Grateful today:

hot tea and candlelight.

a supportive team.

living near cousins.

a night building bookshelves.

this song.

this one comes tomorrow.

.family vaca.

We are in full-on, old-fashioned family vacation mode in Coronado, California,

where the four Eaton siblings grew up.

My extended family is intergenerational, and I love that:

my mother and her brother were born a decade after their older sisters.

So the oldest cousins were in middle and high school when I was born,

as Allie and I and Chuckie and PJ were when their babies were born,

and now there are 20-somethings and teenagers to toss around the new babies

(ranging in age from 4-11)

just like their parents did with us.

It's the best.

We are eating breakfast and dinner together,

going to the pool, the beach, the zoo,

making s'mores and tickling and catching outdoor concerts in the park our parents grew up going to.

Family is a crazy blessing.

So thankful my sister drove down from LA to join the fun. 

.simple and good.

My body and heart have been telling me they need some rest.

There has been a lot of taking a book on the porch swing.

Sitting outside with tea and a blanket through twilight.

Walking to the produce stand and cooking with whatever I find.

Sewing through quiet afternoons, piecing patterns together.

Sundays with cousins watching Little League games.
Summer garden planning.

Spontaneous evenings with easy friends, laughter, ice cream, a Redbox.

Lots of walks. Lots of long, open mornings. Lots of candles lit.

Taking it slow.

Ebenezer.

One of my biggest factors in deciding to move to Oregon was to be near my cousin Andy and his family. Andy was in middle school when I was born. He took me fishing when I was five and when I was ten brought two cars full of his friends to stay at our house on a road trip. When I was twelve he married one of the coolest women I have ever met. And a few years after that, he and Jodi started going to church regularly and raising their kids to love and serve Jesus. But we've never lived in the same state or except for a couple of years even the same coast. We've never seen each other more than about once every year on average, and it's been less since he got married.

When I came out here for my interview at Fox in 2010, I stayed with them. I loved being able to talk on an adult level with my cousin. I loved that we could connect about our faith, and I loved seeing his and Jodi's dynamic as a married couple and parents. I wanted to get to know my cousin, a part of my family, on a more than occasional-family-reunion and Christmas-day-phone-calls basis. And that desire- that hope, really, because I didn't know for sure if it would happen like that even if I was out here- was truly a deciding factor for me in choosing this school, and this side of the country.

As I've written on here before, my relationship with them is beyond anything I could have hoped. I see them every week, I am permanently invited to sleep or eat over. I babysit and read stories and pick up from practice. Jodi is really my closest girlfriend in the state, and more of a joy and an encouragement to me than I can describe. Their home is a safe place for me, and the unconditional aspect of having family here has made such a difference in my overall adjustment.

Yesterday they had something unexpected come up and called me to babysit- I drove into the city and met Andy at the house. He had some time to kill before he was leaving to get Jack and then meet Jodi, and we hung out in their kitchen talking. I ended up sharing some stuff on my mind and heart that was weighing me down. Last night before bed I texted him, "Thanks for listening, I love you." And this morning I woke up and had this text waiting:

"I love you. You are an amazing person, you have a huge heart, you're really smart and you are a beautiful person... Jesus has a plan for you, whatever that plan is you don't have to figure it out... just let it happen, be yourself and trust Him."

Today I looked back on all the prayer that went into my decision to choose this program, on my moving out here in large part on the chance that my relationship with my extended family would become real and deep and close.
Today I read that text and thought about the fact that I was receiving the kind of encouragement and prayer that only comes from really walking-through-daily-life knowing someone- from my cousin. Who before this year I'd never spent more than a few days in a row with and knew only in a same-grandparents, same-Christmas-tradition-stories way.

And I am just in grateful wonder of how God so above-and-beyond answered prayer.

Views bookending my Saturday.

Morning walk with a friend.

Bedtime with cousins.

I love:

Instrumental Christmas music.

Christmas lights.

Professors who care about me as a person.

My cohort all laughing together (even when it's at me...wow what a new group dynamic for me.)

The fact that I have a cuddly cohort. Thank God.

Text from Mere: "Happy Friendaversary!"- it was the annual Rez volunteer breakfast, where last year we sat and talked for two hours.

Email from Josh: "Hi friend! Just wanted to send some encouragement your way this morning..."

Watching movies with my roommate in her bed at night.

Bugging Chet on gchat.

Night runs under starry Oregon skies (I take a buddy when it's afte dark, Mom, don't worry).

My assigned upper-class mentor- she's the best.

Text from Christine Will: "I had a dream that the three of us met at a Panera somewhere in the middle of the US. There happened to be a chalkboard, so we drew friendship maps and talked about how different people have blessed and influenced our lives this year."

Telling a professor who just had her first baby, "He's so beautiful!", and her excited reply, "I know, isn't he?!"

Brilliant sunrise sky shining over a low layer of fog over the vineyards.

Little girls running to hug me when I walk in the coffee shop.

Raspberry syrup in my coffee.

Psalm 139.

Girls' night with cohort friends, and an afternoon with all of us lying talking on my bed.

Cuddling and reading Christmas stories with children.

Newberg Friends Church.

And the kids being adorable in the Christmas pageant last weekend.

Coffee dates with wise older-than-me women in my small group.

The strong women in Wendell Berry's fiction.

Justin McRoberts's version of O Little Town of Bethlehem.

An email from Lindsay ending in, "Okay, time to go feed the baby!"

Baking Christmas cookies with an almost 3 year old.

Lessons learned from baking cookies with an almost 3 year old... if you tell a toddler that eating raw cookie dough is bad for her as you sneak a bite, it does not have the effect you hoped for. And no matter how stern she's being, it is still funny when you hear your cousin-in-law scold her child for throwing a piece of the nativity scene, "You need a time out! That was NOT nice to the baby Jesus!!"

Twenty-two hour whirlwind Seattle trips.

The familiarity of beloved faces I've been looking at for years.

Two-minute mid-work-day phone calls from across the country asking for prayer.

Feeling known and so happy here... and realizing I'm not leaving anytime soon.

Feeling sad after finals because it means the semester is ending.

Oregon life, as told by my phone.

Flipping through the random moments I've captured recently made me smile last night. It is rich, this life of mine.

On a walk alone, with coffee. (This was about a month ago and it's already hard to believe I was in flipflops).

Pumpkins in the window of my favorite coffee shop/bookstore.

Kids playing together in front of church, a few minutes before the service starts.

Screen door in our kitchen, letting in fall air and light.

Cuddly cohort members, on a break during class.

Studying with my sweet roommate.

Friends who show up at the door with ice cream.

Notation on my cousins' calendar.

And catching a parenting moment in the kitchen.

Pumpkin tattoo on the bicep (announced by, "Look at my GUNS!!").

Sunny afternoon, reading and homework.



Current favorite spot for a quiet time.

Breakfast-for-dinner one night at Chels and Ryan's.

Making apple juice after church (no idea, but it was freaking cool.)

Sunset behind pine trees.

Family.

Train organized by my favorite coffee date (who sat in front because he was the ENGINEER, and proud of it.)

Seats: Kitchen chairs.

Train riders: Grandpa Glenn, me, MY MOM WHO IS VISITING!!, Memaw Peggy, Rubes (who you can barely see poking out), and Jodi. Cameraman: Andy.

What, isn't that what your family does after dinner?

Pumpkin Muffins & A Dance Party: Fall Cousin Movie LOVE!!!

We baked pumpkin-chocolate-chip muffins Friday afternoon!

And then after dinner... we had a dance party to Mumford & Sons. Because, obvs.

I know... I don't know why I get this awesome of a life, either.

We also went on a walk to an insanely-decorated-for-Halloween house down the block and read books and cuddled.

I love fall. And family.

The woman above is Jodi... she is married to my cousin Andy, and I am so unbelievably thankful for that, I cannot even tell you.

To any men considering marriage, my word of request: if you have a little 12-year-old cousin who ten years down the road is going to move away from everyone she knows and need a new best friend- please consider picking a wife who will hang out with her all the time and be the sweetest listener and best coffee-date buddy ever. It's a really, really nice cousin move. Thanks Andy!!

(Andy never really gets represented on here bc usually he's at work when I'm hanging out with the fam. Here he is. Do you think we look alike? Our moms are sisters. I love him a lot.)

Hot date.

I went to Starbucks with a cute boy yesterday.

He melted my heart with his excellent hand-holding skills, his wide grin... and his shoes that light up when he walks.

 

 

He's a cheap date, too. His only requests were a chocolate chip cookie, apple juice, and that we sit at a "really tall table" and take a picture so he could show Daddy how he climbed in it all by himself (he really did, too!).

 

 (Salted caramel mocha for this cousin!!! Heart fall.)

 

We brought Mama back some coffee and she was happy too.

 

"Hey Wyatt, want to know something?"

"Yeah!"

"I love you very much."

"I already knew that!!"

Such a blessing to be near my sweet family.