December 2018 – This was our annual Christmas letter.

Dear Friends and Family,

Greetings from Boone, North Carolina!  This is just a short note to give you an update on our lives and happenings.  As many of you know, we made yet another transition this summer from Colorado to North Carolina.  We are still in the mountains, and still at a “high” altitude, for the East Coast (our house is almost at 4000 ft.).  But instead of semi-desert, we now live in a rainforest! Most of us are enjoying the rain. We live north of Boone, on about 3.5 acres, on a mountain road that winds through the gap between Rich Mountain and Snake Mountain.  We really like our new house and the area. This summer and fall we explored hiking trails, as well as tubing and canoeing down the New River. We also live only 2.7 miles from my parents, which has been a lot of fun!

The kids are all doing well.  Micah has been doing odd jobs for his grandparents, also serving as chief lumberjack to keep our wood stove going. He has been working hard studying the Japanese language and hopes to visit Japan someday.  Hannah is, as always, a big help with the kids. She cooks us delicious meals once a week and often keeps us supplied with cookies. She has been busy weaving Christmas presents on her loom and has started studying Herbology.  Sarah is becoming quite a young lady. She likes to sing in the choir at church. She is still taking Cello lessons along with ballet and tap classes. She also likes to bake and help in the kitchen. Ella is a big helper. She really enjoys helping mom and dad with whatever they are doing.  She is also taking cello lessons and also attending a combined ballet and tap class. She likes tap the best because she moves more! John loves to be outside, building things and playing with his trucks and cars. He also really likes playing with Ella and is a bit lost when she is not around.  

As many of you know, Brian was diagnosed with Stage 4 Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma a year ago in October.  He (but really WE) went through Chemo throughout the winter. When he had his final scans in May, there was what we thought was a new spot.  We were preparing for salvage chemo and a bone marrow transplant. However, because we were also in the middle of moving he met with his new oncologist in Charlotte, NC, and she ordered another PET scan that came back completely negative.  Of course we were hugely relieved and thankful! For the next few years Brian requires check-ups every three months, because he does have a significant risk of relapse. For now, we are thankful for the time we have.

I continue to maintain life around the house, do school with the kids (which includes a lot of life learning), chauffeur kids to various lessons, and make sure everything is running smoothly.  I had fun this summer working with a friend from church who is a wedding florist. She designs some amazing arrangements on site and I was able to lend a helping hand.

As always, if you are in our neck of the woods, look us up!  We will always make room for a few more. : )

Merry Christmas!  Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

Brian, Shari, Micah, Hannah, Sarah, Ella, & John

That’s pretty much the theme of our lives right now.  Hurry up…do this….go there….have this appointment….and then wait some more.

Brian met with his new doc in Charlotte, NC yesterday.  He called me in to the appointment via Google Hangouts since I was driving with my parents to NJ for my cousin’s wedding.

The short version is that the new doc wants to do another PET Scan to make sure the cancer has come back.  There are cases of false positives.  We feel good about this plan.  A double check seems to be a good idea.  Best case scenario, the PET scan will come back clean and life will go on with regular check ups.  IF the PET scan doesn’t come back clean, the doc will order a biopsy to determine if the cancer is still Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma, or something new.  IF it is the same thing, the next steps will be salvage chemo and a bone marrow transplant using Brian’s own stem cells.  Then on from there.

We spent Wednesday and Thursday looking at houses in the Boone, NC area, and found a couple we were considering.  However, we’ve put that on hold until we know what Brian will be doing next.  If he has to have the transplant, we may just look for a place in Charlotte to rent for 6 months or a year and then move up to Boone.

And so we wait…to know what, if anything, will happen to Brian next, to know where we will live, to know which direction our lives will take.

And on a side note, there is a wildfire that started burning in our county (Teller) in Colorado.  Kids are home.  Brian will be back there this afternoon, and I’ll fly back Wed.  Hopefully, prayerfully, the firefighters will be able to contain it soon and it won’t damage many houses.  There are a lot of houses between the fire (Southwest part of the county) and our house (North/Central part of the county).

It’s amazing the way our lives can change slowly over time or quickly in an instant.  Both of these things have happened to our family in the last 3 years.

Time has moved on.  Kids have gotten older.  Our Bookend boys are 19 and just turned 4.  Girls are now 16, almost 9, and 5.  They continue to learn and grow and thrive with all their various quirks and gifts.

We’ve spent the last 3 years living in Divide, CO, just West and up the pass from Colorado Springs, at 9000 ft elevation.  We live in the forest in a lovely community and a lovely rented house.

About a year ago we decided it was time to move closer to family, specifically my parents, so we could help them out as they needed it.  After a lot of exploring and searching we decided to move to Boone, NC, in the Appalachian Mountains.  (Can’t live without our mountains!)  Amazingly, my parents are moving there too!

Of course, we thought we were moving closer to my parents so we could help them.  Turns out, at least for now, they will be helping us.

Our instant life change happened last October when Brian was diagnosed with stage 4 Lymphoma.  After undergoing 6 rounds of grueling chemo and 2 rounds of not so grueling chemo from November through April, we eagerly awaited the results of his “final” PET scan.  Unfortunately, while the chemo got rid of the cancer that was there, a new spot popped up.  Now we are looking at salvage chemo (yep, that’s as bad as it sounds), and a bone marrow transplant (even worse).  Brian will be meeting with the transplant team in Charlotte, NC (2 hours from Boone) on the 29th of June.  That may (or may not) let us know the direction our life will take overa the next year.  He will likely start the salvage chemo before we leave CO.

It will be good to have my parents nearby.  And so our paths and places unknown are circling back to family, albeit in a new location.

Yes it really has been almost 4 years since either of us last posted on this.   I don’t think our lives have slowed down in the last 4 years either.  We spent a year (not quite for the kids and I) in California until Brian’s contract with Google ran out.  Decided we didn’t really want to raise our kids in the Bay Area, so headed back towards the Midwest, landing in KS.  While in KS we had a bit of deja vu from our first move to Denver when we found out we were expecting #4 and about a week later Brian found out the company he was working for was closing down his department.  Thankfully God provided him with yet another job, remote again, and circumstances came together to allow us to move back to Colorado, this time Colorado Springs.  #4, another beautiful baby girl arrived that February and we thought we might settle in for a while.  But such was not to be because God sent us a surprise #5 which we discovered when #4 was about 6 months old.  This time a sweet little boy arrived last June and it’s hard to believe that he’s almost 1 year now.  The good news is that we have been living in the same house in the same town for almost 3 years now (a record) and Brian is still working for the same company (another record).  We are still homeschooling.  We still have the one dog, and did acquire a cat in CA.  We are renting a lovely house, working to help establish a new Orthodox Mission church, kids are all playing music, and we are putting down at least a few roots.  HOWEVER, I don’t know if it’s caused by the frequent moving in so few years, or a bigger plan that we are still not aware of, but there’s a feeling that our journey isn’t over.  We may not be at the end of it yet.

Yes we are still alive and headed Westward! Just a quick update since It is after 11 current time and I need to get to bed but wanted to let you all know where we were! We have been without internet and usually without cell coverage most of the last week plus. We left KS last Wed. and spent a delightful but chilly 4 nights in Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park in CO. Visited many of our favorite places in the park. Then we headed towards Denver and a motel for the night with a stop in Boulder to hike the Flat Irons. We left Denver and headed South the Great Sand Dunes National Park. I’ll admit this wasn’t my first choices of places to go, but the kids wanted to. I was Amazed. It is truly an Awesome place, and we only explored a tip of it. It contains the Dunes, but also high mountains (2 in the area are over 14,000 ft high), grasslands, and even wet lands. We hiked to the top of the 2nd tallest dune, 650 ft high, and visited a water fall that we had to hike back to via wading in a snow melt creek and then going into a little cave – but it was well worth it! That was a busy day, as one of my children locked my keys in the car first thing in the AM and our guardian angels in the form of the family camping next door helped us out by lending us their cell phone and AAA card (which I have but was in the car) and feeding us bagels and coffee for breakfast. They had just camped there for the night on a whim pretty much. Kids and I had just prayed we’d be able to get in and the dude came over. That was pretty Amazing in and of itself! We only spent 2 nights at the Dunes (we could have stayed longer!) and today we made our way South and West and are currently in Gallup, NM, just 16 miles from the Arizona border. Tomorrow we’ll make a detour through the Petrified Forest National Park and then on to the Grand Canyon. One week from tonight we’ll be sleeping in our new apartment in CA!
That’s the very briefest version! I’ll attempt to fill in more details from our adventures later!

If anyone’s noticed the change of picture on our blog header, this is a picture Brian took from somewhere near where we’ll be living in Mountain View, CA.  It’s a beautiful area!  Rolling Hills and mountains.  And if you hike in the right area you can climb a mountain, look out over more mountains, and see the gleaming Pacific in the distance!

I suppose some would say it’s not an ending nor a beginning, but a continuation. Maybe the best way to look at it would be like a book   We’ve finished one chapter and the next chapter is beginning.   However you want to look at it, 2 years, 2 months and 2 weeks ago we drove into Florida on April 1, 2009 and stopped at our friends’, the Dauns’, house near Orlando on our trek to Naples.  We had 1 dog, 2.5 kids, 3 cats, 2 cars, and 5 relo-cubes of stuff (in storage).

Yesterday, on June 15, 2 years, 2 months and 2 weeks later, I again arrived, in transit once again, on the Dauns’ front porch.  Now our final destination is Mountain View, CA.  We have 1 dog, 1 car, the equivalent of 1 (plus 1 ft linear space) relocube of stuff (in storage), & 3 kids.  I’m on my own, in the adult category, since Brian’s been working in CA for the last 4 months

This time is a whole lot different.  It has been a life changing 2 years in many ways.  Make that closer to 3 years from the beginning of this particular journey.   When we drove into FL we didn’t intend to stay, but I’m not sure we would have guessed God would take us somewhere new so quickly (although for the last 9 months we’ve certainly prayed He would!)  He continues to believe one of our greatest lessons we need to learn is patience and relying on Him.  As we wait for the delayed closing on our House in FL.  As we waited for someone to buy our house… As we waited to find a 3 bedroom apartment in or near Mountain View. when all of a sudden there were no vacancies… And now as we wait to get into our new apartment.  But at least that one has a definite time period on it…July 20.  1 month and 5 days.

So, for then next 35 or so days, kids and I and dog will be traveling, visiting, and sight-seeing.  This next chapter is bound to be exciting!

I have been reading the Latin Vulgate in an effort to increase my fluency in Latin and of course to increase my understanding of scripture. Instead of spending $30-50 on a nice Latin Vulgate I went the more expensive route and bought a Nook Color, which of course has made available many other old books for my use.

Unfortunately, there was not a good Vulgate available for the Nook when I got it. So I spent a few hours and wrote a script to generate one. I am using the Clementine Vulgate text from The Clementine Text Project. If you are using a Nook, you will have to side-load this ePub. It is not in the Barnes and Noble store.

This ePub works well on the Nook, but may still have a few minor conversion errors. Let me know if you have any problems with it.

Download the Vulgate ePub

UPDATE (6/7/2011): You can now buy this through the Barnes and Noble store for $0.99. I would have made it free, but Barnes and Noble wouldn’t let me:

Buy the Vulgate for Nook

We have been having an evening family read-aloud time for quite some time. On various occasions we have read from the Bible, stories of the lives of saints, Greek mythology, and others. Most recently to supplement an area of school we don’t really emphasize we have begun focusing on American history.

We started out with The Voyage of St. Brendan taken from Brendaniana by Denis O’Donoghue which we read on my son’s Barnes & Noble Nook. We skipped ahead to The Voyages of Columbus by Armstrong Sperry which we acquired used from Abebooks.com (an excellent site for homeschoolers). Tonight we finished Leif the Lucky by Ingri D’aulaire which we acquired from the library. The next book on my list is The Young Folks Book of American Explorers (which we will read on the Nook).

I have added a sidebar widget for our current read-aloud books and linked it to my librarything.com account.

UPDATE (9/22/2010): We tried The Young Folks Book of American Explorers and it did not work out very well as a read-aloud. I have instead started reading America’s story for America’s children, Volume 2, which reads nicely and seems a very good introduction to American History. Volume 1 is merely a collection of simple stories for early readers so we skipped ahead to volume 2.

Today we mourn the passing of a family member. I adopted Mr. Bert 18 years ago about 6 months before we were married. He went through 6 moves and lived in 5 states. He was a faithful and loving companion and we will miss him.