CSC trip recap

No words or pictures could capture our trip. The feelings, the experiences, the people . . . it was so good and so hard and so wonderful and so emotional.

We left early on Sunday morning, December 18th. At the airport by 4 am to check all our bags and pick up coffee and get to the gate in time for our first leg of the long trip to Cebu. We flew from Minneapolis to LA. From LA to Seoul. From Seoul to Cebu. Nearly 24 hours of total time in the air between the two flights! Due to the time differences, it was early Tuesday morning, local time, when we finally arrived in Cebu. We were tired and weary, but excited to be there after the weeks and weeks of dreams and plans.

We were asked to come to help with Christmas preparations for the kids. 75 kids, give or take a couple! That's a whole lotta Christmas prep, let me tell you. We shopped. We wrapped. We wrapped some more. We "emergency" shopped for a few more things. We baked cookies. We made table decorations for Christmas dinner. We frosted cookies. We played with kids. We held precious babies. We made friends. We witness the selfless gift, purchased with money donated by orphaned and abandoned children, that would bless someone who had needs beyond any that I can wrap my brain around! We worshipped. We sweat a lot (TROPICS! We were in the tropics!). We listened. We cried. We ate A LOT of rice. We even slept a little bit.

I can't put words to the life long impact an experience like this has on a person. I'm so grateful to have been able to share it with some of my very favorite people on earth.

Levels and Travels and Bursitis, oh my!

It's been a whirlwind of a fall and winter so far. When we turned the calendar to October, we were looking forward to pretty average fall and winter. The biggest "stuff" on our radar was all the "lasts" of life with Jacob still living under our roof full time. But shortly thereafter, things got crazy.

We took on this major addition/remodel/house project. It will be so, so wonderful once it is finished, but it most certainly throws a wrench into regular family life!

Then a couple weeks later the two older girls and I were offered the opportunity to spend Christmas in Cebu at CSC. We gave it only a few minutes of thought before we were in. So there were passports to get. And tickets. And plans to be made. And packing to do.

Then in November I was diagnosed with bursitis in both my hips. It was good to have a diagnosis and to know what was going on to cause all my hip pain. So that started a journey of PT to work on healing and diminished pain.

What was looking like a calm season took a turn. A crazy turn, but a turn that would lead to lots of fabulous destinations. Life is nothing if not a crazy ride!

In case there wasn't already enough going on

Life has been a bit of a whirlwind the past month or so. Lots of things (very good things!) coming at us that weren't exactly in the immediate plan, but nonetheless we have found ourself in the middle of them. Major life things. Time consuming things. Thought consuming things. Good things, but things that demand a lot out of you!

We are on the brink of a MAJOR house project around here. An addition and remodel. Big stuff! We have lived in our 1920's house for nearly 20 years now and we LOVE it, but there are lots of things that could stand to have a bit of money thrown at them (and that's an understatement), if you know what I mean. So, we are diving in! All the years we've lived here, we have dreamed of a bigger kitchen. Our kitchen is small and the space is also the main entry into our house. And since 8 people live here (five of whom are full-sized people), the space is pretty tight, to say the least. And when you add in the fact that all the shoes/coats/sweatshirts/backpacks/etc for 8 people get tossed on the floor in the kitchen, it's nearly enough to make you lose your everloving mind! So, our yard will soon be sporting a big hole and life will get messy for a while . . . well, life is always messy, but it's about to get a lot more messy, in the literal sense, for the foreseeable future.

Also, I will be going on a MAJOR, life-changing trip with our two older girls in just over a month. Passports have been applied for. Plane tickets have been purchased. Planning is well underway! My mom, my dearest girlfriend since childhood (my "sister"), my two older girls and my brother's wife will all be traveling to Cebu, Philippines to work at a shelter for orphaned and abandoned children. We will have the opportunity to serve them by helping the staff there prepare for Christmas. How fun is that? Shopping, wrapping, baking, planning, prepping . . . doing what we can to help make Christmas special for the 80+ kids who call CSC home.

I'm quite sure there will be plenty to share on both of these fronts in the near future, so stay tuned.

Life is quite a ride these days. (And always!) I'm hanging on tight.

two whole decades

2 decades. 20 years. 7,305 days. 175,320 hours. 6 kids. 2 addresses. 8 or 9 vehicles . . . 10 even, maybe. I've lost count. A lot of life has happened since the day we got married. It hasn't all been fun or easy or something we would have chosen, but it has all worked together to bring us to where we are today! Life is hard. Marriage is hard. Parenting is hard. But I don't think it's supposed to be easy! Good, but not easy! To celebrate our 20 years of marriage, we returned to Cape Cod, where we spent our honeymoon 20 years ago, when we were just "kids".

I still do 1996-2016

I'm not a big fan of travel, so it took me a few days to really feel settled and enjoy myself being away from home (and by then it was nearly time to head back), but we did have a wonderful trip and enjoyed our unhurried, calm, quiet time together. I have tagged along for a day or two of a work trip that Kirby was on, and we have "house-swapped" with my parents to celebrate an anniversary or gone away to a nearby town for one night, but this was our first real TRIP together (out of state, kid-free, no work commitments at all) since our honeymoon. It was just what we needed.

Our plane landed in Hartford (after an early-morning red-eye flight and a layover) in the early afternoon. We picked up our rental car and grabbed some lunch. Then we headed to the cemetery where my grandparents headstone is located. It was a beautiful day and I LOVE cemeteries and I hadn't seen the marker for my grandparents since it had been placed in the ground, so that was a great way to start our trip. Then we drove to Boston and walked around downtown for a few hours. We went in the Boston public library, walked through the public gardens, went by Cheers and saw the Boston Marathon finish line. After our quick self-guided tour, we hopped back in our car and headed to the hotel we were staying at that evening. Travel had worn us out, so we had pizza delivered to our room and turned in early.

State Veterans Cemetery, Middletown, Connecticut

Boston Marathon Finish Line

Super cool book art at the Boston Public Library

cool church window in Boston

 The next morning we got up, checked out of our hotel and went to church. We had hunted on the internet for a church in the area that we could go to that morning and ended up at one whose service started about 20 minutes after the scheduled time (the first service ran long -- they had a guest speaker . . . this maybe should have been a clue for us!). We finally headed in to the sanctuary and the service got started. It was significantly more charismatic than we are used to, and it made for an interesting morning. We snuck out a bit before the service was done, since we'd already been there nearly two hours, we were hungry and we wanted to get to the ocean! Driving to Cape Cod on a Sunday afternoon is much like driving north in Minnesota on a Sunday afternoon in the summer! You quickly realize that you are going the opposite direction of EVERYONE ELSE and for that you are so very grateful! We had lunch at a hole in the wall local place and then headed to the place we would call home for the next couple days. Ships Knees Inn. My dad's sister and her husband own and run the Inn, so we got a little family time in, too, visiting with them while we were away. We were go grateful for their hospitality and loved seeing how fabulous they are at their jobs! Best innkeepers ever!

Ships Knees Inn (we highly recommend you visit!)

Our shadows on the morning of our 20th anniversary

We took long, slow walks on the beach (it's hard to walk through beach sand any way other than slow!) and around town. We went to a movie (it was a rainy day!). We ate. We walked on the beach some more. We ate some more. We browsed in a quaint little shops. We toured an amazingly beautiful church with stunning architectural detail (again with the rain!). We want to another cemetery. We found a labyrinth a walked through that. (I LOVE labyrinths. Kirby didn't quite see why I love them so much). We saw seals (hundreds of them!). We listened to waves. We ran away laughing as waves crashed against our legs. We watched sunsets and sunrises. We enjoyed our time together and rested and relaxed and then were ready to head back to our state. Our house. Our kiddos.

A pair of seals in the water (hundreds more on a sandbar in the distance)

glorious sunset on Skaket Beach 9.20.16

my love

It was a great trip and one we hope to repeat again. Maybe we won't wait 20 more years next time! I am so thankful for twenty years of faithful, supportive love and encouragement mixed with lots of fun, laughter and heartache. Neither of us are perfect, but we are a pretty darn good pair!

amazing sunrise on our final morning

the "old" married couple who need major work on their selfie skills!

He is risen indeed!

Every other year we head north to spend Easter with my in-laws and my husband's extended family. It's not short trip. They live about 350 miles north! That's a long trip when you can only stay about 48 hours once you arrive. But it is well worth it. The kids love seeing their grandparents and spending time with their cousins . . . and you can't forget the EGG HUNT!

So this year was a traveling year. Kirby and Joe returned home about 5:30 on Thursday night from a 3-day environmental studies field trip that the 5th grade class at our school goes on every spring, and after a full evening of laundry (you don't want stinky/wet/dirty camp clothes to sit for 4 days before being laundered!) we left first thing on Friday morning. We arrived at my in-laws house Friday afternoon and after unloading our stuff and stretching our legs a bit, it was time to get ready for the Good Friday service at church. Following church, we played games and had dessert at Kirby's older sister's house with her family. Saturday brought our big extended family dinner and egg hunt (since we needed to leave right after church on Sunday to get home at a decent hour, we did our celebrating as a family on Saturday afternoon). I think there were probably 40 people at Kirby's aunts house for dinner. 2 of Kirby's 3 siblings were there with their families as were many of his aunts and uncles and cousins (as well as his cousin's kids). We are quite a group! There was lots of food, much laughter, games to play and all the kids enjoyed the egg hunt immensely (despite the mud and snow). Following the egg hunt the kids kept busy emptying their eggs, eating candy, trading candy and counting their money (eggs don't only hold candy, you know!) while the adults visited and helped facilitate fair trading among young ones before we all packed up to head out. Saturday night brought a walk to stretch our legs and get some fresh air, pizza and visiting with Grandma and Grandpa.

We went to a pancake breakfast at Kirby's sister's church on Sunday morning and then enjoyed Easter worship at their church with a good percentage of his family. We had a quick lunch at his parents house and changed out of our "church clothes" before hitting the road for the long trek home.

Finally, after LOTS of hours in the car, we arrived at our house. Unfortunately, we were locked out! My parents had come to do a project for us (new front and back steps and front sidewalk -- having a cement mason for a father comes in handy more often than you might think!) and so we left the door open for them when we took off on Friday morning. Kirb grabbed just the van keys and we hit the road. Well, my very responsible parents locked up for us when they were done on Friday. The thought that we didn't have a house key with us never crossed our minds until the moment we pulled into the driveway. Thank goodness for cell phones! I called my parents (who were still had Easter company at their house) and my dad buzzed over right away and let us in . . . saving the day (and our VERY FULL bladders) again!

New England in the Fall

My grandpa died in 2007 and my grandma in 2009. All my life they lived in Connecticut, so they were the "long distance" grandparents (the distance was especially "long" relative to my other set of grandparents who lived right in our house with us for much of my growing up years). I loved when they would come to visit or when we would head east to see them.

The adorable pair ::

The entire family, nineteen sixty-something ::

With my grandparents a week or so after our wedding in 1996 ::

Before my grandparents died, they had decided to donate their bodies to science for medical research. So we had memorial services at the times of their death, but did not have bodies or ashes for them, so there was no burial. Fast forward a bit and our family (the funeral home, actually) got their remains back and started planning the service at the cemetery. My grandpa was in WWII, so he was eligible to be buried in a military cemetery. We considered Arlington National Cemetery (he was eligible to be buried there), but decided on the local state military cemetery in Connecticut. So on a beautiful fall morning a small group of us gathered at State Veterans Cemetery in Middletown, Connecticut to honor my grandparents. It was such a beautiful and meaningful ceremony; I am so grateful that I was able to be there! It was a full on military ceremony. I didn't expect it to be so emotional, especially considering the years that had passed since their deaths. There were three veterans that took part in the ceremony and two current military. The elderly vets shot off their guns and one played taps (Kirby has played taps many a time at a military funeral and Jacob has too, so that is especially meaningful to me.) A lone bugle playing slowly over hundreds of gravestones is pretty powerful! Then the two current soldiers (one man and one woman) meticulously unfolded and refolded the flag and presented it to my dad with these words "On behalf of the president of the United State, the United States Army, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one's honorable and faithful service." The soldier was kneeling and looking my dad (who was seated on a chair) right in the eye. Face to face, just a few inches between them. I was not prepared for how moving and powerful that was going to be.

Entry of the cemetery ::

The soldiers who did the flag ceremony ::

5 out of the 8 grandkids ::

My dad and 3 of his siblings (there were 6 kids in his family) ::

Me holding the flag after the service ::

Following the service we hopped in the car (after a lunch together with the family) and drove to Cape Cod to stay that night with my aunt and uncle. They own an Inn on the Cape where we stayed on our honeymoon. This was my first time back in over 19 years. I enjoyed a beautiful sunrise walk on the beach the next morning complete with breaking ocean waves, seals in the water just off shore,  and seagulls. Then we drove to Boston to fly home. It was a short visit, but I was so glad I was there. To catch up a bit with family. To honor my grandparents. To spend kid-free time with my mom and dad. To make a few Dunkin' Donuts stops . . . it was a wonderful trip!

Sunrise on Nauset Beach ::