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What will you do when an adventure falls to you?

That great philosopher Winnie the Pooh once said:

I knew when I met you an adventure was going to happen. 

A. A. Milne

This speaks to me of my new husband, Dan.

 

How community is forged from imperfect people

Back in the days when televisions fit into cabinets, this primitive hutch housed a TV. It once served as extra storage for kitchen items, and it once set outdoors for a spell, housing vegetable seeds and flowerpots and garden tools.

 

Funky curved doors with fingerhole openings

Here’s why creativity fills our tanks

Of all the self-careful things we women did this past weekend—hearing each other’s stories, eating, hiking, laughter, yoga, massage, solving a murder mystery, singing, listening to encouragement from scripture—one of my favorites was the paint class.

 

Painting by Marlys

What if we could see through the mirror?

I’ve dragged this beautiful, old door around with me through several addresses. Because I had plans to repurpose it into something new and useful. I just didn’t know what. Yet.

 

Beautiful old door

Here’s what happens when you think of everyone else first

It was Summer’s birthday request. She asked her husband for an outdoor activity and dinner in Bend, which meant a drive over an entire mountain range.

 

SIL Josh, daughter Summer, and most of their crew – with The Grandparents thrown in

Will the re-construction be painful?

“We didn’t know how many subs would be here today, and we wanted to get a good parking spot,” said our cabinet guy with a smile. He showed up on Monday at 6:45AM. Six. Forty. Five. In the morning.

 

Knotty alder cabinets

Why we remember

“If you want to use the cabin to think and talk this over, you’re welcome to it,” said our good friend who was standing right there after Dan got the news of his escalating cancer.

Two days later, on a cold spring day, Dan lit a fire that would begin warming the cabin. We donned layers and walked upriver to the spot where we said, “I do,” beneath towering trees.

 

The wedding site beside the Metolius River

Do you know how to have fun?

Before Dan and I were married, we spent a day at a conference center in the Ochoco Mountains. He was finishing up a major electrical project and I cleaned the smaller of the two lodges.

We had lunch with the conference center directors, and then completed our assigned tasks. “That was fun,” I commented on the drive back to town.

 

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

I’ve always thought of myself as brave—not afraid to try new things or meet new people, not afraid of making a major life change.

 

Photo: Pixabay

How beautifully fragile are we?

Although it happened over a short stretch of time, Dan and I fell in love slowly. While hiking wilderness trails and browsing through hardware stores and cruising on his motorcycle and eating food truck cuisine and volunteering with the shower truck and trekking through soft powder on snowshoes and eating ginger spice cookies from the Old Mill District.

 

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