thoughts from the deep recesses

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...

My sister-in-law Lorraine was here awhile back. And we got onto the topic of girlfriends while we were visiting. It was a great conversation - I came away from it really relieved that I'm not alone in my struggles and also encouraged that this particular season in my life is a time to forgive my shortcomings with other women as I really build into my kids for the remaining years they're under my roof. Something Lorraine said really stuck with me though, and it's changed the way I view my relationships with other women hugely in the few weeks I've had to ponder it and pray over it. She said "Don't you think people just want to know someone cares about them?" See, I feel a tremendous amount of pressure to be someone for other women - particularly younger women. Since Asia is so gifted at this with the men he mentors, I feel like I'm always trying to play catch up - showing my care and concern for young women - to be the wise, older women to the...

In January, I set a New Year's resolution to log 500 miles in 2011. I quickly discovered that I am an impatient person... and that getting 10 miles a week (which is necessary to reach my goal by the end of the year) can be accomplished much more quickly when one runs. So I began to run. Intervals at first. Walk a minute, run a minute. Walk a minute, run two. Eventually, I pushed myself to run a whole mile. And I didn't die. And then, because I'm a goal-setting type, I decided I needed something to work toward. So I signed up for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. April 17th. That gave me a few months to train... And yesterday, I ran it. And I didn't die. In fact, I beat my goal of 33:00 minutes by more than three minutes, finishing the race at 29:50. I never, ever, in a million years would have told you that I was going to become a runner when I was forty two years old. But I have done that very thing. I love running. Not necessarily while I'm d...

I saw my first daffodils blooming yesterday on my way to work. Spring is such a gift every year when you live through long, dreary, snowy, cold winters. Truly, I can't think of a nicer thing than spring. I had an epiphany last night that God will redeem some of Asia's food issues in heaven and he will LOVE vegetables. And fruit. And food. One of my greatest sadnesses is that he doesn't really derive any pleasure from food. Food is one of my favorite things in the world... (hence, my need for accountability in the form of my job! Thank you, Weight Watchers for teaching me how to love good food and still stay at a healthy weight.) I look forward to sharing delicious food with Asia someday in heaven. Won't that be lovely? Speaking of good food, we went out last night with some great friends - we were just going to meet them for dessert, but since I had to come straight from work I ended up ordering a hummus plate. Wow . Best.hummus.plate.ever. YUM. The flat bread was str...

The buds on my lilacs are getting big. Never mind that it was snowing yesterday. Spring is declaring it's arrival! I've been on the phone nonstop the past few days trying to find alternative ways of getting our immunizations for the trip... if we go to the regional health district, it's going to cost us over $1000. Partly because they charge an office visit fee of $45 per person. That's $225 just to walk in the door. We're finding some pharmacies have access to travel vaccines and only charge for the cost of the immunization... problem is, we can't find anyone who can get the yellow fever vaccine. If we have to go to the health district for that one shot, we might as well get them all there. But UGH! I hate being on the phone. But especially when it feels futile. Kyler has been fighting tendonitis in his right leg... he hasn't been training much at all, allowing it to rest and heal. He wasn't able to compete in the first league track meet, but is hopin...

Sometimes you have to deal with stuff much larger than you think you're capable of dealing with Sometimes you start from the bottom of the heap. You just have to work harder to get to the top.  Use the skills you've been taught.  Sometimes you're gonna look a little silly doing what you know is right. Keep on keepin' on. Always look 'em right in the eye... You can do it. Even when you really feel like quitting. If you're on top, you still need to work hard so you can stay on top. People are always watching you. (E's had the same coach for five years. He's been watching and encouraging him the WHOLE time. If nothing changes, he will have this same coach when he gets to high school. Cool.) Somtimes you get hurt. (And you mom will always wish she could rescue you. But she won't, because you have to figure out how to get out of painful situations by yourself sometimes.) Sometimes you have to dig really deep...