KOA

I know I go on and on about our KOA family in Gunnison. But it really is our home away from home whenever we have the chance, and with our dear friends, the Hamels & Risners, as much as possible.

Where else can you stay up till 2am around a campfire and attempt to ride your bike to the bathhouse after (harrummpphh) shots of Tennessee Honey? Or eat at a restaurant that is so kid-friendly that they hand out boxes of Legos to play with instead of crayons? Or pet the goats, ride a cow named Fancy (pronounced "Fay-un-see") and play pinball until your thumbs bleed? Not to mention the swimming pool, best playground ever, trout fishing, good coffee, epic mountain biking and NO WORRYING ABOUT THE KIDS!!!!!

You really must come next year. I'll bring s'mores.

Forever Summer

I'm always sad when summer ends and school begins. Every year I tell myself that we will do more this summer, go more places and see more people. Every year, I glance through my mental list and see all the items that didn't get checked off. 

This year, I decided to try to medicate that feeling of disappointment by looking through photos and seeing all the things we DID get done. Thanks to being up all night with one kid puking into a Tupperware that has since been ceremoniously retired into the trash can, we canceled today's plans and are truly attempting a day of rest.

 Here's a representative collection of random photos, in case you care:

 

Tyler & Jessa taking a break from crawdad fishing

First really hot day of summer

Thelma & Louise made a cameo appearance at Liam's birthday party

Tyler being Tyler, while Clay was being Clay with the Expensive Camera

If anyone has true blue cowboy blood in him, it's this guy. No one can wear a hat quite like Liam. (Allison Family Reunion)

Great-Grandma Mona Bebe Yoder King, with all 10 of her great grandkids (King Family Reunion)

This is how we ended the King Family Reunion. The temp averaged 106 all weekend and it really took all my willpower to not take all my clothes off every single day. How on earth do any of you people live there?!?

I always feel time slipping through my fingers, like the wind does when I'm hanging my hand out the window while I drive. It's pressure can be warm and pleasant, but felt even when at a dead stop. 

The Mayans believed that time is circular. I like this philosophy. (That's why their calendar "ended". It didn't actually end, it just started over. So I don't think we are all suddenly going to be on the brink of Armageddon later this year.) It's poetic, and I tend to be drawn to circles more than lines both literally and figuratively. Hopefully when my kids are grown they look forward to making memories with my like I do with my mom, and she did with me. 

In the meantime, I'm going to sit back, relax . . . and work on my list for next summer. 

Guilty Blessing

I love being horizontal. Especially when it's in my gigantic bed, with it's 4" memory foam mattress topper (thank you, Cosco) with my hubby (in his absence one--or all--of the kids) sleeping next to me.

It's a small pleasure, but a deep pleasure, and if there's only one thing I've ever learned from being a nurse it's to revel in those smallest pleasures.

This past week, one of my patients learned that, in spite of the aggressive chemotherapy he's been getting for the past two and a half months, his tumor has doubled in size and spread to his liver, lungs and bones. Though he wishes, and we support, every attempt at the most aggressive treatments, the statistics are not in his favor. He will likely not see the end of the school year, or spring break with his kids. This will be his last Christmas. (If he makes it that far.) Anything more will truly take an honest-to-God, water-into-wine miracle. All the positive thoughts, prayers and other universal alignments will continue towards curing this, but . . . I get to have that conversation with he and his amazing wife tomorrow.

He is 40.

The Guilty Blessing is that experiences like this are why I have a living will. (There really is nothing worse than families fighting over what a loved one wanted in their last days. If you love your family, give them the gift of never having to wonder.) This is why I have a series of scrapbooks for me and my kids that detail some of the most favorite moments of our lives together. Why I have started a notebook for each of them with random thoughts, lessons, quotes--things I want to leave them with. Why I'd rather have a black light dance party in the living room than get to bed exactly on time.

Just in case tomorrow never comes.

Tragedy happens. To honest, good, stable, productive, happy families. Every day. And yet the sun still comes up the next morning.

Sometimes I think that if something horrid happened to my family that I would feel like the universe was taunting me by being so normal. Yet I also see those who have suffered incredible loss, and end up healing--strong, smart, functional, productive, happy and NORMAL.

I guess the awareness is a blessing in and of itself. The icing is being able to meet some incredible people. Someday I want to write a book, to be able to tell some of their stories.

In the meantime I'll hug my kids and try to make a small difference for those who have to face it.

Blaming Christian

I'm not at church this morning. Again. 


Don't get me wrong, I am very, very thankful for the faith family that I have. It is a relatively diverse group of people who come together more or less weekly for the purpose of seeking spiritual guidance and fulfillment. And it's exquisitely important to note that some of the people who I commune with regularly on the most spiritual levels do not frequent the same church--or any church.


To be completely honest, I have a very paradoxical relationship with organized religion. Which is a bit odd given my personal history and what I consider my depth of faith to be. 


My dad has been a pastor since I was three in a Mennonite church. First at West Union in Parnell, IA for 17 years, an now at Beth-El Mennonite in Colorado Springs for the past 18 or so. (For those of you whose education about Mennonites has come from reality TV or tour-guide type books, we drive cars and wear shorts and listen to Black Eyed Peas and drink beer and have real live flush toilets and electric lights and I have never owned a horse.) If you've never attended a Mennonite Church, do. They are--generally speaking--very welcoming, tolerant, grounded, deeply spiritual people who are less interested in "the Bible tells me so" than "love thy neighbor". My experience has been one that has grounded me to seek Truth, and not based on religion. 

Let me explain: 

The Bible tells a love story. It is not, contrary to popular belief, a book of rules and regulations and judgements about lifestyle and lists of punishable sins.  


It is amazing and heartbreaking to me how many people read the Bible--regularly--and completely miss the point. There are, roughly, 1186 chapters in the version of the Bible most widely read. (For you scholar-type people, there are several different versions and scripts used in other faiths, especially Jewish tradition, that are not usually published in the version decreed as acceptable by King James the somethingth--thus the King James version. It gets fairly confusing, but scholars decided which books to include in this version, which as been accepted as Unarguable Truth by Christians Everywhere ever since.) This is not your average lazy Sunday read. To even plow through some of it will take days. Most people cannot even read the whole thing in a year. 

It seems to my little pea-size brain that the Biblical story is easiest to understand when taken in the context of the original listeners. What details were important culturally and socially? What parts that seem insignificant to me may have had fundamental meanings to those originally hearing the story?

In that context, I realize that there was a lot that God asked of those who claimed to love and follow God. Take Jesus, for example. He did not come to die on the cross to save our sins. As I read the story in the context of the Old Testament, following the entire story line, it seems his original intent was to completely buck the politio-religious system that existed at the time. I would even argue that he didn't come to establish followers, but was God's effort at a continued relationship with misguided humanity. In the end, salvation through his death on the cross was the gift he left for those who entered into that relationship with God. 

I'm not sure I can measure up. 


In the wake of a lot of prattle about gun control and Chick-fil-a over the past couple of weeks, I was deeply grieved to see that, once again, Christians everywhere have confused a commitment to an issue over commitment to people. Commitment to relationships with people, no matter the "cause". Truthfully, it makes me ashamed to be associated or categorized with those who would use one's experiences and understandings--in this case even oneself--against them. I know that I've heard people say, "Well, we have to draw the line somewhere," when defending the contradictions of their beliefs and their actions. But the Truth is that the line between right and wrong runs through the middle of each one of us. We'd tear ourselves and everyone we care about apart if we tried to draw a hard line irrespective of the relationships on either side. It's impossible.

I do not intend to stop going to church. Even though it is imperfect--the dysfunction that affects every family affects every church family as well. That's part of being human and part of belonging to a family. I may not agree with how everyone votes or how they choose to spend their money or what they think the issue is. They probably don't agree with me. But I value that relationship and conversation.

I hope that I can teach my kids how to read the Bible and other faith writings--it's one thing to read, another to read wisely. I hope they learn faster and are wiser than I have been. I hope they learn to love enough to be able to enter that relationship and converstaion unconditionally. And though it seems paradoxical at first, perhaps I'm just painfully aware of the contradiction of being a Christian.

My Olympics

Watching the Summer Olympics inspires me to be more active and attempt athletic-type things. But the reality is simply this:


I could NEVER do that. 


While I like to be active, my abilities are limited with average (and even slightly below-average) performance at waaaayyyy above-average effort. 


I propose a new Olympic event. It's called Mom-lympics. The events will be as follows:


1. Moving Target Pigtails
2. Work-Family Balance Beam
3. Couch Cushion Diving
4. Swimming in Circles (a specific rule here is that you may only use one limb for actually swimming, and must have at least 4 kids you are responsible for)
5. Wet Toddler Steeple Chase
6. Speed Stain Removal
7. Matching Sock Search
8. Creative Drinking
9.  Unevenly Matched Bars
10. Weightlifting (you have to lift each of your children 10 times while singing a Disney tune)


Gold is awarded to the parent who is still laughing at the end.

sister-wives

There are sisters, and there are sistas. 

This post is about the latter. The women in my life who complete me, and who are my closest companions. The ones who understand what makes me tick, and who love me anyway when they don't. These are the women whom share my family and my cooking (which is saying something); who parent my children and who don't mind me parenting theirs. These are the women I want to grow old with, laugh with, cry with, breathe in life with.

I had the privilege of spending two weekends IN A ROW with these amazing people. 

The first weekend was near Ojo Caliente, NM, in a little VRBO house that must be the spiritual epicenter of the universe. The sense of peace and eternity was amazing. It was balm for the soul to just sit and soak in the timelessness of that place.

We spent a lot of time talking, eating good food, and spent time in both Santa Fe and Taos. If you have never been there, go. Both places are beautiful, especially with the Native history and influence in the area. Plus, the artwork, architecture and jewelry are second-to-none.

This peace was good preparation for the following weekend. My sister-sista and I drove to KS with our combined five kids to visit our cousin-sista and her three. We visited a farm where our grandad grew up and is still owned by Mom's cousin; we played and went swimming and ate freeze-pops and had movie night outside on the lawn. We managed a few minutes of adult conversation spread over two days. We really did look like sister-wives with our eight children all blended together like the Sneetches after their stars got all mixed up: 

". . . . Until neither the Plain nor the Star-Bellies knew, whether this one was that one . . . or that one was this one . . . or which one what what one . . . or what one was who."

 I love the expressions of everyone watching the pigs. "What's it doing, Mama?"

 

 These two littles look an awful lot like three mostly grown up bigs did.

And since it wasn't chaotic enough, we added fire. A whole case of sparklers. 

Ahhhhh. This is what lifetimes are made of. Thank you, sistas, for feeding my heart. 

Once Upon Allison Reunion

On July 4th, we drove 10 hours to the booming burg of Alpine, AZ for the Allison Family Reunion. In addition to seeing long lost mostly related relatives, we enjoyed good home cooking, hours of catching up conversation, four-wheeler tours, sight-seeing pit stops and a small-town Independence Day Spectacular (Allison Float in the town parade included).

I should note that no 20 hours on the road with three children isn't necessarily my idea of the ideal vacation, but ours travel well with the in-flight movie of their choice. (For those of you who believe I am bending to sorrowful, head-shaking lows by offering nearly 4 hours of screen time each way, I do not apologize. You may consider yourself to be the chauffeur for our next trip sans electronics. Please be prepared to wipe mashed banana off the ceiling, provide snacks at 20 second intervals, play the 'smelly feet' game, be nearly deaf after 2 hours of 21-month-old screeching, sing "wheels on the bus" a bazillion times--with motions--and say "black probe droid" five times fast.)

Here are some photographic highlights of the trip, in no particular order: