Christmas 09 pics

My beautiful daughter by the Christmas tree!
Copyright (c) 2009 Wendee Holtcamp

My daughter took many of these photos and Sam took a few also. Savannah is now a budding photographer herself so even though she just got her first nice Canon camera last year, she likes to take and use my yet more expensive camera... She is taking photojournalism at school and has her own blog and is very talented! She is much better at photo editing than I am, so these are just some shots I barely edited. She'll have more on her blog soon.

We went to see Avatar on Christmas Adam (Adam came before Eve... ha ha!) - and we all loved it. We didn't see the 3D version, but I'd like to if I see it again. Here's the skinny on Christmas - but below are the pictures that tell the story. Christmas Eve I baked my homemade pies - pumpkin and apple - and made a broccoli casserole (which nobody liked but me... but I love this casserole and now I have a huge bunch of it - ha!). Then me, Doug and the kids went to church around 6pm, which was a really nice festive service. After church, we came home and watched It's a Wonderful Life while eating a bunch of random hors d'oevres like baked brie, chips and queso, strawberries with chocolate fondue, summer sausage, hummus and naan bread, and chicken salad with crackers. Yum! The kids opened one gift each. When the kids went to bed, we packed up their stockings with Santa gifts and then Doug and I watched Lost... We're on the last season out on DVD. I love that show!

Christmas Eve we got up relatively early and the we all opened their stocking gifts and we ate pie for breakfast (what else?). Next we opened all the gifts under the tree, one at a time. The next big plan for Christmas was to have our 2nd annual FREE HUGS event at Starbucks. Last year my ex had the kids so I had wanted to do this ever since I saw the Youtube video and heard about the FREE HUGS campaign. I had just started dating Doug so I roped him into doing it. Ah the things you can do with new love... this year I had to rope the kids into doing it with us. It's funny, Savannah was all excited about doing it if her friends would come, but of course on Christmas few people are around to go stand at Starbucks and give out free hugs. So she didn't want to go. She thought it would be embarrassing. So we went to a Starbucks a bit further away from our house to minimize the chance she'd encounter someone from her school. Ha! But once we got there I think everyone had a good time. My friend Georgia and her family came again this year.

After we were done with that, we came home and I cooked up a pork tenderloin, mashed potatoes, gravy, sauteed mushrooms, corn, and stuffing. I had made the broccoli casserole the day before but forgot to put it in the oven - oops! We prayed and gave thanks, and stuffed ourselves. Then we watched the movie Cloverfield, not exactly a Christmas movie but what the heck. Doug wanted me to see it. I got very sleepy... probably all the food and the chocolates I kept eating after dinner! All in all it was a very good and fun Christmas holiday!

Laughter is a beautiful thing!
I want that one! Christmas Even everyone picked out one gift to open.
Sam opening his one gift on Christmas eve. Notice the Snuggie? LOL
He got... Halo ODST3. Just what he wanted. Plus a cool pair of jeans in the box that even fit and he likes them!

I opened my gift too - a salad spinner from Doug! I've wanted one forever! But Sam liked it best of all. He would not stop playing with it!
Christmas morning! About to open stocking gifts. I sewed their two stockings many years ago from fabric from a maternity dress.
I got Savannah this hat from Buckle, which she loves and looks soooo cute in!
The cat got her present - the Balderdash box. She loves boxes of all types.
On to Christmas free hugs! This is me, Georgia, her daughter and Savannah.
Everyone needs a hug!
Sam and Savannah torturing one another as usual.
Savannah stuck her hand in front of the camera - random just like her!
Hugs anyone?
This is a local pastor who loved our free hugs campaign. He had us take a picture and send it to him.
M and Savie. So cute!
M and L bringing the Christmas spirit to the Free Hugs campaign!
Me and Savie!
Doug decided to run around the parking lot screaming, "Just give me a damn hug already!" while jumping around like a madman. Savannah recorded it on video. It was hilarious!!
Being weird!
Would you like a hug? We are equal opportunity huggers!
Of course!
Another success!

The video that started it all...

bliss on the longest night

Elephant Butte Lake, New Mexico
Copyright (c) 2006 Wendee Holtcamp

Right now, I feel bliss. It's 145 in the morning, and well I have just have a warm happy feeling. Bliss. I haven't been so good about blogging regularly and I have so much to say, but I'll just add a few thoughts and updates and then I'll try to write more later. Today I took the kids ice skating at the Galleria, which was fun though the skates are annoyingly hard and uncomfortable (they seem to get more so every time I go - do you think?). Doug and I went a year ago the first week we'd met, so it was special to go back there together. Savannah and Sam brought friends and we skated then went to Ninfas for lunch. Surprisingly, the Galleria was not that crowded, given it's the week of Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, doesn't it seem that every year the holiday season goes faster and faster? I am happy to say though that I really haven't stressed at all this season. Last year I didn't get my holiday letter out at all. I wrote it, I bought stamps, and then I never mailed anything. And writing a holiday letter and Christmas cards is a 15+ year tradition for me. Some people think newsletters are impersonal but I disagree. I truly love reading about my friends' years and seeing new pictures, and I know that it can be incredibly difficult to keep up with people on a more regular basis (this was even more true before blogging and Facebook came around). And I like writing one!

I am happy to report that I got my tree up and decorated relatively early in the season - and I LOVE the way my house looks with the tree and Christmas decorations. I got my holiday letters written and mostly sent. I have my Christmas shopping all done and presents wrapped. And we have some special things planned for this week.

I have the kids this Christmas (my ex and I alternate holidays, so if I have them on Thanksgiving he has them on Christmas and vice versa). I thought about going to Dallas to visit my mom and stepdad but it's my first Christmas with my kids and Doug here, so we decided to stay home and just do some fun stuff. Today was the ice skating part of the plan. We also plan to go to see that new flick Avatar, which looks awesome, probably on Wednesday. On Christmas Eve we'll go to church and have the kids open one gift each and watch It's a Wonderful Life. Have you seen that movie? Do you love it? Hate it? I've only watched it once or twice and it's so moving, and I'm trying to share with the kiddos some holiday traditions and things. They've never seen that movie, believe it or not. Last year or the year before I had them watch A Christmas Story which of course is a classic and they thought it was totally stupid and cheesy. Course it IS totally stupid and cheesy but that's part of the appeal. Christmas we open stockings, and then gifts and I plan to make a big Christmas dinner with Doug as my sous-chef.

Yesterday my best friend Daline came over and visited. She's been living here in Houston for several months and I've hardly seen her more than when she lived in Cali or Utah! Every year since I've known her she always came to visit me over the Christmas holiday when she'd come home to visit her family. That always meant so much to me since in my life I tend to be the one who keeps in touch with everyone from days past. Daline and I met in college, and have been friends since, and became very close after my divorce. She's been an incredible friend, listening to so much stuff I've rambled on about, and she is just a truly outstanding human being and I am blessed to call her friend. People are lucky to find just one friend like this in a lifetime. And she's an incredibly talented musician!! So we went to a meditation at Ekam Yoga, which is owned by my friend Maggie, and the meditation was led by my friend Linda. It was really neat and combined Qigong, sitting/meditation, chanting and breathing. Then we did a fun little gift exchange (I got a popcorn popper - oops I almost wrote popcorn pooper - ha ha!_, and then there was some absolutely delicious yummy food. Then Daline and I came home to my house and played Balderdash with my kids, and she and I drank some wine, and talked til past midnight!

So that's all the tidbits of info I have to share. I have more, but will keep it at this for now! Lots of love to you all this Christmas season. Tonight is the longest night, and tomorrow is the return to light.

savannahs photo bday

For my daughter's birthday, she wanted to go photograph stuff with some friends. First we went to a nature park. It was a very foggy day, which is unusual for this area, but that added a cool dimension to the photos. Who knew the girls could levitate?
Me taking a pic with Savannah's camera
There was a lot of dog poop at the park, and I stepped in it. Twice! Meanwhile Savi got some good shots.
She got this coat for her birthday!
Besties!

Gang of three
Besties! Take two!
Take three! I took this one with my blackberry
At the park.
Nest we went downtown Houston and took some random photos. There was a particular old abandoned building just across from Minute Maid Park that Savannah wanted to photograph but after we drove to it, we realized stopping might not be such a good idea. There were several dozen homeless people all around there, several camped under the overpass, several walking around the region. I felt bad for them. It's not always in your face in the suburbs. It was like a tent city but without the tents.
No Trespassing!
L taking pics!
This building was really cool. Lots of color and texture.
Quit taking pics girls so I can take one of you!
Ummm....
The weirdest thing is that inside the window was a paper printed with Lola Savannah. That's my daughter's name and one of her friends' nicknames (well close to it). And it smelled like coffee!


I love love love this photo! I edited it slightly in Photoshop by reducing the saturation and the result is it looks almost B&W.
Abbey Road!

Savannnah!

Global Wildlife Center!

Skippy the human-reared baby red roo gives me a kiss!
Copyright (c) 2009 Doug Markle/Wendee Holtcamp

Finally I got around to putting up more photos from our cross-country road trip! After Gatlinburg and the Smoky Mountains, we headed to the Northshore of Louisiana. Today I'll post photos from the Global Wildlife Center because it was such an awesome part of the trip! In a day or two, I'll post pics of the other parts of Louisiana's Northshore including an awesome swamp eco-tour where we saw gators!

The idea for my visit to this area started because Renee Kientz from the St. Tammany Parish Tourism Commission emailed me about a story idea she had for my Animal Planet blog. It was about a woman raising a baby kangaroo on her own, which had been abandoned by its mom - and has since been covered by the Today Show, the Washington Post and others. (And you can watch an endearing slideshow of his life so far here).

I thought it was a great idea, and she invited me to come visit the Global Wildlife Center and meet Skippy the baby kangaroo firsthand. It took me a few months to get there, but it was well worth it! The Center is a 900-acre wildlife preserve with around 4,000 animals, run by a nonprofit. They offer tours on either single-vehicle Pinzgauers - a Swiss Army vehicle (which we took) - or these other multiple-vehicle train-like things. Either way, you get up close and personal with the animals, and they're awesome! I've been to Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Glen Rose, Texas but that was a self guided auto tour and you don't really get to touch and interact with the animals like you can at Global. I highly recommend this especially if you love animals or have kids! So on to the photos!

Before we went on the tour, we got to meet the star of the show at the moment - Skippy! I have a blog post coming out about him tomorrow so be sure to visit my Animal Planet blog! He's 10.5 months now. He loves to give kisses!

Doug got to hold him.

He gave me kisses too. What a sweetheart!

Our tour starts and I started taking photos. We saw some zebras first. All the animals are together, pretty much. The lady who raised Skippy as his mom, Christina Cooper (who is the Education and Development Director), said that during Hurricane Katrina they were worried to death about the animals but when they looked out of doors, they saw the animals had all huddled together in one giant circle and everyone survived. Amazing. I have always thought zebras are so beautiful!

Look at those big brown eyes! The first big animals we came across were these Bactrian camels. They have two humps and are very furry-faced. There are wild Bactrian camels living in the Gobi desert which are genetically and behaviorally distinct from the many domesticated Bactrian camels. I wrote about them for the Planet Earth animal guide profiles I wrote - so you can read more about the species there (under the Desert episode).
They are gentle giants! Love this pic.
They would just reach their faces right into the Pinzgauer and munch away on the corn right out of the big bin as well as the buckets we fed them from. They kept bumping their heads on the top of the vehicle. LOL!

Next we came across the giraffes, which just loved the corn and us! They were so cool. We could pet their heads and faces and shoulders. They have the coolest lips! And though a few times they bumped their heads, they were very aware of where their heads and horns were, and would bend their heads when they took them out of the vehicle, more so than the camels.

You can see the big bin of corn inside the Pinzagauer (vehicle) which we fed them from in this shot.
I love this photo! Look at that face! One of these is a young un.
Such beautiful animals!
Another gorgeous shot of the giraffes.
I'm not 100% sure but I think these are the Pere David deer, a highly endangered species that bred very well here on the reserve.
Where are all the animals running to?
It's feeding time! Just before dusk, when the temperature starts cooling off, the staff start supplemental feeding of the animals. They put all the corn in a big spiral and pretty much everyone comes together to chow down!
The preserve has a few Watusi and longhorn cattle and they would come over, stick out their grossly long tongue and open their mouth wide. They practically inhaled the corn!

On my Facebook profile status, while there, I wrote that I was being chased by a wild beefalo! This was the crazy beefalo that was chasing me (well tecnically chasing after the vehicle with the corn in it...). A beefalo, so I learned, is a cross between a cow and a bison. The cross-breeding occurred naturally at the center.

Here it is again, in the back, and it wouldn't leave us alone once we fed it. We had to drive off to the llamas, to learn about the "llama drama" to get away from it (not that driver Christina minded but it was seriously starting to freka me out, especially when the ginormous longhorns and beefalo were all surrounding us! The bison were pretty tame in comparison.
Aww... the baby llama!
Another shot of the baby llama.
Polka dotted llama
I love this photo too. The baby looks exactly like a llama male that isn't the head of the herd - this guy - so Christina thinks maybe the jealous herd leader took mom and baby away to stop the gossip. The three of them have been hanging together separate from the herd. Hence the staff call it, hilariously, the "llama drama." :)

Gatlinburg, Tennessee

Hi again! Today I'm posting photos Doug and I took in Gatlinburg, Tennessee! After exploring the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we spent some time in Gatlinburg visiting the attractions. We ate lunch at the Smoky Mountain Brewery, and then walked around until dark. Most of the attractions stay open until 9pm. We had a great time! There are several "Ripley" museums, such as Ripley's Believe it or Not! Museum, Ripley's Aquarium, etc. We also went to a cool 4-d moving theater, which had 2 ~6-minute shows in sequence - it really tossed you around! Then we went to "Earthquake: The Ride" which was freaking hilarious in its total stupidity. You get into this train car ride, thinking it's actually going to be a sort of roller coaster but it just shakes you around, and puffs nasty chemically smoke in your face, and then you see a gorilla peer through the "train" window. Then it's over. The train doesn't move more than about 15 feet forward, then back! But Doug is now enthralled with saying (in the same way the advertisement that blared out onto the street did) "Earthquake: The Ride!" (The real thing! Earthquake, the ride!) LOL.

Most of the photos were from the Ripley's Aquarium which was an amazing aquarium!! We took these photos with Doug's point and shoot and my phone so the quality isn't stellar but I wanted to share. Tomorrow or the next day I'll share pics from the Northshore of Louisiana and all the cool stuff we did there. And then snow in Houston!! My kids made a very cool snowdude named Frostbite.

This is from earlier in the day when we were still exploring the park, but I forgot to post it yesterday!
This is a shot of our beautiful room in Gatlinburg's new Hilton Garden Inn (they've applied for LEED certification and should hear back any day now). Notice it even has a fireplace!
A cool bear made of nails at the front of the Ripley's Believe it or Not museum.
At the Ripley's Believe it or Not museum they had a thing where you could capture your shadow. This is Doug jumping! He thought it kinda looked like a skateboarding jump.

This - fuzzily - shows the lights (LED!) that illuminated the main street in Gatlinburg.
Doug standing next to a replica of the tallest man that ever lived, who was an outrageous 9 foot and some change!
The rest of these are taken at the Ripley's Aquarium. This is a shot of a shark in the cool tube-like maze aquarium. I like its abstractness.
Another shark photo.

Another shark pic.

These seahorses were so cool!

I loved the jellyfish too.
Another shot of jellies.
Me with a crab on my head (after all, I am a Cancerian!)

The Great Smokies!

The Great Smoky Mountains!
Copyright (c) 2009 Wendee Holtcamp

I promise to write more about the trip and post more pics soon. These are the first batch of photos, from our short exploration of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We mostly just drove through the park, starting at Gatlinburg and going first towards Cade's Cove (which was closed at the end of the road because they were treating for the Woolly Adelgid, an insect affecting the hemlock, if I recall correctly. We actually met up with Bob Miller, a Park Ranger, in the morning. Then we drove through the park. After going towards Cade's Cove we turned around and drove the other way, down Newfound Gap Road towards the Oconaluftee Visitor Center. We stopped a lot and took some photos but sadly didn't have time to go on a hike. It was a gorgeous day, if a bit cold, especially in the morning! After we drove through the park we spent some time in Gatlinburg and I'll post some pictures from that part of the trip tomorrow!

This and the photo above and below are the view of the Smoky Mountains I see in every brochure! It's taken along Newfound Gap Road, which runs from the park entrypoint near Gatlinburg to the southeast.

And another!
A view of one of the rock tunnels in the park

A lone maple leaf overlooking Laurel Creek

My shadow as I take photos of the creek.

Another view of the same tunnel.

We saw some whitewater kayakers in the park. Looks like fun!

We saw two white tailed deer and a fawn! This is the fawn, she's already lost her spots. We didn't see any elk or any bears, and I was very disappointed about that especially since there are like 2 black bears per square mile!

Laurel Creek
The Mountain Farm Museum near the Oconaluftee Visitor Center.

Water droplets over the creek.

pics from PA trip

Hi again! We made it to Gatlinburg Tennessee this evening, the gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Yesterday we left Doug's mom's place around 3pm and went to our friend April's parents log cabin in Hollidaysburg, PA where we stayed overnight. Her mom served a delicious venison stew, and then we watched the Ravens-Steelers game. I was rooting for the Ravens because that's the team that (left guard)Michael Oher plays for. He's the player the movie Blind Side (currently in theaters) is based on, and his life is such an amazing story! And they won in overtime which was very exciting. We were exhausted by the time that ended.

Got up around 7am, and hit the road from PA, through Maryland, then West Virginia, then Virginia, then Tennessee. It was relaly cool driving through Pigeon Forge and then Gatlinburg as it became dark as it looks like a Christmas wonderland with all the lights up. Gatlinburg's lights are all LEED and the area is really developing in a sustainable direction which is interesting. Pigeon Forge looks like a fantastic and fun place to take kids for a vacation! We arrived at our hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn (a LEED Certified hotel) around 6pm and then had dinner at the restaurant, then back to the room where Doug's watching the Saints-Patriots game and I'm updating the blog :) Doug is teaching me about football (I'm totally clueless, or was until recently!).

Tomorrow we're going to drive through the national park and try to see some black bears. :) I'll take some pics and try to upload... have a happy day!!

This is a pic of Doug's grandma and I on Thanksgiving. You can see the food on my plate, rapidly disappearing! We arrived around 3pm and had a delicious meal. Doug's 92-year old grandma is amazing! She is sharp as a tack and still walking and getting around great! On our second day there Doug and I went for a couple mile walk through Mechanicsburg (a suburb of the capitol city of Harrisburg)., and this is a self-portrait from our walk :)
One of the old buildings in Mechanicsburg.

Another historic building, this one says the Orris House.

Doug gave his grandma a pink Snuggie for Christmas! We had to restage the event and we think she looks scared of the Snuggie! I think we chose a good color for it though don't you?
Grandma, Doug, and Mom. Doug's grandma does her hair in rollers every day and always fluffs her curls with her hand, which is so adorable.

Another photo of me and Doug's grandma
We went out to eat with Doug's aunt and uncle, Pat and Marvin, on the left behind Doug. On the right is Doug's grandma and mom.

This is our room, with fireplace even, at the Hilton Garden Inn Gatlinburg. Nice place!

hello from PA!

I'm sitting at Smoothie Joe's Juice & Java in Mechanicsburg, PA - the town my boyfriend Doug grew up in - drinking a Milky Way frappucino. Mmm. It's not a chain but a locally owned cafe, and it's very good! I had a grilled veggie sandwich too. Mmm.

We flew out Thanksgiving morning from Houston at 6am (meaning, we woke at 345am, caught a cab at 430am). Our flight to Newark was uneventful, where we had a 2 hour layover, then we got on a puddle jumper to the Harrisburg airport. Dougs lifelong friend Al picked us up from the airport, and brought us to his mom and grandma's house where we had a yummy Thanksgiving dinner with turkey and all the fixins! It was so nice to meet his family.

Yesterday we just hung out at the house, went for along walk, and then in the eveing we went out to downtown Harrisburg with Doug's childhood friend Lance. They've been friends since like 3rd grade. Harrisburg is about 20 minutes from Mechanicsburg and is the capital of PA if you forgot that little fact since 5th grade when everyone had to memorize all that info... We went first to the Brick Haus, an upstairs pub, and then to this Ceoltas Irish Pub/Restaurant that was really cool looking. Then we ended up home by about 10pm. You know you're getting old when you're home by 10! :)

Today we picked up the rental car (a nice trusy Toyota Corolla) which we'll use to drive home starting tomorrow. Well technically the long drive starts Monday. Tomorrow we're leaving in the afternoon to go visit Doug's friend April who lives outside Hollidaysburg. We're staying the night there with her and her family, maybe doing a bonfire, and then leaving about 8am the next day for Gatlinburg, TN where we'll stay at the brand new http://hiltongardeninn.hilton.com>LEED certified Hilton Garden Inn for 2 nights, guests of the town. Gatlinburg is right outside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The next day we'll explore the national park! Hopefully the weather isn't rainy like I think it might be...

Sorry I can't leave you with any photos yet - I am using the wifi at Juice & Java and haven't downloaded any pics from the camera! :)

a deep breath

Two hoatzins (Opisthocomus hoazin) on Cocha Blanco (White Lake) in the Peruvian Amazon near Blanquillo. See my other Peru photos!
Copyright (c) 2006 Wendee Holtcamp

Well hello!

It has been a crazy last few months, I tell ya. I am finally starting to breathe a long sigh of relief (though the final sigh to end all sighs will come after my book is fully approved and edited!). Writing that book, the draft that is, has taken me - from proposal to now - five years!!! At times I didn't think I'd finish, I didn't know if I wanted to, I thought I didn't have anything new to say, I questioned who was I to write a book on this topic, no one would listen, no one would care, it sucked, and on and on and on. But I felt some relief in hearing at least two writers say that they had very similar feelings. One was Liz Gilbert, the author of the amazing runaway besteller Eat, Pray, Love. She wrote about her feelings of the book's inadequacy (ie it sucked) on her website's Thoughts on Writing page. Another was Rachel Held Evans, who I met online because of her book on a similar topic - Evolving in Monkey Town - which is due out by Zondervan Press soon. I know that such thoughts are held by many writers in the long process of writing their books. And another thing, I've long since let go of the thought that if it didn't become a critically acclaimed bestseller, I was a massive failure. I can almost guarantee you, it won't. And I'm ok with that. At this point I just want it published!! Of course I'd be thrilled with wonderful sales and good reviews, but with the topic being so controversial (evolution and Christianity) I have no doubt there will be some authors on various sides of the fence slamming it. We'll see.

Regardless of all that, I feel a sense of freedom that I haven't felt in a long time because having the book incomplete felt like a huge weight on my shoulders. On top of having the book to write, I had tons of other writing to do in order to pay bills, plus my kids, my boyfriend, and the stress of life in general kept me so busy I hardly had time to write the book in the way that would serve it best - start on it and focus on it and finish it. That's why I went to Montana, and that turned out to be a huge blessing! Then as soon as I turned in the draft, I had a nearly 3,000 word feature due a couple weeks later, and now I have to write several blogs for my Animal Planet blog post to line up for when I'm out of town for the Thanksgiving holiday and my drive home from Pennsylvania to Texas. But I feel a whole lot lighter in my load right now!

In the past few months, Doug and I attended a 7-week Couplehood as a Spiritual Path workshop, a Christian-based workshop based on author and psychologist Harville Hendrix's bestselling book Getting the Love You Want (which is secular). Reading that book changed my life, and I tried to apply the techniques within my marriage many years ago, but the hard thing is if you don't practice it regularly, it doesn't become second nature. Then you don't end up using it when it counts, when you're upset. I wanted to introduce Doug to the concept now rather than later, even though every other couple in the class was married (and the fact that he will attend a class like this says so much to my heart about him!). I missed two of the sessions because I was in Montana but the ones we attended truly helped communication in our relationship. It can be so difficult to overcome some of those behaviors that we bring from our childhoods, the fears that prevent us from doing things or lowering our walls, or the triggers (buttons) that get pushed and make us over-react. But I believe self-awareness is the first step, and then the committment to start to change, to move in the direction of greater love and greater empathy for one another.

The final day we got a "Roadmap to Change" that includes the following advice:

Do this daily for the rest of your life:

• Spend a few minutes a day praying for your relationship
  
• Do at least one caring behavior for your partner
  
• Send your partner an appreciation (ie say one thing you appreciate about your partner)

Do this weekly for the rest of your life:

• Visualize and review your Relationship Vision (something we created in the workshop)
  
• Engage in a shower of blessings (this is where one partner sits on a chair and the other person walks around them saying praises about that person - first physical attributes, then behaviors, then character traits then general affirmations - in an increasingly loud voice so you end up yelling loving things by the end! It counteracts the negative stigma we have with raised voices and replaces it with loving affirmations). I can say when Doug did this for me, it truly made an impact on both of us. It was a transformative moment.
  
• Take turns planning at least one high-energy fun activity per week
  
• Create new gifts of change (ie decide one small, measurable behavior you will change for your partner and then tell them you want to do it as a gift to them).

A central part of this is the concept of mirroring, which is a pretty standard technique in psychology circles. You repeat back what your partner says verbatim, or as close as possible, to make sure you got it right. And then you go through the steps of validating it and empathizing with them. It's a lot harder to do than it sounds!

If I don't get a chance to post again before Thanksgiving, have a very blessed Thanksgiving!!

Caught in a Bad Romance...

Had to share this video - I Love it - so hot! I didn't really care much about Lady GaGa before - just thought she was very odd with all those outfits, but I fell in love with this song the first time I heard it, and having read about her interest in fashion and that she has a lot of input into the creative aspect of her music and videos and strange fetishistic (is that a word?!) clothing I am loving her - very avant garde and original. Check it out!

finished a draft of my first book!

My kids Sam and Savannah being silly - as usual - in Mount Field National Park in Tasmania, Australia. This was near a stream where Sam spotted a platypus. Copyright (c) 2006 Wendee Holtcamp

I am excited to report that I finished the first full draft of my book on making peace between evolution and Christianity! It's in my editors' hands, and I'm waiting for news, and we'll start editing for publication in - if all goes as planned - Fall 2010. It's been a long journey for this book. I started writing the book proposal in New Mexico which I blogged about toward the beginning days of this very blog in November 2005, and I also published an essay in E/The Environmental Magazine about that great solo adventure in Back to Nature: What is it about simplicity and solitude that inspires writers?. The book goes as far back as 2003 when I testified at the Texas State Board of Education hearings over biology textbooks, but really goes all the way back to my childhood and my own spiritual formation. I'm very excited about the book and though it took way longer to write than I ever imagined, and was more challenging, I am finally over the hump and super excited about refining it and presenting it to the world. A bit scared too! It's my baby!

In other news, my next big adventure: I plan to fly to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving with Doug, and then we'll drive back! We will go to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park - my furst time there - and to Louisiana's Northshore for some R&R. It's going to be a long drive but I'm excited to visit some states I've never visited before. I have been to every state out west, and only a few on the east coast but will get to see Pennsylvania, and West Virginia for the first time, and maybe North Carolina (The national park is in both Tennessee and North Carolina, so if we drive through the whole thing, I'll see both states. I've been to TN before though). I'll get home just in time for my lovely daughter's 15th birthday! She is very excited about getting her driver's permit. Me, not so much...

On a personal level, despite some ups and downs in figuring out communication in relationships, my spirits have improved dramatically from a few months back. There are a couple reasons. I am convinced that a main reason is that I hadn't been on any big trips for the year and a half prior... except for the one to Portland, Oregon during December when I got snowed in! Taking another trip to Oregon and Washington in August so rejuvenated my spirit! I love traveling so much. But also, though I am a person who has long been adamantly opposed to antidepressants, I started taking a very low dose a few months back, but then got off of them a month ago and I feel great! I believe that they helped me through a rough patch, and my body and mind, perhaps has fixed itself, who knows. Though I'm not sure what my future holds on many levels, I am feeling great and excited about the possibilities!

Now that the draft of my book is complete, I have started to ponder the many things I've long put off that I have passion for. Should I produce and star in a documentary on sand mining on the San Jacinto River, raising some funds through the nonprofit organize I run (though it's been on hiatus for a while) - the San Jacinto Conservation Coalition? Should I turn my material from my online writing green class into an e-book? Should I start a local natural foods co-op? That last one is a recent passion of mine, and the biggest and most challenging idea but I'm pondering it. I'm considering starting a book club geared towards socially conscious books and documentaries, and I've run the idea by several of my conscientious friends in the area and we're going to get that started soon. The first book? Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, which has gotten a lot of attention so far. His article, The Fruits of Family Trees, in New York Times Magazine based on the book wowed me.

a few of my favorites

Sunrise on North Padre Island
Copyright (c) 2006 Wendee Holtcamp

Just a super quick update. I am so close to being done with a full draft of my book. So close that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel but it's still not done which frustrates me because I was only one half-chapter away when I got back from Montana and I have not had time to just do that single half chapter!! I understand why, just basically getting caught up at home, spending time with my beautiful awesome kiddos when I can, some time with Doug, and then writing several Animal Planet blog posts so I can have a week to focus - this week. And here it is, Tuesday!

I wanted to link to some of my favorite Animal Planet Animals in the News blog posts in case you haven't had a chance to read them.

Massive oil spill off Australian coast puts marine life at risk - The news in yesterday's post horrifies me because some 400-2,000 barrels of oil per day are spilling into the Timor Sea off Western Australia and it's been going on since August 21st. Yet it's barely made the news. WWF-Australia made an expedition there to survey the damage to wildlife.

Hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" may kill animals- I like this post because it reports on something that, once again, has only started getting the public attention it deserves. It's a frightening story that we all should be aware of! My friend Sharon Wilson who writes the Blue Daze blog has been a longtime advocate of drilling reform in the Barnett Shale of Texas.

Open Season on Gray Wolves - I like this one because it's based on my recent visit to Yellowstone National Park and seeing the wolves in the wild, then I give an update on the first wolf hunting season in recent history.

Costa Rica’s “Leatherback National Park” threatened - Discovery Channel sent me to Las Baulas National Park in 1999 for a totally amazing expedition Love & Death on Turtle Beach! Now the national park may get downgraded by Costa Rica's own government.

Meatless Mondays - I have enjoyed writing about food/meat issues on the blog, which is something "animal" related that I never originally intended to write about. But as I come across story ideas, more and more I realize that food issues affect us all, and actually a lot more than many other wildlife or animal stories. I am trying to do "meatless monday" which means no meat on Mondays, and it's embraced by the likes of Paul McCartney and many others. The goal is to help curb global warming because meat production is one of the leading contributors to greenhouse gases. This post gives the facts about meat consumption as gathered from various sources, and the low-down on meatless Mondays.

Good year for endangered coho salmon - Again part of this was based on my visit to the Pacific Northwest and I really like writing about the places I visit, and learning more about the salmon hatcheries and the endangered species of salmon that live there. I like to choose sustainably harvested seafood and this blog has helped me learn a lot in that regard. According to most seafood watch reports, Alaska salmon is mostly ok, farmed salmon is bad to eat, and it depends on which precise river drainage in the Pacific NW you get your fish from on whether it's sustainable or not...

That's all for now! :) Visit and leave some comments, if you get a chance!

home again home again jiggity jig

Yellow flowers in Elissa's yard in Montana.
Copyright (c) 2009 Wendee Holtcamp

Just wanted to give a quick update. I'm back home in Houston after a very productive and awesome time in Montana. My goal was to write two full chapters of my book, and I accomplished that goal and even got another half chapter completed. So now I have to complete that last half-chapter, and I'll have a full draft of the baby into my editors. Yea! This book writing thing has been way harder than I ever imagined, on many different levels. I will be so incredibly happy to see my book in real-book-form one of these days! If all goes as planned, it should be on shelves in Fall 2010.

I got back Saturday evening after a crazy day of airport travel. Have been writing up several Animal Planet blog posts so I can again shift my focus back to finishing my book! I have a feature due mid-November so I plan to try to get my book draft done next week then shift my focus again to pikas, the topic of my next article.

Tomorrow I am giving a mini-photography workshop project to my son's middle school. A few weeks back I did a journaling workshop, and I'll be picking those up from students so I can read them. I had assigned them each an "outdoor observation journal" which I also use in the online writing class I teach (the next one starts Oct 31 if you're interested check it out!) But the next project I'm working with students on was inspired by the documentary movie Born Into Brothels where a handful of kids born into poverty (children of sx workers specifically) in Calcutta India's red light district were given cameras and it allowed them to express themselves in ways they weren't able to in words. I was touched by the updates I read of Avijit Halder the one child who made his way to America, first attending school in Utah and then being accepted into the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He seems wise beyond his years. At any rate the people involved in the production of Born Into Brothels have an awesome nonprofit called Kids with Cameras which inspired my idea to have these middle school students capture a day in their life, through the camera lens.

In other news:

I found out this week that I won 1st place (Gold) in the International Regional Magazine Association (IRMA) Awards for my article Dead Zone in Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine! My editors at the magazine submitted it, not me, and I didn't even know about it until I found out I won! It made my week!

I went to see The Cove documentary at the Bozeman Film Festival (which is really just a movie shown at a theatre...). I really enjoyed it, especially since I'd written about it for Animal Planet, but it was not quite as exciting as I had hoped for, given the hype. What impressed me, though, is how much the film has made a difference in raising awareness of the issues, in helping the Japanese/Taiji locals become aware of the issue of mercury contamination, and in - so far - preventing the mass slaughter of the dolphins this year.

Elissa is an amazing cook and I'm trying out many of the recipes she made on my own. So far so good, though I'm still learning on some of the things, like how long it takes to actually caramelize onions! I am enjoying trying the recipes out on (my boyfriend) Doug and the kids. She follows the Paleo Diet which is high in meat, veggies, and fruits and low in sugar, dairy, and any grains other than whole grains. I'm trying to follow along with it sort of now that I'm back home. The Mark's Daily Apple has some info too.

Yellowstone National Park!

Photos from Wendee & Elissa's Most Excellent Adventure! We went to Chico Hot Springs in Pray, Montana and Yellowstone's north side. Highlights include soaking in the hot springs in 20 degree weather... closing the saloon down at 2am, and in the park seeing two wolf packs and hearing them howl!! Plus we saw bison, elk, bighorn sheep, a fox, and blacktail deer. Not bad! No bears or moose though! The only moose I saw was dead on top of someone's car driving through Bozeman. Oh and we saw some "homeo sapens"! :) (Inside joke! Well not anymore! LOL)

Emigrant Peak near Pray, Montana. This is where Elissa and Ben got married!

Another shot of Emigrant Peak. This is just around the corner from Chico Hot Springs Resort where we stayed last night. We soaked in the hot springs, had dinner, and then went out to the "saloon" and listened to the Clumsy Lovers play, and then we stayed until they closed at 2am!

The caboose we stayed in at Chico Hot Springs - it was so cool!!

Inside the caboose. It was a gorgeous room!

Hanging at the saloon at Chico Hot Springs.

We met some great people after dinner at the Chico Hot Springs dining roon.
Elissa and I on our most excellent adventure!
This arch gateway represents the original entrance to America's very first national park (Yellowstone, obviously)! Now most people use the east and west entrance and fewer visitors come to the northside but the Lamar Valley is a fantastic place to view wildlife. :)

Bighorn sheep alongside the road, just before entering Yellowstone National Park from the North entrance.

Icicles.

This is the walkway at Mammoth Hot Springs. There were several hot springs here which you can see by the rising steam!

A view along the Mammoth Hot Springs trail/walkway

A closeup of the terracing at Minerva terraces - "living sculptures" formed by the hydrothermal activity.

A bighorn sheep on the mountainside. Hard to see in the pic this size, click to see it larger!

Elissa and me with a moose hat on! This was the spot where we saw the Druid Wolf pack (near Slough Creek) but they were too far away to get a photo of. While here we met some folks who follow the wolves around and love to observe them using scopes. They're the ones who knew what wolf pack it was. One had a radio collar on. We even heard and saw them howl!! THAT was sooo amazing!!

A baby bison amidst a herd.

Bison saying hi!

An old timey bus at Mammoth Hot Springs. I think they use these for tours.

The Yellowstone River.

Devil's Slide and the Yellowstone River

Elissa spotted a second wolf pack on the roadside in the Lamar Valley near Blacktail Deer Plateau. There are 3 wolves here, two black ones in the foreground and a third grey one coming down the hill that I didn't even see until I upped the contrast in Photoshop!

There are two wolves here, a black one and one barely visible behind it that it's grey -you can barely see its ears and head just to the right of the other one.

Here's another shot of the three wolves walking across the valley. It's not as zoomed in as the other pic above but if you click on it you can see it larger!

A big daddy-o! We heard him make his bugle call. He was in the town of Mammoth Hot Springs just inside the park entrance.

A baby elk in Mammoth Hot Springs (a little community just inside the park). The elk often go there and hang out and eat grass!

cloistered away in Bozeman

A view of the Montana mountains - shot using my Blackberry.
Copyright (c) 2009 Wendee Holtcamp

Time is flying by, but fortunately I've made some good progress on my book! I've edited the first four chapters, and gotten a substantial amount of the next one written - Land of the Lost - which is about creationism. In it I talk about my visit to the Creation Evidence Museum which I visited in late October 2008 - See my old blog post from then, Land of the Lost.

I have literally been in my yummy black fleece North Face sweatpants and t-shirts, no makeup, for the past week. I write in different corners of the house... downstairs I have a gas fireplace that is toasty warm and a couch, a round table with comfy stools, an office with a desk, and then my bed (where I'm at now). I write upstairs on the couch watching the snow fall as I did today... it was really coming down today! We got like 8 inches of snow!! The other day it snowed, then that all melted and it was sunny but cool. Then it snowed again starting last night through today. It's so pretty! I haven't really been out in it though.

The other day, I walked to the Bozeman Community Food Co-op which is 4 blocks from Elissa's house - we sooo need one of these in my community! I seriously have thought about opening one... then again I have way too many ideas for my own good sometimes! Anyway, I worked a bit upstairs at their coffee shop which has wifi. The view of the mountains is awesome - see the picture below. I took Elissa to the doc, and saw another beautiful view, the pic above is from the doc's office window. All these are just from my Blackberry. I need to upload some of my pics from my better camera but haven't yet. Last night they had some friends over to watch the Steelers-Chargers football game and I helped Elissa make a Thai food feast!

Other than writing, the only plans we have so far are to go see The Cove - a documentary about the dolphin slaughter in Japan - on Thursday at the Bozeman Film Festival - which is really just alternative movies playing at a local theater... and then we're talking about taking a couple days the following week to go to Chico Hot Springs, Yellowstone, and staying in Cooke City near the northeast park entrance. It's apparently a great time of year to see wildlife because the snows will have started bringing them into the valleys, and they're trying to fatten up in prep for the long winter. I will also probably let Elissa take me up in her Cessna and fly me over Yellowstone some other day too. She's been a pilot for a while. Here are a couple more pics. Now I'm back to writing!

The view out the back porch today with all the snow that has come down! It will probably melt soon though.

A view of the mountains from the upstairs coffee shop at the Bozeman Community Food Co-op.

First days in Bozeman

A mountain goat on Highline Trail in Glacier National Park, Montana
Copyright (c) 2007 Wendee Holtcamp

It's 1130 at night and I'm going to try to give a quick update without saying too much because I need a good night's sleep, and want to get up relatively early to write write write some more! I'm here in Bozeman, Montana at my dear friend Elissa's for the next 2 and a half weeks, cloistering myself away from the daily responsibilities of life to write a couple chapters of my book - God help me! Just wanted to share a few quick experiences so far, as I love my adventures, and I love sharing them! This is my second trip to Bozeman. The first time Matt and I were on a drive back from Alaska, moving to Texas. That was 1997. We stayed in a hotel and visited Elissa only briefly before stopping by Yellowstone and then to our new home. This time I'm staying in the downstairs of Elissa and her husband Ben's awesome home in the massive college town, population... 30,000. She think it's getting too big....

I have the whole downstairs to myself, with a bedroom, bathroom, office, kitchen and living room. Upstairs is their regular home, and today I got to use the awesome jacuzzi tub in her recently remodeled bathroom! There's wifi here, so I have everything I need to work, write, focus. As I mentioned before, she and Ben run a nursery in town so normally she'd be at work but she has had some shoulder pain and has been staying home. I've spent the last day and a half going over the chapters I've written thus far, outlining and determing what I've alreday said, and what I still need to say. I've just started outlining some of what will go in the new chapters. In the best of all worlds I'd get sooo much writing done I'll be just thrilled. Some moments I think I can do it, and other moments I get frustrated at how long the overview/review is taking me.

Elissa is an amazing cook! She follows something called the Paleo Diet which includes a lot of meat and veggies, some fruit but very little dairy, no grains or potatoes, and no sugar. I decided to try to follow while here. Instead of mass produced meat she eats a lot of game meat (she has a whole bison in her freezer!) or naturally grown organic meats (Speaking of mass produced meats, we watched the documentary Food, Inc tonight which I'll talk more about later...). Elissa has a huge garden so a lot of veggies and herbs are grown right in her backyard and the others she buys at the co-op down the street and elsewhere. And guess what? Yesterday I awoke to SNOW!! We had to rush to cover up her herbs and veggies because she hadn't yet harvested them yet. Today, she was cutting up all the herbs and plans to make various pestos - traditional pesto, tarragon pesto, mint-almond pesto, etc.

Wow! I'm so impressed with everything she does!! And the food - which I will provide photos of soon - is out of this world! So flavorful and delicious!! Yesterday for dinner we had blackened salmon with cucumber-mint sauce - and broccoli and salad. Today for dinner we had chicken breast (organic free-range) with chile sauce in roasted yellow peppers, with a bed of cabbage and sliced nectarines on the side.

Anyway I wanted to share a few pics I took on my blackberry. They're nothing special but just to give an idea... more will come soon!

You know a town is cool when you're greeted by a T.Rex sculpture at the airport!

And then, a sculpture of a bear... which says "Guardian spirit." I like to say the bear's my totem because when I did a guided visualization to determine my guardian spirit, child spirit and something else the bear came to me. And I see a bear in just about every national park I've been to.

Me & Elissa - lifelong friends! We lived next door in 7th grade in Beaverton Oregon.

Elisa's yard is xeriscaping at its best - no grass!

The "menu" from the previous week on the wall. Little did I know I've come to my own private resort I think! It reads: Bison roast with hot pepper sauce and salad. Skinless goyozas (a meatball) with carrots, cukes, lettuce. Tilapia wrapped with herb pesto, and beets.

She makes herb-infused olive oil and infused vodkas.

A snapshot of the snow covering the garden. It melted today but I'm sure to see more while I'm here! It's been pretty chilly.

Camping & tubing the San Marcos River

Sam fishing at Onion Creek in McKinney Falls State Park where we camped this past weekend. We fished a bit on Sunday morning and he caught one largemouth bass and let it go. It was about a foot long. Sam had hoped to do more fishing and to fish in a clear stream like the San Marcos (where we tubed the day before) but I didn't realize Onion Creek wasn't a clear stream like the San Marcos, Comal etc. Next time!

This past weekend I took Sam, his friend Brent, and Doug to the Texas Hill Country to camp and to tube down the San Marcos River. I hadn't gone tubing since I was in high school which was waaaay too many years ago. I had only tubed down the Guadalupe and Comal Rivers, both of which are nearby so this was a nice new adventure. There has been a major drought in the area, so the water level is low, and the flow was slow, but a big surprise awaited us at the end of the 40 minute or so float... a set of 3 created rapids, and drops, which were sooo much fun! You could go as many times as you wanted. When we got to the end, we went down the rapids with and without tubes several times, and then after a while, we took the water taxi back to the beginning where we floated one more time down. It was absolutely perfect tubing weather - nice and hot - which is good because the water is chilly especially at first! It's certainly not near as cold as, say, California's Merced River in Yosemite or any glacial fed lake so I told Sam to buck up and jump in! Once you're in it felt great.

After we floated down twice, we dried off and went to eat at the San Marcos River Grill & Pub, which sits on the river right overlooking the rapids. I'd smelled the burgers while tubing on the rapids and it made me hungry for burgers!! We sat down in the open bar area overlooking the river and the service was sooooo slow, and I had to basically get everything myself (literally the bartender was the only waitstaff for about 25 people)... BUT the food was great! Then we headed back to the park and crashed. Oh Sam made a small campfire and Brent & Sam made S'mores but I wasn't even hungry anymore. In the morn we went fishing a bit and then headed home. The kids had a great time tubing!! It was to celebrate Sam's 13th birthday which was a couple weeks ago.

Tomorrow I leave for Bozeman, Montana - I can't wait! Oh, we used a waterproof camera to take some tubing pics and I'm going to pick it up later from the photo place so hopefully I'll upload a couple of them too. Your good thoughts and prayers are much appreciated for me while I travel and WRITE my book the next weeks!

A view of the falls at the park.
Sam hooked a turtle, and Doug removed the hook and we let it go!

Sam Brent & Doug fishing Onion Creek
Sam fishing on the bank of Onion Creek Sunday morn, near some large bald cypress trees.
Another view of the falls on Onion Creek.
Sam and his daddy at his 13th birthday party last weekend.
The boys celebrate winning the fort building contest! That's Sam on the far left - you can barely see his face but it's proof he does smile in real life! (he almost never smiles for photos!)

new adventures ahead!

Logan Pass in Glacier National Park, Montana
Copyright (c) 2007 Wendee Holtcamp

A quick update just so everyone knows I haven't fallen off the face of the planet! We had to reschedule the camping and tubing trip from a couple weekends ago to this coming weekend due to rain... the Texas Hill Country desperately needs rains to replenish its aquifers and nourish its wildlife and so forth but we were a bit sad... the weather was so warm back then and now it's started to cool down. Normally you'd think, ok, that is a good thing for camping right? But the thing is... and this is a minor thing, really, but the San Marcos River emerges from a spring and stays right around 72 degrees, which is a bit chilly. It's perfect when it's blazing hot out but when it's 80 or 85 as it will be this coming weekend... well that may be a bit cold on the toesies (and behinds). But we will have fun anyway! Sam is bringing a friend of his and Doug is coming too. We plan to do the same basic thing I mentioned before- camp at McKinney Falls State Park and tube down the San Marcos River. Yea!

Hope I can upload a couple pics afterwards but the reality is I may not be able to for a while, as I leave on TUESDAY for yet another trip! And yes, as you can imagine I am totally inundated, overwhelmed, swamped, and basically going crazy. I have two bags packed for different trips, trying to back up my computer and print things I'll need for the plane trip, taxi the kids here and there (school, soccer practice, cross country practice etc) me to the gym, and write and research as many blog posts as I can SO that I can focus on one thing during the next 3 weeks while I'm away... writing a couple chapters in my book!!! Aye yi yi.

So where am I going you ask? Well, I have researched secluded getaways and friends' cabins for a couple years and after talking about it for oh months, years, I'm doing it! I decided to go stay with my friend Elissa in Bozeman Montana who is graciously opening her home to me to stay there! She has a basement (I think) that is like a self contained apartment so I'll stay there, work work work while she's at work (she and her husband own Sweetpea's Nursery) and we'll get to visit together in the evenings, and take a couple little excursions! Mostly I plan to write day and night! We plan to try to get to either Yellowstone National Park which is only an hour and a half away from her place (in Wyoming) or Glacier National Park which is 5 or 6 hours west, in Montana.

I've been to Yellowstone twice and absolutely love it! I love the geysers and grand prismatic pool and the bison and bears... The last time I went was a decade ago with the kids and Matt on our way back from our insanely long drive to Alaska and back (we got to visit Elissa then too) and the other time when I was 14 years old and moving between Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis, Minnesota. I went to Glacier a couple years ago with my dad, and if you're a faithful Bohemian Adventures reader, you may remember my blog post from then!

I am writing a feature about pikas, and hope to visit with a biologist working on them at Yellowstone but that may not be possible... again you may remember Dad and I went pika-spotting in Glacier a couple years back (pics are at the blog post in previous link) with grad student Lucas Moyer-Horner and I will be writing up that experience in this article. Pikas are so cute! They are also threatened by global warming, and there's a petition into the US Fish & Wildlife Service to list them as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

I'll end this now, and hope to update a wee bit from Montana! Godspeed!

hurricane anniversary, love, and disrespect

Sunrise at Richland Creek Wildlife Management Area, Texas
Copyright (c) 2007 Wendee Holtcamp

Sometimes a majority simply means that all the fools are on the same side.
--Claude McDonald

Not sure what I'm going to talk about but it's been 10 days so I owe you faithful readers something right? This one is for Melanie! :)

One year ago today (ie Sep 13th, though technically being after midnight it's now Sep 14, but we'll pretend it's still the 13th) - Hurricane Ike hit (see my Sep 2008 blogs for pics!)! It wasn't a scary storm where I sat in my nice brick house. But in my neighborhood and all around Houston it wreaked havoc! Particularly where I live there are lots of trees (though they're disappearing daily for subdivisions) and many of the isolated ones fell on people's roofs! I was very lucky that I had no damage other than a single fence thingie (what are they called?!).

We had no electricity for someting like 11 days!! Again I was very lucky and blessed because my friend across the street (a majot street) had it from day 1! I don't know why she was so lucky, but the vast majority of Houstonians did not have any for days and weeks. I think she was on the grid with a hospital. Anyway, so I've lived iwthout electricty in my childhood so it was no big deal! And I had an absolute blast hanging out with friends and having a much more laid back lifestyle for a few days. It was a hurrication!

My son's birthday happened just after the hurricane, so he didn't even get a party... this year something happened again! Well his birthday hasn't happened YET but we had planned to go camping and tubing this past weekend but had to reschedule due to rain. Some may like it but camping in the rain is NO FUN for me, in a tent... yuk. Been there done that, no thanks. Plus tubing is also not so fun in the rain! So let's hope and pray that in a couple weekends from now, it will be sunny and warm!!

I was really irritated at SC Rep Joe Wilson screaming "you lie" at President Obama in the middle of his speech. What complete disrespect! I could go on, but I won't. And I was also very frustrated that people were so up in arms about Obama talking to schoolkids. The hypocrisy with which the very same people oppose the same actions they didn't think twice about with "W" astounds me. It's extremely frustrating that a man who ran without any insults and mud-slinging at McCain or Clinton (he attacked their policies but was not disrespectful or dishonest) - and he often says he wants people to know they can disagree without being disagreeable - gets the exact opposite treatment by certain people! You can disagree with his policies without being disrespectful...

Other than that, I'll share a few bits of wisdom that have come my way the last week or so. I get this daily wisdom email thingie and today's was, in part:

"He believed that the love of his life, if he ever found the Right One, would fill all the gaps of his own personality. She dreamed that her perfect match would always respond gently, never willfully. After the honeymoon phase they naturally began to find imperfections and disappointments. Both wondered if they had chosen the Wrong One. But in a sense, there is no Right One for anyone. In another sense, there may be millions of Right Ones."

Which is interesting because D&I just started this class on communicating in relationship based on Harville Hendrix's amazing book Getting the Love You Want. It's technically for married couples, and I had done a workshop on it with my ex, and honestly it was one of the few things that truly had a big positive impact on our learning to communicate better so since I do not ever ever ever want to get divorced again, so I want to make darn sure that I can resolve deep and painful and complex issues satisfactorily and peacefully... so I am excited about the class!!!

And what we learned tonight (of course it's not new to me) was basically the same thing as I got in the email above. I believe that to truly love someone is not a feeling we have in ourselves, but an action we show to others. And in showing love to another person, we reflect the selfless love that Jesus taught and we became his hands and feet in the world to one another.

thankful!

Camping on our trek through eastern Nepal, very close to the site where we spotted endangered red pandas. We stayed here for a couple days because our fearless leader, Brian (Exec Director of Red Panda Network) became sick!
Copyright (c) 2007 Wendee Holtcamp

I wanted to post again since days are passing... lately I've been feeling very grateful, and have felt joyful again as well. It's not any one thing in particular, but just a spirit that seems to have come over me. One one level, I've always felt grateful, and have kept a gratitude journal on and off for years. But this feeling is different. I will see something very simple, like the t-shirts hanging in my closet and think, I am so glad that I have these clothes. I will make dinner for my kids and think, I am so blessed to have this opportunity to feed and nourish these beautiful, wonderful kids! I will wash dishes and think, I love a clean kitchen! Maybe that sounds silly, but it's true. I'm not sure where it came from, but it's yet one more thing to be thankful for - my thankful spirit right now! Here are some of things I'm very grateful for right now, in no particular order.

• Christy Nockels' and TobyMac's new songs, No Not One, and City on a Hill.
  
• KSBJ Christian radio and specifically the way they're apolitical and loving to all
  
• My Animal Planet blog gig - come visit!
  
• I am truly enjoying cooking more again!
  
• I love and have always loved food, and the diversity of flavors!
  
• I am loving this mango sherbert I bought recently...
  
• I am excited that I have started running again!
  
• I love the cooler weather that we're starting to see
  
• Doug and I are getting along beautifully and are stepping gradually back together in love
  
• I am so grateful for my two amazing children
  
• My good health
  
• I love hot water!
  
• I sooo enjoyed my trip to the Pacific NW and the friends & family I reconnected with
  
• I love that I can sleep in (on days I don't take kids to school that is)
  
• I love that I can work whenever I want, day or night... and take breaks whenever, too
  
• I love my life!
  
• I have a truly awesome career and love it!
  
• I am grateful for our free country and the ability to dissent and disagree
  
• I am so grateful for our change in political leadership, and the positive changes that are occuring; slow and steady turns the ship...
  
• I had an awesome Saturday hanging out with my best friend Daline!
  
• I am grateful for all the diversity of wonderful friends that I have!
  
• I love how Facebook allows me to connect briefly here and there with so many more people than I ever could otherwise
  
• I'm so happy for my dad to have found true love!
  
• I am thankful that Jesus was who he was. The way he lived, the things he said and did, and the selfless love embodied in his life blows my mind.
  
• I'm sure there are zillions of other things but these came to mind!
  

In other news... I'm taking Sam and a friend of his camping and tubing the San Marcos River for his 13th birthday! Another bohemian adventure!! The cool thing is that I haven't been tubing since I was in high school, which is longer ago than I care to admit... I used to love it though! The original idea was just to go camping and fishing but it evolved.... We're staying at McKinney Falls State Park, just outside of Austin. It's one that I haven't been to yet but it looks pretty cool. There's a neat video of the park here.

I honestly can't remember if I've ever tubed the San Marcos. I am pretty sure my previous expeditions were on the Guadalupe. Due to a drought here, the water level is better in the spring-fed San Marcos and also the Comal compared to the Guadalupe right now. All three rivers are in close proximity to one another. Sam has been to the San Marcos River with me before when I was researching this story, Lives of a River, for Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine, published in July 2004. He helped me and some biologists seine the river for fish and aquatic invertebrates and remembers it quite clearly. He's mentioned in the article, too! I leave you with a few relatively recent photos...
When I went to Dallas this summer with the kids, I visited a friend of mine who I went to high school with, Nikki. She is 7 months pregnant here with her second child which is due any day! She looks great doesn't she? My daughter is holding Nikki's daughter Abby. Sam never smiles for photos - he really is a happy kid!
A photo Savannah shot of me at Nikki's. I like this shot!
A photo I took outside my house of cool cloud formations.
Another shot of the weird and cool clouds.
Daline and I when she came to visit the other day! Check out her blog, Pixie Dust World Tour, and I especially encourage you to listen to the song "Here and Now" she has linked from the video at the top of the blog, which will blow you away - her voice and the song is truly beautiful. She's an inspiration! You can listen to her songs from the thingie below - click on the "songs" tab and then - my favorite "Here and Now."