Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Progress

We have been hard at work in our back yard for the past month and half and things are finally starting to look the way we want it to. We have SO much more work to do but for the moment I am content with how much progress we have made.
 


 
Nathaniel found a few mangled wire baskets on the side of the road a couple of weeks ago and after gutting them of their dead contents collected moss and made a hanging strawberry planter.


After a great deal of sawing, hacking and damage to my legs, Nathaniel and I managed to clear the brush  at the back of our property. Things feel so much brighter and more inviting now.
 
 

 
Now we just have to haul branches like donkeys for a couple of weeks... or months...


This is the BEFORE picture
 
 
AFTER
 
 
 
 
We are hoping to finish the deck on the left side and install a fence this summer.
 
BEFORE
 

This is how the front of our home looked when we purchased it.

 
AFTER
 

We still have a LOT of work to do in our front garden. So far, everything we have planted as been found on the side of road or dug out of friend's garden. I call it "opportunistic gardening"!

Nathaniel recently dug this BEAST of a rhododendron out of a lot that was slated for development. We have no idea where we are going to put it. We laughed so hard trying to get this thing into the back of Nathaniel's truck. It nearly fell on me twice.  I would be surprised if it survives, but it would be awesome if if did.  


I would still love to plant an Annabelle hydrangea, more hosta, some rhododendron and a couple of blueberry bushes.

 
And more to come.......
 
 



 

Unplugged


Since our family made the decision to unplug our TV, the girls and and I have been spending more time playing in the meadow behind our home, being crafty and reading . Today I gave the girls some beads to play with while I repaired a few of my broken turquoise necklaces.

Amelia attended a birthday party on Sunday and we had fun making a birthday card for her little friend. I feel as though it has been FOREVER since I have taken the time to make a card. Oh, and we have been picking armloads of lilacs.  They smell heavenly!


We finally hung our hammock this month and the girls have spent hours swinging in it.

 
 

Monday, April 29, 2013

Travel....

I am working on a couple of blog posts and haven't quite finished any of them, so I thought I would share a fantastic article  I found while I was perusing the internet this morning.

(Photo of my in North India journaling while watching the sun set over some temple ruins)

 Written by  Jeff GoinsConverge Magazine
 
"As I write this, I’m flying. It’s an incredible concept: to be suspended in the air, moving at two hundred miles an hour — while I read a magazine. Amazing, isn’t it?  I woke up at three a.m. this morning. Long before the sun rose, thirty people loaded up three conversion vans and drove two hours to the San Juan airport. Our trip was finished. It was time to go home. But we were changed. As I sit, waiting for the flight attendant to bring my ginger ale, I’m left wondering why I travel at all. The other night, I was reminded why I do it — why I believe this discipline of travel is worth all the hassle. I was leading a missions trip in Puerto Rico. After a day of work, as we were driving back to the church where we were staying, one of the young women brought up a question. “Do you think I should go to graduate school or move to Africa?”  I don’t think she was talking to me. In fact, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t. But that didn’t stop me from offering my opinion. I told her to travel. Hands down. No excuses. Just go.
 
She sighed, nodding. “Yeah, but…” I had heard this excuse before, and I didn’t buy it. I knew the “yeah-but” intimately. I had uttered it many times before. The words seem innocuous enough, but are actually quite fatal.
Yeah, but  what about debt? what about my job? … what about my boyfriend?
This phrase is lethal. It makes it sound like we have the best of intentions, when really we are just too scared to do what we should. It allows us to be cowards while sounding noble.
Most people I know who waited to travel the world never did it. Conversely, plenty of people who waited for grad school or a steady job still did those things after they traveled.
It reminded me of Dr. Eisenhautz and the men’s locker room.
Dr. Eisenhautz was a German professor at my college. I didn’t study German, but I was a foreign language student so we knew each other. This explains why he felt the need to strike up a conversation with me at six o’clock one morning.
I was about to start working out, and he had just finished. We were both getting dressed in the locker room. It was, to say the least, a little awkward — two grown men shooting the breeze while taking off their clothes.
“You come here often?” he asked. I could have laughed.
“Um, yeah, I guess,” I said, still wiping the crusted pieces of whatever out of my eyes.
“That’s great,” he said. “Just great.”
I nodded, not really paying attention. He had already had his adrenaline shot; I was still waiting for mine. I somehow uttered that a friend and I had been coming to the gym for a few weeks now, about three times a week.
“Great,” Dr. Eisenhautz repeated. He paused as if to reflect on what he would say next. Then, he just blurted it out. The most profound thing I had heard in my life.
 
“The habits you form here will be with you for the rest of your life.”
 
My head jerked up, my eyes got big, and I stared at him, letting the words soak into my half-conscious mind. He nodded, said a gruff goodbye, and left. I was dumbfounded.
The words reverberated in my mind for the rest of the day. Years later, they still haunt me. It’s true — the habits you form early in life will, most likely, be with you for the rest of your existence.
I have seen this fact proven repeatedly. My friends who drank a lot in college drink in larger quantities today. Back then, we called it “partying.” Now, it has a less glamorous name: alcoholism. There are other examples. The guys and girls who slept around back then now have babies and unfaithful marriages. Those with no ambition then are still working the same dead end jobs.
“We are what we repeatedly do,” Aristotle once said. While I don’t want to sound all gloom-and-doom, and I believe your life can turn around at any moment, there is an important lesson here: life is a result of intentional habits. So I decided to do the things that were most important to me first, not last.
 
After graduating college, I joined a band and traveled across North America for nine months. With six of my peers, I performed at schools, churches, and prisons. We even spent a month in Taiwan on our overseas tour. (We were huge in Taiwan.)
As part of our low-cost travel budget, we usually stayed in people’s homes. Over dinner or in conversation later in the evening, it would almost always come up — the statement I dreaded. As we were conversing about life on the road — the challenges of long days, being cooped up in a van, and always being on the move — some well-intentioned adult would say, “It’s great that you’re doing this … while you’re still young.”  Ouch. Those last words — while you’re still young — stung like a squirt of lemon juice in the eye (a sensation with which I am well acquainted). They reeked of vicarious longing and mid-life regret. I hated hearing that phrase.I wanted to shout back, “No, this is NOT great while I’m still young! It’s great for the rest of my life! You don’t understand. This is not just a thing I’m doing to kill time. This is my calling! My life! I don’t want what you have. I will always be an adventurer.”
 
In a year, I will turn thirty. Now I realize how wrong I was. Regardless of the intent of those words, there was wisdom in them. As we get older, life can just sort of happen to us. Whatever we end up doing, we often end up with more responsibilities, more burdens, more obligations. This is not always bad. In fact, in many cases it is really good. It means you’re influencing people, leaving a legacy.
Youth is a time of total empowerment. You get to do what you want. As you mature and gain new responsibilities, you have to be very intentional about making sure you don’t lose sight of what’s important. The best way to do that is to make investments in your life so that you can have an effect on who you are in your later years.
I did this by traveling. Not for the sake of being a tourist, but to discover the beauty of life — to remember that I am not complete.
 
There is nothing like riding a bicycle across the Golden Gate Bridge or seeing the Coliseum at sunset. I wish I could paint a picture for you of how incredible the Guatemalan mountains are or what a rush it is to appear on Italian TV. Even the amazing photographs I have of Niagara Falls and the American Midwest countryside do not do these experiences justice. I can’t tell you how beautiful southern Spain is from the vantage point of a train; you have to experience it yourself. The only way you can relate is by seeing them.
 
While you’re young, you should travel. You should take the time to see the world and taste the fullness of life. Spend an afternoon sitting in front of the Michelangelo. Walk the streets of Paris. Climb Kilimanjaro. Hike the Appalachian trail. See the Great Wall of China. Get your heart broken by the “killing fields” of Cambodia. Swim through the Great Barrier Reef. These are the moments that define the rest of your life; they’re the experiences that stick with you forever.
Traveling will change you like little else can. It will put you in places that will force you to care for issues that are bigger than you. You will begin to understand that the world is both very large and very small. You will have a new found respect for pain and suffering, having seen that two-thirds of humanity struggle to simply get a meal each day.
While you’re still young, get cultured. Get to know the world and the magnificent people that fill it. The world is a stunning place, full of outstanding works of art. See it.
You won’t always be young. And life won’t always be just about you. So travel, young person. Experience the world for all it’s worth. Become a person of culture, adventure, and compassion. While you still can.
 
Do not squander this time. You will never have it again. You have a crucial opportunity to invest in the next season of your life now. Whatever you sow, you will eventually reap. The habits you form in this season will stick with you for the rest of your life. So choose those habits wisely.
And if you’re not as young as you’d like (few of us are), travel anyway. It may not be easy or practical, but it’s worth it. Traveling allows you to feel more connected to your fellow human beings in a deep and lasting way, like little else can. In other words, it makes you more human.
That’s what it did for me, anyway."  - Jeff Goins
 
I am so thankful that I made traveling a priority before I had children. My life was significantly changed when my daughter was born. Nathaniel and I look forward to traveling with our children and exposing them life outside North America, but , but it will never be with the same spontaneity and risk that we once enjoyed. When Amelia was four month old I travelled with Amelia to Norway and spent several weeks gallivanting the countryside with my dearest friend Heidi. It was an incredibly wonderful experience and gave me the courage to travel to Mexico with my family when I was eight months pregnant with my second child. Hopefully in the future Nathaniel and I will be able to take our children to Central America. In my mind's eye I can envision us strolling through the streets of Antigua with our girls in tow and zip lining through the Montervede rain forest in Costa Ricca. Nathaniel and I look forward to traveling together when our children have grown and left the nest as well.

I still have a LONG bucket list!
 

 
 

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Catching up


For those of you who read my blog regularily, you may have noticed that it has been awhile since I have written. I wish I had a good excuse, but honestly, I just haven't had the heart for writing.  Aside from the Easter weekend, when the sun shone warm and bright and I witnessed my first birth as a doula, I have been reclusive, sad and uninspired. It's been rough and I wish I had an explanation for my weepy, disposition, but I don't. Regular life has felt oppressive, motherhood has been challenging, housework has felt like an overwhelming burden and I have spent far too much time crying about it all. To put it simply, I have not been coping terribly well. You know things are bad, when you land face first in your bed and ball your eyes out for no reason in particular. Depression is common in my family, and I know that I am susceptible to, but it still surprises me when it descends. My low times, as I call them, seem to occur more frequently now that I am a mother. This motherhood thing is hard work you know!
 
Thankfully, I feel like the worst of it is over. I feel as though the fog around me has lifted and  I am SO relieved. Needless to say, I have missed the process of writing and allowing myself the space and time to think through matters of the heart.  Now only that, but I have missed spending time with people. When I am low, I tend to curl up and shut out the world.  I refuse to "pretend" that everything is fine when it isn't. It is far too exhausting, and I would rather be authentic. This period of intense sadness has allowed me to grieve with a friend who has suffered a great loss and understand my daughters INTENSE emotional outbursts.

Now that I am feeling clear headed, rested, optimistic, and composed I have been busy de-junking, tidying, clearing bush in my back yard, baking and hanging out in the sunshine with my girls. Yesterday I actually picked up my phone and made plans with a couple of girlfriends. Plus, the sun is shinning and that always boosts my spirits.
 
There are so many things that filtered through my heart over the past couple of weeks. and I look forward to sharing some of it with you in the weeks to come.










 

Tuesday, April 16, 2013