32. (or, ways the universe smiled upon me since i last blew out candles.)

i do like a good list. always have. lately i've been inspired by this site, (which reminds me of a book i had in college called "a writer's book of days") and also this one, to make more lists. i think they're a nice thing to have, just in case you forget stuff. or have a lot of children, which makes you forget stuff. and also? i'm 32 today. so, the way i see it, i had better start writing this stuff down now. because, you know, when else?

and another thing is, i'm trained as a writer. i mean, i went to school for this stuff. and lately, well, i feel a little rusty. so maybe lists will inspire topics, and topics will lead to shhhh.....writing.

i'm not making any hard and fast promises, but i think you'll start to see more lists around here. hooray.

this was a year in which i know that i was extraordinarily blessed. my thirty second year sent me to san diego and yosemite and portland and paris and hawaii. my thirty second year was full of tight hugs around my neck and sweet baby thighs, of first steps and lost teeth and swinging on swings. it was a year of loving and being loved more deeply than i knew i could. i know it. and just so you all know, narrowing the list of times the universe smiled upon me down to 32? nearly impossible.

and without further ado:

32. (or, ways the universe smiled upon me since last I blew out candles.)

1. my two best guys (over the age of 8) built me a space of my own, in which I can sew and think and create to my hearts content.


2. i found myself with a wealth of new vegetables and new eating experiences, thanks to my first journey into community supported agriculture.


3. i realized my middle is happiest in a costume


4. i celebrated the first really warm day of spring with sunlight, a magazine, a homemade quilt, and perfect baby toes.


5. i discovered secret nappers on a rainy saturday


6. we explored disneyland with 1 nana, 1 papa, 4 parents and 6 cousins ages almost 1 to 7 years old. got out purchasing only 1 bottled water, 6 ice cream cones, and two star wars blasters.

7. i gave a baby her very first french fry


8. the boys learned to play marbles (again). thank you, papa!


9. i photographed 5 boys, 1 baby girl, and 6 fake mustaches. laughed hysterically.


10. we planted waaaaaay too many tomatoes


11. i finally got decent portraits of each of my babies


12. for the birthday of my sweet friend, i baked a very, very pretty cake. and it tasted UH-mazing.


13. i held my breath as my oldest pitched a little league inning


14. our whole family fell in love with a pair of robins as they built a nest, laid their eggs, fed their babies, and let them fly. all in two months time.


15. i climbed the eiffel tower. explored the louvre. rowed a boat on the grand canal at the palace of versailles.


16. i discovered (and made about 40 batches of) my new favorite salad

17. i met a friend i knew as a baby and now love as an adult. the kind you can’t believe you haven’t known forever. the kind who will never, ever be far from your heart again.

18. i sewed (and actually subsequently WORE) my first skirt.


19. the mister and i had a water balloon fight. beat the snot out of those pesky kids.


20. i ate my fill of cherries off the tree


21. i spent a long overdue afternoon with my oldest friend, and kissed the heck out of her new baby. watched our girls laugh on a blanket in matching homemade dresses.


22. i watched my last baby take her first steps.

23.i hiked to two waterfalls. waded in one. swam in the other.


24. i shared an ice cream cone to celebrate the first day of second grade.


25. i helped a friend who had watched her house go up in flames move into the home her heart had been searching for. i sat at a beautiful supper outside, breathed the sweet air around us and felt overwhelmed by the good.


26. i sewed a pincushion


27. i began photographing myself for a change, and actually liked a few self-portraits.


28. did flowers for a wedding. Mostly from my garden.

29. to the immense amusement of my mister and my boys, i surfed with the girls.


30. with fear and trepidation, hope and anticipation, i watched two people I hold close to my heart fall in love. with each other.

31. put pigtails in my baby girl’s shiny red hair


32. learned that saying goodbye is always hard, but sometimes nearly unbearable. but hello...hello feels so good after such a big goodbye.

ugh.

It's so winter. it really is. it makes me want to not use proper punctuation, and wear my yoga pants a lot, and drink a lot of coffee and read a lot of books by my fireplace. unfortunately, my plan is often foiled by A) having to leave the house for food and general supplies, and B) three small children, who for some reason do not think reading books by the fire and drinking coffee is necessarily an ALL DAY activity. (luckily, they don't really have an opinion on the yoga pants! YAY!) Although that big one...by the way he's ravenously devouring books lately, i'm starting to think he's coming around. i've got my eye on him....

ahem. anyhow. it's just been a lot lately. i'm not usually one for the winter blues (seeing as how i LOVE LOVE LOVE the seasons, and the cold, and did i mention i LOVE the seasons? have you heard how i feel about FALL?) but this year, they seem to have caught up with me. as a super awesome band once sang,

"And maybe it's the time of year,
Yes and maybe it's the time of man.
And I don't know who I am,
But life is for learning."

thank you, crosby stills and nash. and thank you bill wertz, for the crosby stills and nash education.

so, yeah. i haven't really been wanting to blog, because there's lots of stuff that i just don't really want to talk about. which is probably avoidance, and probably delayed processing, and probably just me being a person who withdraws periodically, because i can. it could also have something to do with my thirty second birthday being right around the corner.....ouch. when did i get to be 32? how is this possible? i'm ninety percent sure i was like 19 just a few weeks ago.....hmmm. fishy.

so i'll leave you with some photos of one thing i do love in the winter....the oregon coast. it's so spectacularly beautiful and dramatic and dark and stormy. i love a good dark and stormy day every once in a while. luckily, i live in oregon. they are in ready supply.

family photos.

Have you ever tried to take family pictures with your camera on a tripod and a timer or remote? Have you ever felt like you were a reasonably competent photographer, only to be confounded by the utter inability to get a decent photo of your entire family at one time? Huh. Me too.

Enter....the professional photographer. Oh, they are worth their weight in gold, especially when you have two little boys who can be magically bewitched by pretty girls with blond hair.

Check out Jenna at Dolce Photography. She's great. I think the photos speak for themselves. AND she was gracious enough to give us a second chance redo, when weather, meltdowns and grumpy babies proved difficult to manage. :) I uploaded just a few, but click here and here for her blog posts...THANK YOU JENNA! It was so fun to have to choose a favorite for Christmas cards this year, instead of just trying to find ONE good one....

oh, hawaii.

i sorta lost momentum on the vacation posts, there. sorry. in order to be fair to our whole vacation (GRANTED it was 24 days long....) i'm uploading the rest of my photos to flickr as fast as i can edit them. i'll post a few more here, but i need to move on in the blogosphere. mostly because i'll probably start crying about the warm sun, the sand, the water....and the family.


the recap? we went to the beach, had a romantic getaway, hung out with friends we don't see nearly enough, bought a teeny baby bikini, surfed together, surfed separately, saw a bunch of fireworks, went on a hike, swam in a waterfall, got on the plane, got off the plane, got a bonus day, and then went home. all the while? we laughed and cried and got irritated with each other, and got unirritated, we did church, and christmas, and breakfast lunch and dinner, and just tried to get our fill of each other while we could. because only half of the people i love the most in the world got on the plane and came home. the other half stayed there.

so, next. winter and such. coming soon.
oh, and p.s. - thanks for anyone who followed the link to Healing Waters International. Again - consider donating if you can!

Water for Haiti....

So, I'm supposed to be catching up on the recap of our little trip to Hawaii. Which seems totally insignificant right now, considering Haiti. I think that everyone who doesn't live under a rock feels a sickening sense of helplessness in the face of this kind of overwhelming disaster. Especially, especially in Haiti. I mean, they were on the brink BEFORE. What now?

And yes, you can give your money to the Red Cross, and Doctors Without Borders, and those organizations do amazing things. But they are a stopgap. They will leave, at some point. I want something better. I want to help with something today, and something that will still be helping tomorrow and the week after that and the year after that, when we've resigned ourselves to seeing these images on a regular basis, and forgotten the driving, desperate needs of children sleeping outside, with no food and no clean water to drink.

photo via AFP/Getty Images

Speaking of water. I wanted to take a few minutes to tell everyone about an amazing and effective way to help RIGHT NOW.

This is my friend Aaron's blog. Our families have known each other since we were kiddos.
He works for an organization that is doing incredible things in a lot of places around the world. Healing Waters International provides water filtration systems in some of the most desperately impoverished places on the planet. Their model is one of the reasons I think they're so great....

They work in poor communities where the water supply is contaminated, and community members have access to water that is not safe to drink. Bottled water is out of reach, due to cost. They partner with local churches, already committed to helping those in their community, to install, maintain, and manage various water filtration systems that take the available water supply and make it clean and drinkable. The water is then sold at a price that covers the operating costs and yet makes it accessible to even the poorest members of the community. Through their 83 projects, they now serve about 120,000 people each day with clean water.

If you're looking for a way to help Haiti, they can provide a solution right now. Because of their strong presence in the Dominican Republic, and a partnership with Compassion International, HWI is able to provide gallons of clean drinking water in Haiti for about two dollars per gallon, while continuing to provide water to the communities they already serve. The cost basically covers the container and the transport. Please, if you're interested in giving to something that will be effective RIGHT NOW, TODAY, then check out their website and consider a donation online. In addition to providing clean water today, the second phase of their plan includes becoming a permanent presence in Haiti and installing 50 water filtration systems that will continue to provide clean water for years to come. It's under $10,000 to permanently affect a community. If your organization or employer is interested in sponsoring one, check out the website for more info.

Think about it. Pray about it. And the next time you fill your water bottle or grab a bottled water, consider Haiti.

so this is christmas....

my fave shot of the day. the opposite of present fatigue!

And it WAS a good one. See, every year we have this resolution - that the amount of presents under the tree won't be a tiny bit sickening, that THIS is the year we're going to scale it back, take it easy, our kids are completely spoiled, blah blah blah. And somehow, every year we get to Christmas morning, and there's a pile of presents the size of Texas, and by the time they've opened one fourth of the stack, the kids have present fatigue - glazed eyes, crazy smiles, and "WHAT'S NEXT!" mentality. Ugh. It makes you want to throw up just a teeny bit.

But this year, it all came together. Because we got on a plane on the 15th of December, we skipped it. We skipped almost all of it. We didn't put up a tree, or lights, or decorations at our house in Oregon. We didn't go to the mall, and fight the crowds, and elbow people to get the last Buzz Lightyear talking whatever. We just....got on a plane! And we told the kids this was their gift. And pretty much, they were okay with that.

We did a tiny bitty bit of shopping at a super cute store in downtown Haliewa called The Growing Keiki, and then we went for ONE trip to target. One. That's it. The kids each got their very first gaming device - and I'll pause now for all the stones and torches to be thrown. In our defense, my 7 year old has never once owned a video game, and we've decided not to own one for our family. Mostly because I'm pretty sure it would be impossible for them to fight their father off long enough to use it. So Jack got a Nintendo DS, and Aidan got a Leapster with a Star Wars reading game. And a few books, and some body boards. Chloe got a new baby and some hair pretties. And that's it! Shawn and I didn't buy presents for each other, although we did splurge on a getaway for a few nights. (coming later...)









We were done opening presents in like 20 minutes flat, the kids were ACTUALLY excited about what they got, and then we hopped in the bus and headed out to watch the 30 foot surf break in Waimea Bay. Now, our bright idea was shared by about 47 million other people - so it was a bit of a long trip. Like an hour and a half, to drive what usually takes about 20 min. Mimi taught Aidan how to play "go fish," Jackson read a book, Mama read a book, and everyone was pretty much happy. And when we got there it was beautiful, and dramatic, and we even scored a super choice parking spot in a totally cut-throat parking situation. Generally, a great day. We got home too late to cook the ham we were planning on, so we had some snacks and cheese and went to bed. Christmas, over, done, and pretty darn easy and fun. The best part? When we get home - I HAVE NO DECORATIONS TO CLEAN UP!











Oh, and last thing: the BEST presents of the year, by far, were the handmade, hand drawn books that Jackson created for everyone in the family. Each of his siblings, and all the adults got a personalized story for them. Yeah. I pretty much wanted to bawl. But I kept it together, seeing as how it was Christmas, and I didn't want to frighten the children.

it's european.

So, technically, this photo should have gone in with the previous post. HOWEVER. I felt it necessitated it's own post.


Ummmm, yeah. Because mister? It's not enough that you're wearing a speedo in the first place. Or that you're still wearing it at the top of the hill, FAR AWAY from the water. Or that you're standing by the stroller while whatever woman you procreated with goes to the bathroom or whatever - she obviously doesn't care enough to tell you to PUT ON SOME SHORTS. But really, really. The propped up leg? That's the BEST POSE YOU COULD STRIKE? IN YOUR SPEEDO? And p.s. - I think your fanny pack is getting damp.

And just for the record - yes, that is my shoulder in the lower left corner. Because I forced my husband to act like he was taking my picture, to get this shot. Obviously, he could be more convincing, seeing as how the GUY IS LOOKING STRAIGHT AT THE CAMERA. Because we're all about the subtlety.