Category: Ethos
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Family Planning
Photo cred: Valerie Hibler Photography. Though we live 14 hours apart, she’ll always be our family photographer. Consider yourself lucky if you live in Oregon. I have a sibling-set of cousins, exactly my age, whom I have always looked forward to connecting with at family reunions. Their mother gave birth to the first, and less…
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Watchful & Thankful
I vividly recall the fist time I read my favorite passage of scripture… In the back seat of Husband’s Jeep Grand Cherokee, squeezed next to our four month old firstborn, and yakking it up with my sister on a lose-your-mind-road-trip from Salem, Oregon to the tippity-top of Vancouver Island, British Colombia. It was an annual…
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When You’re Funding An Adoption…
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: International adoption is crazy expensive. We have a few friends who have quietly, privately funded their adoption solely from their personal savings. More often, however, adoption becomes a true community effort, with family and friends rallying and supporting adoptive families: participating in fundraisers, providing grant reference letters,…
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Learning From My Kids
One of the coolest things about being a parent is the opportunity to learn from our children. God has used motherhood to teach and refine me a million times over. Like this kid. She’s turning six this week. Already, she teaches me. One of the things I admire most about her is her unbridled zeal…
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Blessing in Secret: a May Day Tradition
Around this time each year I find myself especially nostalgic, particularly missing my late Great Grandma. I remember her skillful paring of apples and pears she grew in her modest orchard each time I fumble to peel one. I recall the fruity array of Crush soda perpetually stocked in her garage fridge each time I pass them…
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Love Thy Neighbor
I do. I love our neighbors. I don’t believe in luck, but we seriously hit the neighbor jackpot when we moved into our new house in Bozeman. It’s almost “as if” it was providential. (It totally was.) It wasn’t more than 20 minutes after we pulled our moving and mini vans into the driveway last August…
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Cocooning & Christmas. They’re kind of related.
A question we’ve fielded repeatedly this winter is if we’d be going home to Oregon for Christmas. We prayerfully determined that we would NOT travel for the holidays, nor for the first six months of having moved to our new home. In addition to a thirst for a new adventure and a desire for a…
