I'm unexpectedly nostalgic as I say this, but I am moving my blog.

I began this blog in 2005, at the start of an important journey in my life.  It has logged a lot of miles - through Kansas City and the prayer room, back to my hometown, and through my early years as a mother.

But my life is changing, I am changing, and it's time for a fresh start.  I will not take this blog down, not until I have made a hard copy of it, at least.  But I am continuing my story in a new place.

See you on the flip side.

Friday is our day to explore with Mikkee. Today we went to Red Rocks.

(The last picture was taken a few minutes after Mikkee rescued Silas from a certain death. There was a stone wall that had very cheerful shaped tunnels every ten feet or so. But the tunnel led them off a cliff. Literally. Am I the only one with children who naturally climb through a tunnel without knowing where they lead?)

It is happening incrementally.  I feel it in degrees - a slackening in my shoulders, an ability to catch my breath.  A slower gait, a renewed interest in books.  A desire for new recipes, fresh foods.  Screens feel two-dimensional and obsolete.  Even daily parenting feels different, deeper and less Sisyphean.

I am waking up.  I am remembering who I am.

Some people are born into their home land.  They grow into adulthood, live wholly awake, and die satiated, all within a few hundred square miles.  And some, like me, must migrate.  For us, familiarity and comfort are not synonymous, and to live fully we must find our own territory.  (There are other groups, of course - people for whom no land holds comfort, and their home is within their deepest relationships.  And others who never wake fully, nor desire to do so.  But that's a post for another time).

And what a territory it is.  Miles and miles of neighborhoods, restaurants, shopping centers, interstates.  Thousands of people, back and forth to work each day in the shadow of the mountains.  But we are all squatters here.  This is Aslan's Country, and our only claim is that we have the great privilege of observing it.

This is where I will grow old.  I see the old women, their gray bangs and weathered faces and gentle walk, and I know I could be an old woman like that.  I still need a map to get home most days, but I feel it.  This will be my home.

Thanks be to God.

You know you live in a house full of little kids when your six-month-old burps and you reflexively tell him to say, "Excuse me."

A few more

I love it here.

See this? This was the day that I realized my kids are too young for museums. It doesn't matter how many free tickets I am offered, how cool the dinosaur exhibit is, or how much I want to be a part of a play group - it is still a bad idea.

On the up side, as I scooped Emmy out of the inside of the exhibit (because strollers WERE NOT ALLOWED) just as she reached for a T-Rex jaw, a very kind museum volunteer pointed to a chicken-sized skeleton and said, "See that one? It's been sat on three times since I have been here."

It could have been worse, right?