Spring break is nearly over, and we have spent the last few days recovering from our trip to Egypt. Me, from a nasty upper respiratory infection and a mountain of laundry, and the kids from a serious case of re-entry boredom. This leads them to do things like 'play fight' which inevitably ends with one sibling really fighting and the other sibling in tears, or to developing a sudden love for practicing the piano but only before 9am or when I need to make a phone call. To say that I am craving a little quiet is an understatement, however not the kind of quiet that is preceded by a loud huff and a stomp out of the room. Apparently, this is how certain tween members of our family are affected by re-entry blues.

My boy called our trip a breakthrough for the family, a revelation if you will. We tend to take lots of city breaks which involve, in little people terms, old stuff, walking, museums, and more old stuff. Not exactly top of the must-do list for the under-18 crowd. In Egypt, we spent the majority of our time at a resort on the Red Sea swimming, snorkeling and enjoying time together as a family. This was made infinitely more enjoyable by the addition of a heated pool, a few lounge chairs, and a midday mojito.

We spent a few days in the sea, snorkeling off a dock in clear, shallow reef waters. That glimpse, that tiny cove of color was such a revelation into the imagination of a God who created such beauty for His own pleasure, knowing there are worlds below that we will never set eyes on. One afternoon, we slipped into the water and were immediately surrounded by hundreds of neon purple jellyfish. I won't lie. There was some screaming and flashbacks to the scene in Finding Nemo when Dory and Marlin are trapped and repeatedly stung in a cloud of jellyfish. We were assured they were harmless and once back on the dock, we lay on our stomachs, hot sun on our backs, watching slippery purple globes rising gracefully to the surface. I want to remember that afternoon, little brown bodies stretched out, reaching for things usually deemed untouchable.

Much of Egypt was like this, so much deemed untouchable. From the food on the street, to the water in the tap, to the children eating with dirty hands from a cloth spread on the curb, to the broken and wasted land. So much.


It made me long for the day when all of those things will be redeemed. When the sting of the past and present will become a graceful rise to a perfect and whole future.

It felt as if we were chasing Eden, looking for the great beauty beneath the rubble of fallen, corrupted things. I saw it in the sea, their smiles, the moonlight on water, and the way they wrap themselves and the land in pigment and spice.

I know there are only glimpses of it this side of Heaven, but someday it will be just as it was meant to be, and we will be able to stretch our hands long and touch it.

Hello, faithful friends! It seems I took a much needed and entirely against my will vacation from the internet. Who knew it would be impossible to get online whenever one wants to (or at all) in Egypt? There is much to discuss. Namely, the fact that we have been to Egypt and survived to tell the tale. After one short stint on a camel in the desert, swimming in a sea of hundreds of jelly fish, eating various unidentified food items, and a harrowing day spent in a van driven by an Egyptian hell-bent on showing us how people from Cairo really drive (the word homicidal comes to mind), I hereby report the holiday a rousing success.

I believe Eleanor Roosevelt was right to say 'Do one thing every day that scares you.' Perhaps she traveled to Egypt too. My family would tell you that I scare easily, so living up to these words comes a bit easier to me than some. I hated that about myself until I realized that finding adventure and joy and fear in the smallest things is more of a gift than a curse. It makes life infinitely more interesting.

To do this trip justice I will need a few posts to capture it all, so if you can bear with me for a few days, I'll take you along for the journey. You won't have to give up your social media or swim among the jellies or take prophylactic acidophilus to do it. Would you like to come along?

Great! I'll meet you here. I'll be the one in the bug eyed glasses and silly hat because the sun hates my face and I like to look as unattractive as possible while on vacation. You'll be the one with the cup of tea and comfy chair. See you soon.

This weekend I celebrated my thirty-seventh birthday. Birthdays that fall on the weekend are the best kind of wonderful. Children make homemade gifts and do their best to behave, and husbands clean kitchens and bake knock-off Starbucks peppermint brownies. It so beats having a birthday on a Tuesday.

We crammed heaps of my favorite things into three days, one of which was a hike in the nearby forest. We started out under a cotton ball sky and walked down to a creek bed filled with ice and moss draped stones.

A while back I wrote an essay and sent it to NPR's This I Believe. Last week it went up on the site. If you have a moment, head on over for a short spell and read my thoughts on how love and family life can capture our hearts in a way that makes them no longer our own. And then pop back in here again and let me know what you think.

*This essay has been known to make a grown man cry. Of course, he also cried over a Taylor Swift song, so I took it with a grain of salt. Also, I am not secretly referring to my husband. He doesn't cry over Taylor Swift songs. Or my writing:)

All it took was two inches leftover from the last snowfall. A sunny afternoon. A pair of rain boots standing in for cold weather gear. Upside down mittens. A 'yes' from mom. A few two dollar sleds. And two kids with the imagination to make mountains out of molehills. Or small backyard hills, as it were.

It's so cold that the snow won't melt. It lies like white ribbons of piped icing across the rooftops. Yesterday, I stood outside in the cold, staring at snow ribbons, waiting for the kids to come home on the bus. I waited, and waited, possibly said a bad word, and waited some more. They finally pulled up some twenty minutes later. I pasted a smile on my face so as not to look annoyed at the bus driver. Rumor has it that they were late a few days ago because one kid, a girl with an easy smile and my big brown eyes, was screaming too loud. That day the driver stopped right smack in the middle of the road until there was quiet, probably thinking that someone should talk to that kid's mother. It's at times like these that I am thankful for the language barrier.


Anyhow, the kids weren't off the bus thirty seconds before I got the full story of this afternoon's adventure. Apparently, the door to the bus is broken (think less bus and more large van with a sliding door). The driver was ascending a hill when the door spontaneously flung itself open and then slammed shut, repeatedly. If the driver doesn't want screaming kids on board, then perhaps she should reconsider a van whose gaping wide door might give a six year old a near death experience. She pulled over and attempted to shut it, and that dang door would not shut. Hence, the twenty minutes I spent rooftop gazing.

I haven't laughed that hard in months. I had to stop to catch my breath on the walk up the hill to our house. I laughed, they laughed, and we walked bent over at the belly from the sheer joy of it. There's nothing like laughter to knit the things that have fallen apart back together again. Now, if only someone could work that kind of magic on the bus.

Yesterday I put on my Hot Chilly's, packed the car with three snowboards, one pair of skis, and three reluctant passengers, and drove up a mountain. It was snowing, and the police were pulling some cars over half-way up the mountain and forcing them to park. To say that I was concerned when they allowed me to pass and continue the drive up is an understatement. However, we arrived at the top safely with a few of my nerves still intact. The snow and wind picked up as the four of us fought to get into our gear and to the slopes for our lessons. If you've ever tried to put ski boots on a fussy six year old in a tempest, then perhaps you can understand how close to the edge of sanity I was inching.

A long story short:

Gear on. Instructors located. Brave face, the kids are watching.

Blizzard. Ski lift. Big mountain. A fear of falling.

Falling now. Repeatedly. Instructors laugh.

Oops. Wrong turn. Instructors stop laughing. A walk back up.

Feels familiar.

White out. Can't see. Worried. Kids continue. Mama doesn't.

Day over. Snow swirling. Slippery, slow drive down.

Brave face, the kids are watching.

The moral of this short story? Fear it. Face it. Know when to order a hot chocolate and call it a day.

Even if the kids are watching.

We recently spent a weekend in the mountains, Interlaken to be exact, and I kind of, a little bit, lost my mind and allowed my husband to convince me to go paragliding. I have a confirmed, long standing fear of heights, as well as an aversion to anything that might make me vomit. You can see how this was a difficult decision for me. However, upon learning that my nine and eleven year old children were fearless enough to do it, I signed up. There was no way I was going to let a kid who still likes being tucked in at night out-brave me.



It was glorious, just a wee bit scary, and definitely nausea inducing, but worth every moment. I nearly cried on the way up the mountain when the pilot informed me he had only been flying since May. E turned to me with wild eyes, as I silently devised a way to fling us from the vehicle while not falling off the cliff. After a very awkward pause, he said 'May of 1996'.

Never let it be said the Swiss don't have a sense of humor.



We reached the launch site, and after a running start down the mountain, the wind lifted us above Interlaken for breathtaking views. The currents blew us above alpine forests, lakes and the town below. Just above us, two eagles circled and we followed the pattern of their flight for a true bird's eye view.


I don't know that I would do it again, as it took me about 45 minutes on land to gain a sense of equilibrium back. But to drift to the current of the wind beneath eagles wings was the chance of a lifetime. I'm glad I took it.

Kimberly

PS Photos from the air were taken by husband. I would not have had the presence of mind to do so, nor was I about to release my death grip on the safety handles.

It seems that while I have been busy stuffing my face with such delicacies as chocolate peanut butter ice cream, enjoying summer fun with my favorite little people and spending time with my favorite grown up person, the days have been silently stacking up. The memories have too, blanketing these days until they are a fuzzy haze of sticky hands and sunshine.


I'm trying to soak it all up, these little people who won't stay little no matter how much I wish it, the friendships that cross oceans and time zones, family that loves and gives and loves some more. And the husband, the husband whose first answer is always 'yes', and who wakes up as steadfast as the sun and the moon.


I wish this for you as well. May your summer be blessed with every good and perfect gift. May it be full of laughter and sticky-handed love, and may you be wise enough to recognize and revel in it.

Kimberly

for some photographs. I have been terribly remiss in keeping up with things here. It can be difficult to come up with new ways of saying 'Today I bagged two lunches, ran three loads of laundry, pondered a new way to make chicken appear appetizing, and spent two hours shuttling my kids back and forth'. Rinse and repeat, every dang week. That sounds ungrateful, which it isn't. Just real. I know you understand.

So let's add a little beauty to an otherwise ordinary day shall we? A few weeks ago we took a cogwheel train up to the very top of Mt Rigi, also known as the 'Queen of the Mountains'.



Rigi Kulm is the point from which all of the other mountains in Switzerland are measured. From below the mountain everything was obscured by gray cloud cover, but the beautiful thing about Switzerland is that the sun is always shining further up.

Half term break is nearly over, and I am happy to report that it has been equal parts fun and lazing about.  There was a day trip to Mt. Rigi where we (and by 'we' I mean my mister) had hoped we could attempt death defying acts of snow sporting also known as sledging, which was unfortunately (and by 'unfortunately', I mean quite fortunately) deemed impossible due to a lack of snow.

It seems we all survived our first experience ski/snowboarding in the Alps.  Of course we didn't make it off the bunny slope, but I still consider it a success in that no one was hurt and I spent only about three quarters of the time on my backside.  The story doesn't end there, as we get to do it all over again for another three Sundays.  Blessedly, I will have my better half available to assist me in the gear hauling and kid wrangling.

I've spent the better part of this week trying to walk as if everything didn't hurt and playing catch up from our three weeks away.  Between the Advil popping and laundry loads, I've tried (somewhat successfully) to set aside some time to think and pray about the year ahead.  I want to be intentional and purposeful with this year, and not live distracted and fractured.  So I find myself a bit lost in a pile of lists, papers and books. Lost in a good way. In a way that suggests I might not see the path clearly, but I am headed in the right direction.

What direction are you headed in this year?

Kimberly