Little Family in the Big City

What would YOU do?

2012-01-29T21:43:00.002-06:00

What would YOU do for a deal?

Would you drive out to a convention center?

Pay $13 for parking?

Hand all your worldly possessions

to a complete stranger in blue sneakers

who then ties them up in a trash bag

and throws them under a table?

Would you stand in line for several hours?

Just for a chance to enter a warehouse

full of spandex and black tutus?

For thousands of Chicago women

(including yours truly)

the answer was YES.

For the first time ever in the United States

the yoga/fitness clothing line Lululemon

hosted a warehouse sale

right here in Chi town.

Okay, before I go any further let me back up a bit.

Last fall I did a little post called "Yoga is Hot."

In that post I mentioned a line of yoga wear

known as Lululemon, or as most say "Lu-Lu."

Let me give you a little analogy to help you understand.

Got it?

Lululemon has become iconic for yoga culture in the United States.

The expensive yoga wear can be seen on yoga butts from Seattle to New York and every SUV driving yoga mama in between. Their marketing is not just genius at selling tight fitting spandex that'll make any girl's backside look good. It is selling a religion. Enter any Lulu store, drop down a significant amount of cash, and you'll walk out with an unbelievable piece of quality yoga wear. Your new spandex will be packaged in a shiny red bag strategically decorated with feel good truisms typed in different fonts. The irony of the whole thing gets me every time, and I'd be tempted to scoff if I didn't like their pants so darn much. I still slightly want to gag when I read some of the tag lines such as

"Love is the new black"

"Living in the moment could be the meaning of life."

Really?

When I heard that Lululemon picked Chicago as the site of their first ever warehouse sale I wasn't surprised. After all, Chicago (and especially the surrounding suburbs known in these parts as "Chicagoland") is a corporate dream land. After living here now for 18 months I have a theory that Chicagoland is Corporate America's test market. The trends may start on the West Coast or in New York, but they get tested to go to the masses right here in the Middle. People in Chicagoland like having the latest trends, but unlike other places I've lived, folks don't really seem to care if everyone else is wearing/driving/drinking the exact same thing. It's a corporate dream world.

And when it comes to yoga pants, I'm not above it either.

First and only warehouse sale in the United States

by a company that has figured out -

how to put a uniform on women ages 20-40,

charge a lot of money for it,

and bring out thousands of people

to wait in three hour lines

just to try on their pants at a discount.

I was curious.

"Hurry! Run! Did you get that last hoodie??"

What's behind that black curtain?

That, my friends, was the mass changing room

where only 200 women were allowed at one time

to drop their drawers and try on the goods.

(You had to wait in line to get in there too)

This smiling gal was directing traffic

and very patiently instructing us

that we must be wearing underwear

in order to try on the pants.

I was going to take a picture inside the black curtain.

But then I thought I might get arrested.

Next to me a woman dropped her pants.

She looked up at me and said,

"Is this weird? This is weird. There are a lot of women in here."

But, after sliding on an 80% off pair of yoga pants,

she seemed to have gotten over it and asked,

"Do you think these pants make me look fat?."

The tutu rack.

I'll leave you tonight with my favorite Lulu quote

"Sweat Once a Day"

to which my husband responded,

"Don't we sweat all day every day?."

Thank you, Jason.

*All photos were taken on the sly with my phone...ie. the poor quality.

Winter Fun at the Lake

2012-01-15T17:38:00.000-06:00

A walk on the moon

A Bit of Sledding

An Icicle makes a fine Baseball Bat

Abominable Snowman Strikes Again

The First Real Snow of Winter

2012-01-12T20:46:00.000-06:00

Snow.
It's here.

But life doesn't stop in Chicagoland...

Hmmm...what to do first?

Eat snow?

Taste a snowflake?

Say Hi to a tree?

Put off homework to eat snow with friends?

Make a snow angel?

Fun.

A Snowy Day

2012-01-12T13:00:00.000-06:00

Some might say it is slightly dangerous to blog when you really have nothing about which to write. Whether it is the comfort of a four year habit or just because today feels so cozy, I sit down to write even though no words are pleading to be released from my mind. My blogging muse seems to have gone on her own little holiday and left me with a warm cup of Pitta tea you see pictured here. Those beautiful rose flowers mixed with mint and hibiscus are supposed to restore my Pitta energy and make me chill out and focus. I'll let you know.

A wet, heavy snow is falling outside and many Chicagoans are breathing a sigh of relief. The world is indeed returning to normal. The warm sunny temperatures we have been enjoying this winter are not "a sign of the end times" (as one person told me the other day). Nor are they a source of consternation anymore to those who live in this snowy cold climate out of principal. Yesterday a woman said to me, as we walked in t-shirts under bright blue skies and 55 degree temps to pick up our children, "I mean, really, this weather is playing with my head. It is supposed to be winter for God's sake!! If I wanted 55 degrees in January... I'd live in L.A." Okay. My theory has just been solidified. Midwesterners pride themselves on their endurance to survive and thrive in drifting, blowing snow and plummeting temperatures. Those long "sleeping bag" down coats separate us from the mere mortals who must choose more temperate places of existence.

If I step onto our balcony to do silly things like take a picture of my tea in the snow, I can hear the sounds of happy children on the playground drifting across the quiet blanket of snow. Forget dry sidewalks upon which you can run or ride a bike and sunny afternoons with no coat. My children want snow. They want those snow plows clearing the blacktop at school into mini mountains of fun for recess. They want to wear their new snow boots and pants to walk to school, gym, and recess. I'm raising my children in the Midwest. Weird. Cool, but still weird.

Not everyone is enjoying the snow. The city of Chicago's budget was enjoying our stretch of balmy weather. So far this winter, the city has spent SIX MILLION dollars less on snow removal compared to this time last year (read more HERE). Snow ain't cheap! But it sure is cozy.

Two Blogs

2012-01-04T09:28:00.000-06:00

I tend to be a bit behind in all things pop culture, in getting the joke, or hearing about books, movies, and music. So with that caveat I recommend two blogs I've recently discovered and thought you might enjoy too.

For Food:
101cookbooks
This is a well known blog many of you already enjoy. The brussel sprout recipe from yesterday made my mouth water. If someone can make my mouth water over brussel sprouts, I think they've got some skill. After all, it is January. We all need a bit of cleansing veggies, eh?

For you Bookish ones:
Take a peek at This Guy. Jason forwarded this blog to me yesterday, and I really enjoyed his post on short story recommendations. If you are interested in books, culture, theology, etc.. you might find it fun. I'm anxiously awaiting his favorite novel list of 2011.

I hope your new year is off to a great start. I'm a fan of January. Except for Christmas trees on the curbs (which make me sort of sad), January is refreshing in its lack of expectation. January gives the gift of time for my inner introvert to get a little air, enjoy a good book, a warm cup of tea, and maybe a nap.

2011

2011-12-30T17:05:00.001-06:00

I've had a word rumbling

around in my head the last few days.

Telos.

It is a Greek word I learned in seminary.

It means END-

but not just end like tonight is the end of another year and tomorrow we start all over again.

Rather, it is an end with a purpose. It is like the fulfillment of all things, the end of the story, the point of all this, the final answer to all the questions, the strivings, the wonderings of why we walk on this earth, the final fulfillment of all our aches. And it is bigger than us and our individual stories, but it is not complete without our individual stories. It is the answer to all the stories.

For most of the year the world tells us that we are just spinning in circles on this globe and that our tiny individual minutes, our own stories, don't really matter. "Let the Great World Spin!," they say.

And then New Year's Eve comes and every major network, newspaper, and periodical is devoted to a recap, a Best of, a Worst of, a most (you fill in the blank). Why? Because we humans want closure. We want to sum things up, tie them in tidy memory boxes, and look forward to hopes of change and newness that a new year brings. This is because deep down, in the fabric of our created beings, we know that our lives do matter. The years matter, even as they pass at warp speed, because we know that the miracle of our redemption and the redemption of the world has both already begun and is not yet complete. As you reflect back on your last year there are many days you cherish and some you'd like to forget. But all are significant, and they matter...

as do you
in this story God is writing.
Happy New Year.

And for some highlights from
the Little family's 2011.

Our FIRST winter in Chicago
which happened to be one of Chicago's
coldest and snowiest.

Celebrating our 10th Anniversary on the sands of

Tulum, Mexico

Enjoying seeing my brother for the first time in a few years
and meeting his Thai girlfriend Chompoo!

Getting the girls on skis for the first time
with Dad in Big Sky, MT

Going on a Colorado Backpacking Trip

with my sister-in-law Gretchen for the first time

Getting Braces ON

And Getting them OFF

(right before Christmas!)

Learning to Ride a Two Wheeler

And Learning to Read Independently

2011
wasn't all coconuts and snow skis.
It also included

Another move to our FOURTH address in FIVE years.

A goodbye to our sweet Weimaraner Roscoe.
Jason getting to know all about PICC lines and infectious disease docs.

But there is so much more for which to be thankful

Jason turning 40 and climbing the Grand Teton

Lots of great visits with dear family and friends

Reading one of the best books of my life

(Anna Karenina in case you missed it!)
Watching my children grow and learn

But it is time to go pour the champagne...

So from the fourth floor

in our little corner of the world

we say,

"Goodbye 2011!"

Just in cased you missed it...
that is our Christmas tree throwing itself off the balcony.

Christmas in the Big City

2011-12-23T21:07:00.000-06:00

For the first time in Chicago

the Little girls do the Nutcracker

with Nana!

Performed by the Joffrey Ballet

at the Auditorium Theatre

Lots of cool lightbulbs.

A magical old theater.

Some amazing dancing.

Two VERY giddy girls who are now

pirouetting through the living room.

Christmastime in the Big City!

Christmas Lights?

Nope... a closeup of ONE brick

in Chicago's famous

Crown Fountain

in Millenium Park

Merry Christmas.

Kids Today. Or Was it Yesterday?

2011-12-20T20:36:00.001-06:00

"No earthly way of knowing, which direction we are going," squeaks a little six year old voice in her best Gene Wilder imitation. Fortunately, from the back of the minivan, I don't hear the next line of the song "is the grisly reaper rowing?."

"Ok, Mom, now you sing at the same time the Oompa Loompa song and we'll make that spooky song blend with the Oompa Loompas."

I oblige my daughter's attempt at harmony and begin my rendition of "Oompa, Oompa doopity doo" as she adds some extra spook to the scariest song in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We end at the same time with me singing, "You will live in HA-PI-NESS too. Like the Oompa, Loompa, doopedy, doo!."

Why is this suddenly very disturbing to me? The Oompa Loompa's aren't happy! They're prisoners of a madman with red faces, green hair, and endless wheelbarrows of chocolate to push. There is something strangely dark and sinister about this whole minivan ensemble we have going on. I guess you could say we've watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory one too many times during this holiday season.

Last week, in an attempt to prepare the girls for their first experience of the Nutcracker at Chicago's Joffrey Ballet, I checked the original Nutcracker story out from the library. Written in 1815 by E.A. Hoffman, it is a morbid story with dark undertones and a lonely, bleak view of humanity and relationships. Far from cute dancing candy canes and sugar plum fairies (made famous almost 80 years later when Tchaikovsky's famous ballet premiered in 1892), the original Nutcracker story is deeply disturbing. After the battle with the seven headed mouse king and the toy soldiers, Marie (aka. Clara) lies in a pool of blood on her bedroom floor. She is mocked by those who are supposed to love her. She enters a magical but sinister 'Candy Land' by a portal that is strangely familiar to a CS Lewis reader..the sleeve of a fur coat in a WARDROBE. Not unlike Willy Wonka's factory the candy land where Nutcracker reigns as prince is populated by dancing treats but also strange creatures. The toy maker, Dr. Drosselmeyer, is darkly sinister and scary. He appears above the clock as an evil apparition and shares secrets only Marie knows. Spoooky.

Alice Liddell & her sisters.
Lewis Carroll's famous story is believed
to be inspired by his relationship with Alice.

The 19th c. gave rise to the Romantic ideal of 'childhood' as a time of innocence, exploration, and imagination. Part of this was connected to the movement to stop child labor and introduce compulsory education to the masses, but part of it was also due to the religious and intellectual movements of the day. Coincidentally, the creation of our modern idealized view of a Currier & Ives Christmas also developed. We look back at ages past and think of Dickens' "God Bless us Everyone!" or the little girl in It's a Wonderful Life proclaiming "Daddy, Teacher says, 'Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.'" We wonder why life can't be like that now. Kids these days are so ruined. Where has the innocence gone? But was it ever there?

Tim Burton is honest and insightful in his remaking of Alice in Wonderland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (even though the 1971 version is FAR scarier in my mind). There is a darkness and a danger to these children's stories that is scarier than any of the 'in your face' shows of today. A writer for the LA Times says, "Burton's mission is to reclaim a children's classic, resharpen its edges and remind everyone that sapping the weirdness out of a tale often renders it flat and forgettable" (Read It). Alice and the Nutcracker's Marie may travel through mysterious portals to magical lands, but they are far from safe, secure places where a child feels known and loved. Part of what makes Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (based on the 1964 children's book by Roald Dahl) so scary is the look in Gene Wilder's eyes. "You are about to be destroyed, and it is a game to me," they say. This is not unlike the children's literature that grew out of the 19th c. The idea that children could have their own genre of story was new, and it paralleled the growth of Gothic literature which combined romance and horror in an attempt to thrill and terrify the reader (think Dracula- monsters, ghosts, hidden rooms, etc).

Looking back just a few decades, consider A Charlie Brown Christmas (1964). It is a TV classic whose main theme song has become iconic for the sound of pop culture Christmas. It's warm and fuzzy, right? Snoopy decorates his doghouse, Charlie Brown loves a little Christmas tree, and we all laugh at Lucy in her extreme approach to life. Last Saturday I took the girls to a local production of the show. Bright cheery costumes and a very talented cast, with those super expressive faces and Annie kind of theater voices that children love, dominated the show. I was sure it would be a hit. After the production, Eleanor walked out with a long face.

"What's wrong?," I asked her, "Did you like the show?."

She shrugged her shoulders and said, "Mommy, why are the kids so mean to Charlie Brown? Why do they yell at him, tell him he's stupid all the time, and make him feel so miserable? I didn't like it at all."

I wonder, sitting in the driver's seat of the minivan today, how she is so intrigued by Gene Wilder's evil song and yet so bothered by Charlie Brown? I can't help but wonder if the evil of Willy Wonka is easier to handle because it is encased in a dark fantasy. Children know evil exists. Spend ten minutes chaperoning an Elementary School recess and you will be certain of this. It is why the PTA can't ever fill these volunteer positions. Watching children be cruel to each other is just too painful for adults. Dostoevsky knew and understood the darkness of the human heart even in the experience of a child (read more about this in a previous blog entry "Boogers in the Library"). He didn't idealize original sin. Out of that honesty he tells a powerful story which points to true redemption.

Upon what Savior do you gaze this Christmas? Is it a Romantic image from a 19th c. print? A creation of our own imagination? Or is it the Mighty God who put shepherds flat on their faces merely from seeing His angels? Does He have power to save? But from what? Darkness is real. Our children see it. Do we? And when we do, will we see the One who has power to save?

**if you're curious about which Willy Wonka song I'm referring to watch it here**

A Gingerbread Caper

2011-12-18T14:20:00.000-06:00

For the last week

Mr. Truman's Third Grade Class

has been rehearsing hard for...

A GINGERBREAD CAPER!

Check out our own little thespian-

shot live by Jason from his front row seat

on the cafeteria floor.

After the show...

Gingerbread Houses!

Opus

2011-12-17T00:14:00.000-06:00

Jude Law is interviewed on Letterman tonight (HERE). Letterman asks him, "If you could choose film or theater, what would you choose?." Law answers, “Theater....the relationship with the audience is irreplaceable.”

Tonight (before watching Letterman) Jason and I are part of an audience. In another tiny theater, by the Bryn Mawr stop of the Red Line, a play is performed to a sold-out audience of forty people. There is sweat. People jump in their seats. An actor’s final lines are spoken by Jason’s right ear. I stare at an actor standing next to us and wait for him to break out of character in this small space. He doesn't.

One of the things I love about Chicago is the chance, on any random night, to step into a small storefront theater and watch a story unfold. There are plenty of huge productions from which to choose, but there are also many small theaters where some amazing acting is taking place. Some shows are definitely better than others. But for as little as $10 you can catch a show (see what’s playing for cheap in Chicago at hottix). Hopefully, the longer we live here the more we'll know where to go and what to see, but for now I am enjoying the adventure of exploring and discovering.

Tonight’s show is Opus. With a cast of five it tells the story of a string quartet, the ups and downs of their relationships, and the power of music to bind people together. The climax of the play centers around the quartet performing Beethoven’s Opus 131. I know so little about classical music, but this play does what any great story does. It makes me want to learn more. It makes me want to listen differently. Have you ever listened to Opus 131? Until tonight I had not (you may have heard it on HBO's Band of Brothers). Nor did I really care. But seeing live people on stage wrestle through the challenges of relationship and respond to music as creatures made in the image of God, I begin to care. I read tonight that Beethoven, when asked which of his quartets he considered the best answered, "Each in its own way, Art demands of us that we should not stand still.” What is it you might like to explore? Where might you begin?

Flyboard

2011-12-13T21:05:00.000-06:00

Because getting a mysterious infection

and spending a few nights in the hospital

isn't enough to put new wrinkles on my face,

Jason tells me today that he wants

THIS

for Christmas.

If you just skipped that video...

go back and watch 45 seconds of it.

I think we need to get more life insurance.

Sort of makes me think of

THIS

**This album cover was designed by a talented artist we like to brag that we know

(His Official Website)

A Small Patch of Earth

2011-12-11T19:35:00.001-06:00

On this crisp Sunday afternoon, in the last light of a short December day, our family takes a walk.

It isn't always easy, living in a big, sprawling urban area,

to get lost in the woods.

I am reminded today that it really doesn't take much

to to get a little nature fix.

A small patch of woods.

A few sticks.

A semi frozen lake.

And let the games begin.

Who needs an iPad

when you can break up ice

with different size sticks?

And with a little imaginative exploration

you might find

a magical seashell from an ancient world,

a dragon's head

staring back at you,

or a mysterious message

hidden in a secret ice formation.

Or maybe just a new set

for the next Coen Brothers movie.

Ish

2011-12-06T22:03:00.001-06:00

I spend a fair amount of time at the grocery store. Interactions manifesting human nature unedited often happen in the mundane aisles of our modern temples to food. Today, while smashed between fifty new flavors of gum and three rows of periodicals claiming to have new tips on everything from sex to crock pot meals, I enter the usual checkout line coma.

“How are you today ma'am?,” I hear an elderly man ask the cashier as he puts his fifth frozen chicken pot pie on the conveyor belt.

Long black hair, recently refreshed with dye from Aisle 6, flips across the register.

“Good...ISH, ” replies the cashier drawing out the ISH as if begging to be known by another human being.

Across the man's face deep wrinkles twitch in perplexity as I slide my plastic divider behind his frozen cuisine on the moving belt.

Dropping my bag of lentils precariously close to our plastic border protecting anything that might be HIS from that which will soon become MINE, I bite her hook. "That's a loaded ISH," I say.

“Well, I lied once to my mother. It was a lesson of a lifetime." I notice her red lipstick is starting to creep into the lines of her upper lip. She reaches for the last pot pie and sweeps it across the scanner. The machine beeps in an obedient reply.

"Something I’ll never forget. I swore then, I’d never lie again. So, I’m not gonna lie." She looks at the old man in earnest, "You asked me how I am. I’m good. But I'm only good- ish. A girl’s got to tell the truth. So that’s all I got for you. I’m good, but it’s gonna have an ISH on it today.”

The elderly man gathers his plastic sacks and waits for the bright red nails to rip the receipt churning with a mechanical cluck through tired fingers.

She turns to me in a final catharsis, "You gotta be real, ya know. Sometimes it’s all in the ISH.”

Tree's Up

2011-12-03T20:44:00.001-06:00

And really...

what are the chances

that BOTH our moms would save

the SAME crafty ornaments

and that they would end up

TOGETHER on a Christmas tree

29 years later?

Apparently popsicle stick sled ornaments

were a popular craft in the eighties.

For more Christmas tree fun from blog entries of days gone by..

Get Comfy. Read. Maybe Write.

2011-12-02T13:10:00.001-06:00

Last week, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I attended the last lecture of Introduction to Russian Literature: Tolstoy & Dostoevsky. Like coming to the final chapter of a good novel, I both want it to end, for freedom of time and resolution in my mind, and I don’t want it to end because that will mean a loss of something that has been a source of pleasure. The class was a wonderful experience which I think will continue to surface as I read other books.

Picking up a new novel is difficult. Nothing seems to satisfy. So, I decide to pick up a book I’ve started many times and give it another try. A familiar paperback, one that has stared back at me from many different shelves in our various homes, seems a good transition from the Russians. And so Marilynne Robinson’s book, Housekeeping, finds itself in my hands under a hand knit blanket and with a warm cup of hot tea. The book is a bit strange. Reading it feels like entering a dreamlike state. After watching an interview with Robinson taken at the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, I understand that this is how she writes. (her whole demeanor reflects a calm, peaceful creativity that will make you want to read a book)

She says in the interview, “When I write fiction I like to be very comfortable, as in prenatal or something! I like to be in comfortable clothes with no distractions and so on. I like to be in one corner of my house. When I write nonfiction I sit upright in a chair, and I write on a word processor, or laptop. And the mood or character of concentration is completely different. Fiction is much closer to dreaming, a sort of inducing a very strong imagination of something and trying to preserve the integrity-the movement- of it.”

*This interview is Part 3 of a four part interview. The beginning is about GILEAD, but about 2 minutes in she gets to the writing stuff. All four parts of the interview are great if you are interested. But for the sake of space and time, I've only posted the part of the interview that contains the quotes I've included in this post.

I love the way she differentiates writing fiction and writing non-fiction. The act of creating characters seems so elusive, mysterious, and intimidating to me. Robinson describes the creation of her characters explaining, “Characters tend to be voices. I have great respect for the complexity of the brain or mind...I’m comfortable assuming I don’t know what is going on in my own mind a great part of the time. It is kind of like hearing music, I think... I don’t feel as though I create the characters. I find them. Something has presented itself to me. What is it?.”

“I wrote Housekeeping assuming it would never be published. I wrote it just to write it,” confesses Marilynne Robinson. If you have never read this book, consider reading it just to read it. Don’t get frustrated trying to iron out a plot or a strict narrative as the characters develop. Rather, let the book quietly move along and you will find yourself immersed in the town of Fingerbone, seeing a lake as a character in the novel, and feeling deeply for the characters’ loss, sorrow, and transience which in a dreamlike, mysterious way reflects our own reality.

If you have read Housekeeping, consider reading another book from an author who studied under Marilynne Robinson. Tinkers, written by Paul Harding and winner of the 2010 Pulizter Prize, reads in a very similar way. Both of these books will make you see the blending of your dreams, your memory, and your imagination in a new light. And who knows? Maybe you’ll want to write them down.

“For why do our thoughts turn to some gesture of hand, the fall of a sleeve, some corner of a room on a particular anonymous afternoon, even when we are asleep, and even when we are so old that our thoughts have abandoned other business? What are all these fragments for, if not to be knit up finally?” ( Housekeeping 92)

“For need can blossom into all the compensation it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue so sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know anything so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is the foreshadowing- the world will be made whole.” (Housekeeping 152)

Also, keep your eyes out for Marilynne Robinson's new book of essays titled When I was Child I Read Books coming out in March.

Advent

2011-11-27T21:08:00.002-06:00

Every time I hear Handel's Messiah I cry. My love affair with this three hour piece of music begins in high school when I first hear it performed by Westminster's Ensemble choir and symphony. Brian Baumgartner, now famous for his role on the Office, slams into a big drum during a performance of "For Unto Us a Child is Born." Then the entire choir belts out, "And His name shall be called. Wonderful! Counselor! The Mighty God! The everlasting Father. The Prince of Peace." And I am hooked. My faithful friend and roommate treks over to Duke chapel with me almost every year of college for their performance of the Messiah. Even my children succumb during a children's performance in Portland.

Unexpectedly, it is not the Messiah but the Portland band The Decemberists that brings tears to my eyes on this first day of Advent. Tossing together a plate of Thanksgiving leftovers for the girls, I slip the newly ordered CD into my laptop. When I actually lived in Portland I didn't listen to this band, but now far away from its culture and place my eyes start brimming with tears. When the tears start dropping into my children's leftover mac&cheese I hit repeat again. Why do we do this to ourselves?!? I decide to just let it ride and enjoy the music.

I've been thinking about Portland a lot this week. Waking up with an unbelievable urge to take a hike in the Gorge or a walk through a damp forest, I feel almost a physical craving for the landscape. The irony of this is that, as pangs increase for the people, the place, and the culture of Oregon, an increasing contentment and appreciation for the good gifts God has given us here is growing. Sometimes I wonder if feeling more love for new people and a new place doesn't decrease the love of previous people and place but rather increases it. We long for relationship, for intimacy, for home, and yet so often it alludes us. I might be all wet on this, but I think Colin Meloy is getting at this in his song "Rise to Me." This song made me weepy at first, because it reminded me of mountains,rivers, and all the natural beauty of Oregon I miss so much. But after listening to it a few more times I realize that he is singing about relationship and how difficult it can be to get close to people. (If I'm totally wrong, leave a comment!) We want to know people. We want home. We want intimacy. We want relationship. But can we surmount the obstacles, the hurt, the effort, the forgiveness, and the grace that it costs?

I think this is sometimes the source of people's pain at the holidays. We see a shadow of rest, of home, of the fulfillment of all things, and yet we painfully feel the reality of not yet being there. We miss people and places that are lost to us while we enjoy the gifts of the now. We look forward and anticipate while we look back and remember.

Today is the first Sunday in Advent. We light the prophecy candle today. At church I make Advent wreaths (AMAZING job, Helen!!!) with the children during the sermon time. I look into hopeful eager eyes and speak of advent, of 'arrival.' I sing 'Rock of Ages' with a congregation of people I am growing to know and to love. The Light of the world shines in the darkness. He has come into this world and has promised He will come again to redeem all things.

"There are times life will rattle your bones and will bend your limbs," sing the Decemberists. Life doesn't always break you, but it will rattle and bend you. We have a Father who holds onto us even when we can't hold onto him. God may call you to unlikely places and to a motley crew of unlikely people.

But His promises are sure.

His grace is sufficient.

And He is Home.

Grammy & Pops!

2011-11-23T16:35:00.001-06:00

Loving my new Cathy Little knit wear.

Check out my beautiful cowl.

Feeling thankful!

Baking Time is FUN time!

And to those we love who are far away,

we send our love and say,

"Happy Thanksgiving!."

Come see us soon.

Parking

2011-11-21T11:00:00.001-06:00

It's the holidays.

We all need a little extra cash.

Chicago is trying to make up its own budget deficits.

How?

By PARKING TICKETS.

But I think Evanston and Wilmette

have turned parking sign delirium

into an art form.

See if you can figure out from these photos why,

to park on the North Shore,

you need

a calendar,

a Northwestern football schedule,

a ruler,

a tape measure,

a holiday schedule,

a clock,

and maybe a PhD in logic too.

Sometimes I wonder why the cities

don't save themselves a little cash on printing

and just say...

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-19T12:49:00.001-06:00

From the Little Family

In the Big City

11-11-11

2011-11-11T10:31:00.001-06:00

Happy 40th Jason!!!

1 year

3 years

Can we bring back the hair wave?

Senior in High School

August 2011
Summit of the Grand Teton

How Do You Look?

2011-11-08T22:04:00.000-06:00

How do you look? Have you checked? Caught a passing glance in a reflective storefront window or a long stare in the bathroom mirror?

But how do you look... at others?

In my last blog entry I introduced Anna Karenina to you as she sat on a train having illicit thoughts about a man. But what happened after that train ride? Tolstoy tells us that when Anna got off the train “the first person that attracted her attention was her husband. ‘Oh, my God! Why do his ears look like that?’ she thought” (Tolstoy 120). Really, ears? After that dramatic scene in a moving train this is what we get? Gary Morson points out this famous passage to draw our attention to the way Anna makes a tiny choice to see her husband in an uncharitable light. By beginning to see in this way she justifies her own guilt, so that it is his unattractiveness and not her unfaithfulness that dominates her mind. Morson writes, “The more she ascribes lack of feeling to [her husband], the more she comes to see him that way automatically” (84).

Do we do this? Do we make quick decisions about a person and then fixate on the negative in order to justify ourselves? How often do we pick people apart so we can feel better than them, not intimidated by them, or more justified in who we are? Have you ever stood in a grocery store line silently staring at magazine covers hoping to find a flaw in the beauty that shines on the glossy covers? Why do we delight when the powerful, the beautiful, or the rich mess up? Deep down do we revel in the failure or demise of those we envy? Or closer to home, how often do we criticize people in our lives or undermine their accomplishments so they do not threaten our own sense of ‘being better?’

Morson points out Anna’s reaction to her husband’s ears to show how the tiniest decisions we make about people are often quite ordinary. Usually we don’t condemn all at once, but bit by bit we adjust our perception of another, focusing on the negative, until we can justify our behaviors or thoughts toward them. Morson writes,

“We can look charitably or uncharitably. We can pay attention only to what is worst in a person; everyone possesses characteristics that can be seen as irritating or repulsive. Tolstoy wants to teach us that what we do at every moment of our waking lives-how we look and direct our attention- has supreme moral value precisely because it is so ordinary, precisely because it forms habits” (Morson 84).

How would our relationships change if we viewed others not with a critical eye to make ourselves feel better but with an eye to find the beautiful in them and rejoice in it?

Today, as you move through your day, how do you look? On what will you focus? That which makes you feel better about yourself by picking another apart? Or that which is truly unique and special about the person? Will you fixate on their faults and tear them down in your mind? Or will you seek to find the good to appreciate even if it means making yourself less?

Knowing we are loved by God and knowing that our brief little lives really DO matter in the eternal story of redemption gives us the freedom to rejoice in who God made others to be. Knowing that in Him we can see others with a more accepting love, we are free to be ourselves and love better. Those small little decisions we make about people affect the way we love them. His ears. Her voice. The way he does that. The way she always does this. Morson argues that “each uncharitable act of looking is a choice” (85).

Knowing that God, in His mercy, has looked upon us and made us beautiful in Him, we can see others with the same grace. How would our hearts change if we sought, by His grace, to look with an eye of charity. Might these charitable reads on people actually bring us closer to them?

So, how will you look?

If Life Could Write

2011-11-04T10:47:00.004-05:00

A woman sits on a train trying to read a book. Her mind wanders dangerously to thoughts of a man she shouldn't be thinking about. The train gets hot and hotter until her surroundings blur from reality into a frightening dreamlike nightmare. A fur cloak becomes a beast and returns to a cloak as she slides a paper knife slowly down her neck. A peasant is gnawing on a wall... or is he merely checking the temperature in the train? Shapes and sounds swirl around her as she hears fearful shrieking and banging “as though someone were being torn to pieces.” She feels as “though she is sinking down. But it was not terrible, but delightful.”

The latest in late night television? Some dark horror movie with an erotic bent? Nope. Leo Tolstoy, my friends, drawing his readers into the mind and imagination of Anna as she begins her descent into her own desires and cravings. Will they destroy her? You’ll have to read the novel. I can’t spoil it for you. It is just too good.

Gary Morson, professor of Slavic languages at Northwestern and teacher of the class I’m auditing on Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, says that readers the world over have expressed that “if life could write directly, it would write like Tolstoy” (Morson, Anna Karenina in our Time). He argues that Tolstoy’s way of understanding the world and the inner workings of people’s minds are “worth reconsidering so that , as Tolstoy intended, we learn to see the world, and our own lives, more wisely."

Have you ever sat in a class with a teacher that is enthusiastic about a topic that you absolutely love? It’s fun, isn’t it? This is how I feel watching Morson pace back and forth in his blue sport coat and listening to him bring the characters off the page in his enthusiasm.

If you are interested in reading Anna Karenina on your own or with a book club, consider buying Morson’s book Anna Karenina in our Time: Seeing More Wisely. I know this is crazy! Read a 900 page novel and then another book about the novel?? Yes! Gary Morson’s course on Anna Karenina regularly enrolls 500-600 students and is the largest Slavic Lit class offered in America. He is the only professor at Northwestern to hold both an endowed chair for research AND teaching. He’s got some good stuff to say, folks.

Maybe you can get one copy and pass it around your book club. Or maybe you could divide up the chapters and share with your group what you learned from specific chapters. If you are on your own, skip his heady philosophical introduction and just read the SECOND chapter entitled “Dolly and Stiva: Prosaic Good and Evil” and the THIRD chapter “Anna and the Kinds of Love.” These chapters will help you get more out of the novel and understand in a deeper way what Tolstoy is doing in crafting the character of Anna Karenina. Then, skip to the end of Morson's book where he sums up his years of study in “163 Tolstoyan Conclusions.” You won’t agree with everything he concludes, but I think it will enrich your reading. Here are a few:

33.One can lie by looking and practice falsehood in silence.

44.We often describe actions as passions so as to avoid responsibility for them.

45.We sometimes choose to create situations in which something we wish for but know is wrong can happen “against our will.”

57.Marriage is not an idyll in which one simply “enjoys love.” It demands the constant work of knowing oneself and another as changing people in changing circumstances.

74.It is often when nothing special is happening that lives are being smashed.

84.We always know more than we know.

92.If life were essentially predictable, our hands would not have an inbuilt tremor and our minds would not wander. Antelopes would have wheels and communism would work.

120.Real thinking, like real art, derives from serious reflection on finely observed experience.

142.When one senses the meaning of things, one cannot formulate it so that others will sense it...but one can tell a story...that story can help others to recognize when a similar process is taking place in themselves.

163.To understand life more deeply we must learn to see more wisely.

To close these thoughts on Anna Karenina I want to leave you with what I think is one of the most powerful passages in the book. Tolstoy’s insight into what sin and shame feel like is profound. What happens when sinful desire is fulfilled? Read how Tolstoy describes two lovers whose elicit love becomes clouded with guilt as desire is fulfilled.

“Looking at him, she had a physical sense of her humiliation, and she could say nothing more. He felt what a murderer must feel when he sees the body he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage of their love. There was something awful and revolting in the memory of what had been bought at this fearful price of shame. Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him. But in spite of all the murderer’s horror before the body of his victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what he has gained by his murder. And with fury, as it were with passion, the murderer falls on the body and drags it and hacks at it; so he covered her face and shoulders with kisses. She held his hand, and did not stir. ‘Yes, and one hand, which will always be mine-the hand of my accomplice.’ She lifted up that hand and kissed it. He sank on his knees and tried to see her face; but she hid it, and said nothing” (Book 2, Chapter 11 Anna Karenina).

Yikes. If you weren't scared of sin before, maybe Tolstoy will change your mind.

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T20:05:00.000-05:00

"Did somebody say homemade donuts and cider???"

"Where??"

"Right there! Where all the people are!!"

Happy Halloween.

A Visit to Sunshine

2011-10-30T20:29:00.001-05:00

This afternoon we got a small glimpse of love in action

during an Open House visit to

Sunshine Gospel Ministries

in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago.

They opened their doors for friends to come

and see how the grace of God

and a little vision

can begin to transform a community.

I confess that when I think of urban ministry

I get initially inspired,

but then the emotions pass under the overwhelming need.

When Jesus says to love the poor I choose to not think about it.

I'll leave it to the visionaries, the policy makers, or the radicals.

Seeking the renewal of the city

seems like such a big job.

I kept thinking today, while I toured Sunshine Gospel Ministries with a group from our church, of some comments from a book I'm reading about Anna Karenina by Gary Morson (a Northwestern prof).

He writes, "Life is an everyday affair,

and the sum total of unremarkable,

daily happenings defines its quality.

Like good, evil affects us most strongly

in countless small ways,

each of which is barely visible...

sainthood is often small acts

of thoughtfulness that are barely perceived."

We often expect great acts of good (or evil for that matter)

to come with great drama, fanfare, or invention.

But sometimes great good, great love, is accomplished through surprisingly practical means.

Like computer literacy, for example. Computers? Really?
One of the ministries of Sunshine is a computer lab and computer training program.
For $30 one can take a six week training course in how to use a computer. But who doesn't know these days? According to Joel Hamernick, executive director of Sunshine, lots of people!

After knocking on the doors of hundreds of neighbors they found that less than 50% of the households in the neighborhood have a computer. Of that 50% less than half of those computers are connected to the Internet. "Walk into any Home Depot or Wal-Mart today and try to apply for a job," explains Joel, "and what you will be given is a computer on which to fill out your application. If you have no idea how to use the computer merely to fill out an application what are the chances of you actually getting a job? Literacy is now a matter of having knowledge of computers as well as reading."

Now think about your neighborhood.

Count how many grocery stores and businesses

you have within two miles of your home.

What if your street looked liked this (see below)?

What if your neighborhood

that was the size of a small city (picture Portland's East side)

was empty of business? How inspired would you feel?

What if no one wanted to come to your neighborhood

because everyone said "Oh, a business couldn't make it there!?"

Sunshine Gospel Ministries says "We think businesses can make it, so let's pray that God would provide a way for us to acquire an entire empty block where maybe some locals can start a business. Maybe a coffee shop. Maybe a space for art. Let's try it."

And so they did.

As of last week they signed on this property you see above.

One business at a time, one block at a time,

love starts looking really practical.

Thank you Sunshine for royally entertaining us with a little Christian Hip Hop and cupcakes!

If you are interested in Sunshine Gospel Ministries click on this link to find out more. Part of their mission is to "equip churches to consider the issues of race, poverty, and the urban context through a Biblical lens, while also preparing them to meet the long-term needs of their own changing communities" (ie. short term mission trips).

And any blog post on the city would not be complete

without a picture of the food we ate on the way.

This is a Brat Jason and I shared at Frank N' Dawgs (in Lincoln Park).

Those are 'pickled lotus roots' on that dog!

Sprinkles and Nuts

2011-10-29T16:37:00.000-05:00

Chicago by L: The Loop

2011-10-24T22:02:00.000-05:00

So, what does it mean anyway? The Loop. During my first year in Chicago I heard people make comments all the time like,
"Do you work in the Loop?"

"Is it in the Loop?"

"Oh, I used to live in the Loop."

"Have you tried that restaurant? It is in the Loop."

Like any good Southerner I sort of assumed that "the Loop" meant some large interstate that circled the city (I know, go ahead and laugh you Chicago aficionados). Wrong. To the eyes of an out of towner the L map looks like a preschool crayon drawing of colors that meet in a central psychedelic rainbow. This is the Loop. It is the historic business district of Chicago. Towering canyons of skyscrapers -hemmed in by Lake Michigan to the East and the Chicago River to the North and West- dwarf business men in suits and tourists with cameras. And circling all this world class business and money making are the elevated tracks of the L.

Walking through the Loop means walking with your neck craning and looking up. It means feeling really small and slightly chilly in the shadows of immense towers of glass, steel, and stone. It means wrapping your arms tightly against the famous Chicago wind as it whips through narrow passages of urban intimidation. It means an onslaught of architectural contradictions and creativity.

These men walked down LaSalle, Chicago's Wall St., in front of us.

Every business needs a friar, don't you think?

In the Loop you can grab a cup of Intelligentsia Coffee

while the L provides an atmospheric roar over your head.

My mom and Jason take in the sites.

Here's some fun Chicago trivia for you.

Did you know that all Chicago fire trucks

have a green light on the right side of the truck and a red on the left?

This goes back to the 1930s when the department adopted

the seafaring tradition of port and starboard.

It is a bit like seeing a ski boat coming toward you in the night.

Not really, but you get the idea.

Ok, it is time for a little truth in the telling.

We didn't actually take the L down to the Loop today.

We took the Metra. I know! It is sort of cheating, but let me explain.

There are two main train systems in Chicago.

Here's the Cliff Notes version.

The L: Old. Lots of character. Sways and stops a lot.

Lots of racial diversity and color.

Sometimes you might get sunflower seeds spit on your shoes.

It is integrally part of Chicago's history and development.

Super fun when you have time and want to get to unique neighborhoods.

The Metra: Newer. Sleek. Fast.

More of a commuter train

traveling to suburbs as far away

as an hour outside of Chicago.

Some Chicago commuters call it the "Grown Up" train

because you can have an adult beverage on your evening commute home.

And the Metra comes in handy

when city adventures must be squeezed in

a few short hours while children are at school.

Wildcat Alley

2011-10-22T18:42:00.000-05:00

Northwestern Football

is only a few blocks away-

right here in the neighborhood.

Feeling slightly guilty

that my children are painted

like Northwestern Wildcats

and don't even own a Tar Heel t-shirt...

I probably need to get to work on that one!

Nana (aka. my mom) is here!

She's getting to work getting the girls in shape

with a little football training.

Boogers in the Library

2011-10-18T20:54:00.003-05:00

Have you ever known the rush of discovery and exploration of finding something in the library? Something small captures your imagination and sets your mind on a search for a new idea, a new discovery, in the bowels of a library. You wander among the quiet stacks looking, your eyes scanning the spines of books hoping to find the one you are looking for. You pull two or three that hold promise, scan the table of contents, the index, or the chapter titles for a clue in your treasure hunt. Then, on page 115 of a book that hasn’t seen sunlight since 1972 you see a word that ends your treasure hunt. On a yellowed page, marked with red ballpoint pen and a booger, is the passage for which you have searched. This journey is only for the brave of heart and, perhaps, stomach...boogers not withstanding.

Last week Gary Morson made a passing comment that somehow found an empty hanger in my brain, hung itself like a bright striped shirt, and wouldn’t let me leave the closet until I tried it on. Morson, while lecturing on Dostoevsky’s profound understanding of human depravity, mentioned an essay by Aldous Huxley in which Huxley compares Dickens to Dostoevsky. Huxley, he explained, argues that Dostoevsky is a profoundly better novelist than Dickens. Why? Because Dostoevsky understands the depth of human depravity and the problem of evil in a way that far surpasses Dickens sentimentality and emotional shallowness. Morson moved on in his thoughts to other topics, but my curiosity was piqued. I emailed him that night and received a quick response that Huxley’s critique was buried in a long essay titled “Vulgarity in Literature.” Today, while Eleanor and Rynn searched for American Girl CDs, I found the book and the essay (Huxley, Aldous Collected Essays “Vulgarity in Literature”). Assuming that you’ve called upon you inner nerd, I am going to quote several passages from Huxley’s essay. If I can’t convince you of the profound emotional, psychological, philosophical, and spiritual profundity of Dostoevsky (and I think Tolstoy even more) then maybe Huxley can.

“Literature is also philosophy, is also science. In terms of beauty it enunciates truths...All that modern psychologists, for example, have done is to systematize and debeautify the vast treasures of knowledge about the human soul contained in novel, play, poem, and essay. Writers like Blake, Shakespeare, and Dostoevsky, still have plenty to teach the modern scientific professional” (110).

“It is vulgar, in literature, to make a display of emotions which you do not naturally have, but think you ought to have, because all the best people do have them. It is also vulgar to have emotions, but to express them so badly that you seem to have no natural feelings, but to be merely fabricating emotions by a process of literary forgery. Sincerity in art...is mainly a matter of talent” (112).

Then, after Huxley spends a few paragraphs destroying Dickens for being sentimental and “mentally drowned and blinded by the sticky overflowings of his heart,” he turns to a comparison with Dostoevsky. He writes of Dostoevsky, “Feeling did not prevent him from seeing and recording, or rather re-creating... Goodness and innocence and the undeservedness of suffering and even, to some extent, suffering itself are only significant in relation to the actual realities of human life. Isolated, they cease to mean anything....That work of art which in its own way ‘says’ more about the universe will be better than the work of art which says less....Why is [Dicken’s work] a less admirable novel than The Brothers Karamazov? Because the amount of experience of all kinds understood, ‘felt into,’... and artistically recreated is small in comparison with that which Dostoevsky feelingly comprehended and knew” (115).

Maybe it was those years in a Siberian prison. Maybe it is that Dostoevsky understands that goodness and evil exist in the ordinary, in the sublime, and in every heart. Or perhaps his writing shows that the overflowing of the heart does not "drown the head or dim the eye" but shows the truth more clearly.

Apple Picking

2011-10-14T17:20:00.000-05:00

For the last few weeks Chicago has been enjoying an unbelievable stretch of beautiful weather- bright blue skies, warm temperatures, and sun. (Before you get too jealous, I'll also add that the weather reports are predicting this winter to be one of the worst in Chicago's recorded history. How do they know these things anyway?) Last Monday, a Columbus Day holiday, we went apple picking. This involved an hour and a half drive through Chicago sprawl before the endless stoplights gave way to farm land and apple trees not far from Wisconsin! I think we'll be eating apples until Easter.

Our little church buddy, Alli, and our friend Ms. Helen came with us too.

Several of you have asked how Jason is doing. As you can see from the above picture he is doing so much better! His doctors say both his knee and his blood work show signs that the antibiotics are working and the infection is going away. The intensity of the two week sickness and hospital visit has given way to a more general fatigue of trekking out to the hospital EVERY DAY to receive his antibiotic treatment. And if this wasn't enough to wear a man down add-

No alcohol. No coffee. No exercise.

Throw in a daily mummy wrapping

in Saran Wrap (around the PICC line on his arm)

just to take a shower.

Cheery, eh?

So, needless to say, Jason is counting the days until October 25th when the PICC line comes out and all he'll have to worry about is getting his knee back in shape. Then we wait and pray that the infection doesn't return and he is given the clean bill of health!

Yoga is Hot

2011-10-11T22:29:00.004-05:00

Yoga is hot. Studios are opening on main streets and in malls. Yoga is in ads selling everything from cell phones to insurance. It has become so pervasive in pop culture that you might be tempted to dismiss it as cliche. If you told me five years ago that I would be standing in a room heated to 105 degrees, dripping sweat in spandex, with a spontaneous smile spreading across my face I would not have believed you. I first put my face down on a stinky yoga mat at the Chattanooga YMCA five years ago and have been slightly addicted ever since. This post is my attempt to convince you to try it, maybe just once. Wait! Before you click away, consider the top excuses I hear from people. I dare you to not be one of them.

1. My body isn't made for yoga. Ok, I get this. Sometimes all those mirrors are downright depressing. But, here's the thing. Yoga can change your body. The great thing about yoga is that you will see all body types. Those classes at the gym with the overly perky girl yelling at you? Not for me. I get passive aggressive and want to go slower instead of pumping harder on some plastic step from the 90s. Yoga is calm, quiet, and contained to one little mat. It will regulate your metabolism, stretch out your muscles, improve your posture, and make you taller. Well, maybe not that last one, but a girl's gotta have dreams, right??

2. I don't have the time. Wrong. You do. Squeezing in a yoga class might mean other things in your life don't happen. A few weeks ago, while in the bathroom at Whole Foods, six year old Eleanor says, "Mom, can we always come here to go to the bathroom? The toilets are so much cleaner than ours."

3. What about all that spiritual stuff? You have to listen to your own conscience on this one. I've been to studios where I walked out because I felt uncomfortable. Remember, YOU are the customer. You paid the $, and you don't have to stay. That being said, 95% of yoga classes I've attended are purely exercise with the obligatory 'namaste' at the end of class. No one is watching to see if you are putting your hands to your "third eye center." Don't do it! Just chill out, relax, and enjoy a moment of quiet. What are they going to do? Make you stand on your head for 10 minutes?

4. I don't have the right yoga clothes. For the last five years I've been faithfully sweating through my $6 yoga top from Marshalls. I've paraded my self righteous lack of fancy yoga wear past Lululemon with moral indignation that some people actually pay lots of money for that little swirl logo on the back of their spandex. I thought if I bought a nice yoga top from the infamous store that someone might as well slap a Starbucks latte in my right hand and a conformist poser sticker on my forehead. Two weeks ago I succumbed, and I must admit you get what you pay for. No pulling, yanking, sagging, or flyaway boobs. Gentleman readers? Wear what you want. Bike shorts are perfect or maybe a long pair of comfortable non cotton shorts. And don't worry, no one is looking at you. Everyone is too busy looking at themselves.

5. I can't do the party tricks. Just because you can't get into 'crow' pose, stand on your head, or twist your body into a pretzel while doing a backbend doesn't mean you can't enjoy the benefits of yoga. Do what you can. Go by yourself so you won't worry what your friend thinks. One day you will pop into a headstand and feel awesome. Just don't try it after two beers. Please.

6. It's too hot. Yoga doesn't have to be hot. You might find, after trying a few classes, that you are ready to try the heat. After three Portland winters and one brutal Chicago winter I find that walking into a hot room is incredibly soothing not only to the body but to the mind. If you can't have sun, at least you can be warm! If you are in Colorado, California, Portland, or Chicago check out CorePower Yoga. They have non-heated beginner classes, slightly heated classes, and their own version of Hot Yoga which is only an hour (instead of the traditional 90 minutes).

7. It's too expensive. Practicing yoga at a studio can get expensive, but don't let that deter you. There is always a way. Most yoga studios offer introductory classes that are free, a free week, or a discounted beginner package. Some studios offer a trade for yoga. For three years in Portland I 'cleaned' one of CorePower's studios for 1 1/2 hours in exchange for unlimited free yoga. Lots of community centers offer yoga and even Lululemon has free classes in their stores. Try visiting a studio if you can. Typically, the quality of instruction and the warmth of the room is much better than you will find at a gym.

8. It’s a girl thing. Last week I did yoga next to a six foot tall black football player on one side and a wiry 70 year old woman on the other. Stretching is good for everyone. Any age. Man or woman. Ask Jason. He’s convinced.

Chicago by L: Bucktown!

2011-10-08T11:53:00.000-05:00

Bangs, boots, beer, and bikes. Get your hipster game on because this is your virtual trip to Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood. In Bucktown you can get a get a Chicago microbrew, stop by one of only three Chrome stores in the US (Chicago, New York, San Francisco), or dodge hipsters in cowboy boots to wiggle your way into a used bookstore or boutique liquor store. What used to be a working class neighborhood, whose name may have originated from the large number of goats-bucks- raised by Polish immigrants that settled there in the 19th c., is now a neighborhood not unlike Portland's East side. Take a few cowboy boot clad hipsters in skinny jeans, toss in a few Chrome accessorized bike commuters and moms in expensive yoga wear, and you will have a good sense of Bucktown.

Liquor and books - together at last.

The ever present L uniting the city in its diversity.

Principled individualism of the upwardly mobile combine with architecture that shows the transformation of a working class village to an elite 'hip' neighborhood.

While taking a picture of these boots I heard a young girl next to me declare,
"GIRRRRLLL, Those boots be making some HEAT."

The ever present L tracks cut through the neighborhood and rumble over the heads of pedestrians.

Old and new is present in a strange cocktail of architecture.

some thoughts from Dostoevsky

2011-10-07T16:37:00.000-05:00

I promised you a few weeks ago that I'd give some periodic updates on my journey into Russian Literature. After only a couple of lectures I'm still only 100+ pages into The Brothers Karamazov. I have to really concentrate when writing 'Karamazov' in order to spell it correctly (3 'a's!). The book is incredibly rich, both theologically and philosophically, but it hasn't yet begun rolling along with all that juicy love and lust that keeps the pages turning in Anna Karenina.

Sitting in Gary Morson's lectures, though, has become one of the highlights of my week. Riding my bike under the ivy covered towers of Northwestern with showers of yellow leaves falling on my head, I wonder how I got here and can't help but feel thankful for this opportunity. One of the things that is so interesting about Dostoevsky is the depth of his Christian faith and the honesty with which he struggles with this faith. Morson not only does not shy away from this but actively engages the moral and religious questions the novel raises. Consider some of the more powerful quotes from this week's reading.

"Never be frightened at your own faint-heartedness in attaining love. Don’t be frightened overmuch even at your evil actions. I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labour and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther from your goal instead of nearer to it-at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you."

"I love humanity, but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity...and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with any one for two days together..."

And later in the novel one of the brothers struggles with the reality that both good and evil exist within the hearts of men at the same time. This passage is rich, but try to hang with it. As you read it understand that when the character says Madonna he means all that is holy, beautiful, pure, and good, and when he says Sodom he means all that is dark, sinful, corrupt, and wicked in our hearts.

"I am an insect, brother, and it is said of me especially. All we Karamazovs are insects, and that insect lives in you too and will stir up tempest in your blood....Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed....I can't endure the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. What is still more awful is that a man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart may be on fire with the ideal, genuinely on fire. Man is broad, too broad. I'd have him narrower! Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man."
-Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov p. 117-8.

Just a few Pics

2011-10-06T11:34:00.000-05:00

It's been sort of serious around the blog lately.

All that talk of Russian Lit and health insurance.

I figure some of you granmas and aunties out there are saying,

"Come On, Caroline! Just give us some pictures of the kids, please."

These are not the best pictures,

but they capture some of the happenings around here in the last 24 hours.

The side ponytail...
and you thought you'd only have to live through the 80s once.
Wrong!

Pumpkin balancing on our balcony

Halloween colored rubber bands- orange and purple- the latest in 3rd grade fashion.

Rynn takes in the morning sunrise over Wilmette.

Some evening hours...

Rynn working on posting to her classroom blog (again- note the side ponytail) and Eleanor concentrating on her knitting (thank you Grammy for reviving this interest!)

Eleanor said the blog would not be complete without a picture of Bubbles.

Ma'am, It's how the system works.

2011-10-03T21:18:00.000-05:00

The health care system. It gets a lot of press. It is a big controversial subject. It is incredibly not fair. We sit at the top of this food chain. I recognize that in the last week Jason has received better health care than 99.9999 % of the rest of the world at relatively little cost to us. It is the cost to the system that boggles my mind. I know the services rendered to us Westerners enjoying modern medicine are very expensive. But sometimes the lack of efficiency is as downright annoying as the fifty styrofoam cups they give you in the hospital. Let me walk you through the last six hours.

Incident #1: Those of you who faithfully read through my ramblings in the previous blog post know that Jason is currently being treated with heavy doses of antibiotics through an internal catheter called a PICC line. This is a very efficient system set up in the hospital which enables him to go home to receive intravenous antibiotics without being in the hospital. After a few visits from a home health nurse both he and I are trained to give the medicine. We've had a standing date at the same time each day for the last few days for lots of sterility, saline washes, drugs, and other fun things. The only cost to our insurance for this (not counting the drugs)?

The 1x/week visit from a home health nurse= $200.

We find out today that this is NOT covered by our insurance because Jason is receiving OUT OF HOME physical therapy for his knee. So, technically, if he can get out of his home for physical therapy, he should be able to get out of home for his meds. So what IS covered- by the letter of the law- is for him to trek out to a hospital infusion center EVERY DAY to receive his medicine. You do the math. Even if the infusion center is cheaper, let's say for kicks $100/visit, the insurance company is agreeing to pay for these visits EVERY DAY for the next two weeks instead of paying for only one more visit from a home health care nurse. Like I said...you do the math. Our health insurance is covering medical expenses, but it is at an incredibly higher cost to them (and eventually to all of us) as well as effort to Jason.

Incident #2: Eleanor needs to visit her pediatrician for a minor health issue. I make an appointment for later in the week, but as we walk past the office on our way home from school I decide to step in to see if they can fit her in this afternoon. The receptionist, who looks like she should be at some shady lawyer's office in a cheap movie instead of in a neighborhood pediatrician's office, says with a fake smile, "Ma'am, I could let your child see the doctor, but I'll have to charge you an extra $80 for being a 'walk in' patient." She quickly releases the muscles surrounding the lipstick that has bled into the cracks of her upper lip, and her smile disappears.

"You mean," I ask incredulously, "that if I stand in this lobby and call you on my cell phone to see if Eleanor can have an appointment at 3:45 I will be considered a scheduled patient? But if I actually talk to you and ask if she can see the doctor at 3:45 you will charge me an extra $80?."

"Yes, Ma'am, it's how the system works."

on russians and writing

2011-10-01T13:56:00.004-05:00

The week before last, while auditing Gary Morson’s Intro to Russian Lit class at Northwestern, I began to think differently about the importance of writing- even about those things that seem mundane- for the human heart.

Morson explained to us that Russians see literature as not only the highest of the arts but as the very reason for existence and the essence of our humanity. To write or become the subject of writing is what makes you truly human. There are stories of millions of people -dying of mass starvation under Lenin- who were keeping diaries. They are quoted as saying, “This is why I have lived- to record this.” Dostoevsky, writing a response to Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, said of the book, “At last, the reason for the existence of the Russian people is justified.”

One of the most identifiable experiences of Dostoevsky’s life was that he suffered through what has come to be known as the “mock execution.” He was brought out as a prisoner to be shot. For one hour he thought he was about to die before being surprisingly pardoned and sent to four years in a Siberian prison camp. This experience made one of his fellow prisoners go mad and kill himself. Dostoevsky? He took the emotional trauma of the experience and wrote The Brothers Karamazov. His experience and the reflections on the psychology of what a person goes through right before an execution would color his writing for the rest of his life. Why? Because, according to Dostoevsky, part of being human is the sense of a possible future. When that possible future is taken away- even for a few agonizing hours- the experience changes you.

Why do I share these things? Why do we write, blog, journal? There is something inherently human in telling a story and understanding ourselves, our lives, our experiences through words. Many of you who follow our Little family are bloggers yourselves. If you don’t find a blog a suitable outlet for processing your life, then maybe you have a journal or you have the precious gift of letter writing. Most of us, at the very least, in the dark moments of night when we are lost in our own quiet thoughts seek to create order out of our emotions and thoughts through words. I think the Russians were on to something in the significance they attributed to writing things down. If you are not already writing or don’t ‘fancy’ yourself as a writer, consider trying it... even if it is in the privacy of some hidden file on your computer or dusty spiral notebook in your drawer.

I finished Anna Karenina this week. Holy mole, my friends, you need to read this book. The final chapters are some of the most beautifully written struggles of the human soul for faith and knowledge of God I’ve ever read in literature. More thoughts on Anna Karenina will have to wait until November. Until then Morson is going through the The Brothers Karamazov, so tune in next week for more on that novel.

I didn’t get down to Northwestern this week. We had our own little excitement here at the Littles. Jason had the privilege of spending two nights in the hospital after having his knee reopened by his orthopedic surgeon. After running a fever for two weeks and having some other mysterious symptoms Jason sought out his orthopedist. When the infection seemed serious enough and the cause still not entirely clear, the doctors determined that he needed to be admitted to the hospital to monitor his infection and treat him with high powered antibiotics. He is home now and feeling so much better. We are still waiting to find out what caused the infection. Until then he is having a daily dose of intravenous antibiotics administered through an internal catheter that was put in his arm for a few weeks. It seems these medicines are working as his fever has subsided and his knee is feeling so much better. I think we will finally let out our breath when he is no longer on these high powered drugs and when we have some sense of what caused the sickness. There were some tense hours and sleepless nights in there, but what a difference a few days can make. Thank God for antibiotics!

Way to Go, Chattaboogie!

2011-09-22T09:19:00.001-05:00

Congrats to my Chattanooga readers

That's Rynn! Age 3

on OUTSIDE magazine's poll that rated Chattanooga the #1 place to live.
Wow! What'd y'all do to that web poll? I'm glad I can claim it as a home -even though for a mere five years.
I still miss those Tennessee hills.
Chattanooga even beat out Portland, Seattle, and Boulder!
You guys are awesome.

Check it out @ Sweet Home Chattanooga

Wrigleyville

2011-09-16T14:51:00.003-05:00

"Wrigleyville is a neighborhood of young Americans trying to make their way while living in the shadow of a team that proves dreams don't always come true."
-Wright Thompson, The Kansas City Star quoted in Wrigleyworld: A Season in Baseball's Best Neighborhood

As promised a few posts ago,

the first in my exploration of Chicago by L

WRIGLEYVILLE!

Whether you are a baseball fan or not chances are you are familiar with the iconic image of baseball- ivory covered brick walls behind blue clad baseball players swinging bats at the historic Wrigley Field on Chicago's North side. For those of you who, like me, know little of baseball here is a quick lesson.

Chicago Cubs- Fans primarily live on Chicago's North side

-Being a Cubs fan is like wearing a badge of honor

that says "Losing just makes you cooler"

- they are often known as "the lovable losers"

Chicago White Sox- Fans primarily live on Chicago's South side

- a little bit grittier in some people's minds

-they win more

A quick L ride from our neighborhood is Wrigleyville,

home of Wrigley Field and the Chicago Cubs.

There is a mystique about the Cubs, a nostalgia associated with them that I find sort of fun. They represent a time in America's history, or maybe just a nostalgic longing for an imaginary time, when life was simple and baseball represented all that was truly 'American.'

Maybe that's why people keep coming back

to cheer on this team that hasn't won

a World Series

since

1908.

Or maybe they really believe

that today, with their faithful support,

the Cubs will knock the Houston Astros down.

As I write the game is on...maybe today is the day!

Peanuts, Popcorn, Cold Beer!!

I wish there was some sort of App for Blogger where I could capture the smell for you...maybe a 4D blog. Can you smell the hotdogs? The popcorn? The stale beer?

But whatever happens today with the Cubs, one thing is for sure.

There will be a party in Wrigleyville tonight

After all, who doesn't love a party?

Go Cubs.

*All pictures taken today...an hour before the game!

People were more than willing to smile for the camera... so much fun.

Chicago Botanic Garden- a field trip

2011-09-15T21:08:00.001-05:00

Today I join Rynn on her field trip to the

Chicago Botanic Garden .

We spend most of our time

on this chilly September morning

studying the native Illinois prairie.

There is not much prairie left in Chicagoland anymore.

Most of it has been eaten up by the endless sprawl

that stretches from Wisconsin to Indiana.

But just North of Chicago

the Botanic Garden

has preserved the native prairie grasses and flowers.

I love field trips.

I love spying on the kids in Rynn's class, getting some mid-day cuddles, and getting to go on an adventure. It reminds me of the days when the girls were little, and we spent hours exploring the Chattanooga Nature Center looking for frogs, bugs, and flowers.

But they are big now,

and some days I sort of miss them.

But the great thing is

they are growing, loving life, and loving going to school.

and I'm enjoying my little moments of peace :).

"Fool that I am..."

2011-09-12T22:07:00.000-05:00

A shot explodes in a dark room. Blood splatters on the floor. A man falls. Another man leaps from the darkness in an acrobatic defying of gravity, whips out a sword, and demands justice. The lights go down. The small theater is cool, still, and quiet. "Vengeance is mine," says the Count. "I will repay."

It is another night at Lifeline Theater in Chicago, and Jason and I are sitting on the fourth row of this small theater enjoying a preview showing of the latest production The Count of Monte Cristo. BIG STORIES. UP CLOSE. This is the theater’s tag line, and so it feels Friday night when I’m glad we are not sitting on the front row! The story of The Count of Monte Cristo is one well known to many- man is treated unjustly by friends. Man spends 14 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Man’s mind and spirit are awakened in prison by an old priest who teaches him the arts and sciences. Man escapes. Man seeks revenge. In his revenge he not only ends up destroying that which he truly loves but himself as well. He says, in an emotional speech at the end of the story, "Fool that I am that I did not tear out my heart the day I resolved to revenge myself" (Alexander Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo).

Literature is a powerful medium for helping us understand ourselves, our passions, our hungers, our desires, our struggles, our weaknesses, our sin. It is a rare and powerful thing when literature gives a poignant picture of the human struggle with sin. The Count of Monte Cristo, in all its richly textured costumes, sword fights, and choreographed battles, in the end, shows a man’s desire for revenge completely destroying him. Rather than forgiveness it is self seeking justice which drives the story and revenge which destroys. I find myself thinking of Gollum in Lord of the Rings, that powerful character who in his hunger for power and jealousy for the ‘ring’ withers to become ugly, deformed, and a mere shadow of his former person.

Leo Tolstoy, in his sweeping narrative of 19th c. Russia Anna Karenina, describes this ‘withering’ through identifiable characters. The love which once inspired an affair begins to wither through the lies and deception.

“She was not at all as he had seen her in the beginning... He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has plucked, in which he can barely recognize the beauty that had made him pluck and destroy it” - Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

In Anna Karenina Tolstoy notes even the subtlest of human expressions and interactions to make you fall in love with his characters, get angry with them, and then want to throw the book across the room because you are so frustrated with their choices...all the while knowing that what is so insanely frustrating about them is that they are not unlike ourselves. And what a perfect picture of the temptation that sin offers us- a beautiful flower we desire and want to consume. We pick it, like Eve with the fruit, and watch it wither in our hands as we wonder what we desired so deeply in the first place.

Using one another through revenge, lust, envy, or anger can destroy us, but repentance and forgiveness can change us.

“At his wife’s bedside he had given himself for the first time in his life to that feeling of tender compassion..which he had previously been ashamed of as a bad weakness. Repentance... and above all the joy of forgiveness, made it so that he suddenly felt not only relief from his suffering but also an inner peace that he had never experienced before. He suddenly felt that the very thing that had once been the source of his suffering had become the source of his spiritual joy, that what had seemed insoluble when he condemned, reproached and hated, became simple and clear when he forgave and loved” (Tolstoy 418).

Remembering...

2011-09-11T11:42:00.000-05:00

this morning before church on Winnetka's Village Green

counting the lost

"There are prayers that help us last through the day, or endure the night.

There are prayers of friends and strangers that give us strength for the journey.

And there are prayers that yield our will to a Will greater than our own."

-President George W. Bush

excerpt from a speech, Sept. 14, 2001, a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance following the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11th

An Education Mooch

2011-09-06T11:38:00.002-05:00

The air is crisp today. The sound of clanging cymbals and beating drums from Northwestern band practice echoes on the fresh fall breeze blowing in my window. Even the lake seems to have changed its tune from a mild summer calm to a zealous surf responding to the wind's proclamation that fall has arrived. I run down to Northwestern’s campus to see the view of the city, and I half expect to see a wave sweep up like some freshwater tsunami over the distant high rise buildings. Fall is here. The kind of fall that smells of football games, bright blue skies, and anticipation. The fountains in Evanston are dyed purple to welcome back the slow trickle of college students filling the sidewalks and fields of this quaint North shore neighborhood. I, too, feel the giddy excitement of a school year beginning. This fall I decided to unashamedly become an education mooch at this beautiful ivy covered university. I tell you this so that maybe you can join me in my journey.

In two weeks Gary Morson, professor of Slavic Literature, will begin his very popular Introduction to Russian Literature class. Hundreds of students will pack an auditorium to hear this favorite professor teach through Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamozov. I first heard Morson speak at an RUF sponsored discussion with Nicolas Wolterstorff last spring. When I found out that his classes on the Russian classics (he does a class on War and Peace every four years that is said to be life-changing) are some of the most popular at Northwestern and that Morson opens his classes to the community, I said “Sign me up!.”

I’m on page 278 of Anna Karenina. Only 539 more pages to go. But I can’t put it down. It is sort of like a Woody Allen movie meets Wendell Berry meets Jonathan Franzen meets Charlotte Bronte. Love, passion, intrigue, crisis of conscience, conversion, guilt, the beauty of the simple agrarian life, the subtleties of human relationships and interactions. Morson says, “The definition of a Russian happy ending? The hero learns the reason for his agony.” Not unlike Woody Allen, eh? Morson writes, “Each person is a natural egoist who sees the world as if it were a novel in which he or she were the hero or heroine, but morality begins when a person can see the world as if he or she were a minor character in someone else’s novel.” A minor character in someone else’s novel. What if we really lived like that? (Ok...I recognize the irony putting this quote on my BLOG, a medium who’s very nature puts the author as the center of the world. But, well, we are all in process in learning we are not the center of the universe, right?).

I’d love you to join me in this journey this fall with either novel. Hopefully I’ll be able to post some links to lectures, articles, or books about which we can learn more about Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. Happy Reading.

Labor Day Carrot Cake

2011-09-05T09:55:00.000-05:00

Happy Labor Day! For the second Labor Day in a row I'm making Southern Living's Carrot Cake with a buttermilk glaze and cream cheese frosting. Instead of using wax paper and cake pans you can just use a bundt pan, and it is a lot easier.

Tricia Cordell...I'm thinking of you today and remembering eating this cake for the first time in our Portland backyard. Thanks for the yummy recipe. Mine, I can guarantee, will not look as pretty as the one pictured to the right (photo courtesy of Rachel Ray) but hopefully will taste as yummy as Tricia's did the day I first tasted it. What's your favorite Labor Day treat?

Interesting Times

2011-09-02T17:43:00.001-05:00

"We live in interesting times," begins Mr. Truman, Rynn's 3rd grade teacher, to a room full of eager parents faithfully attending Third grade curriculum night.

"The jobs your children may have one day ...probably don't even exist yet. The discussion last night with our technology team revolved around 'Should we teach keyboarding? Will it be obsolete by the time these children are in high school?.'"

What? Keyboarding obsolete? When did this train start moving so fast, and how did I miss it when it went by? Even Blogger changed their interface this week and Facebook is so last week. Ok, maybe I'm the one that is so last week just now hearing about Google Plus. Someone stop the train! With a room full of brand new Macs humming next door I listen as Mr. Truman continues.

"In recent years the Oxford English dictionary has severely limited its printing. What do we do? Do we teach third graders how to look up words in a dictionary? Or is this too becoming obsolete?."

I'm hooked by this former lawyer turned educator. As panic begins to rise in my stomach about keeping up with all this, Mr. Truman holds up a photo of the word WONDER spelled out with found objects by a child on the shores of Lake Michigan.

"Yes, he says, we will teach them to look up words in a dictionary AND....pause...
to practice their spelling words with sea glass in the sand."

"I believe," he continues to a group of overachieving parents crammed in their children's desks, "that it is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."

Supreme art. Creative expression. Joy in knowledge. A zeal to discover the world and never tire of learning. This is what good teachers do for us. They awaken joy and desire. They make us want to run into the world and absorb it. Have you had such a teacher? Perhaps not in the classroom but a pastor or friend? Consider thanking them. Just a thought.

And in other Little family news. Jason is recovering well from his THIRD knee surgery. Although scheduled for a while, it sort of snuck up on us both. A complete ACL reconstruction and meniscus repair...but, in the words of the orthopedist, Dr. Portland, "he can still climb mountains. Just not for six months." For now, it is lots of ice, rest, and oh yeah...trying to write a sermon from his sofa. Maybe in between a few soccer matches.

2nd Annual Bike Ride to the City

2011-08-29T20:50:00.001-05:00

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.

During the school day we have time to ride to the city,

stop for coffee,

take lots of pictures

(Jason took this one of Chicago's new bike lanes)

and stop for some Vietnamese food under the L tracks.

And just in case you are wondering about "swim bans" in Lake Michigan...

I guess it really isn't a sewage problem.

It's all those kids feeding the birds their leftover PB&J.

Phew. I guess we don't need to clean up the Chicago River.

On the way back

I stole a picture

of some Northwestern band dudes practicing for the next game.

You know, trying to get a little blog traffic.

University of Blogspot

2011-08-28T23:33:00.003-05:00

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

and on a more personal level...

we had just moved into our home in Portland, OR
there are comments on those first posts from Oma, Jason's dear grandmother who went to be with her Lord in 2008 (followed by Opa in 2009 and my Granmama in 2010)
Eleanor had just learned to do this...

and Jason had just purchased this...his Xtracycle

Hope Presbyterian Church was pretty much Jason and Pat meeting for coffee
and my babies looked like this

and blogger wouldn't let me post a picture any bigger than this

People always tell you "it goes so fast." It starts to sound a bit trite, but I guess things get trite because somewhere in there there is some truth. Children grow. Life changes. We long for what was because in many ways we are so deeply longing for what will be. I think it is good to remember. I think it helps us understand today. Where were you four years ago? How have you changed? What do you, today, want to remember?

Back to School

2011-08-27T09:32:00.003-05:00

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.

As the girls are greeted by name and with hugs from different teachers and friends, I can't help but feel so thankful for our neighborhood, their little school, and that we are no longer new in this community. Everyone is happy to be back at school!

I began school this week as well.

I'm taking the last of my never ending nursing school prerequisites.

(I know...welcome to the 10 year plan)

Chemistry.

ONLINE.

Things have changed since I took chemistry in college.
The lab arrives in a box in the mail.

A little frightening actually.

Tuning into the online class from my kitchen I listen to the professor while loading my dishwasher and drinking coffee. Lighting the bunsen burner and playing with chemicals should be interesting. I'll keep you posted if we have any major fires!

Hopefully next week I will begin my Chicago neighborhood explorations.

I think the first in my "Chicago Hoods" series will be

Wrigleyville: home of Wrigley Field and the Chicago Cubs.

Stay tuned.

Go Cubs!

No Training Wheels!

2011-08-21T15:23:00.004-05:00

Watch out world.

The training wheels are off.

Jason rigged up a handy handle with a set of old road bike handles. They made a perfect hand hold for giving Eleanor the confidence to TAKE OFF!

an L ticket and a camera

2011-08-20T11:07:00.010-05:00

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...

your favorite Chicago neighborhood, a neighborhood you've always wanted to explore, or any other advice I'd love it! I can be your legs and eyes in this immense wonderland of a city. Start here with this very fun MAP. It is an interactive map of Chicago neighborhoods. Click on any neighborhood and discover the unique cultural mosaic that is Chicago.

Or watch this PBS documentary by Geoffrey Baer called "Chicago by L."

Leave a comment or drop an email to me with your top neighborhood picks. Or better yet, come for a visit and we'll explore together. I can't wait!

Central School Garden

2011-08-16T09:15:00.001-05:00

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.

We laugh at the names of native prairie plants such

'Joe Pye Weed' (pictured below)

and wonder what pioneer story is behind that one!

The school garden is made up of a

vegetable garden,

native Illinois prairie plants,

a sensory garden

with lots of yummy smelling herbs

and fun plants to touch,

and lots of sun loving, insect attracting

"happy plants."

We are excited for school to begin!

Flying High

2011-08-13T14:14:00.000-05:00

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

2011-08-11T14:35:00.001-05:00

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.

All pictures shamelessly mooched from the internet (ie. not our balcony)

There are some amazing ideas out there. Lots of urban gardeners in places like California or Tokyo have gotten very creative with container and wall gardening ideas. The human need for green growing things is strong and produces some pretty ingenious creativity.

If you live in a small space, have a balcony, deck, or just a really sunny wall of your home consider these amazing wall gardens.

The Atlanta Botanical Garden has created an Edible Wall Garden out of a concrete parking lot.

Atlanta Botanical Garden

I found a great blog today called Life on the Balcony. Check it out for some great tips. It really inspires me to do something fun with our balcony next summer. We are on the top floor and have some unbelievable sun. I'm envisioning some tasty tomatoes and butterfly attracting, sun loving flowers overflowing from pots.

Any other ideas you've seen for balcony or urban gardening?

Jason Climbs the Grand Teton

2011-08-08T15:10:00.000-05:00

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

2011-08-04T10:30:00.000-05:00

"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.

Back in the Big City

2011-07-31T20:57:00.000-05:00

Here's the thing about a great vacation-

sometimes the rest, the space, the adventure is so life giving

that coming home is kind of nice.

We've been back in the big city for a week.

The girls and I are hanging at the pool, seeing friends, and staying in our PJs until we are ready to not be in our PJs.

For the first summer ever I have graduated to the formerly enviable group of moms who sit in lounge chairs and watch their young charges or, better yet, actually get to read a book.

A book made it to my lap on Wednesday (I only read one page in three hours, but hey...who's counting?).

Daddy is back to work. The condo is organized, settled, and feeling like home. We feel alive with the hope of new beginnings in a city that is no longer so new to us. I, for one, am immensely thankful our first year of transition is over, and we are returning to things that feel like they are becoming "ours." I am excited for the year to come and hopeful for what it will hold.

Living in this area of Chicago is truly amazing. There is still so much to explore and discover. This fall I hope to explore some of the many Chicago neighborhoods and share them with you.

But, until then, I am sticking close to the home front.

Enjoying the lake.

Enjoying my children

my church

my community

And soaking in every last ray of warm summer sunshine my body can absorb.

Because God is good.

And as Ray Cannata, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New Orleans, said to us this morning, "The Kingdom of God is a feast. Christ is Lord of the feast. It is not that we long for too much. We long for far too little. Only God can fill you. The hunger you feel deep inside...let it drive you to Christ and be ready to share the feast."

Home Again, Home Again

2011-07-28T11:38:00.000-05:00

Home Again.

To Colorado-

one of the most consistent threads of place

in the fabric of our ten and a half years of marriage.

Days with Grammy and Pops in Ft. Collins...

exploring the surrounding hills

and stealing away for a weekend in Portland

while the girls stayed in Ft. Collins with Grammy and Pops.

(more on this trip to come...)

Four days of camping with

Grammy & Pops (Jason's parents)

Gretchen (Jason's sister), Kyle, Jack, & Molly

see more pictures of the car camping

HERE

Colorado Columbine

Tasting Indian Paintbrush in an alpine meadow

While the rest of the crew journeyed back to Ft. Collins for more fun, crafts, and play at Grammy & Pop's house, Jason, Gretchen, and I met up with our old Portland friend Anna for five days of backpacking.

We spent five days and four nights backpacking the Maroon Bells loop- a 27 mile loop circling the Maroon Bells peaks near Aspen. Four 12,000+ passes, four basins, alpine lakes, snow, best Colorado wildflowers we've seen in years, and views galore. Pretty much....unbelievable.

More pictures HERE

Gretchen pumping water with me out of Snowmass Lake- 11,000 ft

and

Home Again.

To Chicago's North Shore-

our latest stop in this pilgrimage of faith.

More thoughts to come in the coming days...

To all we saw in Portland and Colorado...

we love you.

As Eleanor put it over a slice of pizza at the pool last night,

"Mommy, I think once you know a person you become attached to them,

and that is something hard to ever go away."

Amen, baby girl.

a Little holiday

2011-06-29T13:11:00.000-05:00

It is time, as my friends from the UK say, for a little 'holiday.'

Next week marks the one year anniversary of our arrival on Chicago's North Shore.

Last week we finished another move..this time just down the street. Moving from a three bedroom house with a basement to a two bedroom condo is a wee bit tiring. Imagine cleaning out every drawer, basement, nook & cranny, closet, kids' clutter, etc... in a week, and you'll have a good idea of the exhaustion we feel. We are significantly lighter, and it feels good. The new place is great- bright, spacious, lots of wall space for Jason's art, fresh, clean, and going to be so much warmer in the winter!

I want to say thank you to you, dear readers, for taking the time to check in and read this blog. I recognize that it is a bit presumptuous to throw my life story, emotions, and photographs on the internet and expect folks to actually be interested enough to read it. I thank you. This blog has served me well over the past year as an outlet for processing life in our new home. So I think she deserves a little holiday in cyberspace for the month of July. While the Little family flits and flutters through the mountains of Colorado, this blog will take her own respite in cyberspace. We'll all return in August with what I hope is a fresh new perspective and a renewed spirit.

Thank you all and happy summer!

Off to Camp!

2011-06-21T08:17:00.000-05:00