Thanksgiving Memories

This past Thanksgiving, we packed up our minivan and headed west for some long overdue family time. We just love Thanksgiving in New Mexico! Below are just a few highlights of the many things I was thankful for...

Cousins! (first cousins once removed, that is.)

Reading time.I loved (!) listening to the kids and their beloved Aunt Bambi (not her real name) giggle with delight while enjoying the latest installment of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. She giggles as much as they do.

Cribbage with my daughter. Here she is being instructed by cribbage master Uncle Bob (his real name), who shows no mercy. Her glee at beating the pants off me several games in a row was cute. His glee at her beating the pants off me was a touch humiliating, yet also endearing. The pride of the teacher oozed from his mockery. What I loved most was her progression. At first, Uncle Bob was at her side, helping her choose her cards and count her points. Later, she began to play on her own, but a particularly confounding hand would send her running from the table, cards in hand, shouting, "Uncle Bob!!" Eventually, the time for consultations was past -- she played me mano-a-mano... and held her own.

Sibling love and goofiness. Yes, they bicker. A lot. But, as I always remind them, they love each other. I tell them often that they hit the jackpot with their sibling, because they did. He is a wonderful brother. And she is a wonderful sister. Amidst the squabbles and general annoying of one another, are pockets of sweetness -- shared candy, kind words, and bedtime "I love you"s. And hugs on a mountainside.

Snow. We had to travel up into the mountains to find it, but it was worth the drive. (There's a funny story behind this excursion. Of course - it's us.)

Hi-D-Ho. What can I say about Hi-D-Ho? If you ever find yourself in downtown Alamogordo (but, why would you?), skip the familiar fast food chains and hit this local drive in. You'll be glad you did. Get the Tiger Burger. And the Butterscotch Milkshake. Mmmm. (And wear your stretchy pants.)

White sand.In your hair. And in your pockets. And in between your toes. And in your ears. And in other ...[ahem] ... unmentionable places. If you have never been, you should visit White Sands National Monument. The largest gypsum dune field in the world. The world. It is cool. Bring a couple of sleds. And unleash your children (and yourself!) Don't be afraid to put your 41-year-old body on a sled and head down a steep sandy slope. Remember to laugh as you tumble end-over-end ever so gracefully. Make sure the video camera is rolling.

Running. In the mountains. More on this elsewhere. It was awful and awesome all at the same time.

Woodstock. An impulse buy. Because I had $4 in my pocket. And he makes me smile.

Parents who love you and never stop praying for you.
Big, goofy dogs.More on them in my previous post.

And much, much more. Glorious sunsets. The stars at night. Hot oatmeal after a cold run. Thanksgiving dinner prepared in love. A cat named Smokey. A roaring fire and warm quilts. The neighbors' hysterical pet goat. Hastings. A shooting star just for me.

And Cherry 7-Up.

The dogs of Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving was fraught with puppies. Four, count 'em, four puppies. Two big, two small. If you like dogs, my sister-in-law's is the place to be. This plethora of puppies is one of the many reasons my kids LOVE going to Aunt Vangie's. My kids (and my husband) are definitely dog people. Their glee and giggles at the puppies' antics always put a smile on my face. There really is nothing like a dog to bring a special kind of joy to a child's heart.

Quadruple the puppies, quadruple the fun!

First up, there is Snuggles. The miniature matriarch.
She's a slightly tubby chihuahua, with a freakishly long tongue. Needs assistance scaling the height of the couch cushions. Tends to the asocial, but has an affinity for my boy child, who has a gentle way with her.

Then there's Eva. With a face only a mother could love. She's everything you expect a chihuahua to be. Excitable, tremulous, underfoot, very licky. This tiny lady awoke us many a morning with her excitement-induced, snorting asthma attacks. Ah, good times, good times.

And then there are the big dogs: Molly and Ivan.

Molly is a hulking bear of a dog with a bulldog's stance and a bionic tail. Neurotic as all get out -- chews her nails and spends an inordinate amount of time grooming herself. It makes you want to pet her gently and soothe her like a distraught child, "There, there... it's okay... everything's going to be okay." Can you imagine what it's like to wake up each morning to this face ... ... inches away from your face? We can.

Finally, there is Ivan. He's an imposing figure. But here's the truth: it's a facade. Behind the I-could-tear-you-to-pieces-in-a-nanosecond exterior lies the softness of a teddy bear. He's just a huge baby. And he has the whine to prove it. He is the most attention/love seeking, doe-eyed, dog I've ever met. He knows he's found a sucker in my husband, and they have a special bond. I'm not much of a dog person, but it's true -- I have been caught, on occasion, wrapping my arms around this big galoot. Or letting him snuggle up to us while watching the big game.

Thanksgiving in New Mexico wouldn't be the same without these pups. When it's time for us to head home, we are told there is a collective depression that settles upon them.

And the feeling is mutual.

Duct tape summer

First of all, I have to give a hearty thanks to my friend, Hannah, who introduced us to duct tape crafting at this summer's Bible Camp. At the camp, the kids made duct tape wallets such as the très chic one you see here ...

It was a labor-intensive craft for the workers, but oh-so-worth-it, as the kids loved it!

After Bible Camp, we came across this little book at our public library ...

(Stick It!: 99 DIY Duct Tape Projects)

... and she was off!

A few of the summer projects included more duct tape wallets: for Daddy on Father's Day, for Grandpa on his birthday (in Dallas Cowboy colors and with a fresh dollar bill tucked inside), and for her brother, just because.

There was a duct tape flower frenzy, with custom orders being taken for Daddy, Mommy, her brother, her BFF and of course, herself ...

Empty tissue boxes scored at a birthday party became treasure boxes (one for her and one for her BFF) ...


Beloved doll, Julie, received a much needed dresser for her clothing and accessories (at the foot of her fabulous canopy bed, which just so happens to be at the foot of my daughter's fabulous canopy bed) ...

(notice the divider to separate the compartments)

Somewhere floating around is a duct tape ring, which may never be found.

This little horse (found randomly in our sewing table and measuring 1-1/2" high by 1-3/4" long) now has a saddle, blanket, feed bag, and some sort of collar ...

(wearing the saddle and collar)

(wearing the blanket and feed bag)

And last, but not least, some duct tape flip flops (I got to help with these) ...

The girl just couldn't understand why (and was none too happy when) we would not allow her to wear the flip flops outside.

Have duct tape, will craft!

Love to share - locks and locks of it

Oh, this girl. Where did she get her heart? The girl who, when she gets some candy, immediately says, Can I share some with my brother? The girl who jumps at the opportunity to help. The girl who is always on the lookout for gifts for her BFF. The girl whose primary joy is to make things that she can bestow as gifts upon others.

My giving girl.

Most of all, she gives love and I am always awed and grateful for it. I don't deserve it. But I receive it and it makes me yearn for a heart like hers. Just the other night at bedtime she took my face in her two soft little hands and planted a ring of sweet kisses from my chin up around my cheek to my forehead and back down the other side and ending on the tip of my nose. She has no idea what a quiet ecstasy it is, to be the recipient of her gift of love. But I know.

So it is no surprise that as her hair grew heavy and summer fast approached and talk turned to a short summer do, her first thought was, Who can I share this with?


If you have a like-minded little girl, or you yourself are in need of a style update, please consider donating to Locks of Love. Your donation will help provide hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children suffering from long-term medical hair loss. My daughter was thrilled when she received her thank-you card in the mail from the Locks of Love organization.

The hair grows back and the heart grows bigger.

How can you mend a broken heart?

The other evening while my attention was absorbed by a phone call, my sweet girl was sitting quietly nearby flipping through an old photo album. At one point I glanced in her direction and was shocked to see her little body hunched over, weeping. I motioned to her to find out what had happened and she lifted up the photo album to show me this:

(Not his best photo)

It has been 8 months. 8 whole months. And she still dissolves into a puddle at the sight of him. Not all the time, of course. But sometimes, still.

As I held her, I had to let her know that I still miss him, too, and think of him at the oddest of times. Like the other day when I opened up the bathroom cabinet and remembered that we always needed to keep the cabinet shut or he would simply HAVE to check it out, wide-eyed and tentative, forcing his massive girth into the small space because, because .... well, I just don't know why. I'm sure he got trapped in there once or twice. Not the brightest bulb was he. Nope, not too bright.

But gosh, I miss him!

What I wouldn't give right now to lay my weary head on his oh-so-soft, warm, motoring tummy and make him comfort me (you always had to make him) and then laugh when he immediately set about cleaning whatever area I had besmirched with my offensive human touch.

Miss you, Seb ... you big dummy.

The Marathon

This past Sunday, my husband ran the Austin Marathon. This is the story of that day.

The participants
My husband -- the runner

My brother -- race support team member, comic relief

My sister-in-law -- fellow marathoner, race support team member, the brains of the outfit

Me -- the wife, designated navigator
The kids -- the encouraging progeny

5:45am
The runner and his race support team head downtown for the start of the race. Confidence is high. So is the humidity.

6:55am
I leave the house with the children - late. We drive downtown to rendezvous with the race support team at (or near) mile 2, where we discover that parking is scarce downtown on marathon day.

7:00am, Mile 0
The race begins.

7:20am, Somewhere downtown
I locate the race support team and finally find a parking spot. We missed the runner at mile 2, but we are ready to catch him at mile 8.

Mile 8
The under-dressed children (who remind me, "Mom, you told us to wear shorts!"), now clad in borrowed long-sleeved shirts, cease shivering and are ready for Daddy with camera and hand-made signs.

We are looking for the runner, scanning the crowd for his white shirt. Suddenly he appears (in his grey shirt, not his white shirt, which he has already stripped because it is dang warm & humid), flying past us as he tosses his watch to the boy. Race spectating is a weird business.

Mile 12.5
We are waiting at the crest of a doozy of a hill. We are rethinking the message we have written on our dry-erase sign ("You're not slow, you're just enjoying the course"), judging that the folks coming up this hill are in no mood for humor.

We spot our runner reach the bottom of the hill. As he makes his way upwards toward our position, my brother, ever the motivator, approaches him to yell at him to get moving. When he reaches the top of the hill, as we shout words of encouragement and woo-hoos, he cries out, "Do you have socks?! Socks!"

- aside -

The day before the race, while talking to his race support team, the runner pulls out some sweet looking fancy socks that he has recently purchased, never worn. My sister-in-law, the experienced marathoner, warily asks him, have you run in those socks before?? No, but .... She and my brother, the experienced half-marathoner, exchange a look as the runner assures them that while he did not train with these socks, they are awesome and all will be well.

Mile 12.5 (cont.)
"Socks! Socks!" The requested socks, the trained-in socks, are in the runner's backpack. In the car. Two blocks away. I vow to be better prepared at the next checkpoint.

Mile 16
The runner is shirtless now. Confidence is, um ... medium? Humidity, high. He changes his socks.

Mile 19
We are just past mile 19. The kids are taking turns holding our sign, keeping count of smiles, chuckles, and comments elicited from the runners. Emma counted 47. Only one person said, "That's mean!" (but they said it with a smile.) One girl exclaimed, "That's right! What is wrong with me!?!"

My phone rings. It's the runner. He is close. I wonder why he is calling. He breathes into the phone the unexpected words, "I'm done."

You must know this man to know what this means. I know this man. This man is not a quitter. He is not fainthearted. This man is a runner. He runs. This is a man who routinely, daily, pushes through pain. He is a man who does not lightly abandon a goal. I know this man. And I know what it means when he says that he is done. My heart sinks. Because I know what it means.

The support team, the family, is deeply concerned. My brother walks to meet him, to assess his condition. He is unsure whether to push the runner to go on, or not. When he reaches the runner, he understands better. Nauseous and in pain, the runner tosses his cookies. As I approach, I find him heaving behind a fence; my brother is with him. I go to my husband and I stand with him, I lay my hand on him, I wait.

We are all waiting. We have no other agenda for the day than to be here for this man. Whether he stops or whether he continues, we are here with him. We are not in a hurry, we are not disappointed, we are not hungry, we are simply here. With him.

As he sits to rest with our sister-in-law, my brother and I go for some mineral water. In our absence, he asks advice of the woman who understands his struggle, his pain, his desire. And she advises him - wisely, realistically, quietly. It's not a pep talk - her words are simply truth.

My brother and I return with the Perrier and we sit with him. We wait with him. There is nothing I want more than for him to finish his race. For him. We all want that. And so we wait. I sense a peace in the waiting. With him. We are with him. For him.

Eventually, he stands. He walks. He moves forward, toward the goal. We leave him to head for Mile 22, but, really, we are still with him.

Mile 22
He comes. He is moving forward. He smiles. He continues past us. We are still with him.

(The race support team detours for lunch. I know I said we weren't hungry. We weren't, but now we are, and there are children.)

Mile 23.5
We arrive at mile 23.5, sit on the curb, eat our Chipotle, and wait for the runner. Quietly hoping. He comes. He rests. I rub his back. I joke with him that he had to run 23 miles to get me to do that. We encourage, he departs, we finish our burritos, and then we head downtown to meet him at the finish line.

The finish line.

Mile 26.2
I am excited, guardedly excited. 7.2 miles ago, I didn't expect to be here, waiting, at the finish line. Yet here we are.

We find a good spot along the final stretch and watch the runners come in. It is a moving thing to witness. We are past the 6 hour mark, so these folks are not the elite. They are not running for glory, not now, or even for personal best. They are running to finish. They are the ones who could have given up, should have just stopped, but didn't. They are the mom who covers the last 50 yards hand-in-hand with her toddler. They are the woman celebrating her 66th birthday - on a grueling race course. They are the dad crossing the finish line with his child on his shoulders. They are the man with a prosthetic leg, showing the rest of us what is possible. They are the many others whose stories we do not know, whose secret motivations are hidden from our eyes. But still we are inspired by each one, because we see their heart. We revel in their triumph, and we are proud.

My brother sees him first -- "Here he comes!" I barely have time to get my lens cap off, barely have time to snap the photos and call his name, barely even see him as he is sprinting down the stretch. Sprinting. The man who was overheated at mile 12, breathless at mile 16, done at mile 19. Sprinting the final .2.

This day did not go as any of us had planned or expected. Does anything, really? But we gained so much. I witnessed my husband emerge from a dark place of pain and defeat. He did not do it alone. None of us do it alone. I witnessed the love of family - husband, wife, brother, sister, child - and its power to comfort, encourage, believe, motivate, sustain. This love cherished me and it cherished him.

Don't let anyone tell you that 6:28:46 is not a triumph. It was.

Postscript

When I began writing this tale, I intended it to be his story, but I realize now that it is mine. The runner has his own story to tell and you should ask him about it. It involves many of the things I have mentioned - determination, despair, hope, pain, family, love. All that ... and a cup named Turq.

The girl doesn't like math

I find it ironic that my daughter, the child who consistently professes her dislike of mathematics, spent a good part of a recent afternoon speaking to me in fractions.

Such as ...

"Mommy, so-and-so has a van that fits eleven people." "Wow," I say, "That's a lot of people." She surveys the inside of our van. "Ours has room for seven. So their van can fit one and a half more people in it."

(So maybe she didn't phrase it exactly right, but you can see where she was going with it.)

And later, as we are driving down the street ...

"Emma, look at that big dog!" (Because we simply must observe and report any and all cute and furry animals encountered on our travels.) "Ooh!" she replies, "That dog is three-quarters my size!"

But don't be fooled. I have it on good authority that the girl does not like math.

Heart of gold

A couple of weeks ago I was inspired by my son's new organization scheme for his gymnastics medals, which came into being after he earned his first ever silver and bronze medals.

The new system looks like this.

(For those of you who are having trouble making out the light pencil on white paper on white backboard on not-so-white wall, the categories are "4th place or lower", "Bronze", "Silver", and "Gold".)

What I love most about this system is its implicit optimism. The way it quietly screams, "I don't have a gold ... YET!!")

Hope is one thing. Expectation is another. I wondered which of these filled his heart. Especially when, at the very next meet, in the middle of what was shaping up to be a stellar, gold-medal floor routine, he had a major flub. A one-full-point-deduction flub. I considered the empty peg on the wall in his room. I wondered how his heart would fare. Where did his focus lie?

My child made me proud. This boy - ahem, this young man - did not give up nor did he fall apart. He recovered from his error and finished his routine. And after he left the floor, I was even more proud. There could have been tears, frustration, anger. He is eleven, after all. He easily could have focused on the negative, on what had been lost. Instead, and with some encouraging words from his coach, he embraced the positive.

And then on Monday he went back to the gym. And he worked. Hard.

This weekend he had another meet. His floor routine was stellar.

Do I have to tell you the boy was floating on air?

Snow Day

Usually Jim Spencer gets waaay too excited about these things, as all of us here in central Texas are prone to do, so last night I scoffed at the weatherman's "computer models" and their snow-filled "predictions." Snow, schmo. We went to bed around 11pm, not a flurry in sight.

We awoke at 6am and with grand anticipation checked the local tv channel where we received the happy news - no work for me and no school for the kids! I'm sorry I doubted you, Jim.

I do have to admit I was pretty disappointed with the paltry accumulation (I didn't grow up here. I know what snow, real snow, is.) But a day off is a day off, and snow on the ground is snow on the ground. And kids who have not grown up with regular snowfalls are wonderfully, blissfully easy to please in the snow department.

As I write this, around 2pm, the white stuff has pretty much melted in the withering 39 degree temperatures and blazing sunshine bearing down from a cloudless sky.

Go ahead and laugh at us, you mid-westerners, you mountain-dwellers, you snow veterans of the northeast. It's all we got. And I loved it.

I loved the glee on their cold little faces.

I loved their obliviousness to the cold & wet.

I loved their first snowball fight.

I loved their giggles and silliness.



I loved their sweet snow creations.

I loved filling their bellies and warming their hearts with hot chocolate (which they happily declared to be the best hot chocolate EVER! despite the fact that I would not allow them to adulterate it with marshmallows.)


I loved the simple beauty which lay hidden all around us.


And I loved hearing the following words, uttered by my youngest, "Thank you, Lord, for the snow."

Amen.