So Long Ordinary

So....I haven't blogged in, um, nearly a year and a half.  I know.  I hear about it all the time.  I've abandoned you in a most inconsiderate way. For those of you who know our story, you realize that nothing tragic happened -- but life certainly did. I always hate it when bloggers decide to stop blogging and never tell me what happened.  It's like a book that ends without tying up the loose ends.  Some call those cliffhangers, but I call it rude.  I'm left wondering what on earth happened, and my imagination gets carried away, and I worry over strangers I've come to know and love. Sorry to do that to you. I never said an official good-bye because, well, I didn't want to!  I wanted to leave the door open on the off chance that someday, I might pick this habit back up again. This little home on the interwebs means something to me. I couldn't totally give it up, I couldn't completely say good-bye. So here I am and...I think I'd like to come back.  M...

A few weeks ago, I had an opportunity to go along with Sean on a survey trip interior.    I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into, but I'd been wanting to go interior for a long time. We live in a pretty modern city that is nothing like the villages Sean flies to each day, and I wanted to see that world, meet those people. This was a crazy trip to volunteer to go on, and if I'd known what I was getting into, I'd have said "no way!"  I decided to go rather spontaneously and then spent the next three days freaking out.  I didn't let myself talk myself out of it, though, and I'm glad I didn't.   This trip changed my life. A bit too dramatic?  Maybe.  But I'm telling you that three weeks later, I'm  still  processing what I saw and experienced on that trip.   We flew deep into "the heart of Borneo"  to check the river for possible future MAF service in one of the most isolated villages in Central Kalimantan (a 2.5 hour trip upriv...

Last week, we needed a little something special.  Our regular homeschool routine was feeling a little dull and lifeless, so I decided it was time for a tea party. When you have little girls, tea parties are the easiest go-to cure for whatever - for bad days or grumpy attitudes or boredom or celebration.  It always works.    We whipped up some scones (and added chocolate chips, of course) and some Ginger Lemon tea. I put on some peaceful music to play.  We donned our favorite dresses, brought the dollies to the table, and set out our nicest tea set.  A flowery sheet was our tablecloth.  I pulled some of our favorite poetry books off the shelf and we took turns reading poems to one another, giggling at silly lines and talking together about what the poem might be saying.   We didn't linger too long.  It started to get hot and our dresses began to feel itchy.  But when we went back to normal life - cleaning up our mess, tackling math and sp...

Without a whole lot of other perks or forms of entertainment, we get pretty excited about new restaurants opening in our city.  Even better is when the restaurant wants to cater to homesick foreigners as well as introduce fun local foods. Our neighbors recently opened a new restaurant and it's by far the best place in town now.  They make a pretty stinking amazing Mie Tarik  or homemade, pulled noodles that you can watch them make right in front of you.  Since we've eaten there, they've added fajitas, nachos, and burgers to their menu and we hear it's all good.  Can you say "giddy?!" When we first tried out the new place, we were surprised to see that they have a real, wood-fired pizza oven.  Their pizza has...real cheese!  In a town where the closest thing we've had to a order-out pizza was a weird pizza crust smothered in a sweet ketchup sauce and topped with fake cheese and hot dogs, this is a big deal.  We make pizza at home every week bu...

When I was growing up, my parents always brought my sister and I along on their anniversary dates.  The four of us would dress up and head out together for a fancy dinner.  We celebrated what God had done - this family that He had held together through many storms. I’ll never forget that bitter cold February morning 10 years ago when Sean and I loaded our own little family up into the car to head to the airport - first to MAF headquarters, then to Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, and eventually on to Indonesia.  As we turned out of their driveway after a frantic and emotional morning, the hard lump in my chest suddenly exploded as I realized the date – my parent’s anniversary.  With a bitter swallow, I knew that the new normal for us would not include being together on February 19.  There have been a few special years.  I surprised my parents for their 40 th year together, bringing my toddler and newborn on an ill-advised (but worthwhile) journey from Ecuador....

Some days, my Indonesian language skills are woefully inadequate for the conversations I'm having.  Okay, most days.  Ugh!  I wish there was a way to transplant what I actually mean into the brains of the people I'm conversing with...or that I'd wake up with a miraculously improved Indonesian vocabulary that would flow from my mouth freely, elegantly, and perfectly pronounced.  That'd work too.  As it is, I blubber along, feeling like a huge goofy dork.  Because I am.  There's really no getting around this. Granted, I am suddenly having deeper conversations on subjects I've never spoken of in Indonesian before.  I should be happy that things are going deeper, that I'm being allowed into a deeper level of knowing and connection with my Indonesian friends.  But instead, I just feel dorky.  They are pouring out their hearts and I'm saying things like "Well, that's hard."  or "I don't know." or "What does that mean?" or ...

Where to start?   Madison and I were just chatting about some visitors from the States coming to our house tomorrow.  This is a couple that does Member Care for MAF and just wants to spend some time getting to know us and see what life is like for us here. We're looking forward to having them.  When I told Maddie that the guests are arriving tomorrow she said, "So, when I wake up there will just be people with big noses standing outside my door?"  Ummm... I had to ask why she thinks these people will have big noses (she hasn't met them yet) and she said, "Because they're Americans!"   We've been back in Indonesia for four months!  It's been a rough adjustment back to life here.  I think we're finally getting there, though. Honestly, we just got too spoiled on furlough. Those things we were used to before furlough (heat, humidity, ants, separation from loved ones, crazy driving) are taking some time to get used to again.  Homeschool has b...

Reading over this post, I realized it sounds awful whine-y and complain-y.  But I'm leaving it because, not only is it simple honesty, I want others to understand that as adventurous and wonderful as the life of a missionary really is, it also comes with plenty of hard days.  It would be dishonest and unfair to only portray the good stuff.  In the end, you'll see I'm better now and feeling far less like a petulant two year old.  But it's a process... You know when you have so much to say that you can't say anything at all? Yeah. We arrived back into Indonesia about 8 or 9 days ago and it has been pretty much chaos ever since. We were welcomed back so well by our team here and we feel so blessed by the friendships and people here as we pick back up where we left off.  We spent several days getting our house in order and it feels just like home again.  There have been long, hard days, fun parties, lots of laughter, and fun moments of joy as we get back into o...

So...guess who got their Indonesian work visas?! It's been a whirlwind since we got the word about a week ago that our visas were in.  We have booked tickets for September 19.  Our passports arrived in the mail yesterday, all freshly stamped with our new visas and ready to go.  We've been in the throes of packing, which we are mostly finished with now. And just like that, the chaos has begun, the emotions have been multiplied, our lives go into the upheaval of transition.   Oh, this missionary life.  It has never been boring or easy.  It has never been without its sacrifices and pain...or its joys and rewards.   And it sure does require a lot of suitcases, trunks, duffels, and space saving vacuum bags!

About a week and a half ago, we should have been on a jet plane, headed back to our home, life, and ministry in Indonesia.  Um.  We didn't go. No visas. Visa purgatory. At the same time, this delay has been just what we needed.  It has given us a few days to rest, to recover from all the craziness of our furlough travels.  It has provided us with extra time to deal with a medical issue (more on that later).  It has freed up a weekend for camping with my family and for being able to see my niece off to college. It provided us a chance to see our friends and mentors whose influence brought us to MAF as they prepare to head back out on a new assignment themselves.  It has given us a little more time so we could go visit Sean's cousin, finally visit the Denver museum of Natural History, and see Sean's sister and our brother-in-law again.  It gave us a weekend to drive out to eastern Kansas to see my Grandma Jean (a precious weekend with her, by the way) an...

I don't think I've ever had this long of a hiatus from blogging.  This furlough has been all about doing and living and stealing moments of rest.  As a result, you've probably noticed that Sean and I have both been very quiet on our blogs.  We're coming up for air, finally, and we'll hopefully get you all caught up on the past few months as we reflect on it all ourselves.  Sean is catching up with TONS of really great pictures from our furlough time, so be sure to check into his blog regularly.   This has been one heck of a furlough.  There has been lots of travel, training, memorable trips, unforgettable experiences, blessed times with supporters and supporting churches, and so much more.  We probably didn't get as much rest as we may have liked but that's hard to do when you have so many people you want to see and so much you want to do with them.  So, we've been living it up!  We've been " Carpe-ing the Diem " as Sean and I like to say...

Sean's been gone to Spokane for training in the Kodiak for almost two weeks and we're missing him something terrible!  Praise the Lord, we are DONE with our homeschool year and the girls and I are hitting the road this weekend to head up to Nampa where we'll meet up with Sean at MAF headquarters.  It'll be fun to hang out at the MAF apartments until Sean finishes up some more training and then as a family we will drive back to Colorado by way of Yellowstone, the Tetons, and maybe a few more National Parks if we can. More nature, more camping!  Hooray! These are the last of my favorite family pictures from our camping trip in Moab.  Ahhh...such great memories to treasure.  Sean also has some awesome scenery shots but I'll let him share them on his own blog.   Landscape Arch Pine Tree Arch Love thems.... Her joy is pretty contagious! Running down a steep hill of sand...can you think of anything more fun for kids?   See?  Contagious Joy.

We did a little more exploring this time in Moab.  Our girls are able to do a lot more climbing and they were far more excited about things like petroglyphs and dinosaur footprints than they were last time we camped in Moab.  Family trips keep getting more and more fun with these three! Okay, so we found these petroglyphs because we accidently veered off the trail to see the dino prints.  But, look what we got to see up close!  Awesome! They really are as tough as they look.  ;-) Strong in pink. Aha!  There are the dino prints! We also found Onion Creek - this was off the beaten path, outside of Arches and by far our favorite place.  We followed this creek for quite a ways through the rocks.  Stunningly beautiful. I told you these girls are tough.  Look at them holding this rock up!

Found these older photos from about a month ago of the girls riding horses.  This is getting to be a fairly regular occurrence around here and the girls are loving it.  Especially Brooklyn, who is a down-home country cowgirl of the first order.  She's in her element here....though, with a lot yet to learn!  She may or may not have fallen off a mule the other day.  At first she was really upset that it happened (no physical hurt other than a little stiffness the next day) but when I informed her of the fact that ALL cowgirls have to have their first rodeo at some point...and also related several of my own experiences on horses when I was a child, she was just plain proud of her (mis)adventure.  I'm just proud of her tenacity and cowgirl-ness.   I'm proud of all my little cowgirls!  And thankful for a Daddy/Grandpa so willing to share this incredible family legacy.