It's all beautiful...

 I've been doing a lot of avoidance strategies lately: facebook, netflix, reading blogs. I realized I was so busy for a while, it gave me a great sense of purpose. When things slowed down a little bit, I had a hole I needed to fill. Add to that a scare I had the other day (well, it hasn't gone away yet really) with a friend's health, and I found I was trying to escape my own life. 

 I was reading John Scalzi's blog, and ran across a post that really resonated: It's all beautiful and nothing lasts.   He talked about a dream he had, and this is something he says in the dream. What struck me, was that it wasn't defeatist, it was motivational: it doesn't last so enjoy the heck out of life while you have it --whatever it is. 

 I went to my daughter's choir concert last night, and they had a mentally handicapped girl there participating. At the end of the first song, she screamed "more more" so the choir sang her favorite song for her. She was so over-stimulated that she kind of lost control, and was rubbing her face and shouting, and flailing, and I thought --her parents! The pain they must feel right now! The pain they feel every day! But I looked at the choir, and those kids just saw that they were making this girl happy. They saw beauty. I realized that you could see the moment in two different ways. I've been looking at things wrong a lot. 

 Excuse the clichéed simile with autumn and death. Each week I see more and more leaves fall, each week the beauty moves down the mountain. At first the brightest colors are the furthest away, but as winter and death gets closer, the color moves down towards the valley, toward my own front yard. Soon the aspens by my driveway will be bright gold; then they will be dead for winter. 

 With more intense feelings, even bad ones, come more beauty. I valued my friend more as I feared for her health. I mourn the loss of having little babies in the house, and passed a mom with a 6 month old in the grocery store yesterday, and said "you are so lucky!" I saw the beauty in the little baby girl precisely because my baby days were over. I don't remember if I knew how lucky I was when I had babies. I hope I did, but there is beauty in the remembering and yearning too. 

 So I run up the mountain, and enjoy the beauty even of the leaves that have fallen. When winter comes, I will no doubt exclaim over snow and ice crystals. I hope I can stop and enjoy listening to Ari and Kai's chatter after school today. Tia still thinks I'm funny sometimes. I hope I appreciate that now -- It won't last!

 To see the beauty, I have to look for it in each moment. Remember with fondness, and not block the pain --there is beauty in the fallen leaves too.

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Autumn.

 Fall. Oh my goodness. It's gorgeous around here. Jeff and I took our Friday night treat up the mountain with lawn chairs and just enjoyed the sunset and beautiful valley. We talked about how it seems like since we started spending more time outside, we've gotten to really love where we live. We are so spoiled. 

We are NOT good selfie takers! 

 The sky is a deep, deep blue.

 The bushes look like flower arrangements.

 We did steal one frame of honey from our bees, maybe next year we can track down a spinner we don't feel dumb paying to rent. With only 7 frames full we couldn't justify renting a 9 frame spinner. Next year...

 I just cut and slow -melted the one frame's worth of honey. 

 I love my babies more than I love running and autumn trees, but it seems like I never post pictures of them. I have three little readers. I wonder where they got that from? 

Kai has a few good buddies I'm really grateful for. All of our kids are very settled in our little town. Here they are on another mother's roof --probably good I wasn't around, but I'm glad they had a little adventure. 

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Nesting.

 We're home in Utah. Some of the flowers waited for me. And the sunlight.

 And the berries! California must be hopping, because our local store finally gave me enough of a deal to freeze our winter smoothie supply.

 Even raspberries, the hardest berry to pick (I always treat them like gold when I buy them --once half a pound went bad because I wouldn't let the kids eat them in time), were practically being given away.

 So satisfying to have my freezer full.

 Nicaragua was beautiful, but Utah is lovely too.

 Especially my own little corner.

 At least three times a year I see families out getting portraits done in front of this old barn.

 Being in a third world country probably should have made me much less materialistic, but I came home and finally ordered these off my wish list.

It's my favorite blue willow plates. I bought some on sale when Tia was a baby, and Kira bought some, and probably Meesha too, and they've gotten destroyed in the mean time. I only had a few left. Now...bring on the dinner parties! Everything tastes better plated on blue.

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Jeff and I sneak out snowshoeing

 

On the district calendar it said that Tia and Kai weren't going back to school until the 4th.  For some reason that calendar was wrong? and everyone seemed to know that except for us.  Whatever.  Anyway Jef and I were happy because he still had the day off work and we could go snowshoeing together.   All y'all that live here in Utah take this kind of stuff for granted, but where I grew up it looked like this in summer:

 

This in spring:

 

This in fall:

 

...and this in winter.

 After 20 years living here, I'm still not used to this in winter:

 The sun was shining, and Jeff and I didn't even wear real coats.  We used poles, a lot of the trail we went on hadn't had anyone on it before us, and the poles helped with balance.  Most of the time it was just us and the snow.  We did run into Karla and her crazy dogs, and one other couple, but that was over the course of almost two hours.

I still can't believe all of that beauty was real. Do you know when you're experiencing something -say you're eating a piece of cheesecake, and it's so good, you're afraid you're not experiencing it deep enough?  That's what it was like for me.  I kept trying to memorize and internalize how beautiful it was.  To "drink it in" as Anne of Green Gables would say.

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