thoughts from the deep recesses

Kyler has a girlfriend. She is a senior at his highschool - a cross country runner - and is VERY, VERY pretty. It's very new - as in today is their one week anniversary. Savannah turned 15 on 11-11-11. She continues to be a huge blessing in my life... Trader Joe's has finally opened in Spokane. It's very close to me - which is a huge treat in a city where almost all the 'good' shopping is on the other end of town. Love popping in there whenever I need something but I'm still trying to figure out what they do and don't carry. Last night I needed cream cheese. Trader Joe's doesn't have cream cheese.  We celebrated the one year anniversary of Julie's heart attack last weekend. I'm calling it her heartiversary. A sweet day to celebrate her good health and our little community of folks doing life together.  Putting together a package for our three boys in Sierra Leone... and a few other kids we simply have to send letters to. Our family there ...

Amazingly, this is my 1000th post on thoughts from the deep recesses... I can hardly believe I've done anything 1000 times... but especially this silly little blog. I started this blog in March of 2005 - very reluctantly. I wasn't sure what I would ever post about... or even why I would bother... but I did it. I only wrote two posts a month for the first two months... and then slowly my posts picked up speed. Certainly, my posting has ebbed and flowed over the years. Facebook gives blogging a run for it's money - and often things that I may have written about here became status updates instead... I prefer blog posts but realistically, find time for Facebook much more easily than I find time for blogging. So there have been months when the blog has been neglected. But it's still a big part of how I record life. To keep with tradition, I'm going to do a Tuesday Ten of some of my favorite random blog posts over the years... Letter to my 16 year-old-sel...

Ah, October. There is a tree I see every day on my way up the hill from downtown. Every year I say to myself how fun it would be to take a picture of it daily as it transforms from fully green to aflame in autumnal oranges, yellows and reds... and yet I never do it. Every year when I notice the leaves beginning to fall from it, I am sad that I missed the opportunity another year. I watch the local evening news every night. I tivo it and fast forward through all the boring stuff. But I always look at the seven day weather forecast. Every.single.night. Fall sports are winding down... Savannah has her last volleyball game on Thursday - Kyler has his last league meet tomorrow. He will have districts and potentially State still... I was achy in the strangest places the day after the half marathon... specifically, my left shoulder and my right ankle. My left knee really hurt me from mile 10 to about mile 12 while I was running... I wonder if I was compensating for the pain in a way that i...

Before the race with Julie, one of my biggest cheerleaders on this journey Sometimes I wonder how I get myself into things... I've discovered that I am ridiculously goal oriented in the past couple of years... which can be a really good thing. But it can also create these weird situations where I find myself doing things I never would have imagined doing. This past Saturday was a classic example. Because I ran a half marathon. And I NEVER thought that was something I'd ever do. And the craziest thing about it - was that it wasn't really that hard. It just took the goal... and the training plan... and the determination to not completely embarrass myself... because once I told people I was planning to do it, suddenly I had friends signing up to do it with me... which meant I actually needed to be able to do it. And so I did it. And I actually enjoyed it a teeny tiny bit. Kevin, another Spokane friend who came to Leavenworth to run the half There's a prett...

Kyler is running varsity cross country this year. The varsity team is comprised of the seven fastest runners on the team. Never more, never less. I love the boys on his team so much - they have become a tight knit crew - working together to encourage each other through miles and miles of workouts, weekend trips, practices twice a day and often two meets a week. They spend a LOT of time together. And they're great kids. Two of the other boys have been running with Kyler since seventh grade...  One of my girlfriends posted on Facebook the other day " Going to cross country meets does a lot to restore one's hope in the next generation. Way to go to all those teenagers who inspire others through their fitness, hard work and sportsmanship." I couldn't agree more. I'm so proud of how hard Kyler works - along with all his teammates. I will be VERY sad when he graduates and I no longer have a reason to go to meets... The Lewis and Clark Tiger Cross Cou...

So, here's this crazy thing: I run. On Monday I ran 12 miles. Twelve. It's a fascinating process, this running thing. It's doing the most interesting things to my body. Some good, some not so good. For the first time in my life, I have a waist. An actual curve there where my body has always been straight. My half marathon is in two and a half weeks. And I'm not dreading it. At all. I'll be honest with you, I'm eager for it to be over. But mostly because my training schedule has consumed a LOT of time. The poor dog hasn't been walked much at all lately because I'm always running and she can't run any distance with her bad leg. I'm really ready to go to the gym and partake in some other forms of activity. Running four days a week (over 20 miles a week) is about all the activity I care to do... and after a while... well, it gets a leetle-bit boring. But I can do it. I can run . I can run long distances, even. Asia rode his b...

Not sure how it happened, but I guess I just took a hiatus from the blog. It wasn't my intention... But it's been awhile, eh? I really like blogging. And it's something I can't imagine ever giving it up permanently... it's too fun to look back at... so here I am. Life has been nothing short of crazy since we got back from the trip... the kids dove into sports practices almost right away... so our summer seemed extrememly short. With the exception of Kyler - who just started classes this week and had a little too much summer, I think. We're in the middle of LOTS of change around here... with me picking up a lot more hours at work, Savannah and Kyler both at new schools this year, Asia working toward opening a private practice... it's a lot... and we're sort of re-defining normal as we go. I keep waiting for that 'fall routine' to set in... haven't gotten there yet. I've got lots to write about... lots I've been processi...

The door to our apartment building When we began working with the travel agent who arranged our tickets for our trip to Sierra Leone, we were originally hoping to be able to go through London. We have dear friends who live in Northern Ireland, and we were hoping to either pop over to visit them or that they would come to London to spend a few days with us. As we planned, though, we discovered that our friends were actually going to be in the States at the same time... so we told the travel agent to look at flights going through other European cities and just try to find us the best deal. When he came back with an itinerary flying through Paris, I got a wild hair... maybe we could save up enough money to be able to spend a few days in Paris with the kids. Knowing this would be the only trip like this we would ever get to take as a family, it seemed silly to get to Paris, only to spend a few hours in the airport and then fly on to Sierra Leone. I posed my idea to Asia and he ...

Reading this book right now... wish I could give a copy to everyone I know. 18 million people die each year because of extreme poverty... what are you doing to prevent that? We all shudder when we remember tragedies like the holocaust... but every day 27,000 children under the age of five die from PREVENTABLE causes... You can read the first chapter by clicking here. FIRST CHAPTER Then go to your local library and check it out instead of buying it. With the $14 you saved, why not make a donation to a charity that is working to alleviate world poverty? I know of a good one... Children of the Nations ! Sorry - I can't help myself. I will never spend my money the same way again... and I'm determined to challenge people to consider how our unnecessary spending could be reigned in and how that money could make a difference...

I rode Violet (my bike) to the library one sunny morning last week... after 3 1/2 weeks with the same reading material on the trip I was excited to look through the shelves and bring home some new inspiration. My first stop (as always) was the New Nonfiction shelf... There I found a book called Unstuff: Making Room in Your Life for What Really Matters . I turned it over to read the back and the author photo caught my eye... turns out I went to college with the guy from this husband/wife writing team. Intrigued, I threw the book in my basket. I read the book in a couple of days... it's a good read - perhaps a bit more for the Christian who's being introduced to the idea of over consumption as sin - but still full of good principles. I came away from the book with a challenge for my family: Every day for the month of August, each member of the family has to find ten things to get rid of. There are boxes set up in the kitchen labeled 'Trash', 'Sell' and '...

Sunday we were all up at 4:30... piled into the car and leaving the house by 5:15 to drive over to Coeur D'Alene... There has been an Ironman Triathalon in Coeur D'Alene for the past nine years... athletes from all over the world come to do a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike ride and a 26.2 mile run. CRAZY. For the last two years, we've gone over to volunteer. Kyler's cross country team runs an aid station out on the bike ride... at mile 40 and mile 90. (The bikers loop through the 56 mile course twice.) It's a SUPER inspiring way to spend a day... I never cease to be amazed at the people who put their bodies through months and months of training to compete in an Ironman. All the way from the top professional who will complete the entire thing in around 8 hours to folks who will barely make it to the cut off time at midnight. We worked the aid station from 6:00 am (preparing for the arrival of the athletes around 8:00... cutting bananas in half, opening gato...

These three little boys have been friends since they were four... when they used to hang out and play while their sisters played together on Savannah's soccer team. They're not so little anymore. They're now officially sixth graders. Ready to 'rule the school.' Big, little man-children. Great friends. Love these long, lasting friendships for my kids... as a parent who consciously chose to stay in one place and keep the kids in the same school, this is the fruit of that decision. And then there's this one... Who is now in high school. Who attended an event last week that the school calls the "Eighth Grade Social" and all the girls call the "Eighth Grade Formal." I surprised her and made arrangements for our friend Monica to come over to curl her hair before school... the 'formal' took place in the afternoon instead of classes. We bought her dress months ago - off a clearance rack at Macy's... it fit her perfe...

My life is such a crazy list of to-do's that I've hardly given blogging a thought lately... Life continues to bring us an amazing array of opportunities to be thankful... from things like successful school years for all three kids to work going extremely well to God's provision for our trip... it's all good. One more short morning of school for the kids and I will be the parent of a sixth grader, a freshman and a junior. Honestly? I can't believe it. And in two weeks and two days, we leave for our trip. I have so many things that have gone by the wayside in our preparations... from blogging to creative pursuits, to (unfortunately, lately) running... I'm still getting in my ten miles a week, but I've not really been 'training' at all. So my list of things I'm hoping to pursue on our return is long. Long - but definitely set aside for now. As I've worked toward all the crazy details of taking a family of five to Africa, I've struggl...

Hiking is one of my favorite past times... so I was clamoring all weekend for a family hike since we had three whole days off together... However, when Monday rolled around, it turned out our kids were tired from sleepovers and scrambling to finish up procratinated homework and no one was interested in going on a family hike. Except me and Asia. So we went. We commented several times how strange it was to be hiking alone - relating more to the empty-nesters we saw on the trail than the families... but we didn't let it spoil our afternoon. The Spokesman Review on Sunday had an article listed some local-ish hikes to waterfalls... we picked the one closest to us and went for it. And it was an amazing hike. My phone camera has some distortion going on here I think... our heads aren't really  that elongated... For my local friends, it's in Liberty Lake County Park... you drive to the campground and the trailhead sits at the far end. It's a beautiful hike - alm...

We began a new series of sermons at church on Sunday. Sermons from the minor prophets. Beginning with Jonah. And in the first three verses, I'm already blown away: Jonah Flees From the LORD 1 The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD. Russ, our dear friend and the person who gave the sermon, simply asked, "What is your Ninevah?" And at first, of course, because I think I'm pretty cool and together most of the time, I thought "Oh, I don't have a Ninevah. I always do whatever God asks of me... After all, I am going to Africa in a few weeks." (Oh, how pride goes before the fall...) And then, over the course of the re...

  Sunday, May 1st  was Bloomsday. In Spokane, that means that over 50,000 people take to the streets for the world's largest road race. And for me, this year, it meant running. This is my fourth Bloomsday - but I've always walked the whole thing. It's a 12K - which is 7.46 miles. Having run my first 5K race just two weeks before, I was more than a little doubtful that I'd be able to run the whole thing, especially when I considered that the Bloomsday course it MUCH more challenging, with several long hills. Just before mile 5, the course climbs what's lovingly referred to as "Doomsday Hill". That doesn't exactly inspire confidence, now does it? But I decided to run as much as I could... do my best. My longest training run was 6 miles, and when I did that, I felt like I had lots of energy left... so I should be able to pull out another mile and half, right? Well, I DID! Savannah ran with me for the first two miles, then had to fall back, having only rel...