Our kids are getting ready for Christmas break. They hauled a Christmas Tree down off of the hill on the bike trailers (one tied behind the other). We received snow and ice and they’ve even had the chance to go sledding. We’ve been keeping the wood stove warm, and the inside activities are keeping them pretty busy too. Kidical Mass – a Pizza Get Together – and a ride around town to look at the Christmas Lights and have some fun with other families. Dare is missing from this photo, but check him out at: our Photo Gallery.

Getting around Eugene on bikes is very nice. We’ve had a very colorful Fall and the rain has come back but we are still getting more dry days than wet ones.

Well we’ve gone and done it. We have officially sold our mini van and do not have a motorized vehicle of any kind. We’ve not been using it much at all since we moved to Eugene last June. It has been 2+ weeks since we’ve taken the money and pedaled. We got $1500 our of it. We don’t even look at the gas prices any more.

We already noticed a bit of a change in our habits. We occasionally used the van before to handle the grocery runs or the trip to the building supply, but now all our trips are by bike. I need wood for a fence upgrade now and I have to figure out how to get $300 worth of fence boards and posts (and a bag or two of concrete) home from Jerry’s. It is a 4.5 mile trip home, but the hard part is not pulling it but finding a trailer that will haul it smartly. I’ll keep you updated as we figure out all the ins and out of our car free enlightenment.

I figure if we can do it as a family of 6 then there is no excuse for you to go car free too. You’ll have to get serious about making a change. I’ll keep writing to document how we do it here in Oregon.

Here is a link to a article from the Register Guard. The title is Look Ma, no gas!

I found out that I was pregnant, for the third time, by peeing on the stick in the second week of February, 2005. It was a crazy time for us. We were relocating from Montana to “somewhere” in the East. At this point though, we were staying with Paul’s parents. It was as comfortable as a set up can get with our family of four sharing Pop’s and Mombo’s home. O.K. back to the pregnancy. I had bad all day sickness that lasted 6-8 weeks. This was very different than the first two pregnancies. My belly also grew faster this time around than the previous two. I felt baby movement sooner; little did I know though that this movement was two babies jockeying for space rather that the intentional baby stretching thing.

At a day or so before or after Torrent’s birthday, February 24, I had a dream. My dream was this: It was a fresh, sunny, warm morning. The sun really filling the back yard. There were four children in my view. Rainy and Torrent were running in slow motion. Torrent ran around the yard zig-zagging with his arms straight out from his sides and crossed my path flapping his arms, laughing and turning his head to look at me. Rainy was in the middle of the yard spinning around and around and calling Torrent’s name. The sounds and voices in that dream were faint, far away, but very clear. Kind of like listening to children on the play ground. In front of me, the path that Torrent had crossed earlier, approximately six feet away there were two young toddler aged children, a boy and girl. Oh, they sat there so nicely in the brightest sun light I had ever witnessed. As if they were almost washed out, overexposed, by the light. These children looked happy as their feet dangled a bit while they sat on the back porch step. They looked at me as if they knew me and I looked at them with comfort but wanting to know them better. It looked as if they were siblings but the sun light that engulfed them was so intense it was hard to tell. I looked closer and saw that they were holding hands. They began to giggle and that’s when I noticed the one “twin”, the girl had Down Syndrome. The vision of these two children lingered in the light and then I woke up slowly and relaxed.

I never told anyone, not even Paul, about this dream that I had during my pregnancy. I was afraid to. There are no excuses or reasons why I kept it to myself… I was just afraid to think about what I had seen. I was afraid to give it energy. I was afraid to let God know that I was thinking about the “what if’s”, maybe he would test me. I was afraid to give the universe my dream, my thoughts about my dream, because it just might give it back to me. Again, I was afraid, afraid of the unknown. I was not ready.

At week 30, I had an ultrasound. My midwife suggested it, to clear up any uncertainty as to where the placenta was attached to the uterus, because I had a c-section years before with Rainy. It was during this ultrasound that we found out that I was carrying twins. At week 41, these babies were born; a boy and a girl. It was the next day that we knew the girl twin, Sanguine Sky, had Down Syndrome. NOW, I was ready! And it was two weeks later that her official DNA test came back saying that Sanguine had DS.

Ooooh yes, my dream… It was then that I told Paul of my beautiful, most powerful dream. The one that I was so afraid to think about, let alone talk out loud about for 40 weeks.

I am happy, beyond words, that my dream came true.