All Hallow's Eve

Ooooooooooooooooooooooo.....

Do you like to be scared?

Morgen said you must go to Castle of Chaos. He went there tonight with a bunch of his friends and dressed up as a pirate - Captain Morgen. Haha! 

Here are some pics from this years festivities.

(Those are four of my favorite hockey players.) Markus, with friends Beau, and Cole decided to all dress up as Ninja Turtles. Gavin opted for a red morph suit. And then they trick or treated through not one, not two but three neighborhoods across the valley! 

We drove all the friends to Cole's house - coming home and spending the night before going to hockey practice at 6 am. 

Chili, chips, apple cider and apple slices at our house before heading out to drive everyone around. 

Max and his friend Jake had weight lifting at Praxis Olympic Lifting tonight for his Jr. Grizzlies team and they hung out afterwards, shooting all the little ghosts and goblins out his bedroom window with marshmallow guns. Yikes! 

Markus wore his Mr. Potatohead costume to the school parade this morning - since he couldn't wear his mask from the ninja turtle costume. I love that smile.

Now please brag about your favorite kind of Halloween. I will have to live Halloween vicariously through you next year because Halloween isn't quit celebrated the same way in junior high and Markus will be in the new one they're building next year. 

One of 14,000 things to be happy about: the sound of laughing children at Halloween school parades. 
I got a little choked up as it will be the first in sixteen years that I won't have a child in elementary school. 

Who Are You, Really?

You are not a name

or a height, or a weight

or a gender

you are not an age 

and you are not where you 

are from

you are your favorite books

and the songs stuck in your head

you are your thoughts

and what you eat for breakfast

on Saturday mornings

you are a thousand things

but everyone chooses

to see the million things

you are not

you are not where you are from

you are

where you're going

and i'd like 

to go there

too

{My sister Ivy turned 40 today in Hawaii. This photo with her family was taken in June at Darlin's wedding. }

Somebody Call 9-1-1

I heard two fathers of hockey players tonight after Max's game starting to fight while the rink manager was saying,  "Somebody call 911!"

I’ve had all sorts of emergencies in my life. I’ve needed and wanted different things at all sorts of times during each incident. I’m incredibly blessed to have one friend who is a trained, glorious pianist, and there have been times when I’ve wanted her to play some soul-wrenching, Beethoven inspired piece to accompany the disaster, burning down to ashes. When I needed to tell someone about how much I loved my Grandma Jo, and how her glasses slipped down her nose. There have been times when my deepest, most sincere heart’s wish is for someone to come to my fire hauling a vitamin water. And an extinguisher. With a song, playing on a boombox to add a little extra flourish to the proceedings. One night I wanted someone to come close, sit beside me, and watch the ashes of old love letters floating up to meet the stars.

It's been two years - this month - since my marriage ended, people have approached me to say they wish they’d done things differently. I’ve approached people to apologize for not doing something, even if it was “I have no idea what to say – I’m just so sorry this has happened.” I have to wonder sometimes if with so much perfection and Pinterest we deter ourselves from doing a tiny something because it’s not more… well, significant, and for a lack of a better word- amazing.

My friends didn’t offer to fix anything. They gave me no promises, no scriptural recourse or plans. They were Christlike, as when Christ – just minutes from raising Lazarus from death - mourned with those that mourned. To bear one another’s burdens that they may be light. I'm not asked or expected to take all the pain and flames away – just to lighten the burden, to sit together, in the burn. Just to be there; in the ash, within the heat, amid the life burning down.

Thank you for braving the heat, to be with me in the fires of life. You have done something for me, which reminded me that I was loved, thought of, not forgotten or abandoned in the flames...what do you wish I would bring to YOUR fire?

Experience has helped in my own determination to not be “right outside”, but to brave the heat, bring something, or even play the piano, if that’s what someone needs of me.

Fall Sunshine and Smiles

"Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you." -Whitman

{Markus is loving playing on the '03 Regulators hockey team this season.}

He also brought home his report card today and with a big smile on his face handed it to me. I opened it to find all A's and a hand written note from his teacher, Ms. W.: 

This is one smart, kind, talented young man with a very bright future! 

He's Awesome! :) 

No Place I'd Rather Be

I've been reluctant to write due to the sheer volume of places my head's been at, but I'm hoping to address that soon.

Here is where my heart has been for a while, being reluctant, over at the ice rink...

http://youtu.be/QkhnOs-wdCM

You Light Me Up Inside

Birthday Shout Out

I love you Bro

Smile Lines

God, why all the weight? The boys are shifting, stretching, shuddering into new muscles, growth spurts and needs, and I’m feeling I’m running at a loss. I don’t have the time I want with them, and I’m trying to fit everything in and breaking the laws of physics in the process. It’s these times of stress and pressure I wonder if I’m missing some fundamental component that would make it all easier… and have to accept that I’m not missing anything.

I’m not missing anything, because I’m here in my sons’ need for me, even at the ages of 19, 15 and 11 – ESPECIALLY at ages 19, 15 and 11. As much as I’d love (love as in melt into it like a chocolate fondue pot as a spa bath) some time to wrap my head around the demands and pace of nursing study, or the upcoming buzz and frenzy of the boys lives without any other commotion, it just isn’t going to happen. I don’t think that everything happens at once, and I don’t believe God makes everything happen for a reason – but I do believe He can and will make the happening have meaning and purpose, if I ask Him to, or look for it.

But some days I have the gnawing of a headache as soon as I open my eyes because I went to bed far too late, and so hold my eyes away from any light so as not to stir up some more mischief. Some days I’m not looking for God, even hoping I don’t see Him, because I’m tired and I’m cranky and while the last thing I said to Max before I left the house was “I love you!” the thing immediately before that was “Get ready for school NOW!!”

Today Morg and I laughed over the noises Markus was making because the bat had spit on it, and Marko practiced his drawing skill – just a simple sarcophagus, it’s been the one of the many things he likes doing lately, besides practicing magic tricks and shooting air soft guns, and reading and playing with friends. 

Maxi laughed this afternoon after the tyrant started calming down, watching conference and practicing his snoring, deciding that each practice he has had this week has left him stronger than the last. He’s wanting to know why he should keep doing drawing in high school, and wants to try out for the USA hockey team, and the constant going and busyness of his need makes when he’s asleep an audible balm of quiet and devout unceasing prayer that I will survive his teens, and that he will as well.

Morg’s facial hair is coming in more and darker – I have no difficulty now seeing under his jaw he's so tall, and realized today that half of his chin hair is brown/ginger. I see nothing of myself in him physically, though someone at school looked at us and said “He’s your son, right? It’s plain as day!” and he grinned and I was caught totally unaware. I love them all beyond all expression, and I know that I can’t do everything I want for them, I screw up at something every single day, and some days are just ridiculously stupid, and others… others have the boys playing army with airsoft on the front porch, sun shooting off their golden skin and grins as they ferociously debate the number of hits each can withstand from a pistol, and Max uses Molly as a secret weapon, laughing til he cries at the carnage and look on Marko’s face at being so royally and imaginatively trounced by his big brother.

I ate too many blueberry pancakes today, and they were perfectly crisp, staying soft inside. I ate too many, because I was tired and they were there and I wanted/needed a cry but Max needed me, so we drove to hockey together and let the Sunday morning light paint our car as we laughed and did a whole lot of nothing together.

Some days I don’t want to talk to God because I’m already suffering one kind of stiff-necked-ness and the light chases me wherever I turn, and I hope I don’t see Him because when I’m tired I’m cranky, which manifests as smartaleckey and sarcastic, and I love Him too much (mostly) to keep it to myself. Those days – like today – I know He loves me because He stays out of my way, so I don’t have to see Him, or deal with His love, because love complicates absolutely everything and makes you an addict, especially when it hurts like breaking just from trying. Those days, like today, I know He loves me because He stays where I can’t see Him, and still has my back. Those days, like today, He stays away from me, and instead stands next to the choir as they sing I am a Child of God, and watches Max wash his hands and come give me a damp soapy hug. Then helps me cry when they’re all in bed, sleeping.

Some days I feel happy and lonely at exactly the same moment. I’m extraordinarily delighted to be back at school, to feel my brain rise from hibernation and crack its jaws wide, ready. The boys are a bizarre wonder and a delicious delight, and being their Mom is the purpose to my days, the chaos to my evenings, the smile lines I carry with me. I love and I worry and I pray constantly that I’m doing better than I catastrophise and fear. And I think I am.

{Max and team at the USA Hockey headquarters last weekend.}