fresh

There's nothing like the beauty of fresh snow!

Little Guys

Last month when I was home for Christmas we had an unseasonably warm day. 

Betsy and I sat outside and chatted while Abel played bat and ball and Cyrus took a nap. Then we took the boys out for a spin in their double stroller. 

#GoodTimes.

traveling friends

What a fun surprise to discover this handsome pilot and his sister seated among the passengers at my gate in the Detroit airport when heading back to Pennsylvania after Christmas!

sickie New Year

who knew cough drops came with inspirational sayings?!

I've spent way too much of the new year ingesting cough syrup and emptying tissue boxes...

Here's to a healthier February+.

adult discovery:
cough syrup is still just as nasty as it was when we were kids

first {er, second} snow day of 2020

We finally had our first real snow of the winter here two weeks ago (we had a couple skiffs previously). Sadly, I was too sick with a cold to make cinnamon rolls in celebration of the first snow of the season.

We had another mini snow+ice storm Saturday, and these orange glazed cinnamon rolls happened :).

Ten.

“One day this will be history,” Kristen told me the winter of 2010 as I lay in the hospital recovering from the accident on 18 January. 

“You will look back and it will be a year… 

then five… 

then ten.”

I couldn’t imagine ten years from that day in that hospital bed. 

I knew time would continue, and life would pass, but... ten years is a long time and felt like forever on those long gray days of recovery during 2010.

Well, the math says 2020 minus 2010 is 10!

Here I am, ten years from the accident that left me in the hospital for six weeks with most of a year of recovery. 

Obviously something that consumed one year out of my first twenty-three is a significant part of my life, however, it's true that somehow over the past decade, the freshness of that horrible day in January and the ensuing long months of recovery have faded a bit. 

It's not that the sharpness of memories is gone, just rather the frequency of triggers that transport me to those painful places.

I continue to frequently thank the Lord for the gift of healing and strength over my body since that day. The life He's given me is not something I take for granted.

2019 reflections

Every December I get a bit sappy...

I mean, it's my birthday, year-end, and Christmas all in one month.

I'm already a pretty reflective person, so a month brimming with reasons for extra reflection tugs at my inner being, begging me to stop and ponder what has been as a way of preparing for what will be.

One of the best parts of 2019 was the unexpected gift of a lovely blank journal...

"I'm going to buy you a journal!" friend Emily said mid-way through 2019. 

"And you're going to write down your thoughts and questions and use it to process through things and look back at the ways God takes care of you and teaches you new things."

I was skeptical.

[Not skeptical of Emily buying me a journal, but of me using said journal and actually finding it beneficial.]

.......

Over six months later with nearly half of those neatly lined pages no longer blank,

I find myself ever so thankful for the gift of this journal in 2019.

Social media (and really, even the stuff we share in old print media) often has a way of presenting life in high-gloss finish. But my life is full of every-day-real-life-stuff. Real life includes frustrations and pain and tears and... even disappointments and challenges I never knew I'd have to battle. There are lots of days when the beautiful and amazing of the every-day stuff is a whole lot more complicated than just grinning a happy-go-lucky smile or posting a selfie of a fun adventure.

I passed through some deep places in 2019, 

deeper than I could see out on the horizon when January began.

And as I reflect back over this year,

I'm pretty sure those depths led to at least some minuscule growth.

I hope I've learned at least a tidbit more about

my amazing heavenly Father

and who He's calling me to be.

I'm so glad He is patient and loving and gently leads me along

this path called life,

allowing me to ask hard questions

and press through deep waters

into Him.

And to find Him there.

Ever faithful.

Barber Shop

I opened my barber shop Christmas evening and fixed up these handsome brothers. Too bad I didn't get to them before the family photo. Oh well. Better late than never...

2019 Bookshelf

In addition to keeping up with my favorite podcasts-- Freakonomics, the The Moth (story-telling), Planet Money, and... Car Talk (for some classic Saturday chuckles)-- throughout 2019, I was tickled to branch out into using the library's Libby app to select and listen to audio books. Easy browsing, one-tap downloads, and auto returns all from the comfort and convenience of my very own phone! What's not to love?!

During the first part of the year, my audio reading stalled out 30 or 40 hours into the Winston Churchill book Defender of the Realm. I took a break, and still haven't finished...

Instead, I lightened the mood by following up on Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's original Freakonomics via Superfreakonomics (a light and easy read). I moved along to Benjamin Mee's interesting account of buying an English zoo with his extended family (We Bought a Zoo).

A Slave in the White House painted a historical picture of Paul Jennings' service in the White House under the Madison administration. Unfortunately, this read was a bit of a disappointment as I was hoping the book would be written mostly from Jennings' personal journals. Instead, the author (Elizabeth Dowling Taylor) expressed many "might have been," "could have looked like," "may have said," moments throughout the text, which made the story feel quite crafted from a modern perspective.


Although not the same as the movie, Margo Lee Shetterly's Hidden Figures was excellent and a book I would highly recommend (I also highly recommend the film). It was sad to learn of realities brave black women faced in their professional careers not so long ago, but the book is written with a sense of victory over (rather than bondage to) the past.

I closed out the year on an FBI kick: Enemies (Tim Weiner) follows the fascinating political history of the FBI, including generous portions of J. Edgar Hoover's decades of dominance; Killers of the Flower Moon (David Grann) details the historic Osage murders of Oklahoma-- which played a part in the birth of the FBI; and James Comey's A Higher Loyalty (read by the author himself) relates Comey's personal perspectives on leadership, reflecting on decisions he made in various leadership positions he's held in our country over the past number of decades, as well as his growth through and response to circumstances beyond his control.