Diet Coke

My husband knows me well! I sent him a text at work this afternoon..."IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT!!!" He never responded...When he came home from work he walked in with a 12pk. of diet coke cradled in his arms like a baby! LOL He said, "When I saw the text I laughed out loud! I knew exactly what you meant!!..." Yep, he's perfect for me!

~ Misadventures in Water ~

A portent of things to come? Mathew and Andrew at the beach a few years ago!

Sept. 24, 2010

What a week for Mathew and Andrew this has been! A week ago today I was feeling like I hadn’t been to the beach to see “My Ocean” in a lifetime of forever and so I asked my ever patient husband to drop me off at the beach for a little while. He was happy to do so and Joanna and Andrew wanted to stay with me and so the three of us piled out of the van and made our way across the sand to a spot close to the water where I sat down and took out my camera as always.


Joanna and Andrew took off socks and shoes and headed to the surf. It was a beautiful day. Sun shining, cool wind blowing and small waves steadily rolling in. The kids played in the waves, kicking and running along the edges for almost an hour till all of a sudden an unexpected bigger wave rolled in fast and knocked Andrew right off his feet and flattened him! He came up soaked, drenched in icy cold ocean water! Spitting, sputtering and staggering toward me. I grabbed my phone and called my husband and told him, “Come get us, Andrew fell in, bring all dry clothes and a towel fast, he’s ok!” and was off the phone before he even got to me!


I had him take his shirt off and dry off best he could with his sweatshirt that had been laying there by me. (By now he was shivering, his teeth were chattering and his lips were turning blue and it had only been a couple of min.!) Then I wrapped him in my sweatshirt to help warm him a little and we walked as fast as we could up to the parking lot and sat on the concrete to soak as much warmth out of it as we could (Not much on a fall day in Alaska!) till James and Mathew got there a few min. later. Other than a touch of a head cold for about three days he seems to be ok!!!!!


Fast Forward to Last Night ~ Teen activity at the Youth Director’s Home…On a Lake… Mathew and another young man (who shall remain nameless), decided at 47degrees outside…to jump in said lake. Yes, he had taken clothes to swim in case they swam. He just didn’t change first! He dove in his normal clothes and finished the evening with shorts and a tee shirt outside! “But Mom, I had a sweatshirt…”


So today, he went for his Algebra class and then on to another lake with his teacher, his Aunt Deanna, cousins and some friends to cook hotdogs, canoe and have a few hours of fun… Around 7:30 or 8pm he comes home wet to his armpits, smiling, with a big story to tell.


I knew we had had a windy day and as the day went on the wind had gotten worse and in the evening was gusting pretty bad, but I also know in Alaska you can be in town and have a storm with wind and snow mixed with rain and power outages and be just a few miles away hiking on the other side of the mountain and it just be kind of a grey overcast day. This has happened to me hiking with the very same teacher that he was with… so I wasn’t worried.

The 4 Adventurers - Mathew, Jacob, Jesse and Hollie

Here’s Mathew’s version of the afternoon. They had had a good afternoon. Ate, gave canoe rides to the little ones for a while and then Mrs. Vicki and Aunt Deanna told the four teens they could row the two canoes to the middle of the lake to check out the tiny island for a little while before they had to leave.


They got there fine and had fun looking around and then saw and heard them waving from the shore to come back it was time to go. So they loaded up but the wind had picked up and the lake was very choppy and they couldn’t row back to the shore. (Now this is saying a lot because Mathew is no weakling, he’s well over six ft. tall and as his Dad puts it, “Strong as an Ox”). In fact the other canoe with his two cousins was blown around the little island and so he and his friend rowed after them to help since they weren’t making any headway anyway and were worried about them.


Once they were on the other side of the island he said it was a battle to keep from capsizing in the wind and rollers. The order of how and when they tried the different ways of making it are all mixed up in the excitement but I must confess everything I could think of in the calm of sitting at home they had tried there on the lake. They tied the canoes together, then they all got in one with the other tied behind, then they put the lightest and weakest in the small canoe behind for control and ballast and the other three rowed together. They couldn’t make any headway.


They were finally pushed to the opposite shore. There was no trail they could use to hike back around the lake. But one of the boys had a cell so they finally got a weak link to Mrs. Vicki and she told them to work their way around the shore line back to the dock, because they would never be able to fight the waves across the lake.


So they started trying to go around. The only problem was between the wind and the waves pushing them sideways they had all they could do to keep from tipping over and couldn’t make any headway that direction either. So Mathew decided since he was the tallest (Least likely to go under in a deep spot, I guess) he would pull the boats and the other three would keep them upright and from swerving around, so he jumped overboard and pulled the two canoes. I’m sorry but Alaskan lakes are cold!! Alaskan lakes the end of September in the middle of a wind storm…freezing!! I don’t think I could have done it!


But he said he would pull them along the edge about hip deep for a while and then the wind would let up for a few min. and he would jump back in and they would all row as fast as they could to get as far around the lake as they could till it started gusting again then he would jump back in and pull some more. And that is how they made it around the lake.


He got wet to his arm pits when the one time they tested the depth and it was a false read and he broke thru the soft mud and sank! But he said he still had hold of the boat so that kept him from going under! To him it was a grand adventure! He told me the best part was that he got to make Jesse (his cousin who is older than him) sing really loud the whole time! I said, You MADE him? How did you make him?” He laughed, “I told him, you either, sing or get in and help pull, so he sang!” and he just laughed and laughed!!


I was worried that he might be sick after two such wettings in a row, but he’s been fine today. His Grandma Arlene always did call him a “Water Baby” when he was little, she just didn’t know how right she was!

My Mom~Heart of the Home

Hills of Central Ky. Dad was Pastoring his first Church he started out of Bible College.



Sommerset, Ky. - One of our many stops alongside the road in our travels!





   Growing up as a missionary kid we moved and were on the road so much that for us "home" was definatley where we were together as a family. Home was where our HEARTS were, literally. Mom had a way of creating such a closeness that we felt at home in a van, a converted yellow school bus, a church nursery, someone's floor, a colonial mansion, a tent, even a house that was literally cut in half and was sitting in two pieces a few feet apart when we got there to move in!











Yellowstone National Park on the move to Alaska 1985



   I guess what I am trying to say, is home is you the wife and mother...you are the heart of your family for your children and husband. That doesn't make it easy for you. But if you are happy and keep that beautiful smile on your face. They will be at home where ever God puts you. Until He lets you be "settled".







Church for a livingroom - Village of McGrath, AK. 1994



Mom???

How did I come to this place? I sit here 42 yrs old, a mother of three and wonder if I am doing and saying the right things in raising my Children. They are 15, 10 and a month from 9 and I always sound so sure when I tell them to do or not to do something. But sometimes in the back of my mind I am wondering, how do I know that this is the right? Who am I to always know what they are and are not supposed to do? Don't I make enough mistakes and messes in my own life to disqualify me from being responsible for anyone elses life?
It is such an awsome responsability! One I do not take lightly. I remember when James and I followed God's direction and moved to Ky. for two years. On the way down we ran into so many new and frightening situations that had we been alone probably would not have been a very big deal but because we had the three little ones it and they were uneasy about moving and leaving everyone and everything they knew. It was a very dificult time for us. There were many quiet conversations of "What should we do?" in new situations that we had seen our parents boldly go into in years past but we felt somehow unprepared for.
There were acttual storms unlike any we had seen in years both on the road and while we were in KY. I am sure that I had seen as bad or worse while growing up but back then I could bury my head till it was over and know that Dad and Mom would make sure everything was ok. Now I was the Mom and I didn't really know what do do to make "Everything OK".
I feel that way more and more the older my kids get. I feel storms of life and I know I am supposed to protect them and make things OK but I feel as lost and confused as they are and somehow unprepared. Did I miss something I was supposed to "get" some part of me? Some training? Some natural sense of growth? Most of the time I just go on instinct and everything is fine, then when I stop and think about it I just wonder, who am I? And what makes me so special? How can I possibly teach these dear precious Children what they need when I lack so much myself?
Just Wondering????