That long awaited day has finally come to pass. Sweet Boy#2 once again removed his training wheels and once again after 1/2 a circle around the sports court decided that he wanted them back on. “No”, I said. “We will try some more.” And although half crippled by fear, this time I let go of the bike…and he kept riding. He is 4 1/2 and I am so very proud of him. I think I was 7 before my training wheels came off. He is pretty wobbly but just keeps popping up after each crash and can even start on his own without a push. And so the growing up begins. Am I ready…I’m not so sure.
Category Archives: Breaking News
Breaking News
The Hunky Hubby and Sweet Boy#1 just got back from their backpacking trip. It was a four day, three night hike up into several wilderness lakes. Copper, big heart, little heart. These are some of the names I recall from my little boy’s lecture as he held the map and explained the route that they took. My guys came back hobbling and exhausted, brown with dirt, and glowing with the joy of their adventure. Sweet boy #1 was one of the fastest hikers, speeding ahead of his Daddy much of the time. Although carrying his over-sized backpack really hurt his shoulders and on some occasions others lugged it around for him. They showed me their pictures, of alpine lakes and windswept precipices. Looking at that distinct high mountain foliage in their pictures, recalled for me that fresh bitter scent of wilderness air and the feel of the wind trying to blast you from the path. And I realized something important.
If you have never spent time in the wilderness, not just the woods, but the wilderness there are some things that you will never understand about God. Now I live in the woods. Not the same. But when you put all of the supplies to survive on your back and hike up into that wildly rugged territory that does not make any allowances for you, a land that just is and there is nothing you can do to tame or turn it to your ends. You realize something about God. Why are we drawn to the wilderness? Because we have no business being there. It is not safe.
The Hunky Hubby and Sweet Boy#1 stood at the lip of a 1,000 foot drop down into a mountain lake. Just one little slip, a tiny accidental nudge the wrong way and their fragile human bodies would have be destroyed. Shinobi and Splinter (two of the counselors who went along) took a quick day hike up an extremely steep ridge. About half way up they realized that going down the way they had come was impossible. They would pick up too much speed sliding and be killed. So they were really hoping that there was a milder way down at the top. There was, but even then they were going dangerously fast, stopping themselves by crashing into small rocks and bushes as they slid down. But what if there hadn’t been a better way?
They could have died. Not because the mountain was evil, or unloving, or lacking understanding. But because the mountain was great, mighty, awesome, unreachable. Those who want to be safe and sound have no business climbing up into the untouchable heights. The frightful power of the wilderness is why we trek into it. And yet many people do not understand why we are to fear God. Those who have stood on those alpine heights, seen the fragility of their lives and felt the easy power of the wilderness. Fearing God comes easy. We have no business stomping up to the Almighty and making demands. He just is. He is terrible. He is fierce. Mighty. Wondrous. Beautiful. Deadly. Frightful.
Now of course the crazy thing about God is that all of His creation tells us something of Him, and so there is also something you will never understand about God if you have never seen a butterfly, or a duckling, or a grizzly bear. But fearing God…if you have stood there on the precipice with that rushing mountain wind pressing you toward the edge, you just understand. God is frightful.
But that does not make Him any less Good. And in the wilderness you can see that as well.
Breaking News
Some things are bittersweet. Like getting to see all of your favorite cousins at a funeral, sending your firstborn to school, and the last day of summer camp. The last day of summer camp has come and gone and its passing always sends an ache clean to my bones. And yet we would never survive the intensity of summer camp all year round.
The Hunky Hubby and I can’t get away for a date during June, July, or August. The tension yanks at the bindings of your heart as you give all that is within you and then drop to your knees and beg for more. And sometimes the counselors steal your shoes and toss them onto the roof of the lodge.
But it is so sad to see it go. One is truly alive during camp. Serving with an undivided spirit, living as you were created to live, pouring yourselves out as a drink offering for others. It is truly glorious. Draining, but glorious. And now it has come to an end. Fall approaches with its buses and lessons. I will finally get to see my husband, maybe even go on a date. And strangely it is difficult not to get a little blue and weepy for we have given so much, and so much has been given in return. Bitter, beautiful, and terribly sweet.
Breaking News
The boys and I packed up for three days and visited Phylis’s house on the west side or “in the rain forest” as Sweet Boy#1 likes to say. We had such a marvelous time, they behave so much better when there are more eyes on them. We went to a zero tide and looked at clams and crabs and seaweed and anemones and all manner of dead things in the sand. We went to “The Rain forest Cafe” and had awesome food by the gorillas and the boys all got to take home flashy cups that would be the bane of anyone with epilepsy. Fortunately none of us are so afflicted and so can enjoy the flash flash flash flash flash of these cups four hours and hours. We rode an escalator and went to the park and hunted up eggs and fed baby chicks and made forts for kittens. Then when my wolf pack finally settled down to sleep, Phyllis and Ashly and I ate Tillamuck ice cream and watched old Sherlock Holmes movies. So fun! Just writing this post makes me want to pack up and go back. But the hunky hubby has accidentally taken a vital piece of Sweet Boy#3′s car seat with him this weekend and so we are going no where. Ah well, such is life.
Breaking News
This week The Hunky Hubby and I celebrated our 10th Anniversary! Now our anniversary always falls in the middle of camping season and in years past we have just grumpily ignored it and decided to celebrate in September. There is absolutely no possibility of us going out during camp and we barely get to see each other. But this year I was inspired by a couple who celebrated their 2nd anniversary during camp by decorating a cabin up all cute and just spending time together.
Now the hunky hubby is running around half insane this time of year so I decided to surprise him. I ordered an ice cream cake that said: “Happy 10th Anniversary Scruffy” on it and after a short hiking trip (1 hour) with the boys and a visit to their doctor, the boys and I stopped by the Wok About Grill and (after much trauma with a bottle of soy sauce) picked up some of his favorite food. Then we went through the Dairy Queen drive through to get our cake and zoomed on home. The boys helped me vacuum and set up a table with fine china and candles in the living room. I borrowed a movie from a friend and charged our own beloved Shinobi with stealing the hunky hubbies food during dinner time at camp. Whenever he got a plate of food, Shinobi would run in and steal the meat off of it, or just take the whole plate and hide it.
Then after the boys were in bed, Shoe (the assistant manager) told the hunky hubby that I needed him right away. He ran over at top speed, fearing for the boys lives. And found candles. Despite the fact that the three boys had been whispering about ice cream cake and candles and his anniversary to him amidst my stern whispers to be silent during the day, the hunky hubby was totally taken aback. What could it mean? Was I just being nice? Was I celebrating our anniversary early? Or late? Was it the 5th? The boys got to whisper: “Happy Anniversary Daddy” after escaping from their beds and the surprise was complete. A total success. And ten good years together.
Breaking News
My youngest, Sweet Boy#3, is 2.5 years old. And he is growing up way way waywayway faster than both Sweet Boy#1 and Sweet Boy#2. Sweet Boy#1 was 3.5 before we ever even got him a tricycle and 5 before we got him a bike. Sweet Boy#3 started riding his brother’s old tricycle this summer and has been asking me to push him around on Sweet Boy#2′s training wheel bike all summer. But not one to sit upon his laurels, my youngest shocked us all this week when he asked me to lift him onto Sweet Boy#2′s bike as always, except this time he rode it. All by himself. Around and around and around the sports-court shouting back at me in triumph: “Momma, don’t help! Don’t help!!!” Not only has The Hunky Hubby removed the last baby gate from our home (all 3 boys can open it by themselves and all of our summer staff are forever becoming trapped by it and requiring assistance) but now the tricycle stage is quickly coming to a close. Ah life, so sweet and ferocious. Much like Sweet Boy#3.
Breaking News
The boys and I are visiting my folks this week. And on our last night here Papa made me watch a movie. Now movie watching is highly problematic for a mother of young children. You stuff them into bed and then must storm into the bedroom about 6 dozen times to plop their little bodies back into bed and lecture them sternly about the consequences of escape. But after much storming they finally settled down and I was able to get into the movie, “Cinderella Man”, about a boxer in the depression era who gets a second chance to be great. It is a true story and he faces the tall and fierce Max Baer of Abbot and Costello fame (Baer played the giant in Abbot and Costello’s version of Jack and the Beanstalk) and lives to tell about it. Apparently Baer killed two men in the ring. And after the movie Papa exhorted to to keep getting up, to keep writing and keep getting better, and that he believed that I had the talent to get one of these stories published some day. I don’t know if I do, but I’ll still be writing, 6 days a week, all year long. And it sure means a lot that he thinks I do though, a whole lot.
Although, if the publishers start slaughtering folk on pay per view for bad query letters, I might have to rethink my approach. Truly, boxing is an insane form of entertainment.
Camp News
Forgive me the blog silence. I have been exhausted, and busy, and exhausted again.
As you know, the whole desperate times desperate measures scenerio has recently forced me out of retirement and placed me smack into the middle of camping ministry once more. For one week at least I was a camp counselor again.
I went into this with an enormous amount of prayer. And lo and behold every door closed until I was the one with the cabin of high school aged girls. When I got married almost ten years ago, I accepted the fact that I would probably never counsel again. When I had my first baby I accepted the fact that I was unable to even be the prayer counselor for the girls. And this spring I was crying with DK (you know who you are) wondering if God could find some kind of place for me to minister, despite me three rowdy sons and unfortunate lack of free time.
And then The Hunky Hubby took charge of our fierce young brood and sent me back into the glorious world of camping. I was properly terrified. And yet He walked with me, every single step. When I was at the dollar store purchasing feather boa’s for my cabin (what? you didn’t realize that feather boas are a camping requirement?) I thought that maybe I would have 5 or 6 girls, I went to buy 7 but paused. What if I had 8 girls…so I bought 9 boas. And yes I had 8 girls and the 9 boas left one for me to wear. I also bought 9 mini nail polishes. Despite my innate cheapness, God took care of these little details.
Our Cabin
I was certain that my girls would refuse to participate in all of the glorious fun-filled ideas that God had rushed my way. But from the moment I busted out the temporary hair dye on our first day they were up for anything. Seriously, these were the awesomest girls alive. Pranking, they had it. Baking cookies at 1:00am, all over it. Midnight slip n slide, piece of cake. With the one exception of crawling through a field of stinging nettles in the dark during capture the flag (possibly not my most brilliant plan) they were ready to tackle any absurdity that I placed before them. A truly awesome collection of high-school femininity.
Blue hair? No Problem!
We voted about the different boy cabins and decided that we would loathe Eagles Loft, Adore Owls Perch, and have entirely neutral feelings about Robin’s Roost. Then we packed a pile of popcorn into the Eagle’s Loft doorway behind a taped-on garbage bag, placed a bowl of buttery popcorn before the door of our beloved Owls, and put a small container of popcorn seeds before Robin’s Roost. So fun! And for the sand castle competitions I was even able to convince them to build the Tigris River, Royal Assyrian game park, and the Ziggurat at Nineveh!
Sand Ziggurat
I acquired 27 new bruises. 20 on my legs, 6 on my arms, and one huge baseball sized one on my right shoulder blade. How you may ask? Night games, paintball, speedball, and the slip n slide. All bruise worthy pursuits. I rode a waterlogged log in lake Chelan for over an hour with 6 other people, falling off and screaming and pretending to row at battle speed toward imaginary enemies. I led my girls in accomplishing an incredibly stupid skit and they memorized every single memory verse for the week. They worked so hard and were so awesome! I was astounded.
Kristen's New Bruises
They even failed to tar and feather me when I was forced to fetter their fashion choices with demands for modesty, every single day.
We had great cabin times. Yes you heard me right. Great cabin times. We got deep into God’s word and cried out before Him and had the pleasure of seeing God tear down the old and hang up the new in our lives.
Camp was my identity at one time, and I thought that it was completely lost to me. And it was. But after I prayed and cried and despaired, God plopped this glorious week smack into the middle of my lap and I am shocked and grateful. And humbled, that He would look so deeply within me and realize what I myself didn’t know I had been pining for, and then have the audacity to think that He could actually use me, an ancient Mom of 32 years. Astounding.
Eating!
I love camp. The smell of a summer night descending upon the trees. The bite to the air in the early morning as one is stumbling toward staff meeting. That sweet, relaxed insanity as cabins are setting up for breakfast, listening to Newsboys blaring on the sound system, when you’ve gotten only a couple of hours of sleep and the other tables keep making you run around the cabin for not putting your napkin on your lap. Mocha sipped from an ancient pewter mug. Desperate prayers for strength because you caught yourself dead asleep during chapel and you know that you have dunk tank and memory verses to accomplish before you can collapse dead to the world. Camp is strangely relaxing for me. Much much less stressful than parenting. I love it, and yet I barely survived. I was bursting into tears at random moments all week, so exhausted. And yet He carefully placed me exactly where He wanted me, and used me, and it was completely glorious.
Breaking News
It has been exactly 10 years since I was a camp counselor. But after some unexpected events when the Hunky Hubby was faced with exactly ONE female counselor for our High School camp, he decided that desperate times call for desperate measures. And so the Hunky Hubby, with the helpful aid of some support staff members, will be doing his directing duties with three small boys in tow, and I will, for the first time in 10 years, be a camp counselor. I am just a tad bit nervous. It is true that I did attend all of Staff Training, I just didn’t hear any of the lessons due to my parenting duties, there is a slim chance that I might be feeling somewhat inadequate in spite of my 9 years of counseling experience a decade ago. So send up a quick prayer for me if you think of it, for I shall probably be digging candy bars out of wet dog food with my face or some other camp related hilarity, and I just might have forgotten how.
Breaking News
The cousins were here all last week! Seven days of cousinly bliss. Five days of swim lessons together. One day at Lake Chelan and one day traipsing about town on the 4th of July. We shopped at the dollar store together, ate cotton candy together, dug replicas of the Nile river delta in the volley ball court together, swung on swings, slid down slides, ate candies out of Grammy’s crystal candy bowl, and ran about barefoot stepping on thistles and lying wounded until the Band-Aids arrived. It was a glorious time and yet…it’s not over. One more week with our glorious cousins lies before us and the boys are exhausted but ecstatic. Yeah cousins!
