Natural Beauty and other spring break happenings

This year's Spring Break coincided with General Conference. We decided to spend Conference at a beach house in Yachats, which is a spot on the coast further south than we had previously traveled. We loved quaint Yachats town and and want to visit it again someday when it is warm enough to really play on the beach.

I cooked up a storm prior to our trip and we packed a week's worth of food, Easter candy, and other assorted goodies into bags and two coolers.  That way, we only had to heat up food rather than cook from scratch in unfamiliar kitchens.  We feasted on broccoli soup, guiltless alfredo pasta, crepes, apple crisp, and jalapeno sourdough bread.

We arrived at a rented beach house Friday night and set ourselves up for some relaxed Conference viewing. We loved every minute of Conference!

Between Conference sessions on Saturday we explored nearby Cape Perpetua, my new favorite spot along the coast.

We also walked along the beautiful wide beach and took some chilly sunset pictures.

 Monday morning we packed up the car and headed to the redwood forest.  I had miscalculated the distance to our rental cabin in Orick, CA, and that's probably good.  What I thought was a 3 hour drive was actually a 5 1/2 hour drive.  Good thing it was beautiful!

Soon, however, it started to pour rain. It continued to rain all night, but stopped just in time for us to tour the beautiful redwoods.

We stayed in a converted logging cabin which overlooks a meadow filled with elk in the heart of the redwoods.


We spent a peaceful day touring some beautiful spots in the forest. Some of our favorites: Lady Bird Johnson grove, the Newton Drury Scenic Parkway (we explored lots of the trails off the scenic drive), and a spot near Klamath which overlooked the ocean.

 The Lady Bird Johnson Grove was especially picturesque right after a rainstorm.

 We thought it was funny that this was the famous "big tree" when we saw lots of bigger trees!

 Like this one

 Overlooking the ocean. Before visiting the Redwoods, I did not know that the forest runs right to the ocean.

We weren't as impressed by the touristy Trees of Mystery in Klamath, even though the view from the top of the Skytram was impressive.

We did the obligatory and touristy "drive through a tree"

Mostly we loved walking through the serene and peaceful woods, away from the crowds. We were so lucky to enjoy beautiful weather all day.

Wednesday morning we packed up again and drove 7 hours home, stopping in Portland for some Sweet Tomatoes.  We took Grants Pass across the mountains, and we thought the sight of the river sparkling next to the trees and mountain peaks was just splendid.  Sadly, we were whizzing by too fast to get any pictures.

After arriving home late on Wednesday, we prepared for a busy end to our spring break.  Early the next morning Bailey got her wisdom teeth out, Aubrey flew to Utah to visit Brandon and Angela and Grandma and Grandpa for a few days, and all four Kartchners came to our house to stay until Sunday night. It was a whirlwind!

Bailey was such a funny wisdom teeth patient.  She got pretty loopy from the anaesthesia and other medication they gave her, and she was HILARIOUS on the drive home. She was so SAD about everything and cried about many things, including her belief that her lips had fallen off and she couldn't enjoy her first kiss, the presence of trees outside which meant that she wasn't in Utah, and her certainty that the doctor hadn't taken out her wisdom teeth at all and she would have to go through the surgery again.

Somehow I managed to video her with my iphone while driving home on the freeway.  She continued to be loopy and funny until the drugs wore off.  She healed pretty well over the next week, with lots of swelling and one incident of infection in one of the surgical sites.  She watched straight Disney movies while healing over the next few days.

All in all, a great spring break. Bailey chose the location this year, as this was her last spring break at home. She wanted to see somewhere she had never been. Hopefully the beautiful sights we saw made up for the pain at the end of the week!

And now I have updated spring break . . . 2 months late!

Sunrise, Sunset

For the last month I have been tackling a major project which I've wanted to do for many years. I have gone through all of my scrapbooks and scanned almost all our pre-digital photos into the computer. Then, I have spent hours organizing all the photos and videos into digital folders and labeling the folders. This will make it much easier to find photos for any reason, and my first reason will be to pull out pictures for a graduation video for Bailey, who flies out of our nest to her apartment at BYU virtually the moment she graduates.

It has been an interesting experience to live in the past as I immersed myself in the images of long ago years.  I've had a lot of thoughts run through my head during this time, and I'm not sure I can capture all of them. But here are a few.

The years have gone by so fast. 

Years ago, I remember a friend with older kids telling me "blink a few times and your kids will be grown up and leaving home."  It's true.  I can clearly remember what it felt like to welcome each of our babies to our family. Those were exhausting and wonderful times.

I remember at least snippets of what each stage of life felt like, as our family grew from two to six people over 15 years. The kids grew and we did our best to meet the needs of our family of little demanding people. And then our older kid(s) entered adolescence and we tenuously balanced the needs of teenagers and young kids. Each stage has blended into the next, gradually transforming the demographics of our family.

We are definitely in a different season of life now.  

We have left the world of "young family with numerous kids" and now are squarely in "kids are leaving home way too fast and it is getting quiet around here."  I have loved looking at the pictures of my little cuties.  They were and are wonderful.  I miss snuggling their little bodies and laughing at their funny antics.

But I am also OK with the fact that life has moved on and there are new challenges to tackle.  I love the fact that as my kids hit the young adult stage they are delightful and interesting people I want to hang out with.

As I look through old photos, I wish I had captured more of the everyday moments.  

Posed pictures are great, but it's the snapshots of life as it was which are so meaningful now. I never would have guessed how precious the mundane details of everyday life are to me now. I especially like pictures which show life like it really was . . . messes on the counter and the floor, a child throwing a fit.   . 

And I want to slap my silly scrapbooking hands for trimming and cutting my pictures into tacky shapes, thereby removing all traces of the background.  Sometimes what is happening in the background helps to tell the story.

As I organized pictures of the last 7 or 8 years especially, I was dumbfounded at how we fit so much into our days and weeks and months.  The photos tell a story of one big event or activity or challenge after another.  Seriously, just organizing the pictures made me exhausted and I couldn't help but wonder how we pulled it all off.  How did we not just collapse when the pace of our life was/is so extremely busy and we were coping with all the behind the scenes challenges which don't make their way into pictures? As I was pondering this, I realized the only possible answer. We handled it one day at a time. Sometimes one hour or one minute at a time. Just like we do now. We focused on the next hurdle and did our best to cross it while holding everything else together, and only when we cleared the hurdle did we worry about the next one.  That makes it manageable, and it's only in retrospect that I realize how large a mountain we have climbed.

Other than the big events which provided the structure to our lives, as I looked through the photos I also realized that most of parenthood is the summation of a lot of little moments. I know our kids were most influenced by the unplanned and unstructured interactions and discussions. Sometimes I beat myself up for getting distracted by the to-dos and missing a moment of connection. But my photos remind me that we have had a lot of great connection times. Lots of traditions and memories. And lots of interactions which weren't photo worthy.  If I had a chance to live it all again, I would focus even more on the fantastic people living in my home, but I think I have done a reasonably good job juggling life and focusing on people.

I do wish I had taken the time along the way to learn to take better pictures. I've always meant to do it but never made the time. But, blurry, unfocused or overexposed, at least there is some documentation of our lives so far.

This song from Fiddler on the Roof has been playing on repeat in my head for weeks:

Is this the little girl I carried?

Is this the little boy at play?

I don't remember growing older

When did they?

When did she get to be a beauty?

When did he grow to be so tall?

Wasn't it yesterday

When they were small?

What words of wisdom can I give them?

How can I help to ease their way?

Now they must learn from one another

Day by day

Sunrise, sunset

Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly fly the years

One season following another

Laden with happiness and tears.

  

I feel privileged to have been on this crazy rollercoaster of a life with my family. Dan and I love being parents. I can't imagine anything I could have done with my life which would have been as rewarding as raising these four remarkable people.  I'm looking forward to many more years of memories. (And hopefully some good pictures.)