The Journey of Family

We have several events that fall under the category "Christmas Eve Traditions." But this is the one that makes me laugh the hardest and inspires its own category of thanks to God. Three years ago, we invited this large group of people to join us in what we had already been doing since our move back to Colorado in 2001: dinner out on Christmas Eve. It started as a way to treat Craig's mom, but as close relationships with friends have morphed into something far more akin to family (get it, a"kin"), it has become a full-on, all-for-one-and-one-for-all family outing. Here's this year's brood, though a bit blurry....

The Bowles, Covaks, Tycers, and Frayers

(l-r) Logan, Morgan, Grace, Sandy, Charmaine, Michelle, Nicole, Candy, Jared,  

Mitchell, Judsen, Jason, Elijah, Craig, and Al)

Each year, we attend service at Vanguard and all sit together...that's a feat of a long row, for sure, so thanks, Mama Char, for saving those seats! Then we all pile into our cars and hit the restaurant planned for that Eve. Now, this is involved: I usually make the reservations while 10 other people are coordinating phone calls and schedules and disseminating what we affectionately call "The Plan." And, with this bunch, getting that plan together is a holiday miracle: consider that must maintain our individual family, work, and holiday season commitments for that week while also trying to grasp onto some sense of sanity and calm during the season of peace. I say this because, despite the effort, patience, grace, and determination it takes to pull it off, we still do it. Every year.

To me, this says more about our genuine love and commitment to our "family" than any big-bowed present or fancy card. This says, "You matter. God bringing us together in love matters. Celebrating this time of year - the time we party in thanksgiving for the One Who paid our debt - matters. Christmas Eve time and again is now marked with great memories of laughter and flashing cameras and yummy food that's good...but not as great as the family around the table.

Here's some memories from this year.

Jason and Judsen...buddies! 

Craig and his mom, Sandy

It used to be Nic...until God brought her perfect man, Jared. This year, we got to have "The Frayers" join the tradition for the first time.

Jason and Michelle. Love them. That sums it up.

The Three Siblings: Michelle, Mitchell, and Nic

Really, so typical of this group...but notice Mom and Grace haven't quite evolved to the same level of silly mediocrity as the rest of us. Laugh.

And another great friendship formed: Morgan and Grace.

My favorite couple. Wink.

Thank you, God, for this group of people you began forming into family almost 9 years ago: this friendship has withstood time, distance, divorce, marriage, children, disease, hospitalizations, and even death.

But we don't grow deeper in relationship in spite of life events: we grow deeper because of them.

Because depth lays in the journey, not in the outcome...because the outcome is always family.

Lobe Bling

Grace turned 9 on December 21st. We started asking her what she wanted to do for her birthday a couple of months before that. At our house, starting at age 3, we only have a friends' party every other year: after careful structuring in the last two of those, we've now got everybody (except Judsen, of course) on the same year for partying. With our anniversary in late October, Elijah's birthday in early November, then Thanksgiving, then Grace's birthday, then Christmas, then the New Year, then Craig's birthday on January 2nd....inhale big breath here...we'd rather face the parties every other 365 days than look 'em in the eye every year.

Funny, isn't it, how such planning becomes an employment of simple survival?

Anyway, this isn't a party year; instead, we plan a special family event structured around the likes and wants of the birthday child. About two years ago, Grace came home from school asking, "Mommy, how come my ears don't have holes?" Another little friend in 1st grade had just pierced her ears, and Grace had fallen fast infatuated with the glimmer of lobe bling. Obviously, every house institutes a different philosophy on the appropriate ages for this milestone. I'll note that, at our house, girl "fancies," as we call them, are kept to a careful minimum. I resisted this same mantra in my own girlhood as my parents held off on ear-piercing, nail-painting, makeup...you get the drift. In fact, I never painted my nails until my twenties...and, even then, only my toes. I didn't wear makeup until I got married. But, though, I at first made a fuss as the other girls my age got to explore and embellish when I could not, the appeal soon ebbed and, before I knew it, didn't matter at all. I passed through adolescence and into adulthood rarely considering hairstyles or eye shadow, preferring to forego the broken nail if it meant having fun in the moment. Now, as an adult woman, I like to pedicures and facials and will take a slammin' shade of lip gloss any day, but I don't need those fancies to feel pretty. Consequently, you're just as likely to see me in a t-shirt and ball cap than a dress and heels. We want that same freedom for Grace: the extras that make us embrace our femininity are great and, like most other cultural components of gender, they're best used in the right time and place. So, you see why deciding about pierced ears was a biggie for me and Craig.

We ultimately figured 7 was too young for our parental palate and told her that, if she continued to be interested, we'd revisit for her 10th birthday. And we did. And she was. And we held true to our word. So, our event was particularly special because we'd never planned a date with just one child. We each take our kids on "dates," but only one at a time and only with a single parent. But Gracie wanted both of us present to share in this momentous occasion: first, she picked Red Robin for lunch where she got two balloons (yep, her heart is easily glad) and then off we went for her new accessories. She picked her birthstones to be her first earrings and asked Daddy to hold her hand while the lady "loaded the gun."

After a quick couple of pops, she declared, "That wasn't too bad. Harder than a pinch, I'd say, but not as bad as a shot." And, like most Grace stories, this one ends with a smile and a laugh and the best compliment she's received so far: upon our return home, Elijah looked at her ears, hugged ear, and proudly proclaimed, "Grace, you're beautiful!"

The Pre-Bling Lobe

"Daddy, Will You Hold My Hand?"

Here Comes the Pinch...

...and There's The Blinged Lobe

Here's The Happy Birthday Girl

The Gift of Nana

Most who know us recall that we lived in Alaska for 5.5 years: the best 5.5 years of our marriage, hands down, I'd say...for reasons that are both great and not-so-great. But that's for another post.

Here, I'll start with that because those amazing years made the decision to move to Colorado an even more difficult one. But we felt God calling us to return here (Craig hails from the Springs) to be closer to family and, more particularly, to his mother.

One of the benefits of living here is having Craig's mom near. My mother-in-law, Sandy, is a friend, a daughter, a sister and a buddy. She's a reader, a cross-stitcher, and a card player. She gets a good chuckle out of a dirty joke. She hates beer and only drinks sweet wine. She's not crazy about any exotic food and has always wanted to go to Hawaii.  She works full time, and she's a widow with 8.4 grandchildren. So, yes, she's busy. She's lots of roles to lots of people, but at our house, she goes by just two names: Mom and Nana.

We have lots of traditions with her during the holidays, but there's two I'll spotlight here: making sugar cookies and attending her company party. Mom rolls the dough and the kids cut out the shapes. Later, they decorate them with frosting and sprinkles laughing uncontrollably while Mom reminds them about a hundred times NOT to lick their fingers. AT her party, we play Christmas bingo and make crafts, eat pizza, and drink cocoa. We do this every year because one gives her a chance to make a memory with the children. The other lets her watch them have fun while showing them off a bit: I give a thumbs-up, of course, to both activities.

Grandparents are supposed to be proud, supposed to indulge and gush and sing praises all day long of these little wonders they love so desperately but don't have to raise. Mom does a great job of teaching and training and rebuking as needed while holding onto her role of "the fun one." We never allow the children to forget what a gift she is and how they're not to take her for granted. So we make sure we don't, either.

We won't always have the opportunity to carve such traditions, so we seize the days He gives us, hoping that, in all we do, we remind her that she is, in short, the best present under our tree...all year long. And we all have the memories to show for it.

(left) One of my favorites of Mom with our children. This one's with Judsen, just days after his birth. A thousand words. A thousand words, indeed.

The Story of Grace

Craig and I married young - or what I now consider to be young. I suppose, intellectually, I knew that 20 (me) and 23 (Craig) was a tad early in years to make such a profound commitment, but I didn't invest much time in considering it beyond that point. But our age did impact one critical decision: because we were young (among other reasons), we chose to wait a while before having children.

We agreed we'd reconsider that choice at the 3-year mark in our marriage. But, when that time came, we were at opposite sides of the junction: I was ready to have children and Craig was not. Whammy. I had just finished my undergraduate degree and thought it was finally emotionally, physically, spiritually, and professionally a prime time for makin' babies. Craig simply wasn't prepared in any of those avenues to make the commitment a child would bring. And boy was I mad. Mad! Yes, it may sound petty, but that's the truth of the matter. How come I had to conceive, carry, and birth the baby, but with his resounding "no," Craig got to decide the issue? I felt like my husband had garnered control of the one aspect of my femininity I deemed most my own: the ability to bear children. Of course, that was not at all Craig's intention and, through prayer and concentration on the big picture, I learned to daily tell God that Craig mattered more to me than any other dream. Any. Other. Dream. And I'd rather have him and a healthy marriage than any plan or purpose I harbored. Of course, that all sounds so mature and spiritually evolved, right? Well, let me tell you: like most final products, the end truth has lots of shine. But the amount of poop it took to get there wasn't pretty. At all.

So life went on. About 8 months passed. We were happy. Content. Then one morning, in classic Craig fashion, he woke up, turned to me, yawned, and said, "I'm ready to have a baby. Do you still want to have one?"

Yet, circumstances delayed us when we learned Craig, who was a lieutenant in the Air Force at the time, had been tagged for a 90 day TDY to Bogota, Columbia. We said goodbye at the Anchorage airport on the Eve of the Millenium (yeah, that was brutal), and committed we'd start trying for a baby upon his return. My nurse practitioner - along with everyone else who suddenly had opinions regarding our fertility - told us we should reasonably expect 6-8 months would pass before we became pregnant...after all, as Deb (my np) explained, "Pregnancy is sticky business. You've gotta give it time and space." Sticky business, indeed. That still cracks me up.

Craig returned home on March 26th amidst the hustle and bustle of mid-terms and taxes and talk of extending his deployment. It is stressful and overwhelming - as any military spouse will tell you - when your trooper comes home because, though you're thrilled for his safe return and overjoyed to be reunited, you also have to readjust to sharing a home, a schedule, an emotional upheaval, and...well...a body. So let's just say nothing about the timing was right to conceive.

I'll spare the details here and suffice to say that, when nature still didn't take its course after three weeks, we took a pregnancy test. Negative. So I called my doctor thinking something was seriously wrong. I still chuckle when I remember her response: "If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a duck. Come in for a blood test." That night, we were having dinner with close friends, and we'd agreed to meet there. I walked into the house, and everyone was staring at me with these grins to rival the Cheshire Cat. Craig asked, "Have you checked messages on our machine?" Um, no. He told me I should retrieve them and, when I did, Deb's voice was on the line, singsonging, "I know something you don't know."

When I reached her at 7 the next morning, she told me, "Honey, you're 5 weeks pregnant." But how could this be? my uninformed, ain't never had a baby, don't know nothin' mind queried. Craig's only been home three weeks! Deb spun her wheel using the dates I gave her and immediately bubbled into hysterics. What!? What was so funny? "You conceived on March 26th!" Friends in AK still tease us about that. I called Craig at work, stunned to tell him our news. He put the receiver down, and I heard him shout to the entire floor, "I'm a dad!"

Grace was born on December 21st. She was 10 days late. We tried to induce four different ways, none of which were completely effective. Finally, after 36 hours of labor and two more pushing, Gracie decided she wasn't going to camp out in my tummy for the rest of her days, after all, and came into this world at 9:02 pm weighing 8.10 and measuring 21" long. She's our smallest baby, but has the biggest heart. She's sassy and effervescent, and blow-your-mind smart. And she's proof that God's timing is all that matters: it trumps every other agenda, schedule, and plot to circumvent Him it encounters. In short, she came when she was meant to be.

In the 4.5 years we waited to have children, we heard the following question often: "When are you going to have kids already?" To which we'd smile and politely respond, "Not today." When I was finally the one asking that question, Craig's reply was the same. It wasn't time. I may not have liked that answer, but I learned to trust it in the end. I see now that God was speaking to Craig, telling him to lead his wife into the season God had prepared. It wasn't time. It wasn't today. And you can't circumvent God's timing.

But when the right day came, we welcomed our only daughter. We celebrated here then as we celebrate her now, 9 year later. When Craig tells her the story of her birth, he always finishes with, "And I saw you come out, and I held you. You looked right at me. And you took my breath away." Every now and then, I'll peek into her room at bedtime or catch them sitting on a swing outside or see them holding hands as they walk down the street, and I'll hear Craig turn to Grace and say, "You still take my breath away." There are no words to describe her smile in return.

That's my favorite part of the story of Grace.

Just in Case...

Just in case you are not of the either near 36 million or 7 million who have not seen these videos on You Tube, well, then let me send them your way. These are in keeping with "My Favorite Things" concept, being that they kept me laughing and cheering throughout the year. They remind me that I do, in fact, have a silly, saucy, and sometimes even raunchy side (and I don't feel badly about that) that few know about because I've found few want me to be that way.

Regardless, these videos appeal to my lighter side, making me do what is one of my favorite things to do...laugh.

I hope they do the same for you.

JK Wedding Entrance Dance

Baby Dancing to "Ring on It"

Nancy Drew

Now, you can laugh all you want, but this is a guilty pleasure. And, unlike most guilty pleasures that, by their very definition, are secretive and/or private, this one has brought more than many great memories with the ones I love.

I discovered them by chance at the library one day, and have been solving the mysteries for years since. Each time a new one comes out, Grace, Elijah, and I rush to the library to pick it up and play it together until it's solved. We exercise our brains and work as a team, with each player knowing which puzzles we can conquer and which requires us to yield to another. I'm good at words, Grace is good at memory, and Elijah's good at anything requiring him to think the big picture.

We've played, just the three of us. We've played with Nana over popcorn and soda. And we've played with "Auntie Cole" so many nights when she lived here: remember, Nic, the blizzard passed with cocoa and Drew? Now it's a memory we share for years to come...maybe as long as they keep making the Drews because, as sure as there is family and there are friends, the medium of joy and memory doesn't matter.

It only matters that you make them...and maybe that you catch the bad guy now and again.

A Public Salute

I'm a product of the public school system...or, mostly, anyway. I did attend a private school from K-5, but I transferred to public after that. So, in the ledger of my formative years, I count the largest number in the public column. I went to traditional state universities for both my undergraduate and post-grad degrees, and I'm better for it. I got a great education and learned that school, while fundamentally about the curriculum of learning, is also about far more...like how to resolve conflict, stand for what I believe, express my discontentment, say, "I don't know" and "I don't understand" (two keys to life, I'm quick to add), and learn the real-life differences between love and lust, speaking your mind and biting your tongue, and saying you're a friend versus actually acting like one.

Now our children are in public school and, roughly 15 years since we last left it, the quality of the system has remarkably improved. And vastly eroded. I know many parents making the switch to private, atypical, or untraditional modes of education: and I think that's dandy. Like most other products of a postmodern generation, I say do what's best for you and yours. But I won't stand for slamming the public school system - especially if you ain't in it. Despite what critics may need to believe, kids aren't necessarily getting poorer educations if they go to public and, let me remind you, kids aren't necessarily getting better ones if they attend private. Schools, like people, are a varied box of chocolates where your favorites depend entirely on your experience of trying them and finding what you like.

Grace doesn't even test on the charts of literacy, math, and science. I don't say this to boast; I say it to make a point. And here it is: God made Grace smart. He took my genes and Craig's genes, and they spliced together quite nicely, I think. But it's Grace who does the work to get smarter: she reads, she studies, she asks questions about her world, the people in it, and how she can impact it. And it's Grace's teachers...all 5 of them, thus far, who have stimulated, cultivated, shaped, and generally spurred on her smarts. We don't take credit for it, we just say "thank you" for it.

Now, as Elijah has entered the system, we're adapting to cultivating an entirely different person than his sister: if you're a parent, you know this is necessary because, despite misconceptions about offspring, they're not all the same...I don't care who's raisin' 'em. So we get to see how he, too, is flourishing in a public school. And hats off to parents who recognize that different children have different needs and so may have multiple children in multiple school settings and refrain from scorning any one system.

So, what's my ultimate point here? Well, it's twofold: first, I want to recognize the "public" teachers who have touched my children's hearts and minds. Amy Amsden, Jamie Minette, Angie Kelley, Kate Motley, Heidi McClure, and Julie Nealy...you're the cream of my crop, literally. You have planted seeds in the field of my precious harvest - my children. And I won't soon forget you and your contribution. I plan to continue telling my children that superb quality doesn't have to come in expensive or elite school packaging - you're a testament to that truth.

Which leads to my second point: don't slam public school. It's an option that for our family, and many others like us, has proved to be a blessing beyond measure - and one I wouldn't trade. Please remember that our history was founded on a public system, on the belief that no child is more important than another whether yours wears a uniform to school or mine wears blue jeans. We're all trying to do what's right for our families and best for our world and teaching, no matter where you do it, is a hard, hard line of work.

So remember the teachers, public or private or otherwise, who have touched and are touching your lives and the lives of your children. We serve and bless ours for all their commitment to leaving a legacy of learning.

I thank you.

And my children thank you, too.

Grace's 2nd grade teacher,

          Mrs. Motley.

Grace's Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Minette.