2nd Annual Bike Ride to the City

Today Jason and I ride our bikes downtown in what is now officially a tradition.

After dropping the girls at school we hop on our bikes under a crisp late summer sky, ride through our neighborhood to Evanston, and then seamlessly wind through Chicago's Rogers Park until hopping on the Lakeshore Drive bike trail. 

University of Blogspot

Next month marks the fourth anniversary since the very first post appeared on "Little Family in the Big City."  Four years of blogging the ends and outs, the mundane and the dramatic, have passed.  Four years.   The  time it takes to earn an undergraduate degree.  The time it takes to move across the Continental Divide, help plant a church, and move back across the Continental Divide to an entirely different city in an entirely new region of the country.

Since I consider myself the nostalgic type (why not put that History major to use somehow), I thought a moment down memory lane was deserved.

Where were you four years ago?  Consider the following to give yourself some perspective...

In September 2007

• Facebook had only been available to the public for about a year
• The IPhone just hit the market months before in January 
• Netflix was experimenting with streaming movies instead of just mailing them
• The Wii had been on the market less than a year
• No major movies had yet been made about a blog (Julie & Julia was released in 2009- I'm not sure how she beat out Little Family in the Big City.  Still trying to figure that one.)
• George Bush was still in the White House

Back to School

It was back to school on Friday for Rynn and Eleanor.  I didn't get any good pictures...everyone was moving too fast with too much excitement, and the coffee cup in my other hand didn't really help either. I've posted a few out of focus shots for you grandparents :). 

 For the first time ever both girls are in the SAME school at the SAME time.  We can walk there in five minutes waving at friends along the way. 

No Training Wheels!

Watch out world.

The training wheels are off.

an L ticket and a camera

Chicago is a city of neighborhoods.  Dozens of them.  This fall my exploration begins.  With an L ticket in hand and a camera in my pocket I want to discover these neighborhoods and share them with you. Greektown. Chinatown. Little Italy. Little Village (Mexican). Polish. Ukrainian Village. Bucktown. Wicker Park. Gold Coast.  Each neighborhood is a culture unto its own with restaurants, bakeries, museums, and architecture unique as the people who settled there.

If you have some suggestions for me...

Central School Garden

This week the girls and I are helping out a little in their school garden.  Not much to do, really, as other teachers and PTA parents have worked hard to maintain it all summer.   We just get to water the vegetable garden.

Maybe do a nature study of the flowers and creatures we find.

Flying High

Some things in life

just don't get old.

A good hug.

Chips & Salsa. 

Lake Michigan.

Chocolate chip cookies. 

Being thrown in the air by your daddy.

Again.

 And again.

And Again.

And maybe again again.

The View from Above

 Condo living takes some getting used to.  The greatest source of angst for my children is arguing over who gets to push the buttons in the elevator.  They have worked out a fair and equitable system- Eleanor gets the up/down buttons, Rynn gets any buttons with a number, and guests get to push all the buttons.  Fair enough.  But what about outdoor living?  The last few summer days have been gorgeous.  I'm still slightly pining for a yard and a garden.  But, for now, I'm setting my imagination on the potential our balcony holds.

Jason Climbs the Grand Teton

In celebration of turning forty (in November 2011)

 Jason climbed the Grand Teton in Jackson, WY last week with his old friend Ian.  

Ian and Jason were wilderness adventure guides together years ago.

 Both now are Presbyterian ministers.

 (is there something in that Colorado water???)

The Mountain

 The Man

The View

The Accommodations

The Evening Entertainment

(notice the shadow the mountains make as the sun sets behind them!)

The Final Climb

(don't worry Grammy...he's roped in)

The Summit with Ian

The View from the Top

Happy early 40th Jason!

I'm so proud of you :)!

The Mark Within Us

"What is the connection between the home we  knew and the home we dream? I believe that what we long for most in the home we knew is the peace and charity that we first came to experience there, and I believe that it is that same peace and charity we dream of finding once again in the home that the tide of time draws us toward.  The first home foreshadows the final home, and the final home hallows and fulfills what was most precious in the first."

- Frederick Buechner, The Longing for Home

"Joy is home, and I believe the tears in our eyes were more than anything else homesick tears.  God created us in joy and created us for joy, and in the long run not all the darkness there is in the world and in ourselves can separate us finally from that joy, because whatever else it means to say that God created us in his image, I think it means that even when we cannot believe in him, even when we feel most spiritually bankrupt and deserted by him, his mark is deep within us" (Buechner 128).

"We are moved by those precious moments when something holy seems to break through our lives both to heal us and to summon us to pilgrimage...as for what lies ahead, we can take great heart from St. Paul's words to the Corinthians that although now we see only through a glass darkly, there will come a day when we will see face to face and understand fully even as we are fully understood.  It is the nature of faith to look beyond itself- and beyond the doubts that must always exist in tension with it if it is a living faith- to a time on the far side of time when the holy dream is at last revealed to be reality and all that we take now for reality glimmers like a dream" (Buechner 170-1).

*These photos were taken on July 2 while sailing on Lake Michigan with some of our neighborhood friends.  The view of the city from the lake is so different from being in the middle of the intimidating skyscrapers.  The city appears almost quiet and majestic.  What an amazing experience!


** The quotes are from a book I read this summer by Frederick Buechner titled The Longing for Home. It is a helpful mediation on the idea that our longings and desires both for a nostalgic past and for a deep sense of home are really a longing for our eternal and final home.  Not all of the book is great nor would I completely agree with all his theology, but I like that he identifies and addresses our deep longings for joy, faith, hope, fellowship, and ultimately HOME.