Bears and other stuff

The nice lady that pulled over to take pictures of the bears emailed some to Nate.  Apparently he was thoughtful enough to ask her for a copy, so that my special occasion would live forever. They were even cuter in real life, it makes me smile every time I remember that day.

In other news, we just got back from our church family camp.  Each year we go away as a whole church for a time of camping, eating, swimming, canoeing, and not sleeping.  This year Maura and I made spectacles of ourselves when we took Dania and her friend in the canoe.  I was sitting in the front while the two girls were behind me, Maura was getting in the back, when things started to sway, I paid no mind, because it is always a little tipsy when entering.  Next thing I knew, I was headed face first into the water in full fall clothes.  The girls screamed their heads off, but she made us go around the lake a few times sopping wet.  The rumor was that we were labeled tipopotamus by some of our men.  (Not very christian for a church group, don'tcha think)

It happened one cloudy day.

When  she was a small girl growing up in the suburbs of Virginia, a desire was planted deep in her soul, a wild and untamed longing that would go unfilled for over 30 years. That girl would grow up, marry, have children, see her children and friends have the desire of her heart, while she patiently waited for her turn. She travelled out west in hopes of fulfilling her dream, she spent countless days camping in the remote wilderness, she rode the winding, twisting high roads of the high mountains on a motorcycle for years and years with one thought always in the back of her mind. "Is today the day?" She grew older and some wiser, and as the years slipped into decades, it became important to have a list of things she hoped to do or see before the end.  Her own "bucket list" of sorts. Bake bread, learn a language, be in a play, were all things that made the list.  There was one thing on the list that was completely out of her control, no way that she could make this happen, it just had to happen on its own or by design. She resigned herself to "one day" it will happen.  In the meantime "bucket lists" gave way to gratitude list and the real hunting began. No longer were the hunts about this one elusive prize but all the prizes were noticed and written and given thanks over, until today.

Today her husband called and asked her to go for a ride to look at property.  She really did not want to go, it was cold, cloudy, and homeschooled children needed to be schooled.  Her friends J and M wanted to come too, he was leaving for 2 weeks and they wanted to get in a ride beforehand.  She relented and decided that today was a gift to be enjoyed with good company. After they left the diner that had fed them lunch, she told herself that "today is a good ____ day." While riding home her husband had to pull over to the side of the road and check directions,  just as they were pulling out to get back on the road, IT finally happened.  She spotted with her beady little frying pan eyes a small dark object high in a tree, not more than 50 yds away.  I couldn't really say that I saw the sequence of events or remember them to clearly, but it has been said that there was some screaming, and throwing herself off the bike she ran to the edge of the shoulder of the road and saw, not one but two bear cubs in a tree.  Several more people stopped after they saw her group standing there and pointing, and she heard their stories of waiting years and years to see this, and of a man that had just come around the corner and said that "it was a day to see bear." But none could have possibly been as happy as that middle aged woman with streaking gray hair or her husband who always kept his eyes peeled for her and hoped right along side her.  Nor could it have been any better than to be with the friend that had tried so hard to help her see the bear that prowled their neighborhood for a week.  When she came home to write in her thankfulness journal the gifts of that day she already had several to write down before the sighting, and as she recorded the gifts, the cubs were #500, exactly half way.  While that might not mean much to you or me, to her that was another gift, because you see, she wanted the first gift to mean something, the halfway point to be something significant and the last one to finish well.  Today was a really good, cloudy, cold, gift day.

Amazing!!!!!

That is all I can say about this past weekend.  Uncle Bubba (Nate's brother Ryan) actually wanted all 3 of my boys to spend Saturday night with him.  He actually wanted them Saturday morning, so we wasted no time in getting them there and then dropping off Dania at my folks house, so that we could escape for a romantic getaway.  We headed to North Carolina on the motorcycle and never looked back, well until Sunday that is.  We went to Bat Cave NC, and then stayed in Chimney Rock at an adorable Inn that offered us a discount because the owner was away and could not cook the gourmet breakfast they normally serve. We had a lovely continental breakfast on our screened in porch overlooking the river, road, and Putt Putt.  Chimney Rock is where The Last of the Mohican's was filmed and 3 miles down the road is the beautiful Lake Lure, where scenes from Dirty Dancing were shot.  Not that I am advocating either of those movies, but after seeing the height of Chimney Rock, I have so much more respect for the woman that threw herself off of the cliff, man that took guts. We did not go up there because I was surprised to see that it cost $12 a person.

We ate on a hillside restaurant that overlooked Lake Lure, on the balcony, at sunset.  It could not have been more picturesque.  We have no camera with us, other than the Iphone, and I didn't want to desecrate the memory with that kind of a photo.  Suffice to say the memory is worth a thousand words.  We lingered long, looking at the dark purple clouds in the fading orange light that faded to blue/black in way of the full moon.  There was a lovely wedding taking place at the fancy hotel and spa across the lake, and we would catch happy cheers carried across the waters.  After dinner we strolled along the waters edge all by ourselves, except for the lone fisherman that patrolled the shore.

The whole trip was filled with my singing praise songs.  I could not get over the majesty of the mountains, beauty of the rock formations and the rushing rivers with waterfalls. It is so easy for me to see God and feel his presence in nature.  I am so thankful for the opportunity to enjoy his handiwork, given for our pleasure and his glory.

The kids all came home happy, and I was able to fill pages in my gratefulness journal, and tuck away memories for the busy weeks ahead.

The cute little store and coffee shop that was connected to the lovely Bed and Breakfast we stayed in.

A stop in the Pisgah National Forest.  There was this little hotel and resturant right on top of this mountain in the middle of nowhere.

Always the photo of the bike.  I have so many of these, but they are almost always a different bike. Nate says he will be able to remember what year it was by the bike we are on. Uh! Yeah honey, right!

The biker man himself.

Everyday life

I felt the need to nest before school started this year, I got my haircut, called a friend and asked her to come over with her 5 kids and bake bread.  She showed me the ropes, which was to not follow the recipe exactly, hurry the rising time and a neat little tuck and fold of the seams.  We baked two loaves, and to the surprise of me, my household said "pretty good."  Then last week I made two on my own (above mentioned) and they turned out lovely as well.  I plan on making two loaves a week to get my family used to the whole wheat taste, but so far it looks promising.  Up until now we have been Potato Bread eaters solely. We used to do the Honey Wheat, but when I found out that unless you were eating whole wheat it didn't matter what kind you ate because they were not good for you, we went with Potato which is so soft and yummy.

I am LOVING the Sonlight Readers that have come with our curriculum.  I can hardly wait for the kids to finish so we can move on to the next set. The first two weeks we read Mara Daughter of the Nile, and The Golden Goblet, both compliment the Egyptian History and Bible we are learning.  On Thursdays when I am sitting in the car for hours I read ahead and I was able to get a week ahead of the boys.  We just started the Hittite Warrior and I am already half way through.  I need to force myself to not read tomorrow in the car so that I have something to look forward to this week.

In my update on Dania I forgot to mention how the pouting was coming along.  She used to be a pretty big pouter, but has come a long way.  Every once in a while she has a girly, dramatic outburst and on our rafting trip she decided to revisit her past ventures of pouting, and boy was it a doozey, with some good natural consequences.  While floating down the river which for the most part came to my knees, she would get out of the current and stall in some shallows on the side of the river.  The river was pretty wide, probably 300ft across.  Every time someone got stuck on a rock or off course we would paddle with our arms or get out and walk back into the stream.  She was very resistant to both, so she would get way behind.  She was not scared, she just didn't want to bother.  Nate or I would holler at her to get out and walk or paddle.  She would make a half hearted attempt, or complain that it was too hard to get out of the raft.  Finally at one point when she was getting pretty far behind he waited for her and helped her along.  At this point she wasn't being terrible so we were still trying to coax her along.  While we were all floating together, Evan started to pull this really pretty long green river grass into his raft.  It was a collection to see how much he could grab.  Dania decided to play this grass pulling game as well.  All was going well until Evan grabbed a handful of grass and flung it across at Dania.  It landed on her arm and back, to which she shrieked like a madwoman and cried some kind of angry cry.  It did not hurt only made her mad.  I told Evan to not pester her and all that a reprimand entails.  After about 5 minutes I noticed that Dania still had a huge pout on her face and was no longer trying to keep up.  I told her that although what Evan did was not kind, it didn't hurt her and I would not let him get away with any more mean teasing or pestering.  I told her that I would take care of Evan, but she now had to take care of her attitude and stop pouting.  She refused, and slowly got further and further behind.  For a while we all tried to coax her to catch up, even Evan, but she would not stop the pouting.  At that time she was so far back she was a speck.  Nate told me to just leave her alone until we got to a bend in the river and she would have been out of sight.  At that time, we could catch little snippets of noise coming from back where she was ,(she may have been raining down curses on our heads) it sounded like murmuring and complaining. Nate and the boys were out of sight from her now and I decided that enough was enough.  I hollered back up at her to "GET OUT OF YOUR RAFT AND WALK."  She did, and then I heard her wailing and crying and carrying on.  Again this was anger crying, not sad crying, plus she dragging her raft on the island in the middle of the river like she could care less if it could ripped to shreds on the sharp rocks, and I could see that she was avoiding the water, because she knew what i expected.  I have to say that if it had not taken her about 10 minutes to catch up, there may have been a mommy dearest moment.  The grace of God is good however and I had time to think about what I would say.  If you know me at all, I am not a woman of few words, you never have to wonder about what I am thinking, feeling, seeing, smelling, the inklings that I have, the random thoughts, NOTHING. This time I decided that I was going to say nothing about her behavior. (which had been rotten for the past 45mins) When she got to me the only thing I said was "get in." I held onto her raft for a few minutes to make sure she would stay in the current and then let go.  The only other thing I said when I let go was "If you get stuck, you will get out and keep up" I closed my eyes and sighed like I was in utter bliss enjoying the wonderful day without a care in the world.  She started to talk to me about some Hawks that were flying above and then said, "mom, I am sorry for pouting sooo long." I said "you sure did, but I forgive you." And that was that.  Believe it or not, she thanked us for taking them and said she had a good time.

17 years and counting

This past Saturday was our wedding anniversary.  We have officially known each more than half of our lives.  We had a low key day of fun.  We got up early and hit a breakfast buffet, then came home and took the 3 kids that we had (Austin is at a youth retreat) and went north to look at some land.  Finally we came home loaded the rafts into the truck, while I drove the van to the river that is 7 miles from our house to spend the afternoon tubing.  We came home, ordered Dominos and watched Nanny McPhee Returns.  It was a lovely day and I am so blessed to still have the love of this man.

Hilton Head August 2011

They found sand dollars galore.

She loved riding the waves.

He was burying the sand dollars he collected.

All the boys got a hang of this wake board. I tried but tripped very ungraciously,and thought that another attempt in a swimsuit was too risky to my pride.

I gave him lots of candy to keep him fat and happy.

Mother and daughter at sunset.

Bike riding on the beach is a blast, but you have to be wary of the spray of sand that shoots right up the middle of your backside and back up to your neck.

A cute man that I found on the beach.

We found a WWII aircraft museum on the way home, but at $10 a head we decided to fore go the inside tour.

All my handsome men.

The sand dollar did not know his place, he was suppossed to have been the 2nd picture.