and because it's important to me:

the latest from my garden

A Duvi-boy update

playing with Landon in the yard

look at those swimmin' muscles!

Lindsey has requested a recent picture of our little buddy. so, here i took these a few minutes ago! We LOOVE him! He'll be one year old on May 5. so we're pretty sure he's 'bout full grown.

Happy Birthday!

Courtney took me to a place in the mall to paint pottery for my birthday! It was so much fun! This is a picture of Courtney with her plate.

what kind of coke would you like, miss soda pop?

click on image to view larger.


so.... what do you say?

Landon (OBVIOUSLY) says "coke". i'm not sure what i say. i used to say "soda pop", but that really annoyed landon - not sure if i still say it or not.

Spring came knockin' at my door

see the progress of my "garden" compared to a few weeks ago!


our yellow house makes it even spring-ey-er

BUY ONE GET ONE TREE

Just a reminder: If you buy a pair of Chaco's April 25-27 the arbor day foundation will plant a tree in our national forest. click here for participating retailers

Landon in New York

We have had an exciting weekend! Landon's parents came into Chicago to spend time with Justin and Anna and their boys (and us!) as Justin was presenting a paper at a philosophy conference in Chicago. At the same time, Landon flew up to New York to present a paper to a conference put on the The Society of Christian Philosophers at Niagara University. .

It was a very short trip and he says his paper went really well. He brought home some neat pictures of Niagara Falls!

Spending time with family is WONDERFUL!!! Our adorable little nephews grow so quickly and develop such unique and precious personalities. Wow, we just love them so much! and it is wonderful to be with loving family. i am grateful for our relationships with justin and anna and Charleen and Mike - they are such an encouragement in our lives and also really challenge us. I am so grateful that they love God and love us! We are so blessed!

april in africa

just thinking of africa a lot lately. especially that april is such an important month for the kenyans that we love. i've been reading through the blog we kept while we were there, and i miss africa. i miss the children.

the perfect morning

i like days that start like this. and over 60-degrees outside, with brisk winds but lots of sunshine. and a home-made caramel macchiato with colossians. hm....

oh, p.s., check out the "new" logo

in case you didn't know...

so, if you're a starbucks regular (like many of you are) and your local barista hasn't informed you yet, then i will be the privileged one! if you buy a starbucks card and register it online (or register an existing card), then when you get your soy chai, your soy will be free. if you want a vanilla-latte, your syrup choice will be free - EVERY TIME! and what the picture above doesn't tell you, along with the great benefits it already displays, you will have 2-3 hours free internet each day in our cafes with a registered card.

i know, i've never paid with a card before, but this is good enough reason to put some mullah on a card, register it, and then just keep refilling your starbucks card. the money goes to the same place, anyway. and, quite honestly, it might help you budget your 'bucks intake - like, only spend $30.00 a month at starbucks, so you can only refill your $30.00 balance once a month! i'm calling your husbands about this idea, by the way....

Can a Christian be a Religious Pluralist?

We attended a philosophical debate last night between Landon's advisor, Harold Netland, and World-renowned pluralist, Paul Knitter. See the debate here.

Duvick meets Mr. Beaver...again

I took Duvick on a run with me this afternoon and we ran into our second beaver, in the same river, but not on the same trail as previous beaver sighting. Luckily, i saw the beaver before duvick did and had duvick on heal while we passed him. Duvick was whinning and shaking because he could smell the beaver (but still couldn't see him very well), so i put him on his leash and walked him up to the beaver. Luckily, we have yet to meet any beavers who are territorial, aggressive, or rabid.

colorado "fever"

...I go into the desert
Thistle, till I'm stopped
Like an obsidian statue.
The slow rise of below
Sea level to the Rockies,
Where I sleepwalk among
Headshops with false doors
Outside Red Rocks. I weigh my life
Against the evening sky
Orange as dinosaur dung
In scraggly ravines,
Before putting an ear to Cheyenne Mountain
To divide Ute horses,
Chief Joseph.
...Some nights I lie
Awake, staring into a promised land.
A cold wind out of Wyoming
Works my mind, like waves
Against stone, sand and willpower.
I don't know if I can ride
Out the slack, can just float
Along a precipice of indifference.
I can't trust my hands with loved ones,
The drum under my skin
Driven by a burning field. Trees
Stand like a death squad
Hemmed in by juniper and yucca.
Wanderlust, beds where
Unhealing is a religion.
I pray for those who work
Earth down to a blank stare
Up at the Colorado sky...

excerpts of "Fever" - Yusef Komunyakaa

Our first days of Spring

Yay! This weekend, the skies have opened up and we have been rejoicing! Yesterday temperatures were in the mid-sixties and I cracked open the windows and the storm-windows from their frozen positions of winter, creaking open the locks and using all my strength to pry them open and let the fresh air blow through my house - for the first time in 6 months. It was BEAUTIFUL! and i got dirty in the flower boxes around my house, raking the dead leaves from the soil so the little arms of my daffodils could reach higher! And i was so pleased to discover many more things growing that i had not planted in the fall. i'm excited to see what they become. my guess is tulips also and then some leafy thing, with a pretty peppery taste (but landon told me not to eat them). so, we'll see. yay!

i also went on my first run of the year yesterday. it wasn't long - i just ran until the trail was covered in flood-water. in these last few days, i have seen life everywhere! our silver maples are starting to bud in our yard (see new banner), and i saw a snake, heard frogs, swallowed bugs, beheld trumpeter swans, etc...

today i was thinking to myself that i am so grateful to be surrounded by wetlands. if it weren't for the wetlands surrounding our town, i know that we would be completely surrounded by development for miles and miles. though in the flooding of last fall i was shunning the wetlands because they bred the mosquitoes that unceasingly tormented us for weeks. but now...now that the spring time is here and the flood waters are only melting snow and not breeding insects at an exponential rate, i am so very grateful for their presence in our town! it is through the wetlands that we were able to ski, run, walk, and will be taking our canoe (once we get another paddle!)

another (or perhaps finally, the first) matter of importance: Landon had another opportunity to present a paper yesterday. He presented his paper, "An Evaluation of Christian Arguments Against Human Reproductive Cloning," at an annual conference put on by The American Academy of Religion. I was unable to attend because i was working yesterday, so i am not able to give my unbiased opinion. but landon said that it went quite well and he said that he got to have some great conversations with some very interesting people.

so glad spring is here!

For the love of Chaco

Chaco's are my favorite shoes that i have ever owned. Even more than my kangaroo-leather screw-in soccer cleats or the cinderella shoes i wore to prom jr. year.

MY Chaco's:

have walked the beaches of thailand
played soccer with the irish on the san diego shore
braved early mornings scouting elephants and lions
imprinted permanent tan-lines on my freckled feet
have walked through the streets of curacao
been fingered by 30 limuru orphans
survived white-water-rafting the nile river
hiked the trails of alaska
dangled on the back of my climbing harness
carried the dust of mexican dirt
been the victim of my puppy's lunch
ran from baboons in the african rift valley
loved the colorado snow
remembers the night landon asked me to marry him
sat beside a kentucky campfire
trudged through guatemalan villages
been fly-fishing with my father
hiked beautiful hawaii to behold pitiful waterfalls

they've joined me around the world and have been with me longer than my husband. they have captivated me so that i wish to wear nothing else (on my feet) ever again.

Chaco is a Colorado company. That's right! And they are SO socially and environmentally conscious.

if you don't have your own reasons for loving chaco, here are a few that might inspire you:
- If you buy ANY chaco footwear this year over april 25,26,27 weekend (arbor day), one tree will be planted in western colorado for EVERY pair sold! (am i inspiring you to take the initiative to buy your first (second, or third) pair?)
- they are about making the smallest impact on the environment as possible: paying their employees to BIKE to work, encouraging you to re-sole your shoes instead of throw them away,
- if you bring in an old (but not thrashed) pair of shoes to participating stores, you will get 20% off a pair of new chaco's - they will recycle your shoes by cleaning and fixing them and then sending them off to people without shoes - maybe they'll encourage some of our african friends to turn in their tire-tread for a pair of nike's.
- they donate 3% of their profits to organizations committed to caring for the planet and its people.

welp, that's just a few great reasons to wear chaco.

if you twist my arm...

Last week, my new friend from work came to me and said, "hey, i'm doing this triathlon in june, do you want to do it with me?"

I quickly, without any hesitation replied, "Nooooo!"

After which she just looked at me, and was not satisfied with my answer. welp. if you know much at all, you know i am a people pleaser and a push-over. and beyond that, am really inspired by others, especially when i lack my own self-discipline. so. there you have it. if i can come up with $70.00 and a bike on which to train, i guess i'm training for this thing. but, as far as triathlons go, this one is pretty easy, it's even called a "sprint". so.

oh! and it supports Ovarian Cancer Research. That is awesome.

This was me today after my visit to the eye doctor. Gosh, one of the difficult things about moving so much is not being able to (ever) see the same doctor. Each doctor i have to give my whole story to and they want to do full examinations of me each year, blech. but anyways, this lady was my first ever female doctor and she was really nice. And now i have purchased a 6mos. supply of contacts. boring.

but, i did feel really funny wearing about one of those plastic sun-guards underneath my prescription glasses. and because i didn't have short-sighted vision for over an hour and i had light sensitivity issues for 3 hours, i couldn't come home and return to the computer to work, so i got to put in a movie!

"pride and prejudice" has become one of my all-time favorite movies.

lately i have had a HUGE URGE to escape here and live in the wild. I just want to live in some hut (please DO NOT picture thoreau here) in the mountains with my husband where we can start having kids and i can plant my own garden and we can work fun jobs to get by - we won't need much! oh, to walk through the woods and the wild flowers without guarding the time on my watch. i would love to just walk and think and sing and pray and not plan it into my day. even here, the weather is a bit too cold and too wet and the area is a bit too populated to find a place with such peace. my empty womb has been haunting me more lately. wow, that was awkwardly honest. well, it has.

new subject: callie asked about starbucks, so i shall indulge. i love working at starbucks. in fact, in the previous paragraph when i was talking of living simply off of fun jobs, i was thinking that coffee-making would be my choice of fun job. lately, people who were hired after me are getting promotions to shift-supervisor roles which is sort of weird, but i'm proud of them. if starbucks was my primary place of employment i might pursue that as well. but, because i work the minimum hours required to keep my insurance and i am picky about only working in the morning and i want all the time off that i want, i wouldn't be a good candidate for someone with a leadership role. plus, my other job gives me enough to stress about. starbucks, for me, is just...fun. some days i dread waking at 3:30am and after a few too many days in a row of that i am cranky and tired, but i really in all am so thankful! i love that both of my jobs allow me to pretty much make my own schedule. i really love my co-workers and i enjoy our regulars. i like the quite of 4am and the frantic bustle of 6 - 10am. i enjoy a perfectly steamed and crafted latte, and i love telling new customers about our coffee beans and our beverage options. i just really enjoy sharing the joy of coffee with others! (now if only i can get so evangelistic about God!).

what is funny, though, is on days like today, when i wake at 8:30am, i wake with an awful headache. yes, i am coffee-dependant (addicted). so when my body is used to having it's daily allotment of coffee by 8am and i am still sleeping, it lets me know that it's not happy about it.