Earth's Crammed With Heaven

I have a suspicion that tomorrow is going to be wonderful. I don't have any special plans, or really any plans for that matter besides eating black eyed peas with my parents, but my suspicion is so strong that I might even be able to call it a hunch. My hunch about tomorrow has something to do with this little lady And with these guys ( my beloved Tom and Pop, my Dad) And this guy... we'll just call him Scrooge And these crazies who helped me make Christmas cookies this season ( Nurse Cori and Granjoy, whom sweet baby Piper Joy is named after) And the entire family who came over to decorate said cookies in the form of a fierce competition definitely has something to do with my hunch about tomorrow Tomorrow will be wonderful because I am blessed with a fun, funny, loving, and as Dad would say, darn good lookin' family. The memories we made this past year will be a part of my joy tomorrow. Happy 2014 from my family...

My Mom says that as Christians we should be quick to celebrate the good things in life. And not just a mini, personal celebration. Those don't allow others to share in the joy. She thinks, and I agree, that everyone would be greatly encouraged if more people told other people about things that go well - experiences that brought them joy, successes, places where they saw God at work. It has definitely been my experience that when someone tells me a story of something beautiful and good that happened or something they accomplished that mattered to them, it encourages me in turn. I'm talking about huge, impactful things that happen that seem too heavy to just throw into a conversation, and I'm also talking about passing moments that still matter because they offer significant contributions to life. My sister, Nurse Cori , is good at this sort of celebrating. Way better than I am. She isn't afraid, as I might be, to bring a little depth to the conversation to tell about a...

The first of this month marks the two year anniversary of the greatest writing challenge I have ever participated in. During this month two years ago I decided to join NaNoWriMo... the nerdy way of saying National Novel Writers Month. The challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel over the course of the, unfortunately, only 30 days of November. It's well set up online with a word counter and graphs of how close to completion you are. It's also terrifying to watch the number of days remaining until the "deadline" ticking away while the number of words remains approximately the same. I can't say that what I generated during that time was excellent writing, but it was voluminous. And that in itself was a new victory for me. Perhaps NaNoWriMo is not your thing. Today I pose the question, what is? And I address that question to myself. It's easy to be easy on myself, not to challenge myself any more than an ordinary day requires. But then, I have no story! And if ...

Here's an October update on my sweetie pie, Piper Joy. She is officially 13 months old these days. Tom and I made the important decision that she does indeed have enough hair for a spout or two, and the pictures below demonstrate our wisdom. Piper can say lots of words. Her current favorite is "bear". Because she is, of course, a brilliant child, she can identify stuffed animal bears, puzzle piece bears, bears in pictures, and pretty much any other kind of bear you might find in a toddler's life. She pronounces it "bah" and loves to squeal, "a bah! a bah!" over and over again. I love how her little personality is beginning to show up these days. She has very strong opinions about shoes. They are a must have. She also prefers not to wear socks unless she's wearing shoes. When it comes to books, Tom and I may read one to her once in a sitting and then she needs complete control of it from there. She will flip through the pages and r...

At 1:30 p.m. today, my sister, Nurse Cori, arrives back in the U.S. after a two week medical missions trip to Costa Rica. This is the third in a series of trips, one to Mexico, and one to Jordan. We haven't heard much from her while she's been gone, so everyone is chomping at the bit to get a phone call. All I know at this time is that she got to give a fancy wheelchair to a kid who's been bedridden his entire life. That's so fantastic it makes me cry. At 10:30 a.m. yesterday, my mom and I were walking with a giant red stroller full of sweet baby Piper Joy. Piper was trying to fall asleep and I was trying to rouse her enough to keep her awake through the walk so I could take her home for a good nap. I employed such tactics as jumping while singing and flapping my arms as well as racing ahead of the stroller and executing a 360  to end up facing Piper with a giant grin. Neither of these tactics worked and Piper insisted on falling asleep. On our walk with a sleeping ...

Phewf! It's been a long time! (Does anyone else besides my family use that expression? My beloved Tom claims that they do not. I disagree.) The reason for the giant gap in postings : a move to a new town. The reason for me posting today, this beautiful, fall-ish afternoon: I painted a door. This is my door, the door to the house I just moved in to in Fredericksburg, Texas. It's worth noting that the door is heavy. This matters because I did this project by myself. Yep. I figured out how to take a front door off it's hinges (my beloved Tom later told me a much less sweat-inducing way), how to make sawhorse wannabe's out of four chairs and two old, spider infested boards, how to maneuver the door down the front steps to the "sawhorses", how to sweetly ask the neighbor next door to help me hoist my door onto the "sawhorses", how to get over my frustration when the neighbor left and I realized the door had been placed wrong side up, how to ask the n...

I have been going through the vats of old letters I have in my closet. Yes, I am a letter hoarder. It is a problem. If someone takes the time to write down anything on paper, I keep it. There is something about a letter that registers deeply within me. Sometimes I dream that people one hundred years from now will come across these letters and think...They could really think anything at all about me one hundred years down the line and I'd be more than satisfied! During my readings, I came across something I had written. It is a poem written to my beloved Tom the year before we were married. I am daring to publish it here because, well, I like it! And that is rare for me to say of my poetry. I hope you enjoy it as well. Light Year If you sing me that night with its crickets and stars, its machine-sprinkled water a mist curtaining Mars from my sight as I sit wishing nothing -  Maybe something -  Is a kiss coming? That song might make me sing inside like the river ...

I am not much of a napper myself, never have been. After mom put me on my top bunk for nap time when I was five or six, she would crawl in with my sister, Nurse Cori , on the bottom bunk. This was to keep my sister from running out of the room screaming. She didn't like napping much either. Mom and Cori would eventually fall asleep. But not me. Oh no. I would stealthily creep down my three rung ladder, tip toe across the carpet, twist the doorknob with one quick twist, and hold it there while I ever so slowly opened the door a crack just big enough for me to slip through. You see, the Disney afternoon was on t.v. during nap time on channel 11. I can remember the satisfaction of punching those two 1's into our remote control and watching the giant, neon-yellow "11" appear in the bottom right corner of the screen. Victory was mine! And so were Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers, Tailspin, and Darkwing Duck. Chip and Dale was the best by far. As an adult and mother, I now...

My beloved Tom and I work at a summer camp. Here is a post about what my life is like during these busy months. Summer is this: Sun It bakes the cloth diapers lining the fence making them hard, white. They smell like heat. I have one pair of sunglasses. I keep them handy on the kitchen counter. My baby rides in her stroller with the sun-shade up. And her hat on. And sunscreen on her face. It is the only way. We squint down the white caliche roads of camp. The dust of the road splatters on the trees and bushes. They become white ghosts of their springtime selves. The camp boat drivers' faces turn red and then golden brown. Their faces get darker and their hair gets lighter. It is nine o'clock p.m. and light outside. Humidity It is taking a nap in the afternoon with your eye makeup on and when you wake up, your vision is foggy. There is a fire somewhere; only there's no pungent camp fire smell, and the smoke is wet. My straight hair just got straighter. Const...

Well folks, we are entering a new phase here in the Bowyer household: my sweet baby Piper Joy has begun eating solid foods! And by eating I of course mean pulverizing with her feet as she sits in her baby seat and then rolling between her fingers before stuffing in her mouth her entire hand plus mashed food and then promptly spitting it all out to see what it feels like dribbling down her chin. Luckily, messes don't bother me much. Let me share with you some of my newly discovered motherly knowledge - not because it will necessarily aid you in any way, but because it is worthwhile for busy people to stop once in a while and think about babies. They are hilarious and fantastic. First off, when feeding a baby, think of it as an experiment in natural tie dye. Baby clothes are oh so cute, but when your baby, or at least my baby, starts eating, the clothes are not nearly as important as the work of art created by the baby in between bites. Tiny hands can make giant swatches of food ...

We used to live on top of a hill. It was so densely covered in live oaks that you had to drive halfway up the granite driveway before you could see our house - grey and white and tall in the midst of the trees. I can't even imagine how many times I drove up that driveway and caught the familiar glimpse of my home. First, as a high school-er in my blue minivan, then home from college in the old Lexus, then back from Austin in the Miata. I even drove up the drive as a married woman in my beloved Tom's  black Jetta. But we do not live on that hill anymore and I was reminded of that this Easter as I brought my sweet baby Piper to visit her Nan and Pop in their new home. It was not my parents' initial choice to move to a new home. They as well as I pictured their grandchildren coming up the live oak hill for visits. As little as I consciously thought about it, I had always expected to be able to bring my kids back to see where I grew up. But, after last Easter, a fire started ...

When I was living in France, I would take walks up into the mountains behind my host family's house. There were miles of trails that led to amazing views of little farms and a giant yellow chateau (a mini castle) that was still fully operational. I would always scheme about how I might make it inside the gates to get a peak at the inside of the place. The other draw to the mountains was a gypsy camp. I had to walk right past it to get anywhere at all on the trails. The French call gypsies "les gens de voyage," the traveling people. I would try to imagine what it would be like to live life on the road, to enjoy moving, not to long for a hometown and the geography around it. This past week I was a gypsy mamma. The fact that I was only this for a week probably negates any claim I can make to the title of gypsy, but it is such a pretty word that I want to continue to use it. My beloved Tom, sweet baby Piper Joy, and I covered 2000 miles in one week in my new mom car, the ...