We’ve had a spectacular June. Charlie turned 20, Dalton turned 25, and Clint and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. For anyone keeping track, other milestones this year wereMichaela turning 15, Nathaniel turning 10, and Maggie turning 5. Luke, Mary Caroline, Daisy, and Silas are sprinkled throughout, but without fail from our 5th anniversary to our 25th anniversary we welcomed a baby every five years. We haven’t taken very many “destination trips” as a couple. Obviously, this is the first milestone anniversary that we weren’t welcoming a baby. But around our 11th anniversary we went to Mexico for four days. A few weeks before our trip, our beloved friend Michael tragically died and then Mary Caroline was hospitalized with adenovirus. In retrospect, we should have rescheduled the trip, but we were grieving and stressed and naively moved forward with our plans. I ended up getting adenovirus in Mexico, was bedridden the majority of the trip, and was almost not allowed to leave and fly home. In the meantime, toddlerCharlie was suffering through adenovirus at home; without me. In short, it was awful. It took us ten years to get over that trip and our 21st year of marriage we decided to try again. This time we went to Branson for a week. I refused to go anywhere from whichI couldn’t drive back within a few hours. We had a very good, relaxing time; but it certainly wasn’t a “destination vacation” by any means. It took another ten years, but we promised one another that on our 30th, we would do something...big.
When we think about vacationing, we enjoy traveling to places to see things that God has made. In Mexico we enjoyed the beach. In Branson we enjoyed the Ozark Mountains. My sister lives in the area and is an outdoor enthusiast, so during our time wedidn’t go to a single shop or show on the stripbut instead enjoyed exploring the trails and creeks she has discovered. That trip was in October and the weather in the Ozark Mountains was absolutely perfect; the temps were in the 70’s and the forest trees were putting on their gorgeous late autumn performance. Our beach trip was in December, and again, the weather was perfect; not blistering hot but excellent for being a beach bum who just wants to lie around. Since we were planning this trip in late June, and would want to escape the humid Missouri heat, we knew we wanted to go north. We also knew we didn’t want to leave the 48 contiguous US states. We narrowed our search to two general locations – either a driving tour through the upper peninsula of Michigan, with a destination of Mackinac Island, or a trip through the Black Hills with a destination of Glacier National Park and a return route through Wyoming visiting Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons.
Our close friends Don and Liz Noonan, met during our time spent in Iowa, are perennial U.S. National Park travelers. They’ve made it a goal to visit each and every one of the parks over their decades of marriage and they’re getting very close to completing their goal. When asked if they could name their absolute favorite, a bucket list park that every American should see, they didn’t hesitate. It is a park to whichthey’ve excitedly made a return visit: Glacier National Park. Since that was already on our radar, it became the easy and obvious choice. We began reading and planning and realized, in a word,Glacieris: overwhelming. It is a massive park; not just in square miles, but also elevation.A visitor needs to be prepared to possiblyswim, kayak, or fish in lakes or also hike along trails, around lakes, and in alpine meadows or also snowboard, ski, and hike with spiked boots along mountain trails always with rain gear in case of rain, sleet, or snow. Oofta. The packing alone would deter most mothers from taking a family. But we weren’t taking our family – it was just “us”. And that alone is a weird circumstance that we don’t quite know how to manage. But slowly we began to sift through all the different parks within the park. And we found our dream cabin. And then we planned our trip through the Black Hills along with our return trip through Wyoming. Maybe the most difficult, but much more familiar task, was organizing all the kids’ activities and chauffers and caretakers for the length of time a trip like this would require us to be gone. Between Mary Caroline, my mom and dad, and Dalton we *thought* we had all our bases covered. Throw in fellow swim parents from our Rapids family and we finally felt ready to go.
Then, just as we were preparing to leave, the United States Navy told Charlie, “Go home right now or don’t go home this summer at all.” I could insert a whole host of emojis at this point, but instead I’ll just say God Bless America. From the bottom of my pea-picking little patriotic heart. The first weekend he was home we had a ball tournament til midnight on Friday night, a swim meet (halfway across the state) early on Saturday morning, and a concert on Sunday followed by a family reunion (that we never made it to). The second weekend he was home, we were scheduled to leave at dawn on Friday morning for Deadwood, SD. This meant we would miss four entire days of his leave, most of which was weekend time when Clint is able to spend time with him. To say our hearts were completely torn, our emotions were all over the map, and our stress level was through the roof would be a massive understatement. But having 9 kids will teach you a few things – like how to hold everything very loosely and how to“roll with it”. So, we wore ourselves completely slick getting the house and truck and kids and ourselves ready for us to be gone for ten days. We squeezed every last drop out of every experience we could with Charlie. Our daughter-in-love Lil organized and took family pictures for our 30th anniversary, which is no small feat with this many immediate family members.And then, early on Friday morning, we loaded the truck before anyone else was awake; and as the kids have jokingly said for years when it’s time to pack and get on the road for a pipeline job, in my heart I said, “Let’s BURN this candle!” And soour adventure began.
One Response to 30 Years – Let’s Burn This Candle!
One Response to 30 Years – Let’s Burn This Candle!