Days 17 - 27: Summer Camp in Maine!

We have gone to summer camp at the lake! And the best part about this summer camp is that it is our parents' home on Cold Stream Pond in Maine, so we have enjoyed the best of lake life and activities along with lots of family time--grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, 2nd or 3rd cousins (I have never completely figured that out) and new friends!

There have been day-long playdates and sleepovers for Petunia, and she spends most of her time in or on the water--with a cousin or friend, if at all possible.

Enjoying beautiful weather, we have had the opportunity to go kayaking, swimming, boating, and tubing a few steps from our door.  When not in the water, we have been enjoying playing games and eating copious amounts of good food, often with some extended family.

Although you could spend a full summer right here at camp, we have pulled ourselves away a couple times for some fun outings, too.  One day we went to eat at a restaurant on Lake Millinocket, and enjoyed hanging around a bit to soak in the amazing views of Mt. Katahdin in the background.

We are gearing up for our next adventure for a few days but are grateful and excited that we'll get to come back to "home camp" for a few more days before we leave Maine.  This state deserves every bit of its reputation as an awesome place to be!

Mark and I were out kayaking when he got this shot of me with "camp" in the background. What a lovely place to be!

Some version of this is Petunia's most common attire.

Picnic on Waffle Island with her cousin who is a special friend. I wonder how many hours total she's logged on Waffle Island so far?

For this journey, we didn't even leave our lake, just went to another part of it. Petunia did a great job as captain.

Petunia and another cousin, who are anxiously anticipating going ashore!

The water here is so clear and beautiful, and the sand glitters with gold specks, like we're on some exotic faraway island.

Petunia showing off a piece of gold.

Closer to home, we have enjoyed watching the playful--and sometimes aggressive with each other--hummingbirds at the feeder.

When one starts humming right by you, it is surprisingly loud!

Magnificent creature!

We caught another sight of our friend, Mr. Bald Eagle

Petunia is standing between her grandparents, who came with us in the RV to take us to lunch in an enchanted setting.

We ate lunch just up from this view! Lake Millinocket with Mt. Katahdin in the background.  Breathtaking!

Petunia captured this pic of us.

"Keep Maine Beautiful" as it is indeed a beautiful state!

These days at camp have been a delightful mix of lake activity, socializing, resting and sightseeing. Lots of talking and laughing! What a blessing to do all this with family.  

Some adventures are more pleasant than others

Petunia had a loose tooth for a long time.  This one tooth just did not want to leave her mouth, so it hung on and on, no matter how much she worked on it.  In fact, this particular tooth kind of became its own character in our family, it stayed around so long.

"Is he still there?"  "Yep." "You working on it some more?"  "Yes, but it gets looser and then tightens up again."

These were our conversations about The Tooth That Wouldn't Leave.

So imagine our surprise when we're eating lunch in a little pizza place in the village of Watkins Glen and Petunia comes back from the bathroom with bleeding gums and tooth in hand!  We all celebrated!! 

After being admired, the tooth got set down on a napkin as we finished up.  Ok, let's be real...that pretty much made us want to finish up anyway.  Here the details get a bit fuzzy, but I believe the general consensus is I am the one at fault for scooping up the tooth-holding napkin along with the others and throwing them into the trash.  We walked out to our car, everyone thinking someone else had the tooth.

Fortunately, before we even got in the car, Petunia asked to see her tooth.  After a short round of "Who's on first?" we realized what must have happened. This was unfortunate because Petunia really wanted to keep this tooth.  In fact, she had already decided she was going to write the Tooth Fairy asking if there was any way that she could keep this one instead of giving it up because she had worked so long and hard on it.

Mark said we had to at least know we had done everything we possibly could to recover the missing tooth. So, we marched back inside.  I was not feeling extremely enthusiastic right about this point, if you're wondering.

Knowing we had just left, we tried to do a cursory, nonchalant glance inside the top of the trashcan.  

Just writing that sentence makes me laugh out loud. Better than crying, I guess.

Much to our chagrin, that wasn't going to cut it.  We spoke to some employees and got permission to take the trash bag outside for a full inspection. They even volunteered gloves!  Bless you, pizza employees with hearts!

So, we started The Search.

Might not go down as my favorite memory of the whole year.

Fortunately this was a delicious eatery and people pretty much cleaned their plates! We were removing lots of empty plates and pizza boxes.  It could have been much worse.

Petunia was a full participant. She really wanted this tooth.  I was a participant, too, but was the only one taking pictures. We didn't exactly want to drag this out any longer than necessary.

Mark was the hero who found THE napkin with the tiny little tooth still safely ensconced within its folds.  

There was much rejoicing in the land!!

So, yes, some adventures are more pleasant than others, but some things are worth unpleasantness.

A spark, a dream, a plan. Part 2: A Dream

If you read Part 1 of this series, then you understand that Mark and I were on the cusp of some big decisions. Having been inspired to live our lives telling the best story possible, we had to figure out exactly what that would look like for us. Helping me to understand this concept of life as story was one of my favorite books of all time. Here is a quote:

“A story is based on what people think is important, so when we live a story, we are telling people around us what we think is important.” ― Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

Suddenly things came into focus. We know what's important to us. In our family we have long valued:

• Intentionality

To be intentional means to plot a course and be deliberate about going in that direction. It means not letting other shiny things distract you from what you want most.  It takes discipline, delayed gratification, and sometimes long-term planning.   There are many, many things we are completely laid back about. You should see our laundry room.  No, actually, you shouldn't. Never mind.

Some things, though, we make certain that our family will or will not do, see, participate in, and experience. We want Petunia to be introduced to some things by certain ages, and we want to discuss and process milestones with her. We have had to leave margin in our finances because we wanted to support some good work going on in the world. If you are not intentional about these sorts of things, most of them don't come to pass.  It's not good enough that life will happen to us and we react. We will happen to life.

• Family Time

We all have dear friends, and each of us in our family chooses time we will spend on social occasions with those we are blessed enough to have in our life. But we really enjoy spending a lot of time together as a family. I cannot be certain, but I imagine that our small family size helped lead to a tight-knit threesome that has so much fun together.

It was not our Plan A that Petunia would be an only child, though maybe all the time she spent with us instead of siblings is why she's so comfortable conversing with adults. Perhaps it's just Petunia's personality or some genetic trait that has always made her open to try anything: museums, sports games, long hikes, movies on the couch, anything!

Mark and I make each other laugh! He is one of the funniest people I know.  Not many people at all get to see that side of him, but I love it. He lifts my bad moods! Our puns would make others groan in pain, but we get such a kick out of ourselves. We like to spend time together.

• Travel

We travel for fun, education, and for perspective in this great big world. We travel to stay connected to friends and family who live far away, to have responsibility-free time together, and to serve others.  We travel because we must. It's not optional in this family.  If we are on this great big, colorful, diverse planet with so many things to do, see and experience, why wouldn't we go do, see and experiences as much of it as we can?

• Listening to God's voice

While the most important of them all, this one can be the most difficult because God's voice often comes through as a whisper amongst all the clanging noise vying for our attention. In our family we strive to listen and then follow where that whisper takes us. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes not. Sometimes we hear it, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we've ignored it. That's not the kind of family we want to be.  I think God gives us a lot of leeway to make our choices. I do not feel like a course is preset so much as a direction is shown. And to both my delight and dismay, I've discovered that you only get enough direction for the next right step. You don't get the joy, or burden, of seeing down the whole path from the beginning.

So here were the elements of the story we wanted to tell with our lives.  We intend to be a family who is intentional in their actions, who wants to spend a lot of time together, exploring the people and places of this world, all while listening to God's voice. These are our values.

Looking back over our years as a family, we had gotten to do a fair amount of each of those and I'm grateful. I, especially, had the privilege of serving in ministry with an incredible team that got to be part of and witness to God doing amazing things in the lives of hundreds of people. There were hard moments and beautiful moments, sometimes regarding the same story. I had meaningful work with people I respect and admire.

Even still I made the realization that, as a family, we were living out a lot of our most important values in the "leftover" time while the majority of our days and energy (physical, mental and emotional) were spent on a schedule that we had taken on instead of creating.

What if we could create a life that was built around our top family values? Now we had our DREAM!