Prairie Dogs, Hikes and Sticky Children

When it's been too long between writing sessions (and work writing, as fun as it is, doesn't count!), my brain gets a little antsy with all the ideas and words floating around. Eventually the ideas and words congregate, form a swarm and start beating ever so more insistently on the inside of my head. And my head, spurred by the swarm, craves to enter the space of letterings. Back in the saddle for a short blogging stint.

I have been absent but for good reasons (yeah!). I spent the second week of June in Estes Park directing a Christian youth conference - without my kids. It was a wonderful week, and my soul was fortified in different ways by

how God helped to work out the details even as I panicked every day about something or other. On one day in particular, I had several activities to coordinate and no good way of either contacting people or having a central place to find people on the expansive YMCA ground with limited cell service, but the people I needed to find either showed up at my room door or were easily located walking near the lodges.

the hilarious incident of the prairie dog in the lunchroom and coaxing the poor, diseased thing out of a corner with a cardboard box while Ashley Rieves stood on a cooler and shrieked (we are forever bonded) and praying no one came down with junta virus.

watching incredulously as a young man who had strayed from his group on a hike to rock climbing ran down the trail breathlessly, so happy to see us and his dad and explaining that he had taken a turn on what he thought was the right trail BY HIMSELF.

a hike up Twin Sisters, a 11,400 foot peak with a group from Independent Presbyterian Church. I stood at the top peak with four men (me, the only woman - that's the group in the picture) feeling victorious, feeling scared for my life that I might be blown off the top, loving the adventure of knowing what I wanted to achieve but adjusting at every step to the trail (dirt, roots, rocks and finally large, rough boulders), the weather (sunshine, overcast, snow, wind), my thirst, my hunger (M&M cookies satisfied low blood sugar at the top), my aching knees and the group. (Much of the way I contemplated how much life is like a hike - an idea of where we want to get to but know idea of what that trail will really look like and needing resources and friends to help us navigate directions and the trail, and needing to adjust to new discoveries).

laughing hysterically with Rachel Rieves and Frosty Howell - a table will never mean the same thing again when I see Rachel (wink, wink).

watching 270 high school students and youth leaders worship together each night.

calling my mom on Wednesday and her asking me, "Alexa, are you high or relaxed or . . . " and me replying that I was hanging out with friends from the south (how my adopted accent resurfaces!). My southern friends thought this was quite funny.

spending a late night with new friends and old friends (Amy Lowe!!) swapping stories and other fun things (wink, wink).

having a week of going and going and going without children but still not getting enough sleep.

calling home Friday evening in tears because the last dinner was near disaster, and I was exhausted and so homesick and being able to hear home.

feeling like such a woman Friday evening, having kept it together all week and then needing to just sit down to have a good cry and to talk to those I love and then getting back up to finish the week (Rachel and Frosty assure me I was just being human, but I felt a little wimpy at that low point).

ending the week with brunch with the Lowe's by the river and coming home to my sticky, half naked children watching cartoons and spending the day with them and Michael.