Insights on Spiritual Health and Nutrition From Rocket

• If you eat all of your vegetables, your boobs will go away.
• Jesus has a hole in his heart that needs to be filled with broccoli.
• Jesus made drive-thrus and loves them.
• He also loves vitamins and protein.

An Update On Charlotte

This weekend, we decided it was time to release Charlotte from captivity. Although we enjoyed our time with her and her babies, we thought that she might be happier raising them in the wilderness (actually, to tell the truth, there was one member of our family that wasn't exactly "tolerant" of her differences). So we drove a couple blocks from our house, into the mountains, and set her free. I laid her down on a rock, and we all said our goodbyes. I could tell that even that one family member (I wont mention any names) was getting emotional during the fairwell. Then we walked back to our car and buckled the tearful kids into the car and before driving away, that one family member and I decided to go back and say one last goodbye. But she was gone. I haven't heard from her since then, but I imagine that she is happily carrying around her quickly growing offspring around on her back... occassionally eating one or two... but being a good mom for the most part. Before she knows it, they will be big enough to crawl off her back and start lives of their own. I can only hope that one of them will come back to visit me. And if they do, I will catch them and trap them and release them a month or two later.

This is Charlotte on the evening that we released her.

Hello, Kitty.

While I was in Colorado, with Rocket, for my mom's birthday party, Matt stayed behind with Roxanne. He spent the weekend romancing her in every way. They went on dates, snuggled, and then he bought her a kitten. When I came home, I met the new family member that no one knew much about. No one knew his name, his age, or even if he was a he or she. But Roxanne didn't care, and Daddy was her most favorite person in the whole world now... well, except for Kitty. We still haven't named the little rascal, but here were the kids' ideas. Roxanne came up with: KittyMine, MineKitty, NoNoNotRocket'sKitty, DaddyGetItForMe, and ILoveDaddyMoreThanMommyNow. Rocket came up with: Booty, Jerry, Jack, Booty, Pirate, PooPoo, Hello Kitty, and Booty. Feel free to cast your vote.

Itsy Bitsy Spiders

About a month ago, the kids and I discovered a wolf spider hiding in the rocks in our front yard. She was about an inch and a half long and was carrying an egg sack attatched to her abdomen. At first we thought that she looked scary, but then we put our prejudices behind us and welcomed her into our home. It's a good thing that we did that, because we discovered that she had a fun loving, yet sometimes shy personality. Knowing that she had babies on the way, we tried to feed her well. Usually we would find flies buzzing around in our windows and catch them by spraying them with hair spray and then killing them. Charlotte (that's what we named her) seemed to enjoy the flies and never complained about the taste of hairspray. Sometimes we would feed her other spiders too, but she was not as eager to eat these. After a couple of weeks, we started to grow impatient with the anticipation of babies spiders and began to think that maybe they were never coming. I researched wolf spiders on the internet and discovered that sometimes they will wrap pepples or shells up in an eggsack and carry it around as if it is babies, but really it is not. I began to wonder if Charlotte had done that and faked the whole pregnancy just for the attention. I decided to wait a little longer before giving up on her. Sure enough, sometime on Sunday night, Charlotte had her babies- around 200 of them. They crawled out of the egg sack and now she carries them all around on her back. They completely cover her entire body except her eyes and mouth and legs. She is a devoted mother to her babies. I will probably release her back into the wild soon, because I'm not going to start a spider ranch. On second thought, maybe that could be a good business venture. Anyone interested in a good natured baby wolf spider?

This is a picture of Charlotte carrying around her hundreds of babies-click on the picture to look closer (they are tiny)!

The Story of My Mom

This last weekend, I traveled back to Colorado for my mom's surprise 50th birthday party. In honor of the special occasion, I put together this little story and displayed it at the party. Now I am posting it here for you to enjoy too!

Memoirs of an adventure to Oregon

This post is called a memoir because it is going to be that long. But also, because memoirs are the really cool thing right now, so I thought I needed to have one of my own. The post is called an adventure because it is about our trip to Oregon. Don't mistake it for a vacation. The word "vacation" implies that there will be some sort of a break from your regular daily duties, and for me, there was no break. In fact, many of my daily responsibilities only intensified. Also, a vacation implies that you are going to rest, and that rarely occurred on this trip. In addition, an adventure involves exploration, and that's what we did on this trip. I was amazed at all the nooks and crannies that the great Lord included in his wonderful artwork of the earth. And I discovered that within every nook, there is another nook. And inside that crevice, there is another one. This world is like a great big fractal for our bodies and minds to explore.

Our trip began with a lot of driving:

Our first stop was in Bend, Oregon, where we discovered an extraordinary lava cave. It is about a three mile tunnel underground formed by flowing lava, many years ago. We thought that there are probably lots of other caves around there too, but we just don’t know about them because they don’t open themselves up out of the ground. But, who knows. We hiked in about a mile, at which time both kids experienced a panic attack and wanted out of the cave immediately. We tried to explain that the only way out was the way that we came in, no reasoning was useful, and we ended up dragging them out. And, by the way, a screaming child sounds much louder inside an echoing cave. We had to carry in a lantern, as there is absolutely no source of light inside the cave. I imagined that it would be really cool to live deep inside the cave, if there were some way to get furniture and electricity down there. It would be really cozy to have a soft couch and plush carpet up against the stone walls. I would probably hang some fine art up on the walls too. The ruggedness of the walls against the refined linens would give the home a really inviting atmosphere. While we were in the cave, my camera ran out of batteries which really ticked me off, because the way the lantern cast towering shadows onto the walls of the cave would have made really cool pictures. But I did manage to squeeze one last picture out of my camera. This is Matt, holding our lantern:

The next day, we finally reached the ocean, which was so exciting. Like myself, I know many people feel drawn to the ocean. I was trying to figure out why that was. I think that its power gives us a small glimpse of the Divine and its enormity gives us a sense of God's omnipotence. It shapes rock like soft salt water taffy, and you can sense its presence without even seeing it. I thought about this a lot during my time near the ocean.

The kids found a piece of drift wood that they pretended was a pirate ship. They sang, “YO HO HO”.

The next day we visited the Tillimook cheese factory. The best part about this was the free cheese samples.

The next day we drove over the Columbia River into Washington and I had never been so far north before. In Long Beach, Washington, the kids met a friendly clown named Taylor. He was really tall, and the kids looked up to him.

That night we made an enormous bonfire on the beach. The blazes from our fire were almost as big as the flames of hell. It was hot.

On the next day, we went to my favorite place in all of Oregon- Hug Beach. Here, I found the most rewarding geocache I have ever found- not because of what was in it, but because of where it was located. It was on a cliff edge at the top of the water fall that flows down to the beach and had the most beautiful lookout I’ve ever seen. This is Hug Beach:
Hug Beach is the kind of beach I would like to be stranded on. If it were on a deserted island, I would stay there and hope I was never found. I would sleep in one of the caves and shower in the waterfall. I would swim in the tide pools and make friends with the starfish. I would have to become accustomed to eating the little crustaceans that burrow themselves in the sand. Ideally, I would be stranded there with Matt, but I don’t want to ask for too much. Here are some starfish we met:

So, I don’t know how to end a memoir… because honestly, I’ve never read one. But I do know is that you’re not supposed to lie, and I didn’t do that. So, we ended up coming back home, and that’s where I am now. I have some memories and some pictures- but none that compare to the real thing, and that always frustrates me. But hopefully reading this memoir has been interesting enough to give you a glimpse of our adventure to Oregon.

School's Out!

Today was Rocket's last day at preschool for the year. He was very emotional, and refused to say goodbye to anyone because he said that he would be going back next week. He cried on the way home and then decided he wanted to go back to say goodbye to everyone, but they were all gone by then. The preschool has been a blessing to me because of the love they showed Rocket. I brought the director of box of chocolates to say thank you, and she said "well you shouldn't be thanking me! We didn't do anything for YOU", and I said, "Well, anything you did for Rocket, you really did for me". On the way home I realized that I really understood what Jesus meant when he said "if you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me." Becuase we are his children, he feels blessed when we are blessed.
Anyways, as another way of thanking the preschool for all they did this year, I painted a mural for their new classroom. I finished just in time for the end of the year. The project was really fun, becuase no one seems to appreciate my artwork more than preschoolers. I also really learned that doing artwork for a good cause is sometimes much more rewarding than doing it for money. Here are the pictures: