2020

Dear friends, It has been a while since we have published an update on the house, the adoption, and life in general. As I write we (the world) are all under quarantine, a shelter-in-place order, due to the pandemic known as COVID-19 or the coronavirus. I'm attempting to work multiple jobs from home, while Randy continues to go to school during the week to provide lunches for the students in our community. But we've discovered that there is a lot that home remodeling, adoption, and life in general can teach us about how to quarentine. For example, today is the final day that our drywall crew will be at the house. Which is what they have been saying for the past three weeks. Just one more day... Home remodeling always takes longer than you think it will. And so does a quarentine. Every day the news is the same: we need more time. But you know what. The extra time in the home remodeling has been worth it. Because we've taken the time to do things right t...

This month I completed a writing/editing project I have been working on about how to triumph when you are going through life's inevitable trials. Apparently saying "yes" to this project was akin to praying for patience: I was given plenty of opportunities to "practice". (If you've never prayed for patience before, do so carefully!) During this period of writing about how to triumph over trials, my ex-husband died. My mom got E.Coli ... twice. My husband took a staple-gun to the face. My step-daughter was in a car accident. My niece broke her wrist (on my watch, no less). My brother-in-law had a heart attack, followed by a stroke. My aunt injured her back. Another family member went into temporary foster care. Both our dogs have been sick. I ended up in the clinic after an encounter with a rusty nail. And those are just the trials in my immediate family that I know about! Sheesh! Would someone please pray that my next project is on prosperity?! Chan...

July was a month of goodbyes for me. Some goodbyes were harder than others. Some were expected and others came out of the blue. Some I handled well and others not so much.  Goodbyes are never easy. They often come with regret, with longing for the past, with wondering if you've made the right decision.  One goodbye that Randy and I have been discussing for a while now is letting go of the motorhome we inherited when his mother died in November of 2017. While it is sad to let that piece of her legacy go, that sense of adventure and exploration and discovery, it was a necessary next step.  The money we got from selling the motorhome will help us continue progressing in the adoption process, and show that we are committed to providing a stable environment for the boys. (The adoption lady wasn't impressed that we have had 6 different addresses in the 5 years we have been together, and many more months with no address at all. And while it was an incredibly fun and...

On March 1, while I was driving home from a church meeting, a black cat crossed my path. I wouldn't call myself superstituous, but I noticed the cat. I noted the color. And I wondered if, on some plane, it could be a bad omen. An hour later my dog got run over by a car. While driving to the veterinary hospital I told Randy: "I'm not saying it means anything, but a black cat ran in front of me while I was driving home earlier." Later I told a woman about the cat. "It's only bad luck if he is running from the right to the left." "He was," I said. "Oh," she replied, suddenly serious. We made more trips to the hospital -- both to the veterinary hospital and the human hospital -- in March of 2019 than we have in the entirety of our 5 years together. Cinnamon spent a week in the hospital, undergoing hernia surgery because her insides had more or less been torn in two. The week after she was released we were back at the h...

Let me start by apologizing for leaving you hanging last year. Last I wrote we were being cast as characters in a Truman Capote novel, witnesses to the crime of the century in Kansas. That was "Leg 21." There were other legs. We went on to tour museums in Missouri and stay at an epic campground in Illinois and sleep in the Friends United Meeting parking lot in Indiana and eventually made it to Ohio, where we slept in the RV in a short-term parking lot at the Columbus airport waiting for Randy's daughter, Danielle, to arrive to retrieve Van. Once Van and Danielle were safely back in California, Randy and I hit the road again. We went to Toledo for hot dogs, slept in a Home Depot parking lot in Michigan, climbed sand dunes in Indiana and swam in Lake Michigan with my brother and his kids, played baseball on the Field of Dreams and attended my grandmother's memorial service in my second childhood home of Hubbard, Iowa. We broke into the home where my grandmot...

If you’ve never taken a road trip with a 10-year-old boy, here is my depiction: Rand : “Hey Van, look, a volcano!” Van : “Cool.” Rand : “Hey Van, look, a buffalo!” Van : “Cool.” Rand : “Hey Van, look…” Van : “What’s for dinner?” It has taken me a few states to get used to this. Rand and I imagined Van being mesmorized by literally everything that passed our windows. Lassen volcano, a Bengal tiger, the ocean... but we can’t even get him to look out the window! The couple of times we’ve tried to force him to he’s simply fallen asleep (this kid can nap for hours!). To be honest, I was pretty disappointed at first. I had the expectation that experiencing this trip through his eyes would be a new way of seeing the world, with child-like wonder. But he’d rather read a zombie book for the third time than marvel at the random waterfalls along the highway. Disappointment was my attitude going into our trip north to Mt. Rainier in Washington state. It was recommended to us ...

Way back in February -- Valentine's Day and the first day of Lent, to be exact, I took on the challenge of giving $40 to 40 different organizations over the course of the 40 days of Lent. 40-40-40 . Shortly after starting that challenge, my grandmother died unexpectedly, knocking me off course for a few weeks. Committed to seeing the challenge through, however, I decided to keep my eyes and ears and heart open while undertaking the Great American Road Trip with my husband as we transition from Mexico to Ohio. What I discovered on that journey was a great big world that is both beautiful and in need, and it is full of beautiful people who want to help. The problem is, sometimes our helping hurts . While getting to know my high school friend Jim's wife over dinner one night in Sherwood, Oregon, Mel shared with me about an organization called "Days for Girls." Days for Girls was started when a woman named Celeste inquired about what girls in India do when they ar...

Thus far all of my donations have been to ongoing needs, but this one came to my attention yesterday as an immediate need. Just last week 2 children's homes were closed down in Baja due to not being able to meet a compliance that was created on the spot during a surprise inspection, so I have great compassion for the immediacy of this need in Rwanda. Please help if you are able! From Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC):      Friends in Rwanda have an urgent need to raise funds following a decree by the government that they must install lightning rods on all their buildings before the end of March. This comes after several fatal lightning strikes affecting churches, schools and other buildings. Lightning storms are very common in Rwanda.      To meet the requirements, Rwanda Yearly Meeting needs to buy and install 35 lightning rods at a cost of around £400 each (about $565 U.S.). Without financial support from Friends in other countries...

One of the things I love about this 40-40-40 project is learning about local organizations that my friends support. There are many well-known organizations that do great work around the globe, but the more well-known an organization is, the more likely they are to have large sources of funding. It's great when an organization can impact a ton of people, but it can at times overshadow those organizations that are grass roots, right here in our communities, doing just as good (or even better because they are able to focus their services) as those big names.  I learned about one of those organizations when I asked my friends Shane and Buffy Rider about Wounded Warrior Project. Shane and I went to high school together, and he later met his wife while serving in the military. Shane served in the army from 1998-2004, and Buffy from 1999-2007. They were stationed in Ft. Polk, Louisiana. Buffy was also stationed in Hawaii (where my aunt was stationed years ago!). Shane spent t...