Christmas 2013

I love the sight of these tiny shoes by the door :)

I

Snow Day!

School was cancelled so Ava spent the day with me.  A beautiful snow and no wind--so rare and so fun!

 Then back inside for hot chocolate and books by the fire!

Tree Hunting

This was a VERY quick process this year because it happened to be VERY cold the day we had planning to get our tree.  With an icy wind blowing the decision became easy.  Ava waited in the car until it was time to do the actual cutting.

Listen....

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace. - Frederick Buechner

Fall family times

Late in September Eloise came to spend the night with us.  Lots of cousin love!

Ava is now 7--such a milestone age!  We celebrated with her friends at Birch Bay and then spent the night there.

 We celebrated Jon, Kaci and Ava's birthdays at our house later in the month.

Cara, Doug, Ron and I celebrated in Mom's memory on her birthday (the 18th) at Dos Padres.

Handprints

Ava and I made a Thanksgiving card for Nicole, and Kaci sent us one she made with Eloise.

I love these precious hands and the precious girls they are attached to!!

This makes so much sense....

“The faith passes, so to speak, through a distiller and becomes ideology. And ideology does not beckon [people]. In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid.

“And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought… For this reason Jesus said to them: ‘You have taken away the key of knowledge.’ The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements.”

“The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances of the Church of the people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians. It is an illness, but it is not new, eh?” -- Pope Francis

Weezy Time

I went down and took care of Eloise during conference time.  So fun to hang out with her!  She loves the park near her house.

New Ways of Thinking

It's all so much bigger than I thought.  It's more complex, though not necessarily complicated.  It's deeper, and wider and fuller than I realized.  God, and in a connected way, Truth, are so much more than I knew.

And I didn't just wake up one day and realize this.  It's been a gradual dawning...piece by piece, truth by truth, depth by depth.  I treasure simplicity, and I still believe in the simplicity of truth, but the edges are fuzzier and the depths...well it turns out they may be limitless.  Things don't wrap up as neatly as I thought, into tidy packets of certainty, but what I've lost in terms of surety and clean edges I've traded for breathtaking wide open spaces filled with seemingly endless possibilities.

I absolutely love

Friday Harbor!

We enjoyed a getaway on a groupon there in early October.  We stayed at the Earthbox Inn and had fun exploring the town and beach.

Some of the parks were closed because of the government shutdown, but luckily Lime Kiln Park is a state, not federal, park so it was open.

 We went to a lovely Thai restaurant before heading home.

 Ava got a rock skipping lesson from an expert....

 One of the great things about islands is that getting there and back is half the fun!