When my childhood friend returned home from vacation, I’d run to her house and ask about the trip. She hiked in the mountains and slept in a tent and fell asleep to night sounds of crickets and tree frogs and hooting owls. They cooked meals wrapped in foil and roasted marshmallows on sticks.

Fascinated, I asked my parents one night, “Can we go camping?”

It was uncivilized and dirty, Dad said. And black widow spiders lurked in the bathhouses and snakes slithered into sleeping bags, and bears and criminals hid in the woods. So, no, we couldn’t camp.

Our family stayed at Holiday Inns.

I longed to sleep in a tent and listen to night sounds and cook meals in foil and roast marshmallows, but I was afraid of the spiders and snakes and bears. So campgrounds remained both a tantalizing and fearful mystery to me well into adulthood.

Years later, when my husband and I had our first child, I remembered my friend’s foil meals and marshmallows and tents. My husband grew up camping, so maybe we could pull it off.

“Let’s camp,” I proposed.

He agreed, so we bought a big tent, borrowed a two-burner Coleman stove, grabbed a pot and frying pan and threw it in the trunk. With some Kraft macaroni and cheese, peanut butter and jelly, and a bag of marshmallows, we were ready.

We drove south and stopped in Chattanooga, Tennessee, for my first night of camping.

The light was fading fast when we drove to our campsite situated along the edge of the woods at the bottom of a hill. We set our 14-month-old daughter next to us strapped in her car seat while we wrestled the tent up. As I started clipping the rainfly to the tent poles, I looked into the dense, dark woods. Before we left, Dad had reminded me of the bears and poisonous spiders and snakes. We were foolish taking our little girl into the woods to sleep in a flimsy nylon tent, he’d said.

“What’s wrong?” My husband asked.

I glanced at the woods. “What about bears?”

“We’ll put the food in the car. They won’t bother us.”

I whispered, “We’re right by the woods. What if someone’s waiting there, ‘til we’re in the tent, sleeping?”

He touched my arm and whispered, “Nothing’s going to happen.”

We finished assembling the tent and then I fumbled with the stove to heat water for macaroni. I thought about abandoning our tent and calling around for a hotel. Or we could sleep in the car and drive home the next day. Just then, a stranger came to our campsite and invited us to the group shelter where they were hosting a spaghetti dinner. No cost. Just come.

“Can we bring our daughter?”

“Of course!”

“Should we bring something to contribute?”

“No, just come on over. We’d love to have you!”

I wondered aloud to my husband: Are they going to poison us? He insisted we at least walk over, so I scooped up our daughter, and as we approached, we looked up at a giant banner stretched out across the shelter.

“Look!” my husband said.

They were a Christian climbing club. He whispered, “I’m hungry—come on! I think their spaghetti will be safe.” We joined the line, and as I was loading my plate, I heard someone call my name. I looked up and saw a friend from college filling the big drink dispenser.

“Hello! What are you doing here? Are you part of this group?”

She said her husband was an avid climber, so she came along to help with the meals. “We take up so many campsites, as a gesture of gratitude we always offer a meal on the first night.” We chatted about climbing and camping, and I admitted it was my first time to camp. She sensed my nerves, or maybe I told her.

“I’ll pray for you,” she said.

We had to get our little girl to bed, so we said goodbye and walked down the hill to our campsite. We checked that all the food was in the car before we climbed into the tent. I patted the outside of the sleeping bag with a shoe, feeling for snakes.

“It’s amazing you met your friend here,” my husband said. “Your first night camping, and God surrounded you with Christians—including someone you know. Will you sleep a little better?”

I smoothed out my flat, snake-free sleeping bag. “A little.”

I lay in the tent listening to crickets and tree frogs, just like my childhood friend had described. But I also listened for snapping twigs and suspicious rustling in the leaves, praying over and over for safety. My daughter’s breathing grew slow and even. My husband rolled over and fell asleep.

Finally, I drifted off, too.

The next morning, my husband asked how I slept. Our daughter was just beginning to stir.

“Fine. Some weird dreams, but we’re still alive and that’s all that matters.”

He laughed.

I crawled out of my sleeping bag and whacked the heel of my shoe against the ground to shake free any poisonous spiders that had crawled inside overnight. Nothing scrambled away, so I pulled them on and hiked up the hill to the bathhouse, breathing in the fresh morning air and watching squirrels scamper across the gravel road and up the tall oak trees that shaded the campground.

Tomorrow night, I thought, we’ll roast marshmallows.

* * *

Reprinted with permission of The High Calling, from Best Vacation Stories: Tomorrow Night, Marshmallows, by Ann Kroeker.

The post First Time Camping – Tomorrow Night, Marshmallows appeared first on Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

Fascinated, I asked my parents one night, “Can we go camping?”

It was uncivilized and dirty, Dad said. And black widow spiders lurked in the bathhouses and snakes slithered into sleeping bags, and bears and criminals hid in the woods. So, no, we couldn’t camp.

Our family stayed at Holiday Inns.

I longed to sleep in a tent and listen to night sounds and cook meals in foil and roast marshmallows, but I was afraid of the spiders and snakes and bears. So campgrounds remained both a tantalizing and fearful mystery to me well into adulthood.

Years later, when my husband and I had our first child, I remembered my friend’s foil meals and marshmallows and tents. My husband grew up camping, so maybe we could pull it off.

“Let’s camp,” I proposed…

[READ MORE at The High Calling where this story is featured in its entirety.]

The post Tomorrow Night, Marshmallows appeared first on Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

We arrive late afternoon at the Grand Canyon, just in time for lovely lighting.

The overlook with protective railings is packed with people, all snapping pictures, the sounds of chatter and shutters filling the space directly around us.

An exhale, a sigh.

We linger long, much longer than most people, and the noise level drops. I hear my son ask a question and my husband advise my daughter on the best position of her tripod. I look around and realize…

It’s just us.

I point this out to my family and we fall silent a moment, letting space fill the space. I breathe slowly in the fading light, drinking in the silence.

Vast silence.

Then one of the kids asks when we’ll leave.

Spell broken, we discuss dinner plans and head back to the RV, debating whether or not to wake in time for sunrise. We decide to do it. Once in a lifetime and all that.

In the morning, we hustle to the overlooks where, again, crowds gather, though not as many as at sunset. It is, after all, five in the morning. As the sky lightens, we wait for the moment the day’s first shafts of light streak over the far side of the canyon.

And shutters snap nonstop like paparazzi.

I snap, too, feeling guilty for contributing to the noise, but unable to stop, hypnotized, mesmerized. People slowly leave the overlook, finished capturing a digital dawn, but we’re still here, lingering despite a few weary moans from the few who preferred sleep over sunrise.

And once more, we are alone out here. The six of us and the Grand Canyon. I stop snapping pictures, as does my daughter. In the second silence, we pause and take it all in.

There’s nothing to say. There’s only the silence, the space, and us.

In time, it seems right to leave. We stand up and move toward the parking lot, passing a young couple heading toward the empty overlook to take our place on the rocks.

Posts about our trip:

A Trip Across the USA

RV Trip West: Heading into the Unknown

RV Trip West: Convergences

RV Trip West: Route 66

RV Trip West: Petrified Forest

RV Trip West: Winslow, Arizona

RV Trip West: Grand Canyon

Photos by Ann Kroeker.

For about a year, I’ve followed this blogger with interest. His stories and photos inspired some of our planning.

The post RV Trip West: Grand Canyon appeared first on Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

“Hey,” I say to my husband as we leave Petrified Forest National Park, “Winslow, Arizona, is just down the road. Can we stop? Please?”

He’s grinning. Of course he’ll stop, especially because I’m giddy. I don’t know why I’m so excited, because I don’t fit the Eagles demographic, but I doggedly search the Internet on my phone for the lyrics to “Take It Easy” and when I find them, I sing the entire song a cappella as we drive to the Winslow exit.

When I finish, my husband says if I’m ever at a gas station and a guy invites me to sing karaoke, I should pick that song.

“It’s not really a song for a girl to sing,” I point out. “The narrator is a guy.” When I suggest that he be the one to stand on the corner, since he’s a guy, he shakes his head. “We can both stand on the corner.” I look up and smile, then turn to my phone again to track down a YouTube rendition of the song. I play it, trying to get the kids interested. They ignore me.

We drive through town in search of the corner, spotting plenty of vintage Route 66 sights.

Someone in Winslow realized potential for drawing tourists into town and created a park on a corner in town. An artist painted a mural that depicts lines from the song and they parked a flat bed Ford curbside.

I peer down streets as we move through intersections, and we finally spot it.

We park a couple of blocks away, so I try to talk the kids into coming but they decline—all but one daughter who agrees to be our photographer. We bound down the street and find the mural and the flat bed truck and a small tour group—several of them wear coordinating shirts and caps that suggest they’re on a Route 66-themed trip. They’re posing for photos.

Our daughter stands on the opposite corner, ready to take our snapshot, but we have to wait. The visitors are taking turns snapping pictures of themselves by the statue and the lamppost. We wait while they wander around studying mural details, taking it all in.

Finally we tell our daughter to go ahead and snap a few, knowing we’ll end up with peopled shots. A quick glance confirms that I am on the young end of giddy tourists.

We wait and eventually it’s just the two of us.

Except for a couple of guys on Harleys who lingered nearby.

We’re trying to make it to the Grand Canyon before sunset, so the three of us run back to the RV.

“Thanks for coming with us to be our photographer,” I tell my daughter as we rush down the sidewalk. “I know this was kind of boring for you.”

“It wasn’t boring. I loved that Route 66 sign on the road,” she replies. “This was a lot more cool than I thought it would be.”

We climb up the steps into the RV and one of the kids who stayed back looks up from the sofa. “Why did we stop here?”

“For a song,” I say. “Just a song.”

______________________

Posts about our trip:

A Trip Across the USA

RV Trip West: Heading into the Unknown

RV Trip West: Convergences

RV Trip West: Route 66

RV Trip West: Petrified Forest

RV Trip West: Winslow, Arizona

RV Trip West: Grand Canyon

Photos by Ann Kroeker.

For about a year, I’ve followed this blogger with interest. His stories and photos inspired some of our planning.

The post RV Trip West: Winslow, Arizona (Standin’ on a Corner) appeared first on Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

Before we left on this trip, our friend “Helen’s” eyes lit up when we described our itinerary. She and her husband had visited most of our destinations on their honeymoon in the 1940s, and years later they returned to several of them with their kids. “You are going to love it!” she assured us. She pulled out a photo album to show us the vintage black-and-white snapshots of Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon. She ran a finger over the page. “You are going to have so much fun!”

I’d never heard about Petrified Forest National Park until my husband and I watched a PBS series on the history of our national parks. Helen described how beautiful all the colors were in the Painted Desert and how each piece of petrified wood almost glittered with its own streaks of colors.

“Bright colors?”

“All kinds of colors,” she said. “I’ll show you. I have a piece.”

“You have a piece? You own petrified wood?” Sure enough, she owns a petrified log, the size you’d toss into a fire to burn for a couple of hours. “Feel how heavy it is,” she said. She rolled it into my arms and it was as heavy as a stone…because that’s pretty much what it is.

“I bought that on my honeymoon,” she said, “for ten dollars.” The bark was smooth and cool to the touch; the colors, subdued, shimmery. “You’ll see all kinds of colors,” she promised.

Because of the dreamy look on Helen’s face, I decided this national park would be well worth our time to visit.

We wake up in Holbrook and remark how the land seems to stretch out forever on one side of the campground. While the girls finish getting ready, my son and I walk to the office where several impressive specimens of petrified wood are on display—a collection of fat stumps and long logs; entire trees, it seems. I snapped photos with my phone, amazed.

When everyone’s ready, we drive about 20 miles to the north entrance. We stop at the visitor’s center to buy a Petrified Forest sticker and get our National Parks Passport “cancellation stamp” along with suggestions from the ranger for what to view along the 28-mile scenic drive through the park.

One of the first stops is the view behind the Painted Desert Inn. Have we landed on Mars? Or the moon?

We snap several photos and read informational signs, brochures, and pamphlets that explain how Petrified Forest National Park is situated in a broader region known as the Painted Desert. We learn that the colors come from minerals in the soil and rock and that this is technically grassland rather than desert. We see very little grass, but I’ll take their word for it.

We’ve been reading a lot of signs and taking a lot of pictures. Someone’s getting bored. He’s studying the path with binoculars, so I suggest we visit the Inn.

The Painted Desert Inn, built in the late 1930s, no longer handles guests other than park visitors who come through to tour, but years ago lodged travelers passing through on Route 66, which ran directly through the national park land. I see a petroglyph on display and the ranger standing nearby explains that it’s famous. “Haven’t you seen it on hats and bags and things?”

I shake my head and tell him I’m from the Midwest. He says, “You’ll see it everywhere now. A lot of people use it for their logo or something without knowing where it’s from. It’s a cool story.” He points at the sign but then proceeds to paraphrase what it says, adding that it was face down in a bunch of rubble. It could have so easily been overlooked, but they flipped it over to discover this beautiful work of art.

I snap several photos as the ranger talks, and ask, to confirm, “So this is the original, right?”

“Oh, yes! A lot of people don’t know that. It’s right here in the Inn. Right here in Petrified Forest National Park.”

“And you don’t care that my camera is just a few inches away from this national treasure?”

“Just don’t touch it with your fingers.” The stone is standing upright on a low shelf. A small child could easily swipe a pacifier or slimy finger along its surface.

The ranger is eager to show us around, so he invites us into the dining area and explains that the murals are by Hopi artist Fred Kabotie.

I’m charmed by the vintage furnishings, decor and artwork and snap pictures of the kids sitting at the stools. The ranger lets my son slip behind the counter and pretend to serve the girls, and we’re all laughing, delighted.

We work our way through the building and then climb back into the RV to continue our tour of the park. Next stop: Route 66.

Actually, it’s the spot in the park where Route 66 used to cut through. A park ranger is standing nearby to chat with curious visitors, and he lines me up to see where the roadbed used to be. It’s kind of hard to tell, but I snap a picture anyway, since the ranger is standing right next to me to point it out. I snap a few more shots of an old car they’ve mounted in memory of the highway’s heyday, but the dilapidated state of the car emphasizes times long gone.

We thank the ranger and continue, driving a while.

“Life is a Highway” starts rolling through my head, and I realize this is trouble. It will be running through my head for a long time.

We stop at the Puerco Pueblo ruins, where we see the village remains and then petroglyphs.

One fascinating set-up is a petroglyph that marks the spot where, on the summer solstice, sunlight streaks between two rocks creating a narrow band illuminating a round drawing looking like a bullseye. We are at the park just days before the summer solstice, and just a couple of hours before the right time, but don’t have time to linger.

In this photo above, I think I’ve captured the line of light on the left rock inching closer to the circle, which is hard to discern on the right rock. As I attach my long lens and try to get closer shots of the artwork, a man standing nearby says to anyone within earshot, “Someone sure had a lot of time on his hands!”

He says it again, because no one responds. “Someone sure had a lot of time on his hands!”

I ignore him, trying to take it all in, trying to imagine these early artists creating figures and shapes. No one knows exactly the purpose behind all of these designs. Perhaps the person who made them just loved creating art.

Maybe it was one person with lots of time on his or her hands, or maybe that person had to make time for it after returning from a hunt or fishing expedition.

Sometimes people do that. They work around day-to-day obligations to create art. Sometimes they have lots of time available, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they make the time, because art is a priority.

While I’m snapping pictures and thinking of the artist or artists, the man says it again. He shakes his head almost disparagingly. “All I can say is, someone sure had a lot of time on his hands.”

All I can say is, I’m glad someone had time on his hands. He or she or the community of artists who created all of this has left behind some charming, whimsical images for us to ponder.

These people carved a life out of this barren land, building a village that looked out across a valley to a long mesa. Everyday life must have been hard sometimes. Yet, long ago, someone took time to climb down and etch onto rocks the shape of a hand print, a bird with a frog in its beak, spirals and lizards. Someone called this home and added something more than a container to store provisions through the harshest months. Someone took time to tell stories in pictures, to give the villagers something to look at besides mesas and cacti. Someone added beauty.

The buildings are mostly gone. The outline of their foundations is all that remains. But the art…we can still see the art as clearly as ever.

We finally load into the RV and continue. The kids are grateful for air conditioning. Before long, we see cliffs streaked with color, and I remember what Helen told me, that the Painted Desert has all kinds of colors.

We find ourselves in the midst of a bunch of these mounds. To the right and left, these eerie shapes encroach upon the path.

“Have we seen any petrified wood yet?” asks one of the kids.

“No, we haven’t,” I say, equally perplexed.

“It’s funny this is called Petrified Wood National Park and we haven’t seen any petrified wood.”

“I agree.”

But we’re on the lookout for the Agate Bridge. I’ve wanted to see this since renting the PBS national parks series. The Agate Bridge is a spot where a tree fell and formed a bridge, and people used to get photographs of themselves standing on it or walking across. The agate tree began to crumble over time, so workers shored it up with concrete support underneath. But today, in the name of preservation and safety, people are no longer allowed to put weight on the bridge.

We read the sign carefully to confirm, and it stays to stay off the bridge. So we climb down a different way and touch it, instead.

We get into the RV and continue toward a spot where the ranger said we could view lots of wood. I see logs dotting the landscape. “Look! There’s a bunch of petrified wood!”

“Finally!” one of the kids exclaims. Everyone’s excited. We get out and walk among the logs.

We drive on, because we’re told there’s yet another viewing area with lots of wood where we can get up close. We stop along the way, in case this mound is Blue Mesa. I don’t think it is, but find it interesting nevertheless.

Then we realize that the last spot to walk among the petrified wood is just this side of the exit. We hop out and walk the path a ways, but the kids are feeling hot and have run out of steam. I’m sad, because this is the last big collection, the last chance to get up close and personal with the wood out here in its natural habitat. We may never pass this way again.

The kids say that the only thing they want to see here is “Old Faithful,” the largest log in the park. On the way, I snap a photo of a cactus in bloom and then see a particularly colorful chunk of rock and think of how Helen tried to find words to prepare us. “All kinds of colors,” she had said.

I can’t get a good shot of Old Faithful, so I try to capture the place as a whole, and even that doesn’t do it justice.

I want time to explore everything and take better pictures than what the midday sun is able to offer, but everyone else seems ready to move on. We’re on our way to the Grand Canyon, so we do need to go. I would, after all, like to try capturing this evening’s soft light illuminating the Grand Canyon. But I’ve enjoyed this place, and I’m glad that people like John Muir pushed to have it preserved as a national park.

We stop at the gift shop and one of my daughters spends her souvenir money on a Petrified Forest National Park T-shirt. She shows it to me when we’re in the RV getting ready to go. “We saw so many different things in one park,” she says. “I really liked this place.”

______________________

Photos by Ann Kroeker.

Posts about our trip:

A Trip Across the USA

RV Trip West: Heading into the Unknown

RV Trip West: Convergences

RV Trip West: Route 66

RV Trip West: Petrified Forest

RV Trip West: Winslow, Arizona

RV Trip West: Grand Canyon

Photos by Ann Kroeker.

For about a year, I’ve followed this blogger with interest. His stories and photos inspired some of our planning.

The post RV Trip West: Petrified Forest National Park appeared first on Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

Late at night, after negotiating an awkward turn onto a quiet side road in Oklahoma City, a police officer pulls us over. Apparently we’d overlooked a stop sign just after exiting the freeway. He asks where we’re headed and we explain our confusion over the way to a campground. He listens and nods, and then proceeds to give us precise directions without even a warning about the stop sign. “Have a good trip!” he calls out.

The friendly officer drives off, so we roll down the road to the campground where we settle in for the night. In the morning, we continue west through New Mexico toward Arizona.

I realize that several of these exits would take us onto portions of Route 66. I want to drive at least some segment of the old road, so my husband turns off at Tucumcari, and to get the kids to pay attention, I refer to Cars. They’re suddenly interested and start snapping pictures of Route 66 memorabilia.

I’m excited to roll down part of the great American highway, but sad, too. This town has preserved some of the old gas stations and motels seemingly as nothing more than opportunities to paint vintage-style signs with Route 66 in bold, black lettering. Most of the businesses themselves are bricked and boarded up; and those still offering services, aren’t exactly booming.

Still, we enjoy the mini-tour and promise to watch Cars sometime on the trip when we aren’t exhausted.

We get back on Interstate 40. “Interesting sky,” I say to my husband.

It looks like it’s a long way off, and maybe we’ll miss it if it’s moving away from the road as we approach.

The closer we get, the stranger it looks. The wind seems to have lifted sand off the desert before releasing the rain, so we’re witnessing a mysterious, mingling swirl of brown and gray in the distance. We begin to feel the strong plow winds pushing against us. A tumbleweed rolls across the road, lightly touching the asphalt before lifting up again, spinning and tumbling into the field on the other side.

“I’ve always wanted to see a tumbleweed tumble!” I shout over the noise of the wind. “But I forgot that wind is what makes them tumble—this is nuts!”

My husband can’t even respond, he’s so focused on keeping the RV steady. Soon we’re heading into an impressive storm. He’s slowing down as the winds slam against us intensely. We consider pulling over. He decides to slow down even more, instead, and drive on high alert. After several miles, we see the sky clearing in the distance and as we move toward it, the force of the wind and our tension lessen. Finally, we’re on the other side.

“I’ve never felt wind that hard before,” my husband says as the skies calm.

“My heart is still thumping,” I admit.

Our daughter shouts, “A rainbow!”

I turn to look, and with those dark storm clouds as a backdrop, the rainbow seems lit from within.

We snap many pictures, as the rainbow slowly fades.

The last miles on our way into Holbrook, Arizona, are tiring. We’ve been slowed by the storm and now, construction. This time, however, I did arrange for our late arrival. The office manager at the campground picked out a spot for us not too far from the bath house. We try to get everyone ready for bed right away, because tomorrow we visit Petrified Forest National Park.

______________________

Posts about our trip:

A Trip Across the USA

RV Trip West: Heading into the Unknown

RV Trip West: Convergences

RV Trip West: Route 66

RV Trip West: Petrified Forest

RV Trip West: Winslow, Arizona

RV Trip West: Grand Canyon

Photos by Ann Kroeker.

For about a year, I’ve followed this blogger with interest. His stories and photos inspired some of our planning.

The post RV Trip West: Route 66 appeared first on Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

“Bugs and rainbows,” my husband observes as I lean across the RV dashboard to get the shot. “That’s life right there, isn’t it?”

“Always some of both,” I agree.

“Did the camera focus on the rainbow or the bugs?”

“Both, I think.” I lean back in my seat and return to my primary responsibility. A friend who has made several RV trips warned me to secure at least two or three campground possibilities before 5:00 p.m. local time each day. “Do it while rolling down the highway,” she said. But we left so late on Friday that it was practically 5:00 local time when we first pulled out of our driveway. I’m rolling down the highway with nothing lined up for tonight.

Construction slows us down in spots, making it hard to estimate where we’ll be at bedtime. I have a list of names, addresses and phone numbers of campgrounds located along our route. I phone all of the places with decent reviews, but no one answers. The offices must be closed for the night.

Finally, we see that we aren’t going to make it to the city, so we stop at one campground east of St. Louis (but not East St. Louis) billed as a “resort.” It does look nice, actually, with a pretty fountain out front and plenty of fancier RVs than our old Bounder. My husband hops out and studies the papers and posters taped to the office door, hoping to spot a late registration process. Nothing.

It’s close to 10:30 our time, and we have to move on. Nothing is guaranteed; we just have to drive to the next campground and hope for the best. I’m still uptight about the problems we might encounter along the way. Like not finding a campground.

My phone navigation guides us to the next one on my list, but we’re running out of options. Just in case the next campground doesn’t work out, I start scouring Google maps for a Wal-Mart, where RVs are often allowed to stay overnight for free.

The next campground proves difficult to find in the dark, but we eventually turn a corner and discover it tucked behind some buildings. We pull next to the office and find late registration instructions. Yay! We locate a pull-through campsite close to the bath house so that our three teenage girls can conveniently access the showers. After everyone cleans up, we level the RV, pull shut the curtains, and drop into bed.

In the morning, we fix bowls of instant oatmeal before continuing toward the Gateway Arch. Weeks ago, my son insisted, “We have to stop at the Arch. It’s the Gateway to the West! We can’t go west without passing under the Arch!”

As we’re cruising down the highway toward St. Louis, one of my daughters speaks up from the couch. “Mom? Dad? I just realized I forgot to pack my leg brace.” She had ACL surgery last fall and the surgeon advised her to wear—for a full year after surgery—her custom-made leg brace during sports and while hiking unsteady surfaces. We’ve planned hikes in several national parks and assume most will be unsteady surfaces.

After we all sit quietly for a moment in disbelief, the reality setting in, my husband says, “I’m sorry, but we’ll have to evaluate each hike along the way. If some seem too rocky, we may have to ask you to stay in the RV while the rest of us go on without you.” I glance back and she stares straight ahead. I ache for her. I want to turn back time and nag her to grab that brace before we leave, but here we are on Interstate 70, hours from home, just about to enter St. Louis. And the brace is in her room somewhere.

Then I think about my dear friend and neighbor. She has a key. Maybe I could ask her to grab the brace and meet up with our good friends who will be heading to Colorado in a couple of days? We have a special day-long Colorado hike planned with those friends toward the end of our trip. If we could get the brace to those friends, my daughter would at least have it for the longest, rockiest hike.

I contact my friends and launch a flurry of texts and phone calls, learning that my friends aren’t leaving for Colorado later in the week—they’re leaving today. In fact, they just left their home and ask if I can arrange for my neighbor to meet them at a nearby freeway exit in 20 minutes?

My dear neighbor is willing, and so, God bless her, she finds the brace in my daughter’s room and converges with my Colorado-bound friends at the agreed-upon exit—it couldn’t have been more perfectly orchestrated. My neighbor and this family have met in the past, so they aren’t total strangers, making the leg brace hand-off less awkward. I promise to buy my neighbor dinner when I get back, and I thank my new leg brace transport team profusely for taking it to Colorado for us. They text, “Are you going through Tulsa?”

“Yes,” I text back, “but first we’re visiting the Arch in St. Louis.”

She phones and explains, “This never happens, but we’re stopping in Tulsa to see family before going to Colorado. Let’s keep in touch—who knows? Maybe we’ll be close enough to meet up?”

“That would be crazy!”

“Crazy-fun!” she exclaims. “It would be so fun to see you. Plus, wouldn’t it be helpful to get this brace to you for the first part of your trip with all those hikes?”

“Yes! Absolutely!”

I thank her again and ask if I can call her back, because we’ve entered the city and spotted the Arch.

We have trouble maneuvering the RV through the city due to some low overhangs. At one point, my husband has to back up, turn around in a tight spot, and head the wrong way down a one-way street. Fortunately, the street is short and the one car we encounter seems to understand our dilemma and backs up. The driver doesn’t even seem annoyed, and I’m grateful. I look down from the RV window and mouth, “Thank you!” She looks up, smiles, and nods.

The city doesn’t seem crowded on this Saturday morning, so we could park in several lots. We choose a deserted lot with only one attendant—a guy wearing a reflective vest, sitting on the bed of a pickup truck. He asks for $20, five dollars cheaper than the lot down the street, closer to the Arch. My husband asks if he would accept $10 since we are staying only a couple of hours. The attendant agrees to $10 and my husband feels good about his negotiating skills. We lock up the RV and head to the Arch.

We catch glimpses of it between buildings as we make our way to the grounds and start snapping photos from all different angles. Then we round a corner and see the whole thing, like a rainbow arcing across the sky, both ends within sight. The kids run their hands along the cool metal, snap pictures of each other leaning this way and that against it, and then lie on the grass and stare up at it.

We visit the museum and get our National Parks Passport Gateway Arch/Jefferson National Expansion Memorial sticker and stamp, buy our America the Beautiful Pass, then head back out.

We hear Dixieland jazz playing on the vintage steamboat docked below. The kids admire the Mississippi and my son announces he wants to take a riverboat ride. We have neither the time nor the money, so we tell him it’s time to move on; to go west, young man.

All four kids turn resolutely toward the west and walk, together, under the Arch. I’m next to one of the girls. “There,” she says. “Now I’m totally ready to go west.” My son shouts pretty much the same thing. There’s some discussion of Lewis and Clark heading out on their expedition as we stroll up the stretch of green grass to the sidewalk.

We’re making our way toward the RV when I hear the snapping of a flag and look up.

An American flag furls and unfurls above us. I take a series of photos and hope at least one captures these artistic swirls. “Yesterday was Flag Day,” I say out loud to whoever is listening, but my son is jumping this way and that to avoid stepping on a sidewalk crack, and the girls are laughing about something. My husband smiles. “It was Flag Day?”

“Yes. We were packing and driving on Flag Day.”

He nods and looks up. I think about the flag and how we’re about to explore this great land of ours.

When we arrive at the parking lot, the RV is still there but the attendant is gone.

I turn to my husband. “I think that this was always just an empty lot and the guy was some local dude who came up with a great way to get some spending money.”

He nods. “And all he had to buy was a reflective vest.”

We look over the RV exterior and the compartments seem secure, so we head out of the city, west, toward Tulsa. I phone my friend and we compare distances, reading off signage. After our long stop in St. Louis, they aren’t that far behind. “Let’s stay in touch.”

Somewhere in Missouri we encounter a thunderstorm with torrential rain, and to cope with the wind, we slow down to 40 miles per hour. I’m researching campgrounds, but once again we’re unsure how far we’ll get. Meanwhile, our friends text us. They’re closing the distance between us and so we agree to meet in Tulsa, even if we have to wait an hour or so. It’ll be worth it to have that brace and see our friends.

We emerge from the storm front and find ourselves on a clear stretch of road. Sunshine. We’re close to Tulsa, so I text my friend again—we’ve been sending silly notes about the leg brace offering bionic strength, like the Six Million Dollar Man, but now we actually make plans to meet at Coney I-Lander, a local hotdog place.

We exchange texts, and the closer we get to Coney I-Lander, the closer our friends are to us.

We pull into the parking lot outside the restaurant and wait maybe five or ten minutes at most before we spot our friends. We wave and laugh and tumble into a big mess of kids and grownups hugging one another, the leg brace held high over their heads and passed into the grateful arms of my daughter. We head into the hotdog place together, talking about the thunderstorm and the brace and the amazing timing of arriving within ten minutes of each other in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I keep giggling and can’t help bursting out again and again, “This is crazy! This is so crazy! I can’t believe we’re together in Tulsa!”

We’re a little giddy as we eat together, but we can’t linger. On this day, their schedule is tighter than ours. Thankfully, the leg brace transport and transfer has not slowed them down, but they have to visit someone, so we all hug each other again, every combination of adult and child reaching out for another set of arms.

My friends roll down their minivan windows and call out, “In Colorado?”

“In Colorado!” we exclaim. We wave them off and then climb into the RV to continue west, toward Oklahoma City. We’re all smiles when we joke with our daughter, “So you have the leg brace in this RV, right? It’s not driving off in that minivan?”

It’s right next to her on the couch. She grins and pats it. “I have it right here, safe and sound.” We laugh and sigh and settle in for another couple of hours. With all the leg brace hubbub, I forgot to secure a campground for tonight. But we found a place to stay last night. I’m sure we’ll find one tonight.

______________________

Posts about our trip:

A Trip Across the USA

RV Trip West: Heading into the Unknown

RV Trip West: Convergences

RV Trip West: Route 66

RV Trip West: Petrified Forest

RV Trip West: Winslow, Arizona

RV Trip West: Grand Canyon

Photos by Ann Kroeker.

For about a year, I’ve followed this blogger with interest. His stories and photos inspired some of our planning.

The post RV Trip West: Convergences appeared first on Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

Before we plummeted, I woke up.

I told my family about it at breakfast.

“Gee, Mom. Nervous about the trip?” they replied. It doesn’t take a clinical psychiatrist, I guess. We were planning a two-and-a-half week RV trip out west in June, and my mind was conjuring up scary scenarios, even in my sleep.

This trip would involve a lot of unknowns: I’ve never felt the steady push of the Great Plains’ high winds nor traversed the long, barren stretches of uninhabited deserts; and I’ve never journeyed over the heights of the Rocky Mountains. And I’ve certainly never done any of that in an RV. My husband would be the driver, but he’s never been any of these places, either. Plus, our RV has some age on it. Would it make it across the country and back?

We made lists and packed and quizzed people familiar with some of the areas we would be visiting. Should we stay longer at the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, Bryce, or Arches? Should we bother with the Petrified Forest? We weren’t even planning on Lake Powell, but a friend urged us to consider. We had to give up Mesa Verde and Rocky Mountain National Park due to time constraints. Would we regret it? People offered opinions—and each opinion was different.

I guess you just have to head out and decide for yourself.

The Sunday before we left, my husband and I were walking through the parking lot with friends from church. They had traveled quite a bit, so I asked, “I’ve never been in an arid environment, nor has my body experienced altitude. Any last-minute advice?”

“Drink lots of water,” the husband said.

“And put on lots of lotion,” the wife said.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s some tangible advice. Water and lotion.”

“Lots,” she repeated.

I thanked them, then asked, “Anything else?”

They thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. Just drink lots of water,” he said. “And have fun.”

We said goodbye and headed to our cars, then I heard her call out, “And wear a hat!” The husband nodded and shouted, “But don’t forget the water. Drink lots of water!”

We loaded our RV with jugs of drinking water, bought hats at Wal-mart, and grabbed some travel containers of lotion in addition to large bottles of sunscreen I’d already picked up. We invested in hiking boots and socks, and thought through different layers that people recommended (one fleece, a rain jacket, a pair of jeans, hiking shorts). I planned simple meals for the family and prepared some gluten- and dairy-free food I could eat on the way.

Then Friday afternoon, June 14, I’d cleaned out the fridge and wiped down the kitchen counters one last time. When my husband finished work, we climbed into the RV to drive off. Our own trip out west was about to begin, for better or for worse.

After merging into traffic on I-70 and settling into the long haul ahead, my husband asked, “Are you nervous about anything?”

I remembered my dream and felt a small gasp in my gut. I swallowed. “Just the mountains. I guess I’m worried about the RV in the mountains.”

“It’ll make it,” he said. “I read up on how to use the engine’s gears instead of relying on the brakes. I know what to do. We got the RV checked over, and it’s ready to go. We’re gonna be fine.”

I nodded. But every once in a while, as we headed west toward the slowly setting sun, I would remember that feeling from my dream, of being suspended, mid-air.

______________________

Posts about our trip:

A Trip Across the USA

RV Trip West: Heading into the Unknown

RV Trip West: Convergences

RV Trip West: Route 66

RV Trip West: Petrified Forest

RV Trip West: Winslow, Arizona

RV Trip West: Grand Canyon

Photos by Ann Kroeker.

For about a year, I’ve followed this blogger with interest. His stories and photos inspired some of our planning.

The post RV Trip West: Heading into the Unknown appeared first on Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

For the Food on Fridays carnival, any post remotely related to food is welcome—though we love to try new dishes, your post doesn’t have to be a recipe. We’re pretty relaxed over here, and stories and photos are as welcome as menus and recipes. When your Food on Fridays contribution is ready, just grab the button to include with your post. It ties us together visually. Then fill in the boxes of this linky tool to join the fun!

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Food on Fridays with Ann

Three weeks ago, our family of six loaded up our used RV with provisions and clothes and hiking boots, climbed in and claimed various areas (couch, dinette bench, La-Z-Boy recliner), spread maps across the expansive dashboard, and slowly worked our way through the subdivision and onto the bypass around the city, to merge with traffic on I-70.

We were heading west toward such sites as the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, and Colorado. Our family has never seen any of the places on our itinerary, so this would be a shared adventure. We would feel awe together. We would hike difficult trails together. We would live in this mobile home for two-and-a-half weeks…together.

Now I’m trying to unpack not only the RV, but also the trip itself. Traveling always changes me, but I’m not always sure how until I’ve spent some time reflecting on the trip. So over the next days, maybe weeks, I’ll post about some of the places and experiences. To the reader, these thoughts may feel part travelogue, part journal, and part poetry. I can’t really say, as I’m not sure how this will unfold.

One fun project I undertook was to document the traveling Chia Bars. My mom shops at a South Carolina farmer’s market and sent me some Frommer’s gluten-free chia granola bars to taste-test. I gave them a big thumbs up, so she purchased a giant box full of them for my trip and shipped them to me. Frommer’s asked if I could photograph the bars at various locations out west—kind of a Flat Stanley project you can eat. That sounded like fun, so I always had a chia bar on hand.

But I didn’t just carry them for the photo ops—I tucked them into my backpack for my hiking snack. The bars provided sustenance as I explored the country.

We drove off on Flag Day, and returned home a few days before the Fourth of July—patriotic days book-ending our trip across this great country. As we stopped at these national treasures, I occasionally sang the chorus of “This Land is Your Land.” At one of the national parks, my son listened to the words and exclaimed, “That’s the perfect song, because this land really is yours and mine and ours!” He gestured with arms stretched wide to include the landscape, our family, and all the hikers in front of us and behind.

This land is yours and mine and ours. And not just because we’re American taxpayers contributing to the national parks. Indeed, this land was made for you and me, a gift from the Creator above. We laughed about our chia bar project.

But we couldn’t help but stand in awe of this land of ours.

______________________

Photos by Ann Kroeker.

Posts about our trip:

A Trip Across the USA

RV Trip West: Heading into the Unknown

RV Trip West: Convergences

RV Trip West: Route 66

RV Trip West: Petrified Forest

RV Trip West: Winslow, Arizona

RV Trip West: Grand Canyon

Photos by Ann Kroeker (Grand Canyon model: one of my daughters). “Pin” these images in a way that links back to this particular page, giving proper credit.

Disclosure: Frommer’s offered to give me a discount on future orders in exchange for this photo project.

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The post Food on Fridays: Frommer’s Gluten-Free Granola Bars (and a trip across the U.S.A.) appeared first on Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

“Where’s that?” I asked, pointing to the image that so enthralled me. His mom explained it was an island south of Treasure Island—two islands, actually: Sanibel and Captiva—which contained a large wildlife refuge.

Quite a contrast to the family fun of Treasure Island’s condo- and hotel-lined beach. That spring break, I recall the fun of shopping for swimsuits, playing Putt-Putt, and munching a hotdog outside while the strong sun freckled my shoulders. But I remained curious about Sanibel Island and its wildlife refuge. The idea of a quiet, natural, protected, set apart space captivated me ever since I first saw the words Sanibel-Captiva printed on that poster.

Over the past two decades, I’ve traveled with my family to Florida multiple times, usually camping in state parks. While the parks may not be official wildlife refuges, park officials and rangers work hard to maintain a habitat for birds and animals to make their homes that can also serve humans and their desire to enjoy a more natural setting for their outings. Still, as beautiful as the parks have been, I longed to visit Sanibel-Captiva.

Finally, two weeks ago, my husband whisked me away to that place of intrigue, and together we stayed on Sanibel, walking the shell-coated beach, tasting our first ever conch soup, and visiting the J.N. “Ding” Darling Wildlife Refuge where we saw gulls (below), egrets, ibises, ospreys, Anhingas (below), and Yellow Crowned Night Herons.

One afternoon, we stood along the beachfront of our hotel along with several other people when suddenly a dolphin swam so close, it was only a few yards from us.

“Look!” we pointed. And while we stood gaping at the glistening creature slipping in and out of the water, another man started walking toward it. The dolphin slid up, curved, and just before diving under, it slapped the surface of the water with its tail: slap-slap-slap.

The man smacked his palm against the water in response: smack-smack-smack.

I turned to my husband. “What’s wrong with us? We’re just standing here, and that guy’s going to have a dolphin encounter!” My husband just laughed, but we didn’t move. We just stood and watched.

The dolphin slid up out of the water again and slapped with its tail: slap-slap.

The guy smacked back: smack-smack.

One more time, the dolphin popped the water’s surface three times, and the man mimicked.

Then the dolphin worked its way further down the beach, away from us, toward Captiva. All of us stood in the water looked at each other wide-eyed, amazed, and the bold guy gazed at the dolphin for a long time, watching its dorsal fin surface as a small, dark shadow blending with the waves.

That man interacted with a dolphin in the wild, while we stood by and watched.

We’ve been home a few weeks, but I’ve continued to think back to that moment and wonder why I didn’t wade out, as well. I could make excuses, saying that I was afraid that too many of us would scare it away or that the water was so murky I couldn’t tell if I’d be stepping on some funky sea creature. But maybe I’m just afraid of risk.

Then again, this wasn’t meant to be a risk-filled, adrenaline-pumping vacation. After a full season of parenting and life, my husband and I intended for this to be a restful, relaxing respite. And it was. The island of refuge gave us refuge to refuel and return home filled.

But even now, sitting at my desk next to an empty cup of tea, I keep thinking of that dolphin, just a few yards out of reach, slapping its hello to the man bold enough to reach out.

The post Island of Refuge appeared first on Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

On our trip to South Carolina a few weeks ago, we visited the Chapel of Ease, built circa 1740 as a place of worship for planters on St. Helena Island who lived too far to participate regularly in services at the parish church in Beaufort.

On the grounds stands a mausoleum where some members of the Fripp family were laid to rest. This place of ruins, tombs and crumbling tabby walls quieted us.

Some say the grounds are restless.

Murmured stories contribute as much to the atmosphere as long strands of Spanish moss wafting from tree branches.

The dilapidated iron fence and the chapel itself reinforce a sense of loss.

I lingered at the stones lying near the mausoleum—one slab told the story of “an affectionate companion, a fond parent, and a sincere friend.”

I made out only snippets, but they were enough to tell me something about the woman buried somewhere on the grounds, whether in the mausoleum or under the slab itself:

“By the mercy of God, brought to a saving knowledge of the truth, she was in…accumulated sufferings, enabled to…a lively faith in Christ as her only Savior, which resulted in the fullest experience…truth of his promises, inducing her…resign..her earthly prospects…glorious hope of a blessing…immortality.”

A lively faith in Christ as her only Savior, which resulted in the fullest experience of the truth of his promises.

I left pondering the heart of this testimony etched in stone; though cracked, the essence of its message has survived since the 1800s.

What a joy and honor to be known on this earth for “a lively faith in Christ.”

Miles removed from this sun-dappled spot, I still feel peace and hope that chases off any sense of restless, unsettled, unfinished business. And I delight in the inspiration of this woman’s “lively faith in Christ.”

I don’t know exactly what “a lively faith” might look like in me, but I can tell you I’m eager to know my only Savior more intimately and express my faith in Him more actively every day through study, prayer, and action.

Can you describe someone you know who exhibits a “lively faith in Christ”?

The post A Lively Faith appeared first on Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

The post On the Road: The Maiden Voyage appeared first on Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

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For the Food on Fridays carnival, any post remotely related to food is welcome—though we love to try new dishes, your post doesn’t have to be a recipe. We’re pretty relaxed over here, and stories and photos are as welcome as menus and recipes.When your Food on Fridays contribution is ready, just grab the broccoli button to paste at the top of your post. It ties us together visually.Then fill in the boxes of this linky tool to join the fun!

Food on Fridays with Ann

By the time Charity and I squeezed into seats 26E and 26F, we were hungry. We thought we had a full hour layover in Houston, but our plane arrived late and we weren’t paying attention to the time. Instead, we were hunting for an airport Wendy’s. Just as we were anticipating a satisfying meal of a burger and fries, we realized with a gasp that we only had fifteen minutes to catch our flight. We rushed to the gate burgerless.We strode down the long hallways, turned a corner and continued down more long hallways. Eventually, we saw the gate. Over the sound system, Now boarding all rows flight 1155 to Indianapolis. We made it. Just in time.On the plane, as we jammed ourselves into Continental’s economy class seats, all we could think about was food. The stewardess said they were serving complimentary drinks, but no free food. We could buy a snack, though, so Charity pulled out the airline magazine to study the selection. One of us guessed they’d charge four bucks for a bag of five M&Ms. We were close. They charged $2.99 for a 4 oz bag of Twizzlers. But while Charity leafed through the magazine, she also spied a photo of tapas.Bruschetta on crackers, boursin-style cheese spread, olives, hummus, almonds, and a little candy mint. The selection seemed classy and European, like something a first-class passenger would be served with cloth napkins and a mixed drink.Tapas.It’s all we could think about.How much would the tapas cost?Would they serve tapas on this flight?Would so many people buy tapas that none would be left for us?Afraid that they would only offer the overpriced Twizzlers on this flight, I started to manage my expectations. telling myself to stop thinking about the tapas so that I wouldn’t be disappointed if they were out.The plane took off, and when we were at cruising altitude, the stewardess wheeled a cart down the aisle. “Snacks!” she proclaimed. “Would anybody like to buy a snack?””Look!” Charity nudged me. “Sticking up on the end.””Tapas!” I exclaimed. We counted them and wondered if any would be left when she rolled past row 26. The stewardess moved slowly, calling out “snacks” like a vendor at a ball game, but no takers. Plenty of tapas on hand for us.We waved our hands excitedly. “Over here!””Snacks!” she continued, turning away from us as if she didn’t hear.Charity let out a little gasp. “We’d like tapas, please?”The stewardess started laughing. Good joke. Except we were starving. She was grinning big as we paid for our tapas, handing the slender packages to us as we giggled and thanked her. We could barely wait to rip off the plastic while I snapped pictures. We unpacked the little dips and spread, selecting the ideal cracker to carry the hummus and considering which would complement the cheese spread.  We crunched almonds and poked marinated olives with toothpicks. Fancy.”Look at that poor chump,” I whispered to Charity as we munched our goodies, gesturing to the guy sitting next to her. He was quietly reading a book. Unlike us, he was snackless. “He’s stuck in economy class with nothing to eat. But not us! We’re flying First Class, eating tapas.”We scraped every last smear of spread from the containers and crunched every last crumb of the crackers. At the end of our feast, Charity unwrapped the mint and popped it in her mouth. Immediately, her face reacted. “Ewww!””What?””This mint. It’s not a mint. It’s licorice!””What a shock, to expect a mint and get licorice.”She subtly spit it into a paper napkin and tucked it into the remains of our First Class feast—a disappointing end to our moments of luxury flying. Nevertheless, we were satisfied. I even tried the licorice, just to see what it was like.We were stuck in coach, but faked First Class, just for fun. Well, we were hungry, but why not amuse ourselves—even treat ourselves—in the process? We’ll never afford First Class, but it doesn’t mean we can’t make life special in small ways. Even at home in our everyday activities and meals.Why not use cloth napkins and light candles at dinner and pretend our table is newer and classier than it is? We Kroekers do that. It’s easy to make small choices that turn a simple meal into something special.I once wrote about 10 Ways to Class Up One’s Act a Notch, everyday things that make me feel a little more civilized. Here is a selection demonstrating ways my family and I have “faked First Class” in our everyday lives:

1. Goblets. Drink everyday beverages from goblets. I picked up a pair of pretty goblets from a neighbor’s garage sale and drank my iced tea from one. Nice. The kids think so, too–use goblets for their milk, juice and Kool-Aid. If someone accidentally breaks one, no big deal. Keep your classy cool and simply go get another from Goodwill for a dollar.
2. A Toast. Now that you’re holding glasses with a stem, how about a toast? “Here’s to unexpected elegance”–ching, ching. Seriously, a little toast gets our minds thinking differently. What is special about our lives? How can I piece together a one- or two-sentence speech? It’s an interesting little exercise for our kids (me, too).
3. A European Course. Serve something kind of European at dinner. I skimmed the book French Women Don’t Get Fat a few weeks ago, and one idea Mireille Guiliano had was to slice tomatoes, spread them out on a bed of lettuce, salt heavily and sprinkle them with goat cheese. Simple to prepare with an  unexpected flavor combination (for a normally unclassy American). And delicious (you could substitute feta, if you like). That’s just one idea of many simple courses one could add to dinner (another common dish is to serve each person a slice of melon with a slice of prosciutto as a course before what we would call the entree. It would, in France, actually be called the entrée–the “entry,” if you will, to the main dish.). Go ahead, drink another toast to goat cheese and French simplicity: “Vive la chevre! Vive la simplicité!”
4. Candles at dinner. They’re cheap, and the kids love ‘em. Turn off the lights and they’re even an alternative source of lighting in this age of low-impact adaptations. Might as well make it a regular thing. It’s funny, but when we use candles at dinner, the kids are usually quieter, less restless, and a bit kinder and more reflective. It makes me wonder why I’ve been so stingy with candles in the past. All those rowdy, tiring dinners might have been redeemed with the magical, classy touch of low lighting.
5. Classical music. Now, I don’t mean to advance from a tiny notch classier to downright snobbish, but honestly, something happens to the family when we play classical music during dinner. Just as the candles seem to have a calming effect, classical music seems to provide a classier mood and mentality. Even kids who prefer rock or pop or country will tolerate classical style music if it’s just “dinner music.” Stop by the library to borrow a Vivaldi CD, or just flip on the classical station and accept whatever they have to offer.
6. Flowers. While we’re still at the dinner table, may I suggest setting out a simple bouquet of flowers beside the candles? Today, I picked six or seven flowers from the garden and stuck them into glass Coke bottles for vases. The kids loved them. Class meets casual. I know a few classy ladies who can serve meals in the dining room with kids all around while an ornate vase bursting with roses graces the space, but I’m just a daisy-in-a-Coke-bottle gal most of the time. I guess I’m casually classy when I’m classy at all, and this illustrates why I qualified this whole post by saying it would only be classier by “a notch.”

How do you fake First Class, not just on airplanes, but every day?

:::

Continental’s Tapas Snack Box*

• Oloves Marinated Olives, Roasted Red Pepper Bruschetta Spread, Wild Garden Hummus, Rondelé^® Peppercorn Parmesan Cheese Spread, Fratelli Laurieri Scrocchi Al Rosmarino Crackers, Jacobs^® Cream Crackers, Partners^® Olive Oil and Sea Salt Crackers, Emerald^® Natural Almonds, Fantis^® Ouzo Candy Mint
• $8.49

*Item is offered on select flights onlyCredits: Tapas photos by Ann Kroeker.

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The post Food on Fridays: Faking First Class appeared first on Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

(smaller button below)

For the Food on Fridays carnival, any post remotely related to food is welcome—though we love to try new dishes, your post doesn’t have to be a recipe. We’re pretty relaxed over here, and stories and photos are as welcome as menus and recipes.When your Food on Fridays contribution is ready, just grab the broccoli button (My daughter doesn’t quite have the new one ready, and now a second daughter wants to battle it out by offering her own version! Until they’re ready, grab the big one above or smaller option at the bottom) to paste at the top of your post. It ties us together visually.Then fill in the boxes of this linky tool to join the fun!

Food on Fridays with Ann

When we vacation, we usually camp. And we like almost everything about camping except the cooking and clean-up.I would sigh to my friends after a trip and say, “My dream is to find a beautiful place we can camp, where I don’t have to cook. That would be perfect.”One day about eight years ago, I said this to a friend, and she said, “Seems like you need a family camp.””I’ve thought about that,” I said, “but I don’t want to pay a huge amount of money, and I don’t want a lot of activities and programming. It seems like most of them are highly programmed and costly.””Do you know Katie Henderson?*” she asked. We all attended the same large church, but I’d never overlapped with Katie. “Well,” my friend continued, “she and her family go to some family camp up north every year, and it sounds like it might be just what you’re looking for.”I phoned Katie and explained about the beautiful setting and the food hassle and the preference for little to no programming. “If someone else was making, serving and cleaning up after meals,” I said, “I’d feel like I was really on a vacation.”“This is your place,” Katie assured me. She said the food was good, the setting was gorgeous, and there was very little programming. “There’s no speaker or music or chapel. Just a service on Sunday morning, and an optional Bible study two days of the week. Actually, there’s so little programming, we call it ‘Heathen Week,'” she said, laughing.”Perfect!” I said.So our family took the risk. We signed up, paid what seemed to be a reasonable amount of money for the week, and drove north. But it was a long drive and we didn’t have Google maps back then, so we underestimated how long it would take to get there. We rolled in late, just as the opening activity—Saturday evening dinner—was ending, but we’d phoned to say we were running late and they saved food for us. I was stressed out, and when they brought us a high chair for our youngest and set out the food that they’d reheated, it had to be the most delicious, nourishing chicken dinner I’d ever eaten in my life. If we’d rolled into a campground and had to fix our own meal, I would have done it with cranky, needy kids tugging on me. And I would have done it all in the dark. Thinking back to being served with such compassion and attention, I’m sure I cried: from relief.We slid the pop-up between slender cedar trees and went to sleep that night hearing the water of Lake Huron lap against the shore. Next morning, we woke up to dim dawn light revealing colorful kayaks lined up along the sand; shore birds laughing; a green boat anchored and bobbing in the water; the gray-green lodge and dining hall; Adirondack chairs lined up on a porch overlooking the bay.So this is vacation.I didn’t have to think about breakfast. I just had to listen for the bell to ring, mosey to the lodge, and there it would be: a delicious, warm meal that I didn’t have to plan, shop for, prepare or clean up after.Relax, play, rest, read, swim, boat, chat…listen for the meal bell…show up and be fed.Perfect.I thought I would use this post as an excuse to show you a few photos from the trip that have something to do with food…food I didn’t fix.This isn’t at family camp, but Biggby Coffee is a chain we’d never heard of that is big in Michigan. We stopped en route to try some. Two of the girls got lattes and loved them.Quiche for breakfast one morning at family camp—one of many options. The cook accommodates dietary needs, providing options on the buffet for vegetarian campers or those who deal with allergies and food intolerance.A favorite hot breakfast of mine: Red River Cereal, made with three grains: cracked wheat, cracked rye, and whole flax. So simple. Some tease that it’s birdseed, but I love it.Two afternoons they set out food for us in the morning so that we pack lunches for later that day. Some people drive to local tourist spots, but we just stayed on property, hiked out to this beautiful spot, climbed a big rock, and ate lunch together overlooking Lake Huron.S’mores fixin’s provided on the last night during campfire.Cocoa, teas, coffee, and cold drinks like fruit punch and lemonade are available 24 hours a day. Kids and adults alike grab mugs, serve themselves something refreshing, and sit on the porch to read.I didn’t really think to take a lot of photos of food—I was too busy eating it, I guess.

We left family camp and stopped by a couple of other places in Canada, including Niagara Falls, before winding around into New York and Pennsylvania, sliding along the edge of Lake Erie.

The Belgian Wonder exited the freeway and drove on a scenic road that offered tantalizing glimpses of the water. We longed to drive close and dip our feet into the water, but he’d turn onto a road that looked promising only to discover it was a private drive.Finally, we found a little public park where we could stop, get out, stretch our legs, and eat our peanut butter sandwiches and carrot sticks packed from our own meager provisions. The tiny concession area sold only pop and chips, but I was so grateful that they were maintaining this pretty little place where we could pause, I broke down and bought a Coke and a Sprite as a small thank you.We lingered for a while.Then realized we had to get on the road.We munched on snack food on the long drive home.We’d been gone for nine days, camping in a beautiful setting, and the only thing I had to fix was a stack of peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, and instant oatmeal that we ate with plastic spoons from paper bowls on the morning we drove home.I can handle that.

:::

* Name changedAll photos by Ann Kroeker except Lunch on the Rock, by P. Kroeker.

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Each Wednesday (except this week, when I missed my deadline) I’m recording a Curiosity Journal, a recap of the past week. Tag words are: reading, playing, learning, reacting and writing.

:::

Some of you have mentioned that you’re keeping a Curiosity Journal, as well. Leave your link in the comments so that we can visit and enjoy your weekly review.

Reading

The July 28 entry in My Utmost for His Highest:

What we call the process, God calls the end…His purpose is that I depend on Him and on His power now. If I can stay in the middle of the turmoil calm and unperplexed, that is the end of the purpose of God. God is not working towards a particular finish; His end is the process–that I see Him walking on the waves, no shore in sight, no success, no goal, just the absolute certainty that it is all right because I see Him walking on the sea…God’s end is to enable me to see that He can walk on the chaos of my life just now. If we have a further end in view, we do not pay sufficient attention to the immediate present: if we realize that obedience is the end, then each moment as it comes is precious. (Chambers 152-153)

This has helped me gain perspective in the midst of a massive traffic jam, patiently await the conclusion of a complicated business issue that has stretched out unresolved all summer, and accept various symptoms and flare-ups of a prolonged respiratory ailment. If I can stay in the middle of the turmoil calm and unperplexed, with absolute certainty that it is all right because I see Him walking on the chaos of my life just now, that is the end of the purpose of God. When I realize that obedience is the end, then each moment as it comes is precious.I’ve also been reading Breath for the Bones (not “Bones for the Breath,” which I learned from an Amazon search equates to doggie dental treats). As I look ahead to the chapter “Beginning with Journal Writing,” I see how critical it is as a writer—as a human being in this moment, in this place, in this world at this time—to capture sounds, colors, images, conversations, and follow them where they may lead. This is how I can go back and recreate a scene or interaction to tell the story rich with detail. This is how I can preserve and process life.Luci Shaw quoted Henri Nouwen as saying, “Writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us. The writing itself reveals what is alive…The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know” (Shaw 95).I must start writing and see where it leads, asking for the Holy Spirit to direct my steps and then pay attention, following His lead.Luci also quoted William Saroyan, “The task of the writer is to create a rich, immediate, usable past” (Shaw 96). Where and who I’ve been can be right here with me, in my journal, in my blog posts, in any personal narrative writing project.Luci describes a consistent, personal journal as a form of prayer, as the words poured out on the blank white pages “can free us, nudging us into the kind of confidence in the process that eases our way into writing as a way of discovering and articulating who we are before God” (Shaw 96). I have experienced this. Many of my journal entries slip from straight narrative or questions into prayer. This is why I am shy for people to peek, for how personal it can be.But it’s also a lively spot where the creative process unfolds; where I explore early project ideas. As Luci points out, in a journal we see how where we’ve come from and how we’ve grown.I’m glad to have bought the blank book with white pages, no lines. Just space. I can position the book vertically or horizontally, I can write diagonally or in swirls. I can doodle. I can make lists. I can jot phone numbers in a little unused corner of the page with sermon notes. It can be messy or organized; creative or ordinary. I can be any of those things at any given moment—why not have my journal serve as a true reflection of my curious, creative, messy, multifaceted self?

Playing

Haven’t played Bananagrams since we returned from vacation, but my family and I sure have enjoyed playing with photography. Will you humor me with a little slide show of sorts, a photo album, of our week of family camp? Despite all my talk of detailed journal-keeping and how that leads to powerful storytelling, I’ll spare you narrative and let the photos tell the story.

Learning

At family camp, I sat on one of the Adirondack chairs to talk photography with my friend, award-winning photographer Bill Vriesema, someone who knows the craft well. I learn so much from him, not only during these impromptu discussions, but also by enjoying and studying his images and reading how he approaches his work.

Reacting

My health status makes for riveting entries under “reacting.” Seems my respiratory system is always reacting for better or worse to something: allergies, exercise, medication, infection. For example, the doctor thinks that the sinus infection reacted well to the antibiotics but aggravated asthma. The result? Coughing spasms that sounded like a crackling bonfire was aflame in my lungs. Doctor has me taking more stuff. So far, so good. Coughing is calmed. For now.

Writing

Writing in my journal, per Luci’s inspiration.And here.Works Cited:

• Chambers, Oswald. My Utmost for His Highest. Westwood, NJ: Barbour and Company, Inc., 1963. Print.
• Shaw, Luci. Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination, and Spirit. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007. Print.
• Question mark image: “Question Proposed” photo by Ethan Lofton. Used under a Creative Commons license via Flickr.com.
• Butterfly and sparkling water w/rock photos by N. Kroeker, used with permission. Cove, lamp and Ann-leaning-on-post photos by P. Kroeker, used with permission. All other photos by Ann Kroeker. All copyright 2011.

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The only flash of memory I retained from the trip is stepping out of a dressing room to model a cute Canadian dress that Mom had me try on. Though I generally hated dresses, I loved that one; perhaps because it felt a little less like a dress and a little more like a costume. She bought it.

I don’t remember the falls at all.

I know I was there, though, because I have photographic evidence:

(I am not, by the way, wearing the beloved dress in this photo.)

Dad doesn’t look like he’s paying a lot of attention to me, as I gaze out at the mist and roar of Horseshoe Falls—he may have been asking Barb, the tour guide dressed in blue, some fact about the water flow; or he may have been advising my brother how many Canadian coins were needed to use the telescope.

I am pleased to note, however, that Dad has wrapped his arm completely around me and pulled me close to his chest. So I think I was safe. Besides, Mom’s eye would have been watching intently through the camera lens as she snapped this photo. She had reason to be nervous, you see, because years earlier, Dad lost his balance and almost dropped my brother under the turning wheel of a Colonial Williamsburg carriage that unexpectedly lurched forward. And, once again while holding my brother, Dad was stepping onto a tour boat of some kind and lost his footing when the boat shifted in the water—again, very nearly dropping my brother into the dark, sloshing water of Charleston Bay just below.

But he was able to recover each time, and my brother survived those educational field trips, just as I avoided toppling into the crashing waters of Niagara.

Still, perhaps a deep-seated uneasiness kept me from visiting Niagara for several decades. I’m happy to report that I have overcome any trepidation with the help of the Belgian Wonder, who promised to hold tightly to the kids and me if any of us teetered next to that railing.

So after a week of family camp that ended on Friday, we headed out with passports in hand to drive across Canada to Niagara Falls.

Unfortunately, a pedestrian death caused a massive traffic jam on the QEW—all lanes were closed across the Burlington Skyway, the route we mapped out in advance. We naively forged ahead not knowing we would be trapped in stop-start (mostly stop) traffic for over an hour. Cars overheated.

In fact, the car directly in front of us stalled. The driver, agitated and seeming to get no help from her male companion who used the opportunity to step out of the car and light up a cigarette, tapped on car windows, asking if anyone had jumper cables. The Belgian Wonder jumped out of the minivan, ran back to our trailer, unlocked the door and retrieved ours.

About ten minutes earlier, we had noted a black truck with off-road wheels as the source of a deafening bass beat. The driver of that same black truck turned out to be the Good Samaritan who worked with the Belgian Wonder’s jumper cables to get the disabled Subaru running again. Shortly after, though, the car’s engine failed again and they coasted to the shoulder. The driver of the black truck pulled over and backed up, offering to tow them. That’s the last we saw of them, but the agitated driver seemed to be in capable hands. I have no doubt he stuck with them until they arrived at a service station.

Eventually we took an exit away from the QEW and skyway, proceeding to drive without a map or directions, simply “following our nose,” as the Belgian Wonder would say, in search of a highway heading east. On our little adventure, we admired a variety of Canadian neighborhoods, countryside and some small towns—not to mention several Tim Hortons drive-thrus.

We were pleased to see that Canadian packaging requires the French translation.

Our noses were failing us, however, because we couldn’t figure out where we were. We eventually stopped, bought coffee and a map, and asked for help. Happily, we were closer than we realized due to poor signage, so we quickly wound our way onto the 20 and made our way straight east to Niagara Falls.

First glimpse.

First reaction.(Please note the grassy area on the other side of the railing, making it a relatively safe place to stand on the stone and raise one’s hands).

The day unfolded with varying degrees of admiration, astonishment, awe, curiosity, and contemplation.

And as we drove away that night, we were sad to observe the flashy, excessive commercialism just one block from the thundering majesty of the falls.

But I don’t want to end on that man-made, money-making blur.

Let me leave you instead with one more look at this convergence of power that God created and man enjoys: the American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls.

And a close-up of Horseshoe Falls.

Mightier than the thunder of the great waters,mightier than the breakers of the sea—the LORD on high is mighty.

(Psalm 93:4)

Image credits: Vintage family photo by Lynn Hopper. All other photos by Ann Kroeker.

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Here at the Food on Fridays carnival, any post remotely related to food is welcome—it doesn’t have to be a recipe.

Food on Fridays Participants

Food on Fridays with Ann

Late Sunday night I returned home from Grand Rapids, where I attended the biennial Festival of Faith & Writing held at Calvin College. The past few days, I’ve tried to share some of my encounters and interactions with you. The following is a scene from last Saturday (root beer falls loosely into the category of food, doesn’t it?).

My editor and I arranged to meet for lunch on Saturday along with another David C. Cook colleague to discuss potential projects.

Ideally, I’d handle myself in a professional and poised manner. I dressed for it, wearing black slacks, a suit jacket and black pumps.

We couldn’t find a place on campus to eat, so we jumped in my car and drove to the first quick restaurant we spotted: Culver’s.

I placed my order and filled my large cup with root beer. I glanced at the lids and straws, but my hands were full. I decided that trying to secure the lid would be too awkward. I carried the open cup carefully to a small table that was the only one available at the time.

We sipped our drinks for a couple of minutes, chatting, waiting for our food to arrive. Finally I offered to launch into my ideas. I slipped some papers from a Kinko’s bag to hand to both of them as I pitched the first concept.

At that moment, our trays of food arrived. I set my papers down and reached for the tray.

As I brought it toward me, the tray blocked my view of the cup, and—thunk!

The entire cup of root beer tipped over, cold drink pouring onto my lap and down my pant leg. I was saturated. Sopping. The liquid soaked my pants and continued to flow all the way down to my shoe—into my shoe.

“Save the papers!” I exclaimed. My editor whipped up the stack of papers while the other lady rushed over to grab a wad of napkins. I blotted my pants a little, but it was too far along to make much of a difference. I resigned myself to sit in root beer pants.

Someone watched the spill from a big table in the corner. She came over. “I’m just one person at a big table, and you’re three at this small one. Why don’t we trade? You [she glanced at me compassionately] look like you could use the space.”

I thanked her with a sheepish grin. We gathered our trays and bags to walk the few steps to the bigger table.

Squish-squish-squish.

The root beer had filled my right shoe.

The post Food on Fridays: Festival Spillage appeared first on Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

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But it occurred to us one cold winter evening that we only have a few more trips with our almost-16-year-old daughter before she heads off to college, assuming we have the resources. And when we asked where she hoped to go as a family, she confessed that there’s only one place she’s ever dreamed of visiting: Walt Disney World.

I caved.

Instead of packing the camper and driving to a state park for a budget-friendly, spirit-refreshing week of reading and relaxing beach time (a more typical family vacation for us), I said, “Okay, let’s do it. Let’s just go.”

So last week for Spring Break we bought the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World, drove a thousand miles to Orlando, stuffed peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and granola bars into a backpack, laced up our athletic shoes, and took the plunge.

We relied on the touring plans from the Unofficial Guide.I highly recommend that when visiting Walt Disney World (WDW) in peak season, buy the book and follow the plan. If the plan says to walk briskly to one side of the park and grab a FASTPASS, do it. Even if the wait for that ride is only ten minutes, stick to the plan.Otherwise, the park is too full of people trying to do the same thing at the same time. If you don’t follow the plan, you’ll wait in line at some point for two hours (or more) and ride only a few rides all day. It was that full.In fact, the tram operator said they almost closed the parking lot, which is considered full at 75,000 vehicles. He said that they had just under 73,000 that day. It means that at some point, the Magic Kingdom may have been near its capacity of 100,000 people.One hundred thousand people, most of whom want to ride Space Mountain, Splash Mountain and Thunder Mountain at least once.Thanks to the plan, we rode every major ride once and saw most of the shows that interested us.But. Following the plan also meant we arrived at opening and left just before closing, adrenaline surging nonstop as our family of six wove through crowds, stopping only to eat our peanut butter sandwiches on a stone bench outside the Haunted Mansion. While sitting there, we looked up to see a skywriter starting a message.On a different day in a different park, we spotted his handiwork again.That second skywriting message was above Hollywood Studios (a fascinating contrast to see Jesus’ name appearing in the sky over the “Tower of Terror”).We went to all the parks.Even saw a couple of hidden Mickeys, including this one.I took migraine medicine every single day.I let two of my girls spin me around in a teacup on the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party ride and almost fainted when I tried to stand up. Then I almost threw up. I was shaky for hours. Epcot was nice. I liked a ride called “Soarin‘” that simulates a hang-gliding flight over various terrain in California. And I’ve always liked the little boat ride in Mexico. It’s tame, I know, but I needed some tame in the midst of the crushing, manic masses.While the kids rode something called Test Track, I held onto that day’s supply of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and read Our Town.Yes, I really read Our Town at Epcot.How high does that score on the nerd-scale?There is something quite charming about watching one’s kids wave at the cheery characters during the parades.But the thing that charmed my son more than anything else—more than meeting Mickey and getting his signature; more than a Mickey pin his bought with his own money—was finding a heart jewel on the ground at the Magic Kingdom.He kept pulling it out of his pocket to turn it over in his hand and hold it up to the light.We warned him that if he kept messing with it, he might lose it.I was so sure he’d drop it, I tried to offer a positive spin by pointing out that if he loses it, he’ll just be passing along the joy of the heart to some other child.But that cheap little plastic heart survived all four of the main parks and two water parks.The heart survived a sloshy side trip into the washing machine and a tumble in the dryer at the place where we stayed.The heart magically made it all the way back home with us in one piece.And, thankfully, so did I.Barely.Thank you for your patience with me. Without a moment to breathe or think during those Disney days, I was unable to write any posts other than those I scheduled ahead of time.

Photos by Ann Kroeker.

It’s easy to subscribe to annkroeker.com updates via email or RSS feed.Visit NotSoFastBook.com to learn more about Ann’s book.

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(location: Muskegon State Park, Michigan)

The post Sunset Kids appeared first on Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

see below for alternative button

At Make-Do Mondays, we discuss how we’re simplifying, downsizing, repurposing, buying used, and using what we’ve got.It’s a carnival celebrating creative problem-solving, contentment, patience and ingenuity. To participate, share your own make-do solution in the comments or write up a Make-Do Mondays post at your blog, then return here to link via Mr. Linky. Enjoy others’ ideas by clicking on Mr. Linky and then clicking on people’s names.Here’s a mini-tutorial on Mr. Linky:

Click on the icon and a separate page will pop up. Type in your blog name and paste in the url of your new Make-Do Mondays post. Click enter and it should be live. If it doesn’t work, just include the link in the comments.

To visit people’s posts or check that yours worked, click on Mr. Linky and when the page comes up, click on a name. You should be taken right to the page provided.

Make-Do Mondays Participants

1. Gravity of Motion (My Time)
2. My Practically Perfect Life (Impromptu Cake Plans)
3. Sunnydaytodaymama (More toy storage in a small space)
4. Feels Like Home (kid sushi)
5. Rancho Ruperto (Squash Plea)

Make-Do Mondays with Ann

This is a big week. Saturday marks the official release date of my book, Not So Fast: Slow-Down Solutions for Frenzied Families.

August 1, 2009.

It’s a date I’ve looked forward to for two years.

So where will I be on this momentous occasion?

Finishing up family camp.

We’re at a simple, low-tech, minimally programmed (no speakers, no big events, no concerts) family camp that is the epitome of relaxation. We are in the slowest of slow zones here.

This includes Internet access. Slow, slow, slow.

What the camp provides are things like canoes, kayaks, and small sailboats. We can hike through the woods. We can sit on Adirondack chairs in front of the lodge and stare at Lake Huron. We can read, pray, write, think, reflect, chat, or play cards or Scrabble. There’s a beach for sand castles and a game room with ping-pong, carpet ball, Foosball and pool.

The kitchen staff makes our meals. I’m turning into Pavlov’s dog: when the bell rings, I start to salivate and walk briskly to the dining hall.

This is a place where families know how to slow down. They are, in fact, encouraged to slow down in a space and environment where unplugging and slowing down is possible.

And this is where I am for the release of my book.

With the beauty of technology, slow as it is, I can be with you, too, wherever you are on the world.

And I want to say thanks for sharing this journey with me.

Thank you for listening, reading, thinking, and wondering with me, as I ponder, research, pose questions, seek solutions and commit to my own slower lifestyle.

Today I want to share with you several endorsements for the book. What an honor to have positive words from Lee Strobel, Steve and Misty Arterburn (Misty wrote the foreword, too!), and Mary DeMuth:

Jill Savage, Phyllis Tickle, Mary Farrar, Holly Miller, Susan Alexander Yates…

And Michelle Cox.

Also, I’m delighted to organize a giveaway:  you could be the winner of two copies of Not So Fast. I’ll explain how I’ll be giving them away later this week.

Keep an eye open to join the fun!

As I make-do with incredibly slow Internet access, I wonder…

How do you make do?

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Mega Memory Month July 2009 is almost over:Check in tomorrow for Progress Reports.

The post Make-Do Mondays: Slow Setting for a Slow-Down Book appeared first on Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

see below for alternative button

At Make-Do Mondays, we discuss how we’re simplifying, downsizing, repurposing, buying used, and using what we’ve got.It’s a carnival celebrating creative problem-solving, contentment, patience and ingenuity. To participate, share your own make-do solution in the comments or write up a Make-Do Mondays post at your blog, then return here to link via Mr. Linky. Enjoy others’ ideas by clicking on Mr. Linky and then clicking on people’s names.Here’s a mini-tutorial on Mr. Linky:

Click on the icon and a separate page will pop up. Type in your blog name and paste in the url of your new Make-Do Mondays post. Click enter and it should be live. If it doesn’t work, just include the link in the comments.

To visit people’s posts or check that yours worked, click on Mr. Linky and when the page comes up, click on a name. You should be taken right to the page provided.

 Make-Do Mondays Participants

1. Feels Like Home (homemade ice cream)
2. Sunnydaytodaymama (caterpillar cake)
3. Coupons, Deals and More (Cool Whip)
4. My Practically Perfect Life (Camping Food)
5. Like Mother, Like Daughter (Decorating Hack)
6. Mama Long (Ceiling Fan)

Make-Do Mondays with AnnCamping turns a vacation into one big make-do extravaganza. You already read about the Belgian Wonder’s portable coffee gadget, so he can drink make-do coffee. But there’s always something we have to rig up to meet a need using whatever we have on hand. An obvious make-do activity is stringing clothesline all around like a drunken spider building a wobbly web. You can check out our initial clothes-web in the first photo below:Later in the week, after a thunderstorm blew through and dampened many items, we greatly expanded the web, weaving and wrapping the extra length of rope around tree trunks and limbs. We also used many plastic grocery bags for trash (shame on us for having so many—but we were trying to recycle).And when my sister-in-law saw the printer box, she suggested I snap a photo for Make-Do Mondays.Contrary to how things may appear, we did not bring along our printer.The Belgian Wonder grabbed it to store some pots, pans, and our electric skillet (I know what you’re thinking! Is it really camping if I have an electric skillet? You decide…). Storing them in the box, each stuck inside of a paper grocery bag, kept them from banging and clanging against each other and other items stuffed in the camper on the bumpy ride.We saved the big Cheerios box in case we needed it for storage, too, but ended up burning it in the fire pit (make-do kindling).Our dishwashing system was all about making-do. Two tubs, dish soap, a sponge, and a scrubbing gadget. The dishwasher squatted down by the faucet and worked while voracious mosquitoes buzzed around ears, arms and legs.Camping is a great way to practice making-do for Americans used to the comforts of hot water on demand, comfy mattresses, well-lit bathrooms with reliable showers, ovens and air conditioning. We don’t rough it like wilderness campers hiking in with everything on their backs and pitching camp in the mountains, but every time we camp we come back appreciating simple pleasures, like kitchen cabinets, hot water on demand, washing machines and sturdy shelter.How do you make do?

If the main button is too big, try this one:

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This man, Garrett, brought his son and a friend along for a few days at the beach.

We noticed him because he was the only one on the beach with a surfboard. Actually, he rented two: a large one for himself and a smaller one for his son. A novice, Garrett told us he has only been out surfboarding four times.

He was taking a break on the beach, chatting with his friend.

Meanwhile, my brother, sister-in-law, my husband, and I would count heads periodically to check that our kids were all accounted for. Most were playing in the sand, but three were bobbing in the water along the sandbar.

At some point, one of ours drifted just past the sandbar on a boogie board and was struggling to get back on account of this:

All of us had studied the sign on the way to the bath house.

1. Go with the flow; don’t panic.
2. Wave for help on shore.
3. Float parallel to shore.
4. Swim diagonally back.

She was trying her best to follow all of those recommendations. She knew it wouldn’t help to panic. Floating along, she tried to break through and swim diagonally, but it didn’t work.

Well, Garrett saw that she was struggling, grabbed his surfboard and sprang into action. He paddled directly to her and extended the surfboard.

“Grab onto my board!” he told her. “Whatever you do, don’t let go!”

She gripped tightly and he started to paddle back. Then he realized the current was too strong; he couldn’t break through it, either. They both tried kicking as hard as they could without moving an inch.

Garrett started waving for help and signaling for someone to call 911. A woman leaped up and grabbed the son’s surfboard, but Garrett waved her back. “Don’t come out!”

In the commotion, we were gathering our kids, counting, realizing we were missing one.

He said at a key moment, a big wave crashed through and broke up the current. He was able to get a toe-hold and push them into safer waters and on toward shore.

Our daughter walked calmly back to us on the sand, wide-eyed, shaky.

Garrett walked back with his surfboard, wide-eyed, shaky.

We realized what just happened and met her, wide-eyed, shaky.

We sat with our daughter for a long time, rubbing her back, hugging her, hearing about it from her own perspective.

Then we talked with Garrett and his friend, piecing it all together.

How do you thank someone for that?

How do you honor his fast-action and the risks he took?

What do you say? What do you do?

After everyone went back to their beach umbrellas, soft drinks, and sand castles, Garrett went back out to try some more surfing. I went over to talk with his friend. I said, rhetorically, “How do you thank someone for something so huge? How do you thank someone for rescuing your daughter?”

You know what his friend said? He said, “You can’t, not really. You just thank Jesus and pray that He’ll give you a chance to help someone else in some other way in the future.”

Garrett won’t be written up in the newspaper for his heroic action nor featured on Good Morning America.

But I want to thank Garrett publically on my little blog here, honoring a real-life hero.

Thank you, Garrett.

And, like his friend advised, Thank You, Jesus.

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see below for alternative button

At Make-Do Mondays, we discuss how we’re simplifying, downsizing, repurposing, buying used, and using what we’ve got.It’s a carnival celebrating creative problem-solving, contentment, patience and ingenuity. To participate, share your own make-do solution in the comments or write up a Make-Do Mondays post at your blog, then return here to link via Mr. Linky. Enjoy others’ ideas by clicking on Mr. Linky and then clicking on people’s names.Here’s a mini-tutorial on Mr. Linky:

Click on the icon and a separate page will pop up. Type in your blog name and paste in the url of your new Make-Do Mondays post. Click enter and it should be live. If it doesn’t work, just include the link in the comments.

To visit people’s posts or check that yours worked, click on Mr. Linky and when the page comes up, click on a name. You should be taken right to the page provided. 

Make-Do Mondays Participants

1. Sewing Chick (Menu Plan, gray paint, and tolerating the ugly fan)
2. Like Mother, Like Daughter (Shelf–to paint, or not to paint)
3. Rancho Ruperto (Free Cosmos)
4. Mama Long (T-Shirt Refashion)
5. Sunnydaytodaymama (rosewater)
6. Sunnydaytodaymama (mud)
7. ’50s Housewife (Iced Coffee)
8. Feels Like Home (Creamy Spinach Doodles)
9. Life Together (Make-Do Composter)
10. CherieZ Recipes (Ozark Pudding)

Make-Do Mondays with AnnI’m back among the Internets after a week of camping (see me waving and shouting “Hi! Good to see you again, friends!”? See me dumping sand out of my shoes and duffel bag? See me tackling at least four mountains of laundry?).If there were a continuum of campers, where you would find on one end snowbirds in their giant RVs decked out with oak cabinets and parquet flooring, and on the other end would be Boy Scouts building a lean-to shelter out of branches, I suppose we’re in the middle.We own a pop-up, which gets us up off the ground, and we use a few electric appliances to make life easier. Our goal is not to make all our food in a dutch oven over an open fire; we camp to save enough money so that we can visit places of interest. Because our camping motive is primarily to secure inexpensive lodging, we don’t feel bad about bringing along things to make life at the campsite easier, like the electric griddle for pancakes and a hotpot to heat water.Yet, even with our luxury items, I think of campsite coffee preparations as making-do.The Belgian Wonder brought along some Starbucks coffee, so he certainly wasn’t making-do with a cheap instant brand, no sir.Instead, to make a small thermos of morning coffee, he used a plastic drip gadget that sits atop a coffee mug or other appropriate container.I apologize in advance for the breakfast clutter we’ve captured on film. All the cereal boxes and used bowls are unattractively on display. Clearly we weren’t the tidiest campers who ever drove a stake into the sand.But I thought you might enjoy seeing the gadget at work. It’s very simple. He measures out what he thinks will be the right amount of grounds into the small filter (getting the right strength is the trickiest part, he says), which sits in the plastic piece, then pours very hot water over the top and lets it drip.Several people have recommended that he take along a French press instead, but he prefers this.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-_owGu1lps]How do you make do?

If the main button is too big, try this one:

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Southwest Michigan

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While in Europe, I informally interviewed some relatives about differences between American and French (and Belgian) women. The conversation was intriguing, and we ended up generating clothing styles and eating habits that I can share with you here.

By incorporating these simple, practical ideas into our lives, we may end up feeling just a little more European:

• Shoes: French and Belgian women never wear athletic shoes unless they’re actually in a gym working out. For everyday wear, they might consider city-style sneakers designed with gold or darker colors, but not actual running or cross-training shoes like we do.
• Dress Up a Notch: By typical American standards, European women dress up even to run errands. The thought of dashing out in a pair of sweats to get something at the store would be unheard of. They won’t necessarily don their skirts and heels (though maybe in Paris), but they’ll probably have on decent slacks and dark shoes. This summer trip I was seeing everybody in vacation clothes rather than everyday clothes: they wore long shorts, capris, sandals and cute flip-flops.
• Simple Wardrobe: Although Belgian and French women tend to dress up more than their American counterparts, they don’t own an abundance of clothes. Instead, they have a few nice things, most of which will complement each other in some way, and make the most of what they have. This may be driven by the fact that their closet and storage space is generally more limited than what a typical American home would offer. Also, clothes are more expensive there than here. Or, perhaps they realize what we have yet to learn–that more is not always better.
• Basic Black: Not all, but a lot of French and Belgian women really do like black as a wardrobe staple. It might be the background color of a dress, or one article of clothing (the blouse, the pants) worn with something patterned, but black is a color to depend on. I wore a long grayish dress with a black shrug and black shiny flip-flops and received several comments from my French brother-in-law that I’d achieved a very French “look” with that outfit.
• The Scarf: Every time I travel to Europe, I’m struck by how often I see scarves on women. In cooler temperatures, they wrap pretty winter scarves around their necks and often leave the scarves on even if they take off their jackets. In spring and summer, they tie a stylish scarf around their necks employing a variety of creative twists and ties. I wrote about this in another post and linked to a site with knot-instructions. Here’s that scarf-tying link yet again.
• Perfume: My sister-in-law explained that French women always have a spritz of perfume on and like to comment on each other’s scents. “Oh, that’s a nice perfume–it smells tropical.” “Yes, it’s my summer scent.” I’m allergic to so many perfume scents that I gave up wearing it long ago. After talking with my sister-in-law, however, I’m tempted to go out and try to find something that doesn’t give me migraines, just so I can smile and say demurely, “Why, thank you…that hint of honeysuckle you picked up on is my summer scent, reminding me of my childhood growing up in the countryside.”
• Unfussy Hair: The hairstyles of French and Belgian women look sharp, but not fussy. One sister-in-law said, “Even for a nice event, they’ll just pull their hair back with a barrette, stick a few clips in and be done with it. It’s simple, but they always look great.”
• Matching Fancy “Under Things”: My brother-in-law wasn’t sure it would be appropriate to bring up, but he remarked that French women like to match their under garments with their clothes. How he knew this, I’m not entirely sure, unless he’s going with what his wife has reported. But talk about attention to detail–I’m told that French women talk freely with their female colleagues about their totally matching outfits. A red blouse simply must have matching red lace underneath.
• Guilt-Free Treats: A French woman feels free to treat herself to a nice pastry at breakfast or a chocolate dessert completely guilt-free. She exercises restraint in that she won’t wolf down a dozen donuts, but she doesn’t deprive herself from simple pleasures like a small chocolate mousse. She eats it while sitting down and without being hurried in the least.
• Daily Soup (Belgian): Belgians have soup every day for lunch. It’s a cultural habit. Healthy, too.
• Aperitif: At 6:30 p.m. in a French home, it’s time for l’aperitif, the French cocktail hour. Some alcohol is served with something as simple as peanuts or as involved as creatively prepared appetizer-style snacks. Someone might make martinis or other mixed drinks. When I mentioned that I’m not much of a mixed-drink person, the French relatives assured me that sodas and fruit juices are an appropriate option, as well.
• Le Gouter: French women don’t snack between meals, but most do enjoy le gouter, a snack taken between 4 and 6. This New York Times article does a nice job describing it to Americans. Le gouter is a good time for the French woman to enjoy her guilt-free chocolate croissant, some yogurt, fruit, or a biscuit (cookie).
• Yogurt & Cheese Course: The French enjoy a cheese course with their meals that may replace the dessert or be served just before the dessert. The French love their yogurt, too. Because French women don’t drink milk, this is a way to get some easier-to-digest calcium into their diet.
• Hostess Gift: When a French or Belgian is invited to someone’s house for dinner, it’s customary to take a cake, pie, box of chocolates or some nice flowers and a bottle of wine as a hostess gift. Whether or not it’s customary in the states, it sure sounds like a fun idea to me.
• Mushroom-hunting: My sister-in-law in France said she was amazed at what a big deal mushroom hunting is there. Women will head off in their high heels with bags in hand to aller aux champignons, to go in search of mushrooms. I’m a little fearful of incorporating this into my life simply to feel more European. I mean, I don’t know a deadly mushroom from a morel. I think this is one custom I’ll leave to the French women in their completely matching outfits and nice shoes.

So. There you go:  Ideas straight from the experience and observations of my Belgian/French relatives for how you, too, can incorporate small changes into your life to feel a little more European.

Everything but the matching undergarments and mushroom-hunting works for me.

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[Updated: Visit the ten boom Museum website for a fantastic 360-degree, narrated tour—you’ll feel like you are right there (be sure to enter the hiding place itself, in Corrie’s bedroom)]

The trip that we just took to Europe was all about family. As you know, the primary reason to be there was to celebrate The Belgian Wonder’s parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. Before and after that event, we were with other members of his big family, sharing meals, chatting, and generally catching up. It’s been, after all, three years since we were last with them. All of The Belgian Wonder’s 13 nieces and nephews have changed dramatically in that time, and it was our first time meeting the youngest member of the family, a nephew.

As a result of this people-time-priority, we did very little sightseeing and even less shopping.

However, after the 50th, when we were in Holland staying at CenterParcs, the family asked us if we wanted to do anything in addition to visiting the beach and enjoying the CenterParcs facilities (such as its indoor water park). Did we want to see anything special? Visit a cheese-making farm, perhaps, or an historic old windmill?

I said that I’d love to visit the Corrie ten Boom museum in Haarlem and then go to Amsterdam and tour the Anne Frank house. In the several visits to Europe we’ve made in 17 years of marriage, we had never made it up there. It was about a two-hour drive from where we were staying.

As it turned out, everyone was interested in going, even if they only ate ice cream in the city centers while we took the tours. We were glad we didn’t have to lose a day with these people we see so rarely and want to build memories with, in order to see the two sights.

All together, our group added up to 24 people, 11 of them children.

To get that many people out the door packed for a day outing in the vans and cars caravaning two hours to Haarlem (we planned to park our vehicles in Haarlem and take a 30-minute train ride to Amsterdam afterward) was quite a feat. Not surprisingly, we got a bit of a late start and had to make a couple of pitstops en route. All to be expected, of course.

We parked by the train station, where we bore witness to the fact that Dutch people really do use their bikes (snapped through the van windshield):

Then we rushed to get to the museum.

When we got to the door, the English tour was about to begin. Whew! We were just in time.

We started to enter, but the tour guide started pushing the door shut. “Sorry,” she said, “but this tour is full. We can’t take anyone else. Sorry.” Thump. The door shut.

We stared for a moment, unsure what to do. Just then, another guy brushed past us, explaining in English, “We made arrangements beforehand and reserved this time.” He knocked, spoke to the guide who cracked open the door, then slipped in and pressed the door shut behind him.

On the green door hung a little sign with two clocks on it, one for the Dutch tours and the other for English:

“Next English tour: 3:30 p.m.”

It was early in the day, and we were faced with a decision: should we skip the Ten Boom museum and go to Amsterdam, stand in line for the Anne Frank house, and risk such a long wait that we might have to leave without seeing it, too? Should we give up Anne Frank and figure out how to spend an entire day in the small town of Haarlem until the 3:30 tour, which would mean getting back very late? Or should we scrap all the plans and return to the indoor waterslides?

Here’s the outdoor plaque posted on the exterior wall. I got the sinking feeling that this was all I’d capture of the museum (click to enlarge):

Nobody wanted to make the final decision, because I (and our immediate family, but particularly I) was the main one who wanted to take the tour. I felt utterly incapable of making the decision–I didn’t want to be the one forcing all those small children to hang around the city with nothing to do for a day just so that I could see the museum. But I also wanted to do this one thing very badly. All we could agree on was lunch. We walked out to the town square and ate sandwiches next to a big sculpture:

To buy time and do something fun, someone proposed we take a canal boat ride and see the city. The conclusion gradually seemed to be that we would take the ride and then head on back to CenterParcs. It appeared that we would pass on both the Ten Boom museum and the Anne Frank house.

On the canal boat, I worked hard to accept this reality. I handed the camera to The Belgian Wonder, who takes better photos than I, and asked him to snap some shots on the ride. He went to the back where most of our group was sitting, and I stayed toward the front to hear the narration.

As we passed a beautiful windmill at a fabulous angle, I leaned over to see if he was getting a nice shot of it–but he was on a borrowed cell phone making a call! I waited to see if he would finish and get a shot, and he hung up just in time to snap a good one, which was the centerpiece of one of my postcards from Holland.

The Belgian Wonder continued snapping photos on the ride, and eventually moved back into the front to report that he somehow convinced the good people at the Ten Boom museum to change their schedule around so that we could tour it at 2:30 instead of 3:30. This meant that we could finish the canal ride and go straight to the house, take the tour, and get our 24 people home at a reasonable hour.That’s the story of how I had to sacrifice Amsterdam and the Anne Frank house, but was able to see the Ten Boom museum after all.

I just wanted you to know how challenging it was to pull off, and how extra-pleased I am to offer you the following virtual tour. Here is the ten Boom living room, where the tour began:

We walked up some narrow stairs and gathered in the living room. I whispered to The Belgian Wonder, “Take a lot of photos.” In this peaceful, tranquil space, as the tour guide began telling us the ten Boom family history, The Belgian Wonder was snapping away as subtly as possible.

He even took photos of the family portraits on the walls:

In the bottom left photo, you can see a shot of the room that we were in, looking very much the same. The windows have that same decorative top as they did long ago.

Corrie organized and led a Christian girls’ club in the home before the war, something like Girl Scouts. The photos below show her with some of the girls in their uniforms:

After giving an overview of Corrie’s story and explaining how the family got involved with the Resistance, the tour guide took us up the extremely narrow, tight stairs to Corrie’s bedroom, the location of the Hiding Place. To form the space, the ten Booms smuggled bricks in, a few at a time, to create a false wall.

The wall would have been, of course, solid. Somebody at some point took out a section for visitors to see (and climb) inside:

The room with the shaft of light streaming in seemed so serene. Such a contrast to the reason for the Hiding Place–to protect people in a time of terror.

The design was ingenious, building a simple cupboard on the left as a secret entrance:

The Jews in hiding would open the cupboard and climb through the back of the bottom shelf. The back raised and lowered from the inside. Once everyone climbed through, they placed a basket with linens to fill that spot, lowered the door, and from the outside, it looked like a simple cupboard against a brick wall:

I climbed in after everyone else had a turn.

The guide said that with lots of practice drills, the people they were hiding could get to the Hiding Place in 70 seconds after the alarm was sounded. This included stripping the sheets (taking the sheets in with them) and flipping the mattress, if they were in bed (so that no body heat could be felt), or scooping up all dishes, cups, napkins, and eating utensils if it happened while eating.

On the fateful day that the Gestapo came, the six people they were protecting made it to the Hiding Place safely. The ten Booms would put an Alpina sign in the window when it was safe for people to come to the house who were part of the Resistance. If not, they’d pull the sign out. This is the sign:

That day, when the Gestapo came up the very alley where we waited outside for the tour, they pounded on the heavy green door. Betsie snatched the Alpina sign from the window. Sadly, one of the Gestapo saw her do that and figured it was a signal. When they entered to search, he placed it back in the window, and a few more people came to the house thinking it was safe and were taken in for interrogation.

The Gestapo found the spot where the ten Booms hid their extra ration cards and false passports. It was in the stairway:

But they couldn’t find the people. They knew that they were in the house, but they just couldn’t figure out where. Then they decided to starve them out. The people were stuck in the Hiding Place for two-and-a-half days without water, while the Gestapo posted guards, waiting.

One day, a Dutch police officer was put on duty. Little did the Germans know, he was part of the Resistance. He found a chance to get them out, so he helped them onto the roof and through a window into the neighbors’ house, who helped them escape. They all made it out, and the Dutch police officer disappeared until after the war, as well, because he would have been found out.

Here’s the view of the neighbor’s roof (the lower orange roof). The window was blocked off at some point over the years, but it’s the same building:

Here’s the view from the roof in a couple of directions, which was interesting to see even if we weren’t imagining a fearful bunch of Jewish people quietly climbing through to safety:

We passed through the remaining room, where the attic access was (the dark spot upper center):

Several photos were under the cases, including a sampling of the ration cards they had to secure in order to feed the people they were protecting:

Also, there were photos of Corrie with a wide variety of people throughout the world where she had spoken the message of salvation and hope and forgiveness after the war.

There was this photo of some of the people who had stayed with the ten Booms, Jewish people who had come to them for protection:

It was for these people (and others) that the ten Booms risked and sacrificed their lives. Corrie is the only one from her family who made it out alive, after eleven months in concentration camps.

In the dining room, where the signal clock sat in the window, the tour guide turned our attention to the back side of a tapestry that Corrie often used as an illustration (sorry about the glare):

It’s just a big mess of strings, all different colors wadded up in no pattern or form. Then he read a poem that she herself would read when showing the tapestry. I think it’s this one that I found online:

Life is But a Weaving

My life is but a weaving

Between my God and me.

I cannot choose the colors

He weaveth steadily.

Oft’ times He weaveth sorrow;

And I in foolish pride

Forget He sees the upper

And I the underside.

Not ‘til the loom is silent

And the shuttles cease to fly

Will God unroll the canvas

And reveal the reason why.

The dark threads are as needful

In the weaver’s skillful hand

As the threads of gold and silver

In the pattern He has planned

He knows, He loves, He cares;

Nothing this truth can dim.

He gives the very best to those

Who leave the choice to Him.

Then he had someone flip it around to the front side:

A crown of life.

Corrie’s received hers.

And offered it directly back to the Savior, I’m sure.

What a life. I loved, when reading The Hiding Place, how real she was. Her sister, Betsie, was so pure and childlike in her faith, trusting the Lord at His Word so simply and earnestly, praying continually. Corrie was the one exclaiming, “Fleas!” Corrie was the one who wailed, “Betsie, how can we live in such a place!”

But Betsie immediately began to pray, “Show us. Show us how.” Corrie wrote, “More and more the distinction between prayer and the rest of life seemed to be vanishing for Betsie” (p. 197, The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom with John and Elizabeth Sherrill, Bantam Books, New York, NY, copyright 1971) Betsie is the one who said to thank God for the fleas. Corrie is the one who  was aghast. “This was too much,” she wrote. “‘Betsie, there’s no way even God can make me grateful for a flea.'”

But Betsie insisted that the verse says to give thanks in all circumstances, not just in pleasant circumstances.

Corrie prayed. But she was sure that Betsie was wrong.

And of course later they realized that the reason they had so much freedom to worship and pray and study God’s Word and sing was because of….the fleas.

Anyway, I tell that famous story only because I love how this extraordinary woman, Corrie ten Boom, was also quite ordinary–at least she presented herself that way. And she found herself in “such a time as this,” and rose to the occasion by faith.

As a result, she got to see the Lord work in her life in extraordinary ways.

After the war, she spoke about forgiveness in all kinds of settings. The most dramatic occasion was when she returned to Germany with that same message, and a guard, one of their first jailers, approached her.

“How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,” he said. “To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away.”

He stuck out his hand to shake hers. She preached the need to forgive, but kept her hand at her side. As angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through her for the horror, pain, and suffering he caused, she “saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.”

She struggled to raise her hand. She felt no spark of warmth or charity. She couldn’t forgive the man…not on her own.”

Jesus, I cannot forgive him,” she prayed. “Give me Your forgiveness.”Then she described what happened next:

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself. (p. 238, ibid.)

The ten Boom house was a place of Christian prayer, protection, safety, love, faith, and forgiveness. And I felt so privileged to finally be able to  walk through it and almost feel it.

I was flipping through the book The Hiding Place and saw this quote from Betsie:

“There are no ‘if’s’ in God’s world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety–O Corrie, let us pray that we may always know it!” (p. 67, ibid)

O friends, I think that both Betsie and Corrie would want us to ask for the same thing:

Let us pray that we may always know God’s will, and always be at the center of it.

* * *

If you haven’t read The Hiding Place, please consider purchasing it today using my affiliate link (click on the image):

Also, introduce your children to Corrie and Betsie ten Boom by reading them Gutsy Girls, Book Two: Sisters Corrie and Betsie ten Boom (for affiliate link, click on image):

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• Pickle relish (regular dill, the kind you’d spoon onto a hotdog)
• Yellow American-style mustard

So while we took tasty American items like peanut butter to our family in Belgium, the opposite happens, too, of course; in which we travel overseas and find ourselves delighting in various tasty goodies that we want to take home with us or ask others to bring when they visit.There are the Belgian frites that we love, of course. Unfortunately, they don’t travel. Their brief moments of hot, crispy glory teach us the lesson of living in the moment. And there are the sinfully delicious chocolate croissants. They don’t travel, either, so we gorge on them and later confess the sin of gluttony, even as we wipe the smears of chocolate outlining our lips. And then I go jogging to try to counteract the calorie and fat content.Here’s what I would have purchased from a Belgian grocery store, had we been able to get to one before we left for Holland:

• Chokotoff (a tragedy, really, that we couldn’t get ahold of a packet of these chewy chocolates similar to Riesens)
• Cote d’Or chocolates
• Douwe Egberts or Jacqmotte coffee (more for The Belgian Wonder than for me)
• Tuc crackers
• Various specialty cookies
• Wine (The Belgian Wonder likes to bring back inexpensive brands)

Here’s what I would purchase and bring back if Customs would allow it and if they would survive the trip:

• Cheeses–lots and lots
• Salami–lots and lots
• Yogurts and yogurt-ish desserts
• Prepackaged mousse-like desserts found in the dairy section
• Breads, oh my, the breads
• Creme fraiche

Sigh.So we left Belgium without any of that and drove to Holland to stay at a vacation place. I had to give up the hankering for Belgian waffles, frites and chocolates.I admit that I was pretty sad about that.And I’m embarrassed that I was pretty sad about that–that I’m so very shallow and so greatly impacted by my taste buds.But I let go of what was lost and looked ahead to what was possible, what was available, and what was yummy in Holland….The pain of taste-losses was greatly eased when I woke up the first morning in Holland and saw that someone bought the very Dutch Chocoladehagel and Chocoladevlokken!If you ask me, the Europeans have sure got a great thing going–if you start the day with a bit of chocolate, one’s outlook is sure to be upbeat and positive, don’t you think?You see the two kinds of sprinkles in the above photo? The ones on the left are ribbon-shaped. We bought a box in milk chocolate and another in dark chocolate (puur). The ones on the right are more like the sprinkles we would use in the States to decorate cupcakes, only thirty times better. Again, we bought both the milk and dark chocolate varieties.This is standard Dutch breakfast fare, people.Here’s how it works:You take your bread or bun and spread it with some good butter.Ask someone to pass the chocolate…Sprinkle generously…Mmm….they crunch just a little with each bite. I ate mine open-faced, but it’s common to fold over a slice of bread or slap the lid on the bun so that it becomes a chocolate-sprinkle sandwich.Another concept that hasn’t taken off here in the States is sirop. Moms buy these syrups in various flavors. Here is a sampling:The one on the left is “grenadine,” a berry mixture consisting of raspberry, redcurrant, and blackberry; in the middle you see orange; on the right, strawberry. It’s a sugared syrup that they splash into a glass of either “flat” (normal tap) or “petillante” (bubbly) water, to add a dash of flavor. My sister-in-law said that in the flat water, it’s a cheap alternative to Gatorade after sports practices and games; and because you can control the dosage, it’s probably healthier. In bubbly water, it makes a special drink like a carbonated beverage, only cheaper.The lemon syrup is quite tasty and makes a quick and easy lemonade. Combining various flavors produces a fun punch. My kids had a blast mixing them. We were only able to bring back three, because we didn’t make it to the store to pick out more. We brought home grenadine, raspberry, and lime. It’s fun. I’ll be sad when they’re gone, as even I enjoy mixing some with water to make a more interesting beverage. It’s refreshing.The following photo is not really about snacks. In fact, it’s not even a Holland thing–someone brought along this jar from Belgium. I was simply amused by the label that creatively accommodates Flemish and French:Can you see how they’ve put one of the “n”s in parentheses (click on the photo to enlarge)? Choose your spelling according to your language. As I said, this was brought from Belgium to our Holland vacation, so it has to respect both official languages of that land.The next photo was snapped when we’d pulled out several snacks and goodies to sample:The package on the bottom left is “galettes,” those crisp waffle-like cookies we get here in the States, too, that are often served with ice cream. The box on the right was a spice cake that my kids just loved. In the center back are “stroopwafels,” basically two waffle-like cookies with a thick honey (or is it caramel?) layer in between–a honey sandwich cookie. I love them! I found them once at a health food store here in the States way overpriced, so it was nice to get them for only a few euros. To the right is a bag of licorice-flavored gumdrops. Not my favorite, but evidently typical of Holland.Below, in keeping with the snack theme, I thought I would include a photo of a snack shack parked alongside the coast of the North Sea. This is the beach where we would go for the morning if it was warm enough. You can see how overcast it was when I snapped this photo. It wasn’t warm enough to play at the beach. We were actually biking along the dike wearing rain jackets.The tide went way out-and-in each day. When it was out, we would walk what seemed like 300-400 meters to get to the water.And then I thought I’d share a snapshot of an aperitif that the brothers- and sisters-in-law shared:Pastis. If you’ve ever read any of the Peter Mayle Provence books, you’ll recall that old men drink pastis while they’re playing boules, or “petanque.” I’d never had it before that day.Tastes like licorice.Again, not my favorite. I took a few sips, then passed it along to someone who would enjoy it more.That gives you a snack-overview from our time in Holland.Now that we’re back in the midwestern United States, we must carefully ration our syrup and sprinkles–the sprinkles, especially. After all, when they’re gone, our morning chocolate options greatly diminish.I mean, what does that leave us?Cocoa Puffs.Sigh.

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Our last full day in Holland began first with some crabbing, or crab-catching, by the docks. The children were captivated by this as they waited for the adults to slowly roll out of bed and gather for those Sunday family devotions I described in the last post.

This crab-fishing activity evolved over the course of several days. First the kids observed others with nets and tried out various methods of snatching one from the cool waters of the marina.

Then one afternoon they watched as two Dutch kids successfully caught crabs using a simple, ingenious homemade contraption. It inspired a variation of their own.

Using an old hair clip donated by a generous aunt, some string from their craft bag, and mussels scraped off the pilings and cracked open on the concrete (for bait), they pieced together their own crab-catcher.

They tied the string to the hair clip, and the clip held the mussel meat. Then they lowered it into the water and spied for crabs skittering along the rocks at the bottom.

The unsuspecting, hungry crab snatched the mussel and started to munch when the kids slowly raised the string, lifting the crab out of the water as it held on to its mussel for dear life.

General commotion ensued as someone called for a net and several cousins joined in the process: One held a net under the crab, someone else brought a bucket, and yet another shook the crab loose from the mussel.By evening, my children caught a total of 17 crabs.

And because one can’t get enough of these glorious creatures, here’s a close-up taken later in the day:

Catching crabs from the North Sea…when you have an experience like that, who needs souvenirs?

Note: It appears that these are the European Green Crab, an invasive species considered “an aquatic nuisance” in North America. We want to go on record as stating we did not import a single crab to the United States. We caught them and set them free again.

In case readers are curious, we did not attempt to eat them.

And for those more concerned about the crabs themselves, no crabs were harmed in the filming of this blog post nor even during their brief time in bucket captivity.

The human handler in the above photo, however, was pinched by the crab just after I snapped the picture.

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We could have simply cleaned up from breakfast and gathered around the table in one of the rented cottages.

Then we thought of gathering at the dock, where the children had been so occupied scooping up shrimp, oysters, and crabs. But that was a fairly busy spot, and we didn’t want to be praying and singing alongside crabbers.

Then one of my sisters-in-law suggested we go along the water’s edge, past the volleyball court, to a little spot that was a bit more secluded.

We strolled along toward the spot, chatting as the breeze swept across us, cooling the air. The sun shone as we settled down on a bench overlooking the marina. The children wondered what brought them to this spot off by itself.Here’s the view from one direction:

Here’s the other:

We gathered to hear a story, pray, and sing a few songs.

The theme?

Let the little children come to Jesus.

The same sister-in-law who suggested this beautiful location told that simple little Bible story hoping to engage the youngest among us (her husband is next to her, holding cards in place that formed a little puzzle-picture of Jesus with the little children):

Then we sang “Oh, How I Love Jesus” in Kituba, the language of my father-in-law’s youth while growing up in Belgian Congo. The youngest children had learned it to sing at the 50th Wedding Anniversary fete, so they all joined in. Then we sang it in French and English. Whoever knew it in his or her language joined in when possible.

We sang “Jesus Loves the Little Children” in English.

We sang “The Wise Man Built His House upon the Rock” in French. Actually, everyone who spoke French sang it, while the rest of us listened.

Someone closed our time together praying in French and then in English.

Such a simple time in such a beautiful setting for all our kids to be reminded that Jesus warmly invited the little children come to Him.

And for all the big kids to remember that He invites us, too.

You.

Me.

Wherever we are—by the water’s edge, at the computer, in our beds at night, or while walking in the woods. Whether we’re half a world away on vacation or at home in the back yard, hanging up laundry, He invites us to come to Him.

He says we are to become like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Mono Zola Yesu…Oh, how I love Jesus!

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• Brown bag contains a mini hairbrush, hair clips and elastics;
• Blue bag holds first-aid items such as Claritin, Excedrin, band-aids and triple antibiotic cream;
• Blue bag with swirls holds, um, how shall we say it, “personal” items;
• Light blue with pastel colors holds makeup basics; 
• Cloth toile bag is the least precise, because it serves as a mini-purse. It can hold several frequently used items, like a nail file, small tissue pack, antibacterial gel, a stray band-aid or two in case I didn’t have the entire blue first-aid bag, chapstick, two business cards, and one emergency “personal” item.

I simply grabbed the bags I thought would be needed that day and toss them in my purse or daypack. The kids got to know which bag held the first-aid items and could run to the room and snatch it when needed.This containment system worked with my own logic (each person should lean on his or her own, as my own logic doesn’t always make sense to others) and kept things easily transferable from one bigger container, like a suitcase, to another, like a daypack.Of course I had a toiletries bag, as well; but it wouldn’t be tossed into a daypack or purse for use on the go.These small, makeup-sized bags are not a big investment: I found them all at Goodwill, each at 99 cents.Neither of these ideas is all that novel, but perhaps one will help minimize somebody’s minor travel woes.Change of Clothes in Carry-onEverybody knows to take a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a change of clothes (especially underwear) in a carry-on bag, right? This is so that if you arrive at your destination, but your bags don’t, you have options. This happened to us, and we were glad to have something to wear the next day.Empty Water BottleYou can’t take liquids on the plane, but you can take an empty plastic water bottle (be sure it’s totally empty). Fill it up on the other side of security and avoid the high-priced bottles offered at the airport gift shop (plus, feel good about recycling). We filled ours, dropped them in our red sports bag, and took them everywhere, as drinking fountains are extremely rare in Belgium and Holland. A very small bottle is handy, as it isn’t so heavy to tote around.Time Change and Jetlag: Don’t Look BackMy father-in-law, a world traveler, has always encouraged me to change my watch to the time zone of my final destination so as to start living it and adjusting to it. I used to say things like, “No wonder I’m tired–back home, it’s 2 in the morning,” and he would point out that by continuing to look back like that, I was keeping myself from enjoying the present and shifting faster through jetlag. Somewhere along the way, I started following his advice and have found it to be wise and accurate. I change my watch as soon as I’m on the last plane.Speaking of jetlag, we had the longest travel time ever on this trip–with three planes and some drive-time, we were awake for 24 hours when we got in last night.Thus, while not wanting to make excuses, those are the few tips that my weary brain can drag up at the moment.What kinds of travel solutions have you implemented?For more tips, check out Works For Me Wednesday at Rocks In My Dryer.

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Anyway.

On the menu for dinner last night?Frites.

(Definitely visit the link to learn all about how they’re double-fried and served throughout Belgium at friteries.)

Not exactly a cholesterol- or calorie-friendly meal. But very Belgian. Here is a packet of frites striking an inviting pose next to a typical Belgian beer with cherry flavoring.

Do they look good in the picture? Because in real life, they’re so tasty straight out of the cone, hot and crispy. When they get cold, however, I’ll admit that they’re rather unappealing.

Frites are served with a variety of dipping sauces. Look at this selection:

After indulging in way too many frites, I asked if anyone wanted to go jogging in the morning.

They all laughed at me and said not to worry about it. They advised me to eat freely and deal with the caloric aftermath when I get back home in the States.

So instead of planning a jogging route around Charleroi, we sat around the table catching up on family news until late in the evening.

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The Bloggers Circle [CLOSED]What are the challenges and pitfalls of good blogging? How much should you disclose about yourself and other people on a blog? How do you respond to critics? To what extent should blogging be descriptive, a kind of reporting, and to what extent should it be reflective and expressive of your own feelings and thoughts?

Anyway, if you’re interested, here’s the list of speakers.I only knew a few, like Katherine Paterson, Kathleen Norris, Yann Martel, Haven Kimmel, Phyllis Tickle, Elizabeth Berg, Deb Rienstra, Rob Bell, Francine Rivers, and Luci Shaw. Maybe some others, too. You can see from this diverse group that this is not intended to be an exclusively Evangelical event–I think it’s encouraging a broader conversation of faith and writing at a literary level. A lot of these speakers not only have written books and won prizes, they also teach at prestigious universities. I hope I’m inspired and encouraged rather than overwhelmed by these brilliant minds expressing themselves.Hopefully I can check in here at the blog. I’ll try to snap a few pictures of famous people. I’ve been known to say and do embarrassing things when I meet people I admire. I stepped on someone’s foot just before we were introduced, I’ve said really stupid things, and on one memorable occasion in 2005, I was riding on an airplane back from Belgium one row in front of Phyllis Tickle. The story involves airsickness. You can read about it here if you like. After all, there’s really no better way to spice up a story on the mamablogsophere than to include a little vomit vignette.Anyway, if anything memorable happens should I happen to bump into Kathleen Norris or Katherine Paterson in the hallway or the ladies room, you’ll be the first to know.

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It’s pure and simple, with no animal or synthetic ingredients. Most of all, castile soap is a versatile product with numerous effective applications.

This will probably horrify all Arbonne and Mary Kay representatives, but I use it as a face and body wash.

The occasional blemish that would erupt on my chin or nose from month to month? No more. Not a one. Since I’ve been using castile soap, my complexion is better than ever. I know several readers who will just shake their heads at me—they’ll warn me that I shouldn’t use, well, soap on my skin. But, hey, it’s working great. It’s cheap, my skin looks and feels great, and after I use it on my face, I can use it to clean the shower, mop the floor and wash the dishes.

Yes, this product is so flexible, I’ve used it for everything that the back of the bottle suggests, except as a shampoo. I tried that and didn’t like it, but I have long hair and I’ve heard it’s better for people with short hair (and good for dandruff).

I use it for the following (I’m typing directly from the Trader Joe’s label):

• Body: Use directly on loofa, washcloth, or sponge for an invigorating shower or bath.
• Bubble Bath/Baby Bath: Pour one capful in running water for a luxurious bath. It’s also a gentle, safe way to bathe your baby (note: as with any baby wash, be sure to keep it out of their eyes).
• Fruit Wash: A couple of washes in water cleans pesticide residues off your fruits and vegetables.
• Hand Soap: Gentle on your hands and tough on dirt.
• General Use Cleaner: Its naturally powerful cleaning ability will get your floors, counters, bathrooms, and kitchen utensils spotlessly clean.
• Travelers, Backpackers, Campers: The perfect all-in-0ne cleaner. One (biodegradable) soap does it all without fouling up the environment.

This lady has some personal observations from using the actual Dr. Bronner’s brand, and mentions that some versions are better than others for specific uses (some have a high oil content and she observed oil stains when using it for laundry). She (and many others) also dis-recommends using it as a toothpaste. My Trader Joe’s bottle didn’t even bother suggesting that application.

I love how it simplifies life. And it’s safe for the environment: the makers are careful when producing it to be environmentally friendly; and when I put it to use, no harmful fumes or residues are wafting around my home.

You could try a bottle and see what you think. It’s concentrated, so one bottle lasts a while. If you don’t like it for one thing, you can use it for a dozen other uses until it’s gone and be done with it. Or maybe, like me, you’ll find that you’re hooked.

Please visit Rocks in My Dryer for more great ideas!

My previous Works-For-Me-Wednesday Ideas:

• Post-It Annotation for Library Books
• Everyday Mom-Mobile Essentials & Travel Notebooks
• Money-Motivated Kids
• Drawers-by-the-Door
• Make the Most of Internet Lag Time
• Storing Dishes: How Low Can You Go?
• Crepes? Mais, Oui!
• Containerize Kids’ Laundry
• Let It Snow, Let Us Slow (Crockpot Steel-Cut Oatmeal)
• Family LoveFest
• Joy of Lifelong Learning–For Free!
• MP3 Accompanist
• MP3 Note-taking

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