Our Bucket List

I don’t know if it’s because I’m turning 30 this year, or if it’s just that now that I’m done having my babies maybe I want to know that there is something more out there, besides laundry and diapers. It’s not that I don’t enjoy my kids, or that I’m not grateful for them, it’s just that I still want to know that there is an adventure waiting for me, that my identity isn’t totally illustrated by the word mother. Wow, I so don’t want to sound like I am ungrateful for my kids, I know how blessed I am, so let me get to the point….

Dave and I have made a bucket list over the last twelve years. It isn’t in any particular order, just a list of things we would like to do before we kick the bucket. I know it seems silly to have made a list at our young age, but really we aren’t guaranteed 24 hours, knowing me I could close my computer, stand up, trip on the laptop cord and impale myself on one of my kids’ toys. Death is always waiting, just right around the corner, the question is what corner and when will I turn it?

I understand that I probably sound a little morbid here, or at the very minimum extremely crazy, but really there is so much I haven’t done, and haven’t seen. So Dave and I figured, why wait until we’re old, let’s get started now when we can still physically enjoy what this world has to offer.

So here’s our list, some are silly, some are hugely important and others just are- well they are what they are, just things to do because for some reason or another they provide us with a sense of fulfillment in who we are.

So here goes:

Explore the Mayan Ruins

Explore Australia

Read the Entire Bible

Dog Sled in Alaska

Go to the Indi 500

Swim with Dolphins

Watch Grizzly Bears feed in Alaska

Salmon fishing in Alaska

Release endangered baby sea turtles at the Plananitos Sea Turtle Camp in Mexico

Visit Mt. Rushmore

Geocache in every state in the U.S.

See the Egyptian Pyramids

See the Coliseum in Greece

Go sport fishing on Islamorada in the Florida Keys

See Brett Farv play in the NFL

Hike the Grand Canyon

Do a guided Elk hunt in Arizona

Raft the Colorado River

Rent a house boat and explore Lake Mead

Hike the Garden of the Gods in Southern Utah

Do a 2 week backpacking trip in the Sky Lakes Wilderness

Hunt for diamonds at the Diamond National Park in Arkansas

Explore Glacier National Park

Explore Scotland

Drive the Alaskan Hwy, and then buy a bumper sticker bragging about it.

Build an orphanage in Haiti

See the world’s largest ball of yarn

Take a cross country road trip

Do an African Safari

See the Great Wall of China

Watch a Civil War reenactment, visit Gettysburg

See Niagara Falls

Throw a dart once a year at a huge wall map of the earth and travel to wherever the dart lands

Visit Normandy

See Tunisia in Africa (where Grandpa Schober was during the war)

Renew our vows on a beach somewhere

Drink beer from real steins in Germany

Visit every State Park along HWY 101

Kayak the San Juan Islands

Ski Vale, Colorado

Visit Loveland, Colorado (Dave’s birthplace)

Zip line in Sequoia National Park

Sky dive

Catch fire flies in a jar

Visit Pearl Harbor

So this is just a start, and well, it’s plenty to keep us busy for the rest of our lives. It isn’t just about crossing things off this list, it’s about living everyday like it’s our last, it’s about showing up 100%, not taking anything for granted, and realizing that the feeling I get when spending a sick day with my girls, cuddled on the couch together, is just as important as the feeling I’ll get when I zip line through the canopy of the Sequoias…these are the fibers that we weave together to form our lives, our legacy. I want my girls to know that I valued every moment, because in the end the moments are all we have. They may be woven into 100 years, or 30 years. They may be messy and ragged, they may not make sense, and they don’t have to. Most of our lives don’t make sense until that final moment when our eyes are truly opened. As a very wise person once said, “Life should not be measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”

I hope that we will hit everything on our list; I hope that our journey is filled with everything we hope for, and a lot that we don’t…just to keep us on our toes. After all I bet the list God has written for us is much better than our own, He always plans so much BIGGER than we can ever dream.

May your list take your breath away…before your breath is taken away.

Friends.

Isn’t it funny how sometimes someone will come into your life, under strange, random circumstances, and at first you don’t really know why God has brought them to you, until you don’t have them around anymore?

A few years ago I had just graduated from the University of Oregon, I had my degree under my belt and I was gonna change the world. I was going to be a social worker, with an emphasis on working with foster children, everything from placement, to drug and alcohol counseling. It was my duty, and it may sound silly, but it was my “attainable dream.” My real dream was to write for National Geographic, but I soon found that I relied way too much on spell check to pass the introductory grammar class for the journalism major. I can’t spell to save my life, oh how grateful I am to live in the day of spell and grammar check!

Anyhow once I realized that social workers didn’t make enough money to pay the mortgage, I decided maybe I would put my dream off and get a job as a customer service rep at a landscaping company. I do love landscaping, after all. And so I started working and met one of the most wonderful, amazing people in my life.

I only worked there for 5 months, hardly enough time to learn computer systems, regional maps, or even how to transfer calls appropriately, but I did learn about love and true friendship. Catherine was from Australia, she’s funky, crazy and oh so wonderful, even in her procrastination at work I admired her so. But unfortunately I moved back to my hometown to start a new life, and then she moved back to her hometown in Melbourne, Victoria in Australia.

What is so strange about our relationship is that we have hardly spent time together, I mean physically, we’ve always had a distance between us, but it is only physical, in our hearts we are as close as close can be. True soul mates, if you will. Not in a sexual way, of course, but in a sisterly way. She’s the type of person who could come in and go to the bathroom while I was brushing my teeth. She’s the type that I would never feel uncomfortable changing my clothes in front of, or talking about my biggest, deepest, even darkest secrets of my life.

And so I wonder, why on earth are we on opposite sides of the earth? Well, life has just taken us in different directions, it’s not an easily answered question, I ponder it most days, well okay, I ponder it every day.

We may not be positive about the future, or even the present, but I know that we will always be best friends. I know that I can call on her any time of day (which is wonderful because for the life I me I still can’t seem to get the time difference) and I know that if I needed to see her immediately she would do anything in her power to get to me. I hope she knows that I would do the same for her.

Our country codes are different, and there is a 15 hour plane ride that separates us, but what is 15 hours and thousands of miles amongst best friends…not enough to keep them apart. And so as I write this I know the answer to my original question, God brought us together because I had a Catherine shaped hole in my heart, only she can fill it.

And so on today, her 31^st birthday I want to first thank her mother Liz for bringing her into this world, second, thank God for bringing her into my world, and third thank her for staying there.

Happy Birthday my dear, sweet Catherine, I pray we will get the opportunity to share the next 31 years of our lives together, and hopefully one day we can celebrate special days together, in the same country, state, city, town, home, room, and on the same couch…watching “The Village” even though I can’t really stand that movie, but well, that’s just how much I love you.

Fall Down Nine Times.

“Shake it off.” I say as I grip Madi’s arm.

“You’re doing great!” Lacey calls out behind her, she knows that once again Madison, my three year old, has fallen. And so, because we haven’t made a big deal of her repeated falling, Madison stands up, and once again starts hiking behind Lacey, happily continuing her monologue, knowing that with Lacey she has an eager audience who is truly interested in everything she has to say.

We might sound totally insane, indeed the response we got from other hikers along the 7.5 mile Paulina Lake Loop trail, was a mixture of awe and concern for the filthy three year old. (She wasn’t filthy when we started, but seriously…she’s three and we were camping…ok, Shauna’s version of camping, we rented a cabin, but it was “rustic”).

Madi did awesome though, we didn’t have to carry her once, she fell nine times, but got up ten, and to Lacey and I, that was all that mattered. That is one of the things I love about hiking, for a brief, (or long) period of time all one has to think about is putting one foot in front of the other. No phones ringing, no traffic, just the dust under your feet, the good ache in your thighs and knees and the occasional curious creature running across the path ahead of you.

I sometimes wonder if the life we’ve created is easier, or less taxing on our bodies. I think as Americans we have this view that all of the third world countries have no idea what “real life” is about. We have all of our luxuries, our cabins for camping, our computers for networking, and our cell phones that we never speak on since texting has become so popular. I think of this often when I’m paying bills. Recently Dave and I have decided to see exactly how many hours of work are required to purchase everything, for example we found out that Dave has to work 63 hours to pay our mortgage payment, about an hour to pay our power bill, and sadly wayyyyy too many hours to cover expenses like Wal-Mart and Costco. As I write the checks to pay the bills I think, “Wow Dave has to work a lot of hours to keep this family running.” I look around at the flat screen TV, the laptops that rest on our beautiful dining table, the granite countertops and I think… “Wow if we didn’t have all this, he might be able to be with us right now.” But instead he’s at work, happily footing the bill for our “life.”

It is a wonderful life, don’t get me wrong, I’m so grateful for all he does…please don’t send me comments saying I don’t know how lucky I am…believe I know how blessed I am! What I am saying is that when I’m hiking, when I’m watching my daughter and enjoying nature, I often imagine how life would be different if we didn’t have all the luxuries that actually create more stress, or work in our lives. How would life be if our only concern was catching our dinner, sitting around a camp fire, looking at stars, and having conversations that can exceed 160 characters?

I think we all crave this, or at least the people who I like to surround myself with do. We’re all outdoorsy, we understand the value of dirty feet, fish scales on our jeans and oh the joy of a hot shower after a long hike. Maybe that’s the part that is the best, the appreciation I feel for all of my blessings when I’m camping. Maybe it is the breaking down of the elements of daily life into simple tasks that allows me to shut down my mind enough to value the smell of my shampoo and the hot water that pours down my back. Maybe as much as I love my luxurious life I really long for more simplicity. More time to put my hands in the soil as I plant a hydrangea, the joy of plucking fresh basil off one of Dave’s basil plants in the window when I cook, the burn of being so out of breath after climbing a steep hiking trail… only to gasp in delight as I see the view of the lake from the peak beneath my feet.

See it’s not being ungrateful for the luxuries in life, it about being grateful for EVERYTHING! The good and the bad. It’s about being able to honestly tell my daughter that it doesn’t matter how many times you fall, as long as you get back up. It is all those falls, all those scratched knees and bruised egos that make us who we are, no matter the history or your excuse of the day for why you do things a certain way, we have to enjoy what IS. Because ultimately the WHY doesn’t matter. Ultimately it doesn’t matter how our childhoods were, or what our boss said to us the other day, we choose if we will allow those negative ingredients into our life lasagna. Or, as Morgan Freeman said in Bruce Almighty…”Sometimes it takes DARK COLORS to paint a masterpiece.”

So I’ll say it again to Madi, and I’ll say it to Lilly also; fall down nine times, get up ten. One foot in front of the other, and try to do it with a smile on your face...when you scrunch your eyes with a huge smile, you see the world differently.