But in the last 10 years or so spring has also caught my heart.  The longer I live and the more I experience, the more I long for growth, healing and re-birth in my own life & in others.  Spring is able to bring outward evidence of hope and promise after a long, dark northwest winter.  Now I long for the first signs of spring and feel my heart warming to hope again.

I've never had much use for fall or winter because of all the cloudy days.  I don't mind rain except for cold rain, which is what we have for months in the fall and winter.  As a kid I appreciated snow days and sledding.  But the beauty and quiet blanket of peace that snow brings to a neighborhood somehow lost out to the pain of traveling to work in the snow and ice, and potential frostbite for kids who eternally refuse to dress warm enough for the weather.  Plus snow is normally rare around here and hardly seems worth the cost of long, dark days with drizzly rain that lasts for weeks at a time.  All the kids cooped up in the house without an outlet for their energy is hard on everyone.  Every winter I feel anxious and closed-in and wonder how I ever felt happy in my dreary life.  After 30+ years of this pattern I figured out it was a seasonal thing for me and that even though it feels like forever, it never is.  An end comes just as I give up hope, and six months of relief settle in.

This winter was different.  We were always cold, thanks to our walls of windows and propane prices that tripled after we bought our house.  But there is something cozy and safe about this home.  And maybe it is also that our relationships have healed enough over the last couple of years that there is finally more peace than conflict - usually.

Chris and I have experienced a re-birth in our relationship since we moved back here.  This past fall we began to feel younger and hopeful and in love with our life together.  We have always had a strong and caring marriage, but this life has been so much harder than we had planned and we aged faster than we could have believed.  The darkness of this winter has not been an emotional darkness, as in the past.  It was simply dark outside a lot - but we've been regularly happy and craved our time together.  For the first time in my life I am looking at the spring weather of this past week with bittersweet happiness.  I realized today that I will actually MISS this last winter.  That is a very strange first for me.  It used to be that I loved the seasons.  But I meant overall - because fall and winter were really just the pain and darkness of life that allows us to appreciate and embrace the joy and happiness of spring and summer.  I can now say that I enjoy all the seasons of this beautiful place.  Each holds its own rare beauty to me and thankfulness is replacing seasonal depression in my heart.

I love this place...

Fun in the Fog

Chris is a regular on Craig's List.  If there is anything someone may consider trying to sell or give away, Chris has probably thought to search for it at some point.  In January he and our neighbor came across a listing for a dock that a near-by hotel was selling for $200.  Chris has been trying to figure out how to design and build a dock that will survive on a creek that rises daily with the tides.  Somehow in the conversations with the hotel, the dock was reduced to $1 since we were local and could haul it away.  Chris and our neighbor began planning and calling friends for ideas on how to make this dock work.  The dock is concrete so the only way to get it to our house was to tow it up the creek.  But that would require a very high tide to make sure the boats had time to get up the creek and back down before the tide lowered too far.  A special high tide was recommended by someone @ 11:00 on a Sunday morning.  Chris, our neighbor and two older gentlemen friends with boats met at 8:30am that morning to start the process.  The one thing that no one thought of was fog.  It was SUPER heavy and thick that morning...like where it was semi-dangerous to drive...on the road - where there are lines to keep you going the right way.

They set out and could not see a thing.  The trick was driving the dock around the bay and finding the mouth of our creek to head up to our houses.  They could barely see their hands in front of their faces.  Using a compass, after a panicky phone call to our neighbor's wife about possibly being lost out in the bay, by a welcome miracle they were able to find our creek.   They headed up and we were waiting.  The fog was so thick that we could hear the boat motors awhile before we could actually see them.  And then they were here...

Chris is in the boat on the right and the dock is on the left.

We can finally see it...

bringing it up to land...

Just as it was being delivered, a couple of dear friends from Oregon (blog link is on the side: Treasures Through His Grace) stopped by to say hi and see our new house.  They got to see the dock brought to shore and witness our crazy morning.  Pretty excellent timing, Amber and Adam!

 When the guys went to sign the papers a week later, we found out there was still another dock available.  That would mean our neighbors could have their own, and so could we.  The only problem was trying to tow another one.  That's when the marina guy offered to tow it up for us and drop it off at our house.  In my head I heard: THEY DELIVER???????  So a few days later Chris looked out and realized that the 2nd dock had been dropped off.  I had been home all morning and never saw or heard a thing.  Good thing we had our fill of excitement the first time around, because no one noticed the 2nd one arrive...

Prepared

 Some members of our family struggle with impulsivity, so we practice slowing thoughts down and thinking through decisions and anticipating the consequences of our actions.  Other members struggle with the frustrating absence of memory when it would be SUPER helpful to remember stuff.  So we also practice skills to help jog memory or keep us organized when we know our minds just won't help us out.

Our youngest son is benefiting from all he overhears, whether he needs the skills or not.  So when it was time to go see Daddy graduate, this is what he looked like: 

 When you go to a strange college to celebrate your dad, it always helps to be prepared - for swimming, welding, or any natural disaster that might threaten your eyes.

My husband: Chris, Ed.D

I've been proud of Chris MANY times over the last 16+ years - mostly for things that don't have anything to do with celebration and accomplishment.  Chris is a very easy-going person who is able to make conversation with anyone.  He is intellectually gifted and insightful with a compassionate heart.  Most people know one or two sides of him - musician, school counselor, autism specialist, worship leader, soccer coach, behavior & special education facilitator, sound engineer, home remodeler, social worker, or loyal friend.  The husband and father I know is all of these.  And last May, after three brutal years of classes, research, a successful dissertation and a GPA of just under 4.0, he graduated with his doctorate.

Even after 10 months, an out-of-state move, new job, and large remodeling project, he still wonders what he is supposed to do with all this free time...that's how much work it was!  I was so happy for him on his graduation day and SO glad it was over.  I hope after 11 years of college, he feels done.  But I'm not holding my breath....

Back in our Small Town

We spent the last 5 years in Oregon.  We loved living close to family and enjoyed having a swimming pool a few minutes away.  All of our kids learned to swim and G.J. was on the swim team.  We served in a church that became like family to us.  Chris loved his elementary school and I loved working in an adoption agency.  But we had felt our time closing there as Chris prepared to complete graduate school (again!) and we started a 2-state job search.  Chris graduated with his doctorate in May and also holds a principal certification so the options were wide open and sometimes overwhelming.  We knew we would be moving, but were honestly open to anywhere we could afford to raise our kids.

Mt. Baker looms over our icy creek - pic taken from our yard.

Last June God surprised us with the offer to move back to our old community.  In awe, we began preparing to move back to the small town in Washington where we spent the first 9 years of our marriage.  We were able to spend the summer introducing our kids to this beautiful area that we love above all others.  We bought a house in September that is different and better than any we could have imagined.  It is on a large saltwater creek and we have enjoyed learning about salmon runs and boats and watching the wildlife. This morning on the way to pre-school J.T. reminded me that he would be living with us on the creek forever!  It is a peaceful place and we feel like we are on vacation all the time.  Chris is just about done building three more bedrooms upstairs so there is room for everyone.  We are back in our small town and it is sometimes still hard for me to believe that God would grant the deepest desire of my heart, when I have always been prepared to go anywhere.

Our backyard tree.

A regular visitor.

Beautiful winter.

So here we are, spending time with old friends and back in a church that we helped plant many years ago.  We are just over an hour away from my family again so they are a regular part of our lives.  It is a strange experience to be back because much is the same and yet so much is different.  WE are different, and there are more of us now.  I am glad for the experiences, growth and healing we found in Oregon.  And I am so incredibly thankful to be back in our small town.  I look forward to experiencing all the reasons why God brought us back.

What a view!

Changes

I haven't blogged regularly since our oldest girls joined our family 3 1/2 years ago.  It amazes and tires my mind to ponder all the changes we have experienced since then.  In so many ways I feel like a different person.

One thing that remains inside me, though, is the love of putting my thoughts to words and I remember how special this blogging space was to me.  I can feel the thoughts swimming and burning to be recognized, even if it is only for my own heart.

 And so I return, wiser and a bit closer to who God is calling me to be.  And still trying to laugh at the crazy things that happen to me...

The sky over the 1st game at the Hillsboro Hops baseball stadium.

Crazy stories continue...

One of the reasons that I decided to re-start this blog is that I have some SERIOUSLY crazy things happen almost daily in my life.  The only thing that gets me through them sometimes is the hope that I will survive the event to tell someone about it.  Someone who needs a good laugh and a moment to feel better about their own life...

Thought I'd share this one I emailed to my mom and sisters from about 3 weeks ago:

So yesterday morning I got up early to work out on our exercise bike. Before I could do that, I had to send a quick email. As I was working on that, M.C got up and I saw saw a bug across the room that looked suspiciously bee-like. As M.C. was checking it out for me, a yellow-jacket flew past my face. I got worried since we hadn't left any windows open the night before and there shouldn't be TWO in our house, right?

So I got up and went to check the windows in the living room. The windows and walls were covered in yellow jackets. I don't mean like 25, I mean hundreds. I started to panic and then noticed that our dining room (where I had been sitting at the computer on the bar) was also covered in yellow jackets. I sent M.C. to hide in the kids' rooms and make sure the little kids didn't come out. I woke up Chris, begging him to help me. I think his eyes might have popped out of his head just a little bit when he walked into the dining room. He really panicked then and ran to the air conditioner he had brought up the day before from the garage (because it's like 100 degrees down here this week) thinking that maybe there was a nest in it.

I decided we didn't have time for investigations. I ran and put the thickest sweats and sweatshirt on I could find, and started wacking them with a book as fast as I could. I had no idea what else to do. Chris ran and grabbed the 2 yellow jacket poison cans we had in the garage. As he got back upstairs I got to tell him of my newest discovery. In the ceiling over the double front windows in our living room was a round hole and yellow jackets were pouring out of it from the attic. We both realized at the same time that we could NOT whack every single one and survive the war ourselves. Chris started spraying so he could get to the hole. He got stung about 3 times on the way on his head and neck. Apparently they were fine with my hooded whacking, but they didn't like the poisoning guy at all. So he emptied a can and then blocked the hole, then emptied the 2nd can on the guys that were still left. We had yellow jackets everywhere. The guys that hid out behind furniture during the war came out gradually so we had to watch for them. It was complete insanity - like something some twisted comedy movie writer would think up for Steve Martin to act out (he'd have to put down his banjo though - you need both hands).

Chris' head swelled up so I poured vinegar on it and pumped him full of some antihistimines and ibuprofen and gave him G.J.'s epipen since G.J. was late for an appointment and I had to run out with him leaving Chris to man the watch for more.

So the interesting things are that M.C. has asked me several times in the last week about the scratching noise he was hearing when he was sitting on the couch by the front windows. I heard it too, but thought maybe we had a mouse. Pretty sure that our attic is full of yellow jackets...

Plus our bike is right next the windows that the yellow jackets were filling. If I had managed to get on it without noticing them, I would have been trapped!

The ONLY thing that saved us is that somehow they were all really calm. Maybe God spoke to them or something to keep them from attacking us - but it was eerie how calm they were. After Chris started spraying the poison, some angry, non-calm jackets began flying in the dining room door on the other side of the house that we had opened in case some wanted to fly out rather than being smashed by my book. Those guys were ready to attack. If they had all been like that, we might have had to use our fire ladder that lives in our closet upstairs (that we bought for foster care licensing in WA and have never used), to get all of us out while we decided what kind of pest hero guy to call. Someone with some really thick protective gear and a solid plan.

Also - we bought windows for the front of our house that are coming on Friday. We're going to install them ourselves. I am SO thankful that this happened on Tuesday, just days before we were going to cut into the wall where this gigantic nest is. Chris would have been up on a monstrously high ladder with no preparation for what would be coming at him. At least we are now prepared, and I have further confirmation that my teens are heavy sleepers since they slept through the whole thing and were surprised by our traumatized faces when they groggily came upstairs hours later...