Home for the Holidays...

While most of you were raising a glass and toasting to a very happy St. Patty’s day, Kyle and I headed north to celebrate Christmas-yes, that’s right, Christmas with his side of the family. With the pear trees in full blossom and the weather warm enough to drive with the windows down, we pulled wrapping paper down from the attic and wrapped up all of our gifts. You would think being 3 months behind schedule, we would have at least had the courtesy to mail our beloveds their gifts…but no, I’m afraid, we dropped the ball there, too. Ah, family; the small group of people in this world who are supposed to love us anyway. :) To make things a little more exciting we had to travel with our high maintenance dog. Overall, the trip went well with one major exception. We were cautiously guarded about how Oliver would behave with a crawling infant. As a small, protective and slightly neurotic dog, one just never knows. Much to our delight, biting and barking there was none! But, who would have thought, humping…yes, humping! there was plenty. Riley’s first Christmas and already the tab for future family therapy is beginning.

Besides the trauma with the dog, the impromptu holiday trip was good for the soul. Here were some of the holiday highlights:

The delectable chocolate fountain--which has my nomination to be a family tradition for years to come! It was chocolate heaven.
Riley—our one and only niece who was happy and adorable and makes our world a better place!
Drinks at Claddagh’s an Irish pub on St. Patty’s day with Jim and Lori. Good times. Good drinks. Good company!
Reuniting with Marcia & Greg and Jimmy & Eric. It’s true what they say, there’s no friends like old friends. They were the unexpected icing on the cake for our weekend home.









wonderfulpainfulhectic life

Today I talked with a good friend. It had been months since we were able to have a real phone conversation. Sure, we had sent the occasional email update which kept us formally in touch with the major events in each other’s lives but today we actually got to connect.

Here’s the difficult thing about distance and catching up with old friends: No matter how much you love them, if there’s been a substantial amount of time since your last real conversation, it’s almost always awkward at first. It takes a while to get a rhythm flowing-and many times, in our impatience for the awkwardness to go away, we hang up before we get to that place...the place where talk becomes real instead of rehearsed; the place where painful, wonderful, hectic life is shared for what it really is.

So, today our phone conversation began with ‘how have you been?’ and just as I’ve done a hundred times before, I updated my friend on life as I know it. She followed suit. We both talked rapidly, skipping along the surface and soon we were both fully updated & exhausted with the events of each other's past couple months. Just as we were about to wrap it all up for, quite possibly, another few months something wonderful happened. Our conversation dove to a different level and our hearts were exposed. I’m not sure what it was exactly. I don’t believe there was any particular question that drove us deeper, maybe we just needed to warm up and get comfortable with each other again. That’s one of the wonderful the things about good friends-especially those with which you share a great history-it’s always worth it to hang on until the conversation takes wings of it’s own. We evolve in our own corners of the world, so much so, that it almost becomes a bit frightening when old friends reunite. It’s almost as if we allow time and change to persuade us into believing the connection's been lost.

Today, I talked with a good friend. I can imagine life within the walls of her home and I see the depth and beauty of who she is and who she’s becoming in this big, busy world. She challenged me to believe; there was understanding in the silent pauses; and comfort in knowing the 'painfulwonderfulhectic' details of each other’s lives. As we poured ourselves out and into each other we were, of course, filled up. As I hung up the telephone I could barely remember the chatter we subjected each other to from the first 30 minutes of our conversation. To think, we nearly settled for that.

So here’s to good friends; to picking up the phone every once in a while; and to suffering through the awkward updates that must take place as old friends reunite. Here's to never settling for one dimensional, far from satisfying, relationship with each other. Here's to that familiar place good friends crave in conversation with each other, where real life is exposed & life itself feels better and brighter simply because it's shared.

'Suppose I really am Somebody?' -- M. Angelou


Okay, 'so what'’s the deal with the title?' you might be wondering...…No, I promise, this is not the cry of someone with zero self esteem or a passive attempt to get your attention! :) It was a question posed by Maya Angelou at a pivotel time in her life. One day she dared to believe that, maybe, it might be true. '‘Suppose I really AM somebody?' The day she allowed herself to believe that she was in fact, 'somebody', changed her life forever. She held her head up, she walked with confidence, and she gave her spirit a voice. She stumbled and made mistakes but because she saw her life with a purpose far greater than herself, she knew she was not meant for a life of defeat.

That's the kind of living I'm craving these days: bold; authentic; purposeful; free. Sometimes I forget I was created with purpose. Sometimes I forget I was meant to be free. But every day I'm learning...and somewhere, you are too.

I can't promise much about this site. Having never done anything like this before, I send this off knowing this might be the first and last entry ever written. Or, possibly, it will be a means to stay connected to those of you we rarely get to see due to distance or circumstance. Whatever the case, it will be a window into our lives-and we hope it will be a window into your's as well.