Ni Haw

Kati, Mira, Me, Emily, and Kristen at the spa.  Kathy is behind the camera.  Sweet, sweet reunion!!  XOXO

Four of our twelve bags are packed.  Brave has an appointment at the doctor in a few minutes to make sure his whooping cough (pertussis) is gone.  Our arms are a bit tan and our pants are a bit tight, and we are ready to head back across the world to our real life.  

Brave epitomized our two-culture way of life perfectly yesterday when he galloped through the house on his stick horse, a red felt cowboy hat on his head, hollering, "Ni haw," a combination of "Ni Hao" and "Yee Haw."  

It's true, our kids don't know which way is up, or where they are going to sleep next, but they know they are loved and they know, without a doubt, that G0D is the only constant in life, and the reason we are alive at all.

East Asia, here we come!

Farewell to furlough

People ask me all the time, "What is the hardest part about living overseas?"  I am rarely completely honest, for two reasons:  no one wants me to start crying right there in the middle of the farmers' market, or the play area at the mall, or wherever, and I don't want to deter anyone from doing what we do.

But...

If I were to level with them, I would not answer, "Learning a challenging language," though that is certainly difficult, nor would I answer, "Raising the funds," nor, "Poor healthcare for the kids," nor, "Inconvenient grocery shopping," nor, "Spiritual warfare," nor, "Culture stress," nor, "Burnout."

Nope.

I would answer, "Coming back to the States on Furlough."  Emphatically.

What!?  How can American food and time with family and friends be the hardest part?  Because, every 2-3 years we uproot our entire lives, travel 36 hours each way with tiny kids, battle jet-lag, lose our boundaries and our structure, and carry a burden to do as much, and see as many people, and make as many lasting memories as we can with the time we have.  Essentially, we feel the need to cram years of lost time into 12 head-spinning weeks, only to find ourselves on "E" at the end, with no one, including ourselves, satisfied with how it all went.

Am I OK?  Should you be worried about me?  Oh, I'm fine.  I'm just on my blog for the first time in a while and I'm being vulnerable here.  I have enjoyed this summer ever so much, to be sure.  I just wish there were a neat and tidy way to do furlough. Alas...

So, now it is time for the photo recap.  With less than two weeks before embarking on our long return journey, we are wrapping things up.  The ride is almost over.

The boys learned to swim!  Bright can swim 25 meters before getting too tired.  So proud!

Brave turned three!  At Chick-Fil-A! 

The big boys went up in a Cessna, with daddy flying part of the way.  Zion looks about how I felt about it...;)

Jubilee had her first 4th of July as an American, on the beach!  

The kids learned one of my FAVORITE pass-times, fishing!!

Rekindling cousin relationships.  Can you spot the white city kids??

We picked blueberries galore, and ate them all summer long.

The kids developed stronger bonds with their grandparents!

And Jubilee turned 3!  On our camping trip!

Those, of course, were just a few of the highlights.  Farewell, furlough.  Until next time.

Finally her turn

Today is Jubilee's 3rd birthday, though we aren't going to celebrate until tomorrow evening when we gather 'round the fire beside Grandpa and Grandma's RV at our campsite in Ludington.

This might be her 3rd birthday, but it is her 1st birthday with us, and probably her 1st birthday celebration ever.  Because she came to us one month after she turned 2, she has been with us almost a full year with no party in her honor.  Sweet Jubi Sue has watched three brothers and two parents celebrate their birthdays, each time asking, "When my birfday?  When my July come?"

Well, baby girl, it is finally your turn.  Tomorrow we will tape balloons and streamers to our picnic table, provided that it doesn't rain, and presently there is a cocoa fudge cake (a family recipe and a birthday tradition for decades) in Grandma's oven.  I hope the cake doesn't sink in the middle.  I hope you like the wooden beads and string that I will wrap in pretty paper later today.  Your fingers are so nimble and you still have no interest in dolls.

I hope, most of all, that you know how I love you, and that to measure how precious you are to me, I would need all the beads and string in the world.  Your presence in my life, as my daughter, has brought me to the end of myself and back, and your sweet kisses on my cheek are like sprinkles on a cake that the two of us have slaved over for the last 11 months.  God is good, He loves you, we love you, and you are wonderful, Jubilee Sue.

Happy, happy, happy birthday!
Love,
Mommy

A few minutes more

I've had no choice but to be off the internet this summer, and in some ways, I feel I am better for it.  My purse would disagree.  The poor thing is now crammed full of "blog posts" scrawled in ink on scrap paper, because I can't go too long without writing something.  It makes me cranky.

I have a minute now while the toddlers are asleep, before Grandma gets back from swimming lessons with the boys, and though I need to assemble a pot pie, there is no one around who I have waited two years to see and in who's presence it would be downright rude to jump online.  So, here I am, saying a quick "hello," and even more quickly I will type out one of those scrap paper posts.

Dated sometime this month.

The water was cold, but I felt compelled anyway.  My bare feet thudded over the hot sand as I ran toward the nipping waves, my 31-year-old thighs jiggling and my 2-year-old daughter hollering after me worriedly, "Mama!  Mama!  Where Mama going?!"

I left it all behind me.

When I had run far enough and deep enough, I dove under, hearing the silent hummmm of the giant lake in my ears.  Surfacing, my breath came to me quickly, and I looked around.  In one direction there was water as far as my eyes could see.  In the other direction the kids were waiting, befumbled, chewing on their hotdogs.

For a few minutes more I kept my back to the shore, letting my eyes feast on the sight of the lazy summer sun reclining in the low blue sky.  I thought of my Great Aunt Pauly, and how she used to recline on this very beach in her low blue beach chair 20 years ago.  She was old and happy, like the sun.

Soon I would return to my family and eat a bratwurst and a s'more, and later, I would clean sand from places on my kids' bodies that I try very hard not to expose myself to on a regular basis.

Lake Michigan and my life have two things in common:  there is no end in sight, but there is an end, none-the-less.  In the mean time, I will run headlong into the waves and pay no mind to who can see my thighs, and as many chances as I can get, I will linger a few minutes more.

glad to be here

Made my mom's chicken salad today, twice (over-salted the first batch and I can't serve trash) and hosted a luncheon to say "Thank you" to a few precious gals. Listened to evening songbirds from the porch swing while my mother-in-law walked up and down the dirt road in the Arkansas heat; while my husband worked on his sermon in the sitting room in his new T-shirt from Forever 21. It has the Ghost Busters symbol on it and he picked it out himself. That is one great store, America! I even conceded while there to embrace the styles that the young people are wearing these days. My favorite teenager, Libby, had me spending Christy W.'s money (which Christy handed me after church saying, "This is for YOU") on oversized sweaters, hot colors, butterfly tops, and jeans without, yes, WITHOUT boot cut legs. There comes a time when a girl must stop thinking that she is right while the rest of the world is wrong... So I will go make some popcorn on the stovetop, like my daddy always did, and MoMo will get a bowl for herself while I will eat the rest, and Daniel will keep preaching to the pillows in the sitting room. Now the nighttime tree bugs are screeching so loudly that I am glad that the airconditioning is on and the windows are tightly shut. I am glad that MoMo is still young enough to walk up and down the dirt road. Glad for friends who fund shopping trips. Glad that Daniel loves what he does. Glad for a sister-in-law who is facing her pain (after losing Glory) head on and heroically. Glad to be less than two weeks from seeing my mama and daddy. Glad for Ben And Jerry's Ice cream. Glad to be here.

not enough

There is just not enough time.  That's really all there is to it.  Not enough trips to Sonic for cherry limeades, not enough Sunday nights at Chuck E. Cheese's, not enough hot pink sunsets over the Ozarks, or afternoons in the pool, or shopping trips with Allison and Libby, or sermons that Daniel gets to preach at our home fellowship, or cookouts with folks who have known Daniel all of his life.

The time is just too short.  Two weeks from now we head north, where Grandpa and Grandma await us.  We are so excited to see my family, but we can't help but ask, where oh where has the time gone?

Sigh.

We are loving every single minute of our precious June in Arkansas!

off the map

Life in the country.  Tree frogs wooping at the setting sun.  Thunder rattling the timbers of the farm house, rain pouring down from the top porch.  Uncle Philip's cows mooing at an SUV that is coming up the dirt road, flinging pebbles in its wake.  No internet, no TV, no microwave.

Talk about a stark difference from our other life. 

So every now and then, we come over to Aunt KK's and put in a DVD of Dumbo and I get on the computer and catch up the blog.

At an airport somewhere on our way around the world.

Ready for surgery in Little Rock. 

In recovery.  She did great, and never let go of her chapstick!

All bandaged up.  The shoulder lesion won't get worked on until next time.

Old Fort Days Rodeo with the Wood family!

We stayed up until 10 p.m. to see the bull riding.  We had some tired buckaroos on our hands!

Fresh blackberries from Spiro, Oklahoma, gifted to us from Ms. Allison.  We (obviously) made cobbler and served it hot with ice cream!!

A cookout on a cool night.

Jubilee's first chance to eat a s'more, and she declined.  She'll catch on soon enough.

All of MoMo's grandkids except Glory.

Zion's 5-year-old Initiation Into Boyhood camping trip.

A Monday morning breakfast outing to Paul's for the world's BEST doughnuts.

The amount of delicious milk readily available in this country is staggering. 

Until my next brief overview post, happy June!