Welcome to the Pacific Northwet

It was during the summer that I first saw them.  Shiny marks on the floor, both the wood floor and the carpet.  Marks that almost looked like someone had swiped a narrow trail of glue that had dried; but of course that was not it.

Later I saw them again, behind the couch, near the trash can, in front of the sink.  This time I tried touching the place on the carpet to see if I could feel anything but whatever was there disappeared as if glittery gossamer.

I sprinkled around a bit of salt before we left town, hoping that this would stop my mysterious invader, but when Cindy Lynn came by she saw it was not enough.  She spread the contents of a box around the floor and we hoped it would ward off the slimy evil.  I left the salt on the floor for several weeks before I finally vacuumed it up, certain that enough time had passed.  

The first week went by and then the second and the floor remained clean.  And then it happened again.  Tracks by the trash can and tracks by the sink.  Once again I spread salt along the walls, hoping to see something dead and dreading seeing something dead at the same time.

And then last night I saw it.  There was no clue where it came from, but I can tell you it went to a watery grave.  Dare I hope this was the only one???

Beach memories

Every year we come away from the beach with hearts and minds full of memories.  Some memories repeat themselves year after year.

Crossing the bridge to the island.

Our first glimpse of Big Bertha.

Crazy amounts of shopping and multiple trips to Food Lion.  A menu of our favorite foods.

Car treats.  Sand in my ears.  (Why does this surprise me every year??)

This year we played in the kayaks again,

the girls made sand sculptures,

 

 

and we celebrated the triplet's 15th birthday and Josh's 20th.

This year we filled the hot tub to capacity, and then some.

As always we watched the ocean and listened to the waves and rejoiced that we were able to be there again.

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Then there are the memories that are specific to particular years.  The year of the dragonflies.  The year of the tidepools.  The year we weren't at Big Bertha and the year of mother styles.

One of the strongest memories of this year I'm sure will be the number of shark attacks in North Carolina at the beginning of the summer.  I think we were all at least a little freaked out about it.  Thankfully there wasn't another bite in the month before we went.

My other strongest memory will always be the massive sunburn I got from going out to swim in the rain.  The clouds were so heavy that I was sure I didn't need sunscreen...unfortunately when the clouds started clearing I ignored that niggling little thought and didn't go get sunscreen.  I was burned so badly that my forehead was swollen.  I regretted that decision for the rest of the week!

This year will always be remembered as the year that Russ tore a muscle goofing around in the Portland airport as we began our trip.  He couldn't even get in the water for the first few days.  This year will be remembered as the answer for every game was some variation on nipple hair, with the occasional exploding whale.  This year was the first year that all of the kids entered wholeheartedly into playing games.

 

 

 

 

This year was the year we did jigsaw puzzles to prevent Alzheimers.

This year we had crazy storms, and I loved it because we just don't get storms like that here in Oregon.  On Friday I woke up from my nap and looked outside and it was raining.  Then I noticed that Russ was down on the beach under the canopy reading.  Within a minute or two the rain intensified and it was POURING.  When I looked at the canopy I saw that Russ was moving from the middle to the side because the wind was blowing rain underneath.  He ended up having to take the canopy down because of the wind and rain.

Every year we try to plan to do family pictures on the day with the best weather possible.  This year was a total fail--the night we took them was incredibly windy.  And then Friday evening after the rainstorm was perfect!

This year Jared was acrobatic at the beach.  Since he wasn't willing to listen to my worries and not try to do flips, I figured I might as well take pictures.

 

 

This year we took a drive by our favorite little neighborhood on our way home from church,

and this year the air conditioning repairman had a great sense of humor!

Every year--such wonderful memories!!!

Notes

I've written before that I organize my life with post it notes, and I frequently write myself a note and leave it somewhere that I will see it and be reminded.  When we moved into this house there were a bunch of things we needed and other things that I wanted. I was trying to restrain myself and not spend any more money than I absolutely had to, so I made a list of things I still wanted to buy and put it up on an out of sight cabinet in the kitchen.  As I bought things I crossed them off of the list, but the note was still there a year and a half later when Jason got home from his mission.  (What can I say?  There were still things I was going to buy!)

One day after he'd been home for a while I happened to glance at my list while getting plates and noticed that there had been a small addition.

It made me laugh so hard!  Then I couldn't take the note down, because it made/makes me happy every time I look at it.

Then after Mahon and Cindy Lynn visited in February I noticed yet another addition.

I couldn't take that down either, could I??


Last note. I've been planning for a couple of months to go on a whale watching trip right before the kids went back to school but I kept forgetting to make the reservations.  So one night I wrote the word "whales" on a post it and put it on the bathroom mirror.  When I woke up the next morning this is what I saw.

Sometimes the small things sure bring big happiness!

Showing my love through cookie dough

Long ago (when I was a younger mom and still sure I knew almost everything) someone told me that they showed love for their child by buying them things.

I was appalled.  I'd known immediately when I first heard of the book "The Five Love Languages" that whatever my love language was, it wasn't gifts.  In my (young) wisdom I knew that there were better and healthier ways to show love than to buy things.

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Years have passed since that time.  I can still remember an intermediate moment when I had the realization "I am buying my child's love with this purchase here and now."  And I still did it.  Because right then I wanted to show love and that seemed like a good way in that moment.

I've shown love to my kids many different ways since then.  I've given rides and massages and back scratches, I've had late night talks and long phone calls.  I've played board games and card games and done things I didn't want to do when I was too tired to do them.  All of it because I love these kids like crazy and want them to know it.

I was laughing this morning as I wondered how many batches of cookie dough I've made in the weeks that Josh has been home.  Three of them I can't blame on him--they were for the day I took snacks for 90 kids to band camp.  I could have gone to the store and bought something, of course, but once again I was showing my love for my 3 band kids by bringing the good stuff, real homemade chocolate chip cookies. 

Usually Josh wants regular cookies, but a few days ago I made chocolate chocolate cookies with both chocolate and mint chips.  I baked some cookies and put the rest of the dough in the fridge where Josh found it and declared it the best cookie dough ever.  Yesterday I made more, once again baking just one batch and putting the rest in the fridge. 

This morning I noticed that while no more cookies have been baked, the cookie dough is almost gone.  Guess it's time to make another batch.  Josh leaves for Rexburg in a couple of days and I have to show my love by making cookie dough while I can.

Life lessons learned at the beach: Walking in the Water

While we were at the beach this year the surf was rough.  Last year we had some days that were overly calm, but this year we had some days where the faint of heart (or the injured of leg) stayed in the shallows or on the sand.  The rougher waves also meant that the water was always brown and churned up, never clear.

Due the the rough surf and some other weather conditions we knew that there was a higher chance than normal of rip currents.  The first evening we experienced strong currents about 6 houses down from Big Bertha, and so we resolved to always get out before we had drifted down that far.  Some days the eastward pull wasn't that strong and we could play in the waves for a long time before we had to reposition ourselves.  But other days there was a strong pull to the east and in what seemed like no time at all we'd need to ride a wave in and walk back up the beach to the 3rd or 4th house past Big Bertha.

Sometimes I'd go all the way out of the water and walk, but sometimes I'd start walking up the beach while I was still in the shallow water.  Invariably I felt a little off balance when I walked in the water--not only is the sand not level there in the shallows, the level changes are frequent and significant.  One step goes down a foot and then the next only six inches.  Or you might take 3 steps in a deeper area and then be up almost a foot higher.

One day as I was lurching through the shallow water on my way back to the place that was the designated "go back into the waves" place I had the thought that this shallow area was a lot like life.  So many times I'm going along in life and all looks smooth ahead, and then wham, I hit a pothole that isn't visible and am in it up to my knees.  So many times things look even on the surface but underneath they're completely and rapidly uneven and I lurch back and forth.  Sometimes in life I get in a hurry and don't walk all of the way out of one situation (the water) before I start moving forward again, even though is so much more work that way. This summer I reminded myself over and over again that this part of the ocean floor is just that way, and I think I need to remember that sometimes life is just that way too...

The incredible expanding shrinking family

While my mom was dying of cancer I took all her family pictures (years and stacks of them, gathered from all over the house) and put them in scrapbooks.  What else do you give your dying mother for  Christmas, right??  I called it blitzkrieg scrapbooking, my brother and I sorted by year and decade as fast as we could (judging sometimes by clues in the picture like cabinet style or which house or even linoleum) and then put those pictures on pages.  In the end we had 3 large volumes, two of regular pictures and one of portraits throughout the years.

It was interesting for me to look at my parents' life together in this way.  Starting with the few pictures we had of them each as children, on to pictures of their wedding day and beyond.  Seeing pictures of them with me, then that picture once my sister was born when my mom had given me the world's worst haircut ever.

(She always said she thought it was darling but I cringe every time I look at the picture and am retroactively grateful each time that she let my hair grow out again.) The next pictures show three young children,  my brother Val a curly haired pink cheeked cherub. 

None of these pictures were a surprise to me: as the oldest child I had witnessed this part of my parent's life. 

 What was surprising to me were the other pictures, the ones after I married and left home.  It was a time before frequent visits were affordable and there were easy ways to take and share pictures, and many of these pictures were new to me.  I hadn't realized that just as there was a photo history of our growing family, there was a family picture of our shrinking family; first a family picture without me, then several years later a picture without Margaret as well.  

Slowly the family shrunk just as it had grown all those years before.  

In the end there was a picture of my mom with Laila and Jeremy.

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Our growing family was no surprise to me, or at least the part of it that grew in the normal way.  We, like my parents, had a series of family pictures; first with Cindy Lynn, then with Cindy Lynn and Jason, and later with Josh as well.  

Then came the big change--family pictures where is seemed everyone was holding a baby after Rachel, Jenna, and Jared were born.  

After that the only change in the pictures was their age and the amount of grey in our hair. 

I think that a part of me thought that this was how our family was always going to be.  Logically I knew that the kids would go to college, but that logical awareness must not have penetrated deeply. It caught me off guard when we began to have pictures of family activities with just the 5 younger kids, and positively startled me after Jason went to college and on his mission and we had pictures without both of the older kids. 

But that's when it really started surprising me.  Because now Cindy Lynn had married, and so sometimes we had pictures with everyone and this new family member, and then other times pictures without any of them.  In my mind I started calling it the incredible expanding contacting family.  That process has only increased in the last year with Josh at college too, leaving just the triplets at home.  And with the girls in color guard and Jared in wrestling, sometimes we have only two children at home, and sometimes only one!  Until the moment where everyone is home together again and we enjoy the expanded family once more, now expanded even more with the addition of Kate.

If I'd thought about it before, I would have anticipated the shrinking family.  But I never could have anticipated the changes in the other direction, that our family would both ebb and flow throughout the years. 

Last week was the full expansion, with Cindy Lynn and Mahon in Oregon and both boys home again on break for school.  It was wonderful to have everyone all together; loud, full house, full table.  But in a short time it will change again and within a few weeks we'll be back to our new smaller family once again, this time augmented from time to time by Cindy Lynn and her family.  

It has been interesting as I have searched through old pictures to find the ones I wanted for this post.  Because I saw something that I had forgotten in my thinking about the incredible expanding/contracting family.  What I saw was this--that as my parents' family was shrinking, a bunch of little families were forming and growing, branching off from the place that they had started.  That was us.  And now we're where they were then and it begins all over again. The endless cycle of the incredible expanding contracting family.