Fitting Exploration into Holiday Travel

(Warning: Photo Dump Below!)

Whew!  I think we've all recovered from the Fourth of July holiday!  We decided to make a trek up to my parents house  in Washington.  While we were out exploring, I told my husband that I didn't know how to work this into the blog, because I want to make sure that each post has something to offer you, the reader.  I just love his response: "Just share it!  Give encouragement to people to get outside and explore!"  I kinda, really love that man! =D

So without further ado, this is how our holiday travel went while enjoying some adventures, both outdoor and indoor. 

Day 1: The Drive:  So it doesn't take all day to drive up there, but it's 6-7 hours.  Given the time it takes to load and unload, it's basically a full day.  Thankfully now my little ones are doing so much better in the car, so we don't hear screaming the whole way.  When the fussing started, I'd just pull out another book, read it, then pass it back for them to re-peruse (lift the flap books are awesome!).  We'd try to take advantage of meals and gas stops to take a stretch break (or as the kids call them, shake breaks!)  Other than that, lots of dried fruit, I spy, singing and license plate tracking!   We got in with just enough time for the kids to play with a little, battery powered four-wheeler that my dad had received broken, but free and fixed it up.  That got the wiggles out!

Day 2: After a lazy morning, Josh and I borrowed my parents' jeep and headed up some mountain trails (holiday tip: you don't have to have/bring all the "toys."  Share and borrow what you can!)  It wasn't a clear day, but it was so gorgeous!  The ruggedness of the hills is so stark against all the foxglove blooming (my favorite!!!)  Josh was able to just reach out the door and pick me bouquets.

  We picked wild salmon berries and went for a small hike at the end of one of the trails.  At the very top we even ran in to another couple from Alaska, so naturally we had to stop and visit with them for a bit!

 

After we got back we loaded in the truck with my parents to hit the carnival.  Though it was a fairly small carnival, the kids were awestruck.  Our 5 year old enjoyed a few of the kiddie rides, but our 2 year old would only go on the carousel until we got to the Ferris Wheel.  Grandpa and Daddy went with them and even at the highest point you could see both of their faces beaming with delight and they excitedly waved to us every cycle!  What a treat! 

So fun to see familiar faces as well.  A former neighbor and her grown daughter also visiting from out of town, two mission trip coordinators and an former worship teammate let alone countless others that I couldn't quite place anymore. 

Day 3: My former church GAVE me a piano!  I'm so excited and grateful, but have no place to store it right now, so my dad is hanging on to it for me.  He, Josh, and my brothers moved it to their garage for now.  Boy, do I owe them cookies or what?  I just have to tease them that they'll forever be helping me move pianos!  (It may have happened a time or two before) 

First we had to stop by Wing's cabin and learn how the pot-bellied stove worked!

Ringing the church bell with Bampa

 Then the whole crew drove up to Bellingham to the Spark Museum.  If you ever get a chance, check it out.  A museum on the history of electricity, complete with a functioning Tesla Coil (I didn't remember what that was until we got there!)  I'm not a huge fan of electronics, but even I found much of this fascinating.  Just this history, if nothing else, and the beautiful detail they seemed to put into everything they did. 

We got back into town to visit my best friend from age 4 and her family and to barbeque and hang out in their new back yard.  Beautiful end to a busy day!  And I love that our kids feel like cousins!

Krista and I basically have this exact photo of us when we were this age!  Now it's our kids!

Day 4:  Church the next morning (same one I grew up in!) along with many more familiar faces.  Then lunch at the favorite spot  before the in-laws joined us for the logging show and chainsaw carving competition. 

Pole Climb

Day 5:  Independence Day!  Parade in the rain, then about 30 people came to the house for a get-together, fire crackers, and a ton of food.  Lots of playing in the  rain and dancing through the smoke! 

Day 6:  Home again, home again, jiggety jog.  When we hit bad traffic we just took old farm roads.  Better moving the long way through beautiful scenery than stuck in stress and traffic. 

I'm so grateful for my family, but I know for some staying with family can be a difficult time if they are not accustomed to spending much time outside.  I think, especially during a visit to see someone, relationships take priority.  Be with those you've come to be with.  But if the opportunity arises to get everyone out and see something new, maybe it could benefit all!

Free Printable of Daniel for Sunday School

Happy Fourth of July!  This is such a wonderful (but crazy hectic) time of year for us!  A visit to all the grandparents, aunts and uncles has been a joy!  It's always bittersweet going back to your hometown and see all the familiar sights and faces, yet there's so much that has changed and, in fact, you yourself aren't the same person you used to be either...  Moving is strange like that, I suppose.

 

But more to the point of this post, I've been noticing an increased interest in Sunday School printables, so I want to share more with you today.  We've decided to take our Sunday School down a notch or two during the summer.  The barn-turned-community center we're meeting in has a great playground just outside that the kids can't resist this time of year!  The teachers still bring a craft and have a story, but it's much more relaxed!  One of the last lessons we completed before our break was that of Daniel in the Lion's Den and I thought I'd pass along the printable of the craft we made to go with it. 

 

 

 

Before I get too far, though, I thought this was a good re-telling of the story:

Daniel Retelling

 And of course, there's always Veggie Tales!

But the original story is from the book Daniel chapter 6. If you're not super familiar with it, it makes more sense if you read the five chapters previous.

 

To set up, I moved the tables into a big square and threw a bunch of pillows in the center to create a "den" that the kids all climbed into to hear the story that morning.  They had a ball all pretending to be lions! 

 

To complete the craft, after everything is colored in as you want it, cut the paper vertically to separate the den section, then the opening in the ceiling. 

 

Next cut the outline of Daniel out.  Attach yarn/string to the back of Daniel's hand for him to hold on to as he is lowered into (and later raised from) the den. 

 

I like to tape the other end of the string to the back of the rectangle, too so pieces don't get separated.  Then all together it works as a teaching tool as your reading the story or for the little ones to play with later.

 

Click on image below for full sized printable:

 

 

 

 

 



There are so many great Sunday School programs out there, but sometimes you just need one story, and for that purpose, I hope some of you can find this useful!  I hope we can impart to our kids what faith looks like and how awesome and in-control our God is! He knows what we're going through and when we choose to be faithful, just like Daniel.

Pirate Party

I'm sitting down now after everyone has fallen asleep and necessities completed for a moment of quiet.  Meanwhile, our neighbors twin boys seem to be having a graduation party into all hours of the night.  It makes me remember to appreciate this stage right now and all the beauty of it, while still being excited for their futures and the joy yet to come. 

Having your firstborn age half a decade will get you to thinking about these things I suppose!  My eldest is the most amazing, smart, gregarious, loving little boy I know and I just love how he's never met a stranger, only new friends.   He has a real heart for people and a matter-of-fact way of thinking that is so fun to see mature with him!  My miracle boy. 

Okay, enough mush, let's get to the party!  It's often been done before, but he picked such a fun theme this year: pirates!  I wanted to post this to share our joy of the day as well as our take on the pirate theme for any looking for inspiration. 

THE GAME:
Yes, there was only one, but it was kind of several mixed together.  Also, it was nearly a hundred degrees that day and no one wanted to do much more!  We went on a pirate challenge/treasure hunt.  Basically,  we had a bottle on the table with a call for pirates on it and instructions to follow the clues to several different destinations and complete the pirate tasks at each one so that they could prove their pirate-ness.  I tried to write them in rhyme (though it didn't always work) on coffee-aged paper with burned edges.  Their tasks included walking up a gang plank, tying figure eight knots (great guide for many knots from Survival Life), (foam) swordsmanship, (cardboard) anchor tossing, and sail hoisting!  Then the final station's clue came with a map of the property and an X marking the spot where they had to dig up the treasure chest (full of dollar store compasses, ocean stickers, necklaces, rings, doubloons, etc. in an old tool box). 

setting out to find the first clue

Reading the Rhyme

 

Tossing the Anchor (they had to work together each time and make sure one member of the crew had the other end of the rope "tied off to the ship")



Hoisting the sails

Divvying up the loot 

THE FOOD:
Shark Bait (Goldfish) and Cannon Balls (Malted Milk Balls)

Port Holes (the last one!)

Octopus Lagoon Veggie Tray (Now sinking and missing a few legs!  Just go for this example by Denna's Ideas)

Ropes and Gummy Sharks

Treasure map cake












THE DECOR:
We flipped over our fishing boat for seating and set out a basket of pirate dress-up items.  Behind the house I used pavers to mark out the outline of a ship deck and in the middle placed a weighted fence post.  To that I lashed a few branches to hold the sail to the mast.  And that was pretty much it.  Because of the heat we made sure to have the kiddie pool full and sprinkler going.  I love outdoor birthday parties!  I did print out some coloring sheets for the very little ones (but our crayons started to melt in the heat!), "What's Your Pirate Name" and a Mad-Lib type game for the adults.  Bonus: These cute invites! 

To all who came I want to say a huge thank you!  You made this party such a joy for him and he was nearly overwhelmed by the love shown him.  Seriously, the entire next day he was basically in a daze! 

One tuckered pirate

*Note: most of these photos were taken by my dear mother-in-law, Dena Kelm.

Wild Cooking Adventure: Sourdough and Jelly

We just came from the land of the sourdough, both in cooking and in locals.  (Alaska calls their long time homesteaders "Sourdoughs" for those not familiar with the term.)  And sourdough bread remains a popular baked item there.  Many have heard of Dick Proenneke from the television show and I was given some of his sourdough starter from a friend of a friend and kept it alive and well until I had my second child (plus two cats, a puppy and six chickens) and I let it go too long without feeding it and it died!  I'm still kicking myself for that, but I recently learned that you can't transport sourdough starter.  Well, you can, but over time, the local yeasts will overtake it and it will take on the local characteristics.  Sourdough is unique to the area, isn't that interesting?

Wild Yeast Trap Set.  Complete with guard dog!

So I recently began to get a hankering for sourdough again.  I always wondered where the starter came from, I'd only been given jars of starts before.  So the wonder that is Pintrest came to the rescue again and I found that you can capture wild yeast right out of thin air!  Christina Keibler is very knowledgeable has great written and video instructions, but it's basically just flour and water in equal parts.  You leave it in a bowl outside, stirring every few hours to incorporate more air into the mixture.  After about 24 hours you can see the bubbles and "hootch" (clear liquid from yeast) forming and that's it!  She also has a recipe for bread from the starter you can find on this page.  I'm still working on the quirks of Oregon yeast to get a big fluffy loaf, but the flavor is amazing!

Then I got to thinking about jelly and what I have on hand, and I recalled a recipe I have for rose petal jelly.  This rental that we're living at has an abundance of gorgeous rose bushes around it and a good many were just starting to drop their petals.  So my sweet daughter and I plucked them up and followed this recipe by Luckybeans for the jelly.  It turned out a vibrant fuscha red and took a little mending  (it didn't want to set up) but now has a lovely light flavor.  Just a beautiful process as a whole.  So lots more photos of this:

I love that glowing color!  And making good food with what we already have, and getting the little ones involved and learning new skills.  I'm going to chalk this one up as a win! =)  Do you have any fun new food projects planned?  I always love to hear what everyone is up to!  Happy Memorial Day Weekend and I hope in your celebrating you can appreciate those who serve and have served.

A Story of Love and Loss

WARNING: I'm hijacking my own blog just for today with a very different tone. This is not a diy, adventure, or recipe post and will likely be a bit emotionally charged.  This is real life, my heartbreak and how I got through.

I had a wonderful Mother's Day this year!  After church our whole family went out to the coast and chased waves, collected seashells, played on the dunes, and nibbled saltwater taffy.  But leading up to it, I've really felt the pang of separation from my babies who didn't make it.  Some dear friends of mine have recently shared with me their stories of loss in one form or another, and even in the hardest times, it was those shared stories that I found comfort in, so I've decided to post mine here in the hopes that another person will find that they're not alone and there is hope for joyful days ahead.

About a year after we had moved to Alaska, we decided we were as ready as we were ever going to be to have a baby!  We were so excited, and sure enough, I got pregnant so fast!  Yes, this was going to be a breeze.  We told everyone immediately.  Not that that would have changed anything, but we just had no clue there was even a chance of anything going wrong.  But less than two months in, I started cramping, then bleeding.  I was so scared and rushed to the ER where I met my husband.  They did a bunch of tests, but it was obvious.  Our child was no longer with us. 

Before I get to my reactions, let me just go on to say that not long after this I had my healthy pregnancy with our boy.  But then when we were ready to try again, I had two more miscarriages before our beautiful girl came into our lives.  The doctors refused any treatment of any kind unless I had three miscarriages in a row.  Anything else was considered normal.  Normal!  That still confounds me!  But statistically it's true, one in every 3-4 pregnancies ends in miscarriage!  I just had no idea and had rarely even heard of anyone going through this let alone someone I was close to.

The first was by far the worst just because of the shock.  There was a baby crying down the hall  in the ER and I simply couldn't bear it!  I was ill and my blood pressure sky rocketed.  Unlike many women I have talked to since, there was no physical pain for me.  But my heart was searing like nothing I'd ever experienced.  I had no idea how much I could love someone that I'd really never had a chance to meet.  But he was my baby!  Did it hurt him?  Did I do something wrong?  Was it my fault?  It was agony.

I tried to go to work in the morning, but I simply could not hold myself together.  I had always felt like I was very strong and in control of my emotions.  But not now.  I could feel the sorrow, anger, bitterness growing and I hated feeling that way!  I begged God to make it right.  WHY!?  I questioned everything.  How could He let this happen!?  Is He really good?  I guess those are always the questions when things aren't going well. 

I am ashamed of where my heart was, now looking back.  I was beside myself.  I did the only thing I knew how to do from my more minor trials before this.  I (made myself) read His Word and reminded myself of who Jesus had already shown Himself to be in my own life.  He never gives up.  He turns the bad things of this world into good things.  He uses our brokenness to bring life.  He lost His Son.  He knows suffering.  He loves more than I can comprehend.   He is good. 

My pain didn't (and still hasn't) go away.  It's part of me.  But God never gave up on me through this horrendous storm and saved me through it.  I knew my heart was in jeopardy at that time, and God chose to save me again, like He always does!  And slowly I was able to live again.  Our dear children in life are just that much more miracles, but I do still miss my little ones in heaven and anticipate the day I can hold them in my arms. 

Then I had to explain to all my sweet family and friends who were excitedly asking me about my pregnancy that it was over.  I felt guilty because they were so loving that it caused them pain as well.  Wow, I feel so blessed just to be able to write that.  There were many who didn't know how to respond at all because, like I had been, they never known about anyone who had lost in this way.  I can say that the simple "I'm so sorry" and "Is there anything I can do?" are by far the best if you don't know.  And just to give me time to not be okay.  But then I was shocked and comforted by all of the women who told me they really understood because they had gone through the same thing!  Some much farther along in their pregnancies.

A few more  thoughts that were not necessarily comforting, but certainly made me think outside of the grief bubble I was in.  The first was that God is so much bigger than time or space and knows all.  Perhaps He was saving the child from something horrible?  We just don't know.  The other was shared a little after I had recovered, but it was a reminder that this is a world with sin in it.  I know there are differing opinions, but I just see this world as a place that, since "the fall" where mankind chose to disobey God, continues to fall deeper into sin (death).  And no action is without consequence, whether we recognize the correlation or not.  Like I said, not comforting, but just makes me long for heaven that much more.

So, as you can tell, I went through this feeling like my biggest battle was a spiritual one.  Medically I was basically told, "Bummer for you, but it's normal.  Try again soon."  It felt so heartless to the life of the children I'd lost.  I do believe that taking progesterone early in my pregnancy helped (though I had to fight tooth and nail to get a prescription for it, because I was still normal, right?)  That and make sure my firstborn was weaned.  I know it's not supposed to make a difference, but with "old" moms like me, some research has shown that it can (Mayo Clinic alludes to it, but also an interesting article here.)  Oh!  And if you're Rh negative, make sure you get the rogham injection after a miscarriage or your body could build up activated antibodies that could then go on to attack future pregnancies.  Words of advice from someone who's been there.

Takeaway: You're not alone, but it's not "normal" nor how it was supposed to be.  If you've lost a little one, please don't suffer alone!  You are loved and you can find joy and purpose again! 

A friend of mine who is no stranger to the pain of loss just wrote this beautiful piece about losses of women and I wanted to share it with you.  Please check out Trena's blog, Forever Blessings.  Also, huge list of helpful links, stories, and encouragement on Amateur Nester

(Note: I chose to keep this a photoless post as I have no photos to share of my beloveds in heaven)

Color Technique: Muslin + Crayons?

Whew!  I realize this post has been almost a year in coming!  I first hinted at this technique almost a year ago when we made a banner for the lemonade stand!  I love how this turned out and have had so many people compliment it. (P.S. It still looks great after wintering outside!)  This technique is one my mother taught us when we were very young and I still have some of the pieces we made.  It takes the lowly crayon to a whole new level!

So without further ado, the muslin crayon technique:

Materials:
Muslin fabric in desired size
Crayons
Permanent Markers
Scrap fabric

Technique:
I like to sketch out my design in pencil first and then go over it with the permanent marker so I know it will turn out how I want it.  You also may choose to place a design from another source under the fabric and trace it on.  Really the permanent marker is optional, but it really helps with definition. 

Color in as desired with the crayons.  After you are completely finished coloring, place a piece of fabric (I use an OLD, thin towel) over the colored side of the art and iron through.  The color may dull or bleed ever so slightly and will likely stain the scrap piece.  And you're done!

Just in the last year we've used this technique for banners (lemonade and craft fair), wall hangings to be framed, and a pillow case!  The possibilities are endless!  I've not yet tried this technique on clothing that would be washed frequently, but if you do would you let me know how it goes?  These have made some fun gifts and the kids love getting involved with it, too!