My Cousin

 This summer as most of you know, the kids and I went home early - 2 months early in fact. We arrived in NC April 27, to help out my Mom and Dad. I didn't know exactly why I needed to go home early, I just knew that I was meant to be there. Sometimes we don't find these things out until later right?
     I had only been home about 2 weeks when my cousin Julie called to say that she had not been feeling right and was going in for some tests and would we please pray for her. She called us back the next day to tell us that she had colon cancer that had metastasized to her liver and that it was stage 4. Julie and my other cousin (her sister) Ana were super busy and pretty much in lock-down mode at the hospital so I started googling and I was in total disbelief over what I was reading. 6 months to a year?!? How could that possibly be the reality? I remember thinking how could my beautiful cousin who is only a year older than me have that little time with us? She's a nurse, a Mom to my awesome cousin Ethan,  a sister, a daughter, a cousin, and we need her so much in every single one of those roles. There's no way she can leave us!

I figured that the things I had read so far were just worst-case scenario stuff and I kept digging but what I was finding out did not get any better. Meanwhile Julie and Ana were being told different things so I was trying to talk to them and pass on things I was finding out while trying not to erase the hope we all had that things could be different. We hoped for years. We hoped for at least the 6 months to a year that I was reading about. We really wanted Christmas at least. We got 3.5 months. Julie and my brother Tim were extremely close and had a really special relationship. She called him "Super Cousin". On September 6th, just as I was pulling up in front of our apartment in Korea after our trip home,  Tim called to tell me that Julie was gone. He held her as she went and he said it was beautiful to watch the pain and suffering disappear from her face as she left us.

 Julie was so special. She had this outlook on life that was always trying to find the way to make lemonade out of whatever lemons passed her way. She was funny, compassionate, warm, and so loving. Even in the midst of her short battle, her composure was inspiring. I can't imagine trying to get your head wrapped around what she had to come to terms with in such a short period of time. I'm still trying to figure it all out. I got to spend a day with her in mid-August and at one point we both broke down together and just cried and she told me how she wanted to stay and play some more and she expressed her hopes and fears about leaving - especially leaving Ethan. But even in that dark moment she was able to stop our tears with a funny comment and turn it into laughter.
   Julie leaves behind so many people that will miss her EVERY DAY. I look at her facebook page and each day people check in and write her messages just telling her about their lives and letting her know how much she is missed. My cousin Ana has lost her sister after going through the most horrible 3.5 months you can imagine. She nursed Julie while shuttling 3 kids to activities and somehow held it together and kept smiling. She now has the task of dealing with her own grief as she helps Ethan through his.

Look at this picture above. That was taken on Easter. It's Julie, my Aunt Donna, and Ana. Just family celebrating a holiday. That was not so long ago, and we didn't even know that Julie was sick. What she taught me this summer is this: don't wait. Don't wait to do things that you want to do in life. Don't wait to love all over the people that are important to you in life. Julie was the master of this. She loved the people in her life with her whole heart and soul.
    Don't wait to retire to enjoy yourself - you might not get there! Don't wait until the new year to start a resolution, don't wait to learn something new. These are our lives, and every single moment is precious. If you want to visit somewhere in the world go do it! If you want to go bungee jumping or learn how to make pottery call TODAY and sign yourself up.
    Because of Julie, I enjoy the little things more in life. I look at the fall leaves changing color and I don't take for granted that it's just another Fall. It may be the only Fall. So I look. And I see it for me, and I see it for her. Because she would have looked and loved every minute. I still lose my temper, but I enjoy my kids more and marvel in those little moments with them, realizing that THIS moment, Sasha age 7 and Teddy age 5, is never going to happen again. I don't get frustrated when I play my fiddle anymore. I don't think "Someday, when I'm a better player..." I'm finding something that I love about the way I play the fiddle TODAY. And most of all, I know that my genes have a menacing side. And I will get checked every three years, and I'll get polyps taken out before they become the cancer that they want to be. And I'll fight hard to make sure that Julie's is the last colon cancer that our family has to deal with.
    Jules, I love you. And I miss you. And I'm so, so grateful for what you gave all of us this summer. Ethan will always know how much he is loved. He will always hear stories about you and he will know how wonderful and amazing his mom was. You are and will always be missed.

Many updates...

Whew! Between gardening, school, fiddle, shopping and cooking it seems like the days are flying by. Each afternoon I check the clock thinking it must be about 2pm and it's 5! There are just not enough hours. Sasha and Ted are on the go from dawn 'till dusk and when they're not fighting over the swing they come up with some pretty great games to play on it together. Sasha has fallen in love with Grammy's Kirsten doll so when we found a kid size apron and bonnet in a local store I had to get it for her. It's become her new uniform!

Meanwhile the ball of fluff in the nest has become 3 little chicks. Early last week they opened their eyes and checked me out. "Whoa kids - I will be checking in on you daily but I'm not your mama so try not to imprint OK?"

The kids were invited by their teacher to join in her Suzuki recital. Ted opted to be an audience member this time but Sasha knows most of book 1 so she was happy to join.

They did a book 1 play-down. They started with the last tune in the book and then played the tunes in reverse order. So when they got to a song that a kid had reached they joined the rest of the group on stage. It started like this:

And ended like this! Check out the itty-bitties in the front row. SO CUTE!

 

Of course Sasha had to put her apron right back on the second it was all over which was a good call as we all had popsicles to celebrate. Here they both are with Morgan, our AWESOME summer fiddle teacher.

We also love to go over to Ana and David's house. They run a summer camp and have an entire petting zoo on their property. Teddy checked out the pigs:

And Sasha got to hold a chicken!

Then we all got to feed a bunch of baby goats. They have sheep too and each sheep had 2 lambs this year. The lambs stay right with their mamas so you can really tell who belongs to who. It's really cute.

Then last Wed we went to see MONTY! He was so happy to see us! He took us on a romp through the fields and took us down to his river and ran through the water and was just so full of himself showing off.

He recognized the kids immediately and the kids just spent the afternoon loving all over him.

Sasha even got in some snuggle time. She has been so sad about Monty and asks me all the time why we didn't bring him to Korea but once we left she said "Mom, Monty is so happy there and he gets to run free and go down to the river. It's so much better for him than living with us in our apartment..." So I was happy to know that she feels good about it now and will be able to picture Monty in his home running free.

By the end of last week the baby birds were going through their gawky adolescent stage. They had weird tufts on their heads and their wing feathers were growing in. The mama bird taught them to poop over the edge of the nest instead of in it. So the edge of the nest started getting kind of chaucy but I had to give kudos to the mama bird for successful toilet training at 1.5 weeks old. It took my kids 2.5 YEARS!

My 4th of July garden is filling in. Expecting great things by pig-roast time.

Last weekend we went to Asheville for the day. We wreaked havok at a shoe store and then went to a kitchen store that was HUGE!!! Cora, Zoe and Ivana would lose their minds. Actually Zoe would still be there because she would have refused to leave! (Julian, if you're reading this, a small bribe will insure that Zoe never sees the inside of that place. Small bills....3 figures should do the trick - believe me, you're getting off EASY!). Afterward we had a great lunch out at a nice little bistro downtown.

This was the last picture I took of the baby birds. It was early this week. Their wing feathers were all grown in and I knew that any day I would check the nest and it would be empty. Sure enough on Wednesday they were gone. I will miss my daily visits but feel so blessed to have watched the entire process. From eggs to birds in 3 weeks. What a miracle!

Meanwhile I am the master of all things vegetable, but Mom is the master of the flowers. Her gardens and different areas are EPIC. It takes like 2 hours to water them all. Seriously. No wonder her hip was out! This purple thing erupted over the course of about 2 days. It's gorgeous. I'm just not really interested in growing things unless I can eat them so we make a good team.

Speaking of gardens, the kids' garden is doing really well considering it's only 4 weeks old!

The main garden is awesome though. I go out there first thing every morning and check in and there is something new every day. This week Star of the Week Award goes to lettuce (any body need any? we're rolling in it!) ....

....and beans! I pick this much every other day and 2 types haven't even started producing yet. Good thing we all like beans. After living in state where it's almost too cold to garden and then in a state where it's too hot to garden this is a nice change. In NC you plant the seeds and then run for cover as the garden spews produce at you!

The corn is coming along but needs motivation. Watching Jeff lead for the last several years I know just what to do.... we now have team building meetings and pep talks and we have isolated our short-term, long-term and quarterly goals. Everyone needs something to shoot for right? Just trying to promote synergy.....

Adventures in North Carolina!

We have had a few crazy, adventurous, relaxing, stressful weeks here in NC and we've adjusted well. We are SO enjoying the chance to be out in nature without a 17 floor elevator ride and lots of concrete and pavement. We're working on all the spring gardening still and like all good horticulturalists I've learned that "special event" gardens need to be planted months in advance so they have time to establish themselves. Check out my 4th of July garden. I'm sooo EPCOT right?

Poppy Duck meanwhile is working on his castle hedge. It's coming in thick and looking good!

The kids have their very own garden! They planned it out, wrote a map to what they planted and are watering it every day. American Gothic eat your heart out!

Their garden is right near the log cabin that Grammy and P.D. made for them last year. They have a blast in that cabin!

Here it is! They are taking good care of the flowers in their window box as well!

What a set-up! We will sure miss this when we go back to Korea.

Uncle Timmy meanwhile is busy working on the 2nd floor of his barn/distillery. It's a gorgeous building and it's coming along really fast!

There will be many, many good memories made in and around that barn I have a feeling...

Meanwhile is has been an EPIC snake year! They seem to be everywhere and we have been killing them left and right. We always show the kids and they have been through several rounds of "snake school" so they know what they look like, where they might be, how to avoid them and when to really be on your guard. We killed more than this but birds keep stealing them off our snake trophy fence.

I spotted 3 in one day and was awarded my VERY OWN snake shootin' pistol. It's very rad and I am now a gardener who's packin' heat. Snakes better watch out! (I would also like to say that I find it very appropriate that I am wearing my new Zombie T-shirt in this pic. Because the gun's for snakes but you know I'm always on Zombie alert as well. Just sayin'...)

Everything here is green and lush right now. Here's a view from Bob Singer's lower barn (pig roast central) back towards the cabin. You can see the roof of the gazebo:

The kids love to relax in the hot tub at the end of the day. What a view!

Here Sasha was weeding the mint garden for Grammy first thing in the morning. She said it smelled awesome!

My garden. I work in it every day and it's coming along. We're already eating lettuce out of it!

Another view of the main garden. Timmy planted all these wildflowers on the berm below and they are gorgeous!

A view of the wishing well and the cabin up the secret staircase through the arch in the hedge.

Every day is full of wonderful little country living moments. One morning we were all our having coffee on the front porch and we taught the kids how to eat honey suckle. They loved it!

And then there's our nest in the fern. I was watering all these big hanging plants on the front porch and noticed that a bird kept shooting out of this one fern. Took a look and sure enough, there was the cutest little nest and 4 tiny blue eggs!

Another shot of the nest in the fern:

The kids are busy from morning till night. They do school with me in the morning, then we're either helping Uncle Timmy down at the barn....

.... or having a lesson with our AWESOME summer Suzuki teacher. Her name is Morgan and she is great. Teddy is even playing and he loves it! That's how awesome she is!

And she has this ridiculous cat named "Rimski" that is fat and lucious and just loves all over you the whole time you're at her house.

So that was last week. At the very end of the week I peeked in on the eggs in the nest and instead saw 4 little bundles of downy fluff. They hatched! We are watching them every day to see how they grow!

Juwangsan National Park

The weekend before the kids and I left for a summer in The States we headed to Juwangsan National Park to camp out and explore. We camped once in the fall and loved it so we were really excited to get to see one more park before we left for the summer.

Juwangsan was really cool! Huge granite exposures and waterfalls ect. Kind of reminded me of some of the smaller side valleys at Yosemite. And on the way up to the main hiking area they had this cool strip of shops and places to eat if you were adventurous enough!

Since Bhudda's Birthday is coming up the place was all decorated with lanterns whenever you were near a temple site. Since the flowering trees weren't out in full force yet at this high an elevation it added a lot of color to our hike!

My 3 favorite hiking buddies!

We headed up to a little temple complex about 1.5 miles in because the map said that there was a "cave" there.

The "cave" was actually a tiny grotto that pinched off pretty quick. More like a crack in the rock if you ask me. These people need to come to Tennessee and see some REAL caves!

Then we checked out another "cave". More of the same. But this one had a shrine in it and someone had left a can of pringles as an offering. I did NOT know that Bhudda enjoys pringles. How interesting....

One of the little temples in this craggy area:

The cliffs all around the little temple complex:

There were about 5-6 little buildings in this area and they were kind of stacked and staggered up the hillside wherever they would fit. It was pretty neat. Makes you wondering what they were doing way up here in the mountains so very long ago. Must have been a tough place to live!

Next we headed farther up the main valley to check out some cool waterfalls. We hoped the falls would be cooler than the "caves"!

Hiking through a rocky crack:

And then we spotted the base of the first waterfall:

Here's Jeff at the top. It was very cool and quite beautiful. The water had carved quite a smooth channel for itself and cascaded down several levels.

Then we hit waterfall #2. I immediately thought you could have a really nice summer swim in the pools at the bottom of these falls but the Koreans are NOT having any of that. There are signs that say "no swimming" in several languages and video cameras. Of course the people manning these cameras are far enough away that you could probably get in a pretty good swim before they arrived to bust you and then you could just pretend to be Russian or Norwegian. Both of those languages were not represented on the "no swimming" signs so if you faked it well you'd be blame-free!

Water fall #3 was off to the side in a smaller valley. It was really beautiful and quiet so we took a little break there.

How can you not want to swim???

Jeff on the beach and the kids exploring the river.

Then we noticed that the rock wall to one side of the river had all these tiny holes and people had made rock sculptures by sticking a flat base rock into a slot and then balancing other rocks on top of it.

So we all had to give it a try. Turns out we are rock-sculpture prodigies!

Ta-daaa!!

Only in Korea moment. Waaaay out in the boon-docks of the park we came across this cell-phone charging station. Really?!?

Really. Hope they brought a book so they have something to do out here in the middle of nowhere while their phone is charging.

Aaaaand there was a mini-cell tower so that you'd have coverage. Amazing. They haven't figured out how to navigate a shopping cart at Costco but these people are SERIOUS about their cell-phone coverage. Can you hear me now?

Then we headed back down the valley. Since the time of day and direction were totally different it was like a whole new hike!

The light was hitting the rock faces in beautiful ways so our hike out was really enjoyable even with 2 kiddos who were getting a tad bit whiny.

Huge rock perched high above the valley. That thing's going to EXPLODE when it falls!

Another "cave" this one was more of an archway.

Wow! We had to check it all out.

And then it was time for a rest and a snack. Ted takes a moment for reflection:

Hiking out. We headed back to our tent to go get some dinner that we brought from home.....

...but then we decided to have another adventure so we ate at one of the little restaurant shacks.

Sun setting on the rocks:

Goof-balls in a restaurant:

The kids woke up bright and early the next morning. Of course no Team Stolasz camping trip is complete without a session of "daddy steamroller". You don't even know that Jeff is up and then all of a sudden he just steamrolls everyone in the tent. He's been doing this for as long as I can remember. Even before we had kids. Seriously....

My hysterical bunch of campers:

We had a nice breakfast and a hot drink and then took our time packing up before heading back to the city. It was a great trip and we are excited to check out even more of the Korean National Parks when we get back in the fall!