Back Home and Playing

We are home again and have had a bit of time to play. Summer has been full and good! I have traveled a bit and shared time with family and friends. I have had a chance to catch up with old friends through long phone calls and e-mails as well. Work is approaching quickly which means Bryant leaves us soon to travel back to school and begin yet another semester of studies. Brit is ready to start what will be a very full Senior year. What better time to spend playing as a family in our own backyard!

So...off we went with a picnic packed and hiking shoes loaded in the back. A day in the mountains had been calling me for some time now. I know! I Know! Getting up to those mountains is not my favorite thing in life. I am still thinking about a way to just be lowered into them each time I have the craving to hike them.

But having them so close makes them call to me often and with the schedule we have had lately there had been no time to enjoy their beauty other than as I would drive about the city and run errands. Looking up at the and enjoying their beauty from down here is just not quite the same as being amongst them, so my desire to walk in the mountains over rode my fear of driving up them and off we went.

It still amazes Wayne and I just how many different things we live near. Not just things,but activities and sights we love to enjoy! Making our move was a huge leap and leaving all our family and friends was horrible but thanks to technology and the visits back, we are able to keep in touch with everybody we left and still enjoy all that our new space has to offer. We swore we would never take for the granted this new space and all there is to do and see once we moved here and we are trying to fulfill that. There is just sooo much for us to see and so today we take off up the mountains to enjoy Kings Canyon as we know at least Brit has not seen this area yet and the rest of us are ready to enjoy it again. Not only is it a beautiful place to hike but it is cooler in the mountains and that makes for a nice change from our usual temps.

We spend time hiking among the sequoias, a tree that is just amazing!!! Not only are the huge, like in really really huge, but they have this appearance of being very furry and they are really furry! I absolutely love them and for the second time this summer I am reminded just how small we are in this huge universe and am in awe by it all! maybe we all really should having our churches meet outside of buildings. I think we might be missing the big picture by closing our congregations up within four walls. How can we not live in love and peace with each other when we are walking through the sequoias or riding on a whale boat or wandering the streets of Spain, or climbing through the beauty of Peru, or, or, or...
We hiked. We sat for a picnic under the trees. We toured a cave. We enjoyed life and time together as a family! It was a beautiful day to spend with three of my most favorite people in the world. We have come a long way over the last three years...and we have made it through a very tough year of separating. We have done well!

Blessed Be-

Back Where We Started

What better way for the four of us to end our summer than the same way we started it! So, bags packed and a couple friends thrown in for the ride and we are headed back to the ocean! The boys are ready to skimboard and the girls are ready to hunt for shells and sand dollars.

It is like going home each time we make this drive to the water. being a Pisces, it is hard for me to stay away for long and so the excitement fills me each time I head back out to the beach. We have rented a house in our favorite little fishing community. A place our children love as much as Wayne and I do.

It is a break from the heat in the summer and a quiet place for us to relax and re-energize before we begin our next school year which is shaping up to be huge for both the children.

We arrive early and head straight to the beach, unpack a picnic lunch and sit back and breathe in the smell! Nowhere else can we get this!!! The sand is warm yet the water is cold. A perfect combination.

The fog is settled all about, making for that cozy feeling I find myself longing for throughout the months when life is too busy to escape from.

We soon pack up and head to the house so we can check it out, unpack and head off on our adventures. We usually stay out of town in a house on the ocean but this time we will be staying in the small, quaint town of Morro Bay. http://www.morrobay.org/cm/Home.html Bags unpack, house scoped out and off we go exploring!

The boys head out on a bike, laughing as they get the hang of it!

The girls are headed off to the shops and Wayne and I are going to walk to the Farmers Market in order to find some local produce and a loaf or two of bread.

Snagged by a vendor, a wonderful couple with great tops, we spend time talking and getting ideas of places to stop by. We don't head off with out buying a couple of items from them as well as getting their website in order to help support them. http://www.liveinpeace.ws/

Then it is down the market to check out all the sites and smell all the wonderful food! The girls catch up to us, tamales in hand and tell us of a beautiful used bookstore they have found with a garden in the back. Off they go and on we wander. The boys call to say they have made their way down to the Embarcadero and are shopping.

We all gather back at the house soon to dress warmly and head to the beach so the boys can skimboard a bit before dinner. Life is good!!!

Once dinner is over and we are all warmed, we break out the board games, movies, etc. Wayne and I stay up as long as we can and the children remain up most the night as to not miss a moment of fun!

Morning comes and everybody is too tired to head to the beach to collect sand dollars as is our tradition so Wayne and I have a leisurely morning of coffee and book time as the day begins and the sun breaks through. The children slowly get up and start their day and off we go in our own directions. The plan is to meet up for lunch at our favorite spot, Rose's, for garlic fries and whatever other cravings we have by then.

After lunch we head out in kayaks to explore. What fun we have as meet up with an otter having lunch. Then on to an island of pelicans. After which we head to the dunes! A must for our family. We spend time climbing and playing until it is time to make the long trek back to the town and return our kayaks.

What fun and what pain we will feel tomorrow! We head back to our place to make dinner on the grill and play more games and then off to bed in order to rise in the morning and do it all over again.

We are pleasantly surprised by groupings of dolphins every direction we look while we are searching for shells the next morning. We finally decide it is not a good shell morning but it is a wonderful dolphin viewing morning and we sit upon some high rocks and watch as they play and play all around us! we have never had this pleasure before and are thrilled to sit and watch.

Back to the house to have a bit of breakfast, shower and pack up the cars. Time to head to the beach one last time and Jordan has a great project for us while we are there.

We build the most beautiful sea turtle together, then off to town to grab last minute purchases as well as a bit to eat. The teens all head off to get clam chowder in bread bowls and Wayne and I head off to a nice little cafe on the water to sit in the sun and relax a bit over lunch before our drive back home. It is always hard for us to leave but the boys remind us that it is not so bad for them this time as they are headed back to the ocean later this week to go camping.




Life is good-

Waiting & Reminiscing

I find myself with time on my hands. Something that is quite unusual at this point in my life. I am waiting, you see. Waiting for a blossom to open that waits until night when most people have settled in. This same plant, a cactus to be exact bloomed last year and we missed it! After waiting days, as the bud grew and grew, we woke one day to find that it had bloomed but it all had happened as we were tucked away inside for the night and we never had the chance to experience it's unveiling. This year we sit...waiting. A bit like waiting for the birthing hour. How we waited and waited so many years ago. Now to find that in months we will be the parents of not just one, but two adults.

Where has all the time gone and how do we sort through it all and decipher one year from the next? It all seems to have gone so fast and yet there were times in the middle of the night when we sat next to that child waiting for the homeopathy to kick in and relieve the fever and we wondered if the time would ever pass? Or the times we sat up all night waiting for the same children to arrive home safely from Prom. Where does the time go? Tonight I sit typing as I wait the beauty of a blossom. I sit with a smile across my heart as I have both my children home and as I recall the last several nights as we have sat around the table as a family, adding a few extra teens here and there as we discussed the world issues and explained how we would each change the world. As we sat enjoying the slowly prepared food from our kitchen and the hours of conversation as the sun sets and the moon shines brightly over us and I believe that as these nights have passed, that even the moon has smiled as it shone down upon us as we debated politics, life and books as our family always has and is able to once again in it's "whole".

So I sit and I am thankful that this blossom has given me the time to remember when. I am happy to have the time to peruse through pictures that have been taken and filed away as life has been too busy and if I am to be totally honest, I have set to the side so that I would not have to deal with life moving so fast. So, here it is in all it's raw beauty. The last several months...for those of you who have asked. No reason to get nervous over the silence. I always reappear when time helps me sort and I am able to deal with the next phase.

Blessings to you all-