Day Five: White Sands National Monument

Day Four: Albuquerque to Cloudcroft

Wake up.  Take forever to get out of the hotel.  Quick stop to Trader Joe's for snacks turns into eons of fighting over juice and shrimp rolls.  Spill peanut sauce over every square inch of the van.  Drive and drive and drive (four whole hours this time).  Meet Aunt Shelley and Kacie for ice cream, and the fun begins!  Arrive at the Alamogordo Zoo thirty minutes before closing.  Zip through the zoo on turbo speed. Head up the mountains to Cloudcroft.  End the day in a pile of legs and pillows and boy snuggles, as Jude has refused to nap all day and is falling apart.  Breathe the cool, fresh mountain air; my soul smiles and sighs.

Day Three: Moab, UT to Albuquerque, NM

10am to 8pm

Word of the day: “Albu-turkey”

Same as day 2, it took us forever to get moving this morning. It becomes blatantly obvious what Hank is good at when he is not here to do it (i.e. rouse the troops to motion). Of course, it didn't help things that we stopped three times in the first hour for a latte, bathroom, and The Wilson Arch. But how could we pass this up?

Further on down the road we came to Mesa Verde National Park, another lengthy but altogether rewarding detour. Upon entering the park, we immediately determined which cliff dwelling could be reached without a half-day hike and pack mules (okay, really none of them required those measures but at this point in the day I have a just-awakened three-year-old and a yet un-napped two-year-old). We zip down the trail to the Spruce Tree House ruins, a priceless visual aid to the history sentence we learned just a few weeks ago in school: The Anasazi of the southwestern US built adobe villages in the sides of the cliffs from 500 BC to 1200 AD. The kids and I enthusiastically inspected the ancient handiwork, and all the while I am peppered with comments from the park rangers and numerous retired persons as to my “full hands,” (read: kids wanting to climb the walls and ladders, peering dangerously close to the edge of the 15-foot-deep kiva, fighting over who gets to push the stroller back up the hill, and having fits when not permitted to climb said architectural exhibits).

We finished off the day with a late-night swim in the hotel pool with Hank's brother Sam. Uncle Sam was a great sport and skillfully extracted all the kids' remaining energy and screams by playing the role of The Shark.

One thing that is notably in short supply so far on this adventure is any type of personal “down time” for me. When we are at home, we generally have all the kids in bed by 8:45 or so. Then Hank and I have a little time to gather what's left of our sanity and patch it back together before another day begins. This generally involves a big bowl of popcorn, a French lesson or episode of Parks & Rec., an independent trip to the bathroom (woo hoo!), and a little reading before we turn in. There is none of that winding down for me in the hotel. It's lights out for one and all, way past the kids' normal bedtime. Maybe that's why I find myself wide awake now at 3am, mulling over the events of the day and eating half of the powdered sugar doughnuts I bought to surprise the kids for tomorrow's breakfast.

Day Two: SLC to Moab, Utah

Travel hours: 11am to 4pm, with lots of dilly dally stops

 

Word of the day: "Shiloh"

We listened to the story of Shiloh the dog as we drove today.

 

Beauty surrounded by beauty

 

In Arches National Park, with Delicate Arch in the background

Day One: Bonners Ferry to Salt Lake City

Travel time: 6am to 11pm

Word of the day: “baby gun”

 Other than DVDs, the winner for entertaining value was a pair of ten-cent water guns. Eva and Jude spent hours hunting wolves from the comfort of their five-point harnesses. Jude has heard Henry talking about his BB gun, and thus any gun to Jude is a “baby” gun.

At a rest stop

 

We took a little detour to the Lava Hot Springs about 10 miles off the interstate. This was a great way to ease our travel-weary bones after 12 hours in the car. We relaxed in the mineral pools for about an hour and a half before loading up for the last (what should have been) 2 hours to the hotel. Unfortunately due to a road closure and sketchy detour directions, we bumbled around the dark hills outside of Salt Lake City for an extra 45 minutes before we finally located our timeshare condo destination.

All in all it was amazingly smooth day of travel! Thanks for the prayers! Today we plan to have a much shorter driving day in order to explore God's breathtaking creation in Arches National Park.

My Independent Offspring

Something that makes me happy as a parent is to watch my kids learn how to do something and then  practice doing it well.  Here are a couple of snapshots of their very capable selves:

Eva is so proud to be able to cook her own scrambled eggs! 

Grammy taught her this when she came to visit last month.

 

 

 

Time for a buzz cut! What could possibly go wrong? The point is to get all the hair off anyway, so what does it mtter what it looks like in process?

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for letting me do things myself when I was a kid.  I know that a three-year-old makes a lot more mess cooking lunch than Mommy does, but it means that I get four enthusiastic sous-chefs out of the deal!

Why Being Thankful is not Enough

Don't get me wrong--I'm not attacking anyone or any specific idea here.  After all, thankfulness is biblical, right?  But when I try to just sit still and BE anything--thankful included--there's something in me that malfunctions.  Maybe it's because I have not learned to truly be content.  Maybe it's because stillness is such an utterly foreign sensation in this uber-active household of mine.  Maybe it's because I grew up spending many days and nights on the road, sometimes even falling asleep and waking again to the motion of wheels on pavement.

Reading One Thousand Gifts left me feeling restless and incomplete.  Honestly, I never even finished it, and maybe it would have coalesced into action at the end.  I do appreciate beauty, and it is always nice to be let in on someone else's secret thoughts of appreciative reflection.  I felt like a dunce, though, for not being in love with such a gorgeous book and such revelatory words. 

This morning reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan it hit me why.  I wanted to scream YES!!! when I read these words:

Remember the story where Jesus fed thousands of people with one boy's small lunch?  In that story, according to Matthew, Jesus gave the loaves to His disciples and then the disciples passed them out to the crowd.  Imagine if the disciples had simply held onto the food Jesus gave them, continually thanking Him for providing lunch for them.  That would've been stupid when there was enough food to feed the thousands who were gathered and hungry.

But that is exactly what we do when we fail to give freely and joyfully.  We are loaded down with too many good things, more than we could ever need, while others are desperate for a small loaf.  The good things we cling to are more than money; we hoard our resources, our gifts, our time, our families, our friends.  As we begin to practice regular giving, we see how ludicrous it is to hold on to the abundance God has given us and merely repeat the words thank you.

I'm not altogether sure what that giving is supposed to look like in my life, today specifically or in the big picture.  That's one of the things we are exploring as we open our eyes to the world around us in a new way. So yes--let's be thankful in all things, but let's not stop there!  Let's hold onto these many blessings we have with a loose grip, ready to pass them on or offer them up.