JPL

Last week our family started a heartbreaking, but exciting new chapter!  We brought our firstborn to college!  As you can imagine, many feelings accompanied the turning of the page to this new season, but what we feel most is great joy and celebration that she is exactly where the Lord wants her.  Over and over, we were affirmed, finding one little God sighting after the next as we savored one last week together as a family of 4.  

We wrestled with how much time to take off to get her to school.  Do we all go??? But, 100% of my experienced friends said that these were days to prioritize and we needed to not worry about school and teaching and make these family memories together.  So, we took that advice and we have NO regrets!  Understanding, accommodating teachers and my wonderful former co-teacher Brittany, coming back to sub the second week of school for me, were gifts from God.

(As Ella packed, Ivy, never a fan of suitcases, seemed to sense something sad was about to change her world.)

  A crazy, once in 100 years, LA hurricane tried to thwart our plans!  We watched it carefully, contacted places we planned to visit, even cancelled our hotel to be safe, and eventually decided to go for it and just drive down despite.  We had no issue whatsoever and even made record time into LA!  Amazingly, we hardly hit the brakes at all!  We think everyone was hunkering down, the only explanation for why there was little traffic.

We had concerns about all of Ella's belongings fitting in our car with us, but she and Dave were pro packers/Tetris players and got it all in with enough room to spare!  Delia did have to spend a 5 hour drive with a hot pot in her lap, but it wasn't crazy!  At our hotel, we laughed as we unloaded several tubs, bags, boxes, and Ella's entire wardrobe into our little hotel room late at night.  We looked like we were moving in for good, I'm sure!

So, yes, we could have just driven down to LA to move Ella her new place for 2 days.  But, I thought it might be fun to be intentional about getting excited about her new LA home and making grand finale family memories together.  So, I added 2 days to our trip with a bunch of planned outings we knew Ella would love!  The first was a tour of  NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) at Cal Tech.   This is an exclusive free tour, that books up in about a minute as soon as the tickets are released months in advance.  I scored some and we were SO excited for it!  The JPL campus is gorgeous, built right into the side of a mountain in Pasadena and full of lush trees, flowering plants, and outdoor meeting and working spaces.  The hurricane the day before made thousands of tiny frogs come out!  They were hopping everywhere we walked, to our delight!

Our tour had 22 people in it.  Our guide noticed Ella's NASA hat and immediately connected with her, learning of her background in Robotics, being blown away by her experience manufacturing carbon fiber, and getting excited when he heard she would be a college student nearby!  He sold their internship program hard and really encouraged her to apply.  Now is not the right time, since she's so new to college and car-less, but in the future this would be a dream for her and she'll probably try for it!

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you are no stranger to Ella and her unique passions.  In a recent college class, she had to introduce herself by sharing 2 things she loves and 2 things she hates.  She said, "Space and robots" for her 2 loves.  This is a girl who has the Curiosity Rover as her screen saver and who cried in the "Goodnight Oppy" movie.  JPL is the division of NASA that handles all unmanned space exploration-- in other words, all the robotics.  Ella was all smiles all day seeing recreations of her beloved Mars rovers and getting an insider look at how they, and other orbiters, landers, and rovers, are created and controlled at JPL!

I honestly thought this tour would just show us the grounds, a little museum, a gift shop and maybe a movie.  It did have all that-- but so much more!! We couldn't believe it when they took us into the actual Mission Control room!   We even saw a bit of live action as their many different robots all over our solar system were being tracked and communicated with!

Then we were taken to see the real clean labs where everything is created!  We saw the moon-suited scientists working on an actual orbiter, the Europa Clipper, whose mission in 2030 will be to explore the moons of Jupiter to find water below the surface.

We got up close to Ella's favorite (non CarbonKnight) robot, Oppy, and his "ancient" predecessor Pathfinder, who we love as a crucial character in one of our favorite books, The Martian.  

We learned a lot about interplanetary exploration and saw all kinds of cool stuff, like real moon rocks.

I don't know if there could have been a more perfect outing for Ella!  We all enjoyed this so much.  Her talents and interests have opened up such an amazing new world (universe!!) to us!

Summer Time

Our summer was a lot about being soaked.  But not in pools or waterslides or beaches.  We soaked in alllll the time we could with our people.  As big transitions loom, this seemed to be a summer especially full of friends and family time.  

It started with a visit to the Midwest for Dave where he appreciated time with his siblings, parents, and nephews.

Then the girls were off to Hi-Camp, where they reveled in special time with their Lord,   

with their friends...

and with each other!

We enjoyed connecting with the many dear friends who continue to serve this high school ministry when we picked up and dropped off the girls.  Being a Hi-Camp counselor is no longer a part of Dave's job description, but his many years as one formed deep bonds and a deep love for this sacred place.

Many days were spent sharing time at friends' houses.  We hosted game nights, sleepovers, stroopwafel making, and music video recording.

Special outings were sprinkled into our soaking too.  We cheered for our friends performing in summer theater.

Smoothies and shopping were enjoyed.

Pottery classes with friends were taken.

A trip to the (highly reputable and totally safe and clean!) tattoo/piercing parlor was made by these 18 year olds for some fancier earlobes.

Lots of time climbing rock walls at the gym (and trees!) was spent with these dear Robotics buddies.

We even soaked up some quality time with Ms. Becky, our fabulous hairdresser as she freshened all our cuts and gave Ella a new look for her new chapter!

And plenty of sweet times at home too!  Like, making and eating our favorite summer foods together.  Pictured, ratatouille with garden veggies, fresh zucchini bread, and our favorite rainbow colored tomato and basil bruschetta (recipes available upon request! ;). 

Sister movie nights (complete with stadium seating furniture rearranging!) were savored.

GNO to the Barbie movie, dressed in pink of course, was a highlight!

Sooo many snuggles for Ivy, especially from Ella, were appreciated.

Our 20 year anniversary in this home and ministry was celebrated with a little photo recreating (and lots of sweet attention, kind words, and cards from our church family).  Dave was even gifted an insanely generous check to be used for a grand famly vacation.  So, now we get to dream about what would be fun to do together when we are reunited!

And so our Summer of Soaking comes to a close.  When a new school year starts, Delia and I are always most excited about saying "Hello!" to our friends on a daily basis once again, while Ella closes a chapter and says "Goodbye" to hers.  It's a bittersweet time, but we feel we made the best of it this summer.

A Day that Rocked in Yosemite

Dave killed his hiking boots in the Narrows.  When the new pair he ordered arrived, he was anxious to take them for a spin.  Now that we are in possession of a National Park Pass, we rather impulsively arranged a day off for a day trip to free-to-us Yosemite.  We joked that Delia has met her summer hiking quota, so she hung onto plans she had with friends, while we got revved up about the idea of a special Ella Day!  We weren't really sure what to expect crowd-wise, so we kept our plans flexible.  But, public schools are back in session around here, so crowds were minimal and the day was perfect.  We decided that since we had our rock climber with us, we'd make this Yosemite trip all about the rocks!

The morning started with the traditional hike to Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls.  But, different this time was allowing Ella to lead us through the maze of boulders to the misty base of the falls.  We'd never attempt this dangerous activity in peak waterflow season, when the boulders are slippery and the rapids below are turbulent, but the falls are slowing down at this time of year, so the climb was dry, easy, and safe.  See all the others who encouraged us? ;)

The up close view of the falls was pretty spectacular, and totally worth the aching thighs and arms we have today from the 4-points-of-contact climbing!

How many times have we stopped in this meadow to admire El Cap and search for climbers?!  On this trip we tried a new adventure-- getting our own hands and feet on this monolith that is a rock climber's paradise!  It takes about a mile of hiking, with a bit of elevation gain, to even get to the base.  But, once there, we learned it was not hard at all to climb a decent way up with no ropes!  This is called free soloing, and even though ours was a baby free solo compared to Alex Honnold's famous one, we still spent the rest of the day saying, "Yeah, we free soloed that" whenever we sighted El Cap!

Just the 3 of us chilling, taking selfies on an El Cap ledge!

We stopped at the famous Tunnel View for our picnic lunch. 

Then we made our way to Taft Point for the big hike of the day.  This was a new one to us.  My All Trails app told me to not even attempt it with small children, due to the sheer cliff drop offs and many hundreds-feet deep fissures you encounter on this 2 mile hike!  Before we got to these exciting things, though, we had a lovely hike through a wildflower meadow.

Taft point is 7,500 feet above the valley floor.  There is one section with a tiny guardrail.  The views are amazing!  But, anyone with any timidity about heights (me!) will be intimidated by the top of this hike.  I enjoyed most of it while sitting, and far far away from the ledge!  

The tip of the cliff at Taft point is a pretty iconic Yosemite destination.  Maybe you recognize it?  It's actually the cover of my Yosemite hiking guide!  When we considered walking out on it for THAT picture, none of us could do it!  Being that high up with nothing but the entire Yosemite Valley 7,500 feet below got all our knees knocking.  Stepping out to take this selfie, in the section WITH the tiny guardrail, was hard enough!!

These guys had no problem, though!  They are slacklining between the lookout points that we could barely step out on!  They were properly tied into harnesses (Ella watched and approved), but STILL!  A crowd of us spectated in awe and cheered when he made it across and did a fancy flip leap off the line!  Quite a show!

A stop at Glacier Point for an on-top-of-the-world view of Half Dome, Vernal, and Nevada Falls concluded our Yosemite Day.  It was fun to have a whole day with Ella, to talk all about her exciting new chapter and to watch her revel in the rock-climbing world she's grown to love the past few years!