52 HIKE CHALLENGE - FEBRUARY 2018

Hike #6 - 2/8/18 - Powell Butte Nature Park
5.16 miles this day
15.06 miles this year

When the sky and schedule are both clear, it's time to hike!

 

Good thing we're not centaurs!

 

Tyler slid in some mud at one point, but he got a heart out of the deal.

Devon offered Tyler a post-crash piggy back ride for a few minutes.

Silas and Naomi walked ahead while Devon and I helped Tyler and I remembered to get a picture of them together when we caught up, but then totally forgot to get individual shots of them. Such is life.

I love little ferns growing on mossy trees!

The Mountain Finder is awesome! There was too much haze for us to see much, but that ring shows you which mountains are in each direction. There were probably seven or eight to look at. We sat and chatted about hikes with this lady for quite a while.

Looking for a geocache near the end of our hike.

They'd all looked for quite a while and I finally said we had to leave. I told Devon he had five more seconds and he found it on the count of three. Score!

Hike #7 - 2/18/18 - Mill Creek Greenway Trail
1.6 miles this day
16.66 miles this year 

Between morning snow and evening rain, we squeezed in a quick walk and jog on a local trail. We got sprinkled on a little bit at the end, but water dries and life goes on.

Hike #8 -2/25/18 - Mary S. Young Park
3.0 miles this day (at least, probably more)
19.66 miles this year 

Silas and I already planned on having some uninterrupted time to chat today, so we combined it with a hike and the rain held off almost the entire time we were out.

I love dirt paths through trees!

Sparkly hair.

Hike #9 - 2/26/18 - Oregon Zoo
1.5 miles this day (at least, probably more)
21.16 miles this year

It wasn't a traditional hike, but we walked a hilly area all morning and are counting it. I posted more pictures from our zoo outing yesterday, but here's a group shot to prove we were there. 

ZOO TRIP

We were given Oregon Zoo passes at Christmas and finally used them yesterday. We hadn't gone in about four years and they've made a lot of changes in that time, so it was fun to visit again. I didn't take many pictures, but we enjoyed checking out all the animals, watching a demonstration with the elephants, and enjoying the lack of crowds when it's cold outside. 

I'm thankful for the gift of passes, rain that held off, and the flexibility of schedules that allowed us to go on a weekday morning.

MY FAVORITE HAIR ACCESSORY

A couple weeks ago I was putting this clip in my hair and realized I've been wearing it for about 25 years. I bought it at the Treasure Trove, a gift shop that used to be in Brookings, and still love it all these years later. As I thought about how time flies, the clip itself went flying. It slipped out of my hands, hit the floor, and some of the shells came out of it.

Disappointed, I grabbed something else for my hair, put the clip on the dresser and went about my day. The next evening I walked by and saw that Tim had glued a piece back in and had it clamped while it dried. I hadn't said a word to him about it, but he'd seen the broken clip and quietly went about fixing it.

I already loved the clip for its appearance and the way it reminds me of the place my heart calls home, but now it's also a reminder of kindness.

THANKFUL THURSDAY

I'm thankful for an inch or two of snow, enough to look pretty for a day and then go away. What's one thing that you're thankful for?

THE BEST BANANAGRAMS

Tyler was playing with Bananagrams tiles two weeks ago and called for me to come see what he'd made. Best run-on sentence ever!

He called me back a bit later to watch him tip over a row over vertical tiles and this was the result.

Games and spelling and love notes all wrapped up together? I'll take it!

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THANKFUL THURSDAY

I'm thankful for the "Mark as Read" option for individual notifications on Facebook. What's one thing that you're thankful for?

THANKFUL THURSDAY

I'm thankful to live in a time and place with so many choices for how, when, and where to educate kids, allowing people to choose what's best for their child, family, and season of life. What's something you're thankful for?

A SWEET GIFT

As you know, I started my Pampered Chef business and published Random Conversation Starters to pay for the multiple sets of braces our family needs. The work has been a blast and it's cool to see the pie chart on our fridge get filled in faster than I anticipated. (That's an old picture, we're currently at 50% and updating again tomorrow.).

However, the fun of helping people through virtual and catalog parties or seeing the ways people are using whichever format of my book they purchased simply do not compare to finding this  anonymous envelope on my counter a few weeks ago.

TO MOm / from ? / ONLe Braces

 One of the little Ws decided to take money from their giving budget to support my efforts to finance #BracesOnFaces, sneaking the envelope onto my clipboard on the kitchen counter!! How sweet is that?! I love anonymous giving, so the fact they chose to give that way, even though I still know who it's from, made it even better.

Folks, parenting is stinkin' hard sometimes, but then things like this happen and you're able to tackle another day with a smile on your face. Or maybe another hour. Depends on how your week is going, right? 

BOOKS I FINISHED - JANUARY 2018

*****

Auggie & Me: Three Wonder Stories, written by R.J. Palacio
I was reserving an audio version of Wonder, which the big boys and I had already read, for Naomi to listen to as she read along in the printed version and came across this follow-up book. It's a glimpse into the lives of three characters in Wonder and how they were impacted in one way or another by August Pullman.

p. 298 - "Being nice is the first step toward being kind."

*****

Mary on Horseback: Three Mountain Stories, written by Rosemary Wells and illustrated by Peter McCartney
I read this, one of my favorite school books, to Tyler while he worked on a puzzle one day. It's three short stories about Mary Breckinridge, the young woman who created the Frontier Nursing Service as a way to provide desperately needed medical care to those living in the Appalachian mountains.

*****

Twenty and Ten, written by Claire Huchet Bishop and illustrated by William Pene Du Bois
This school book is about twenty French kids at a boarding school who end up hiding ten Jewish kids from the Nazis. A fictional story that serves as a reminder to choose the right thing over the easy thing, to think past yourself. It's been a favorite of all the little Ws.

*****

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THANKFUL THURSDAY

I'm thankful for all the stages of various kinds of relationships - the balances in ones with a lot of differences, understanding in ones with lots of similarities, intrigue of getting to know each other in new ones, comfortable feeling of old ones, lessons learned in the demise of close ones, joy from the restoration of strained ones, accountability and encouragement in ones with vulnerability, fun and frivolity in superficial ones, ease of ones that require little effort, and growth that comes from ones that require constant work.