Treasure of Family Identity

Adventuring together as a family continues to be our favorite form of entertainment.  What a wild, wonderful world is out there to explore!  What amusing personalities exist in people and in animals!  Laughing together as a family has got to be the very best medicine never bottled and sold. Now that our children are teenagers, we are intimate friends as we walk together the often rocky and steep paths of our callings here, and seek to encourage one another.  For now, for a fleeting time, those paths are intertwined in our family.  Our joy is to see them emerging into their own persons, gifted and interesting in individual ways.  Joyful, selfless life together is learned in the refining crucible of family life.


Forming a rich family identity around colorful adventures, common jokes, books read aloud, movie quotes, hundreds of conversations and thousands of laughter-provoked shared experiences, forges a special kind of heart allegiance to a shared vision that is not forced, cumbersome nor lightly valued, and not easily swayed.  And it makes for pretty entertaining car rides and dinner tables.  


From a recent adventure to an island:


Why, might I legitimately ask as a concerned wife and mother, is it necessary to walk out on a tree overhanging a hundred-foot drop?  No, you cannot tell from the picture, but a slip would mean certain disaster. Apparently that makes it meaningful and worthwhile, and especially amusing when wife and mother walks up, blanches, and turns around so she doesn't have to watch.  They even put the dog on a leash so she wouldn't fall off the cliff and die.

Photography is getting to be a significant pastime for them...pretty exciting to see some eagles! 

Yes, it is spring, despite the frostbitten ears while beachwalking

there is rather a genetic weakness for colorful rocks and weather-tossed driftwood

she has an unfailing eye for the absurd...

All in a glorious morning adventure, before rushing back to apply ourselves to mountains of work at home.  Somehow, all of us with elevated spirits and more energy to capture success.