Sophie Goes Camping

It wasn't her first trip to the Rocky Mountains, but this time she roughed it in a tent with bears roaming nearby. Okay, there weren't any bears, but we did see a rattlesnake, and our friend Eric swears he saw a moose. We pitched tent a little south of Breckenridge--or maybe it was west, frankly, I have no idea--but as soon as we got there, Carl discovered that his hiking boots has disintegrated from disuse. Literally, the soles fell off. He found a fishing hook in the dirt around our campfire, a bit of string from his camping kit, and knit the soles of his boots back onto the leather. We feel he deserves a badge, so if any of you former Eagle Scouts have a "knows how to sew boots back together" badge, send it our way.

This backpack looks cool but hurts like heck!

At Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs and where we saw the rattlesnake being prodded with a stick by a German tourist. Or maybe he was Swedish. Frankly, I have no idea.

Poor Casey and Eric had to do all the heavy lifting, while Sophie sat around doing this:

More Wheaton Pictures

The Wardrobe

Sophie and I are in Wheaton, Illinois, a picturesque suburb of Chicago, visiting my sister and her family in their new home. One of the attractions of Wheaton is the Wade Center, a museum and library devoted to the works of C.S. Lewis and his contemporaries. The main attraction of this attraction is that it houses a Wardrobe, which inspired THE Wardrobe in The Lion and the Witch and the, well, you know. They've hung fur coats inside, but when we pushed through these, there was no magical winter to be found. I suspect once Sophie is old enough to read the books and we return, that will all change.

Below Sophie searches through one of the drawers in C.S. Lewis's writing desk, looking for a lost manuscript of course.

Here she is hiding underneath the desk upon which Tolkein wrote The Lord of the Rings.

Don't say you weren't warned:

Sophie at the Ritz

Sophie and I spent the past week in Sarasota, Florida, courtesy of Florida Studio Theatre. The theatre brought me down for a play reading and were gracious enough to make it possible for baby to come along as well. We had the weekend off and spent it poolside at the Ritz Carleton, which was a short walk from artist housing. Sophie loved being in the pool, although I had to keep a firm grasp on her, as she kept trying to swim away--an action that did not help to assuage my baby drowning phobia.

The adorable watermelon bathing suit is courtesy of Donno, of course, and I think it's pretty much to die for cute. I used to ponder the existence of God, the nature of art, as well as read a fair bit, but now, I admit, I live for swoon-inducing, adorable baby girl clothes. Yes, it's come to that.

First, The Play

My pictures from New York aren't the best, but at least my dear readers will get a small sense of our amazing trip.

crooked opened Off-Broadway at the Women's Project on April 20. I had a lot of visitors over the weekend: Carl brought Sophie up for her birthday (April 19), my sister, Martha, and brother-in-law joined us for the festivities, and friends Shala and Darrell flew in from Hays. So many of my friends in New York came to see the play (some for the third time), and I felt completely supported, encouraged and loved. Thank you everybody for helping to make my Off-Broadway debut so memorable!

With Shala and Darrell outside the theatre.

My good friend Korey came up from Washington D.C. to see the show and to meet Sophie.

And while the show of support from my friends and family truly made the weekend, this review didn't hurt either:

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/theater/reviews/21croo.html

One Wedding, One reunion, Four cousins

We spent the past two weeks in Georgia and North Carolina for my brother Jimmy's wedding and Carl's 20th (that's right, 20th) high school reunion. I did not, however, take a single picture from either the reunion or wedding. I don't mind posing my baby in different outfits on a lazy Monday morning, but when it comes to actual events, I don't like to bother with a camera; and so dear readers, you'll have to wait for a glimpse of Jimmy's gorgeous bride, Sarah, (not to mention the NC relatives) until I get some pictures from more dedicated photographers. Suffice it to say that Sarah is a very sweet, natural blonde from Athens, Georgia who loves Johnny Cash, Robert Penn Warren, beer in a bottle and couldn't look better in a bathing suit--your basic Southern male fantasy, minus the tacky. Lucky Jimmy.


We did get a shot, however, of Sophie meeting perhaps my favorite person in the entire world: my grandfather, Paul Charles Vancura, champion ping-pong player, dedicated swimmer of laps, singer of ballads from 1944, husband to the late Mary Evelyn Vancura for over fifty years, handyman/craftsman, a man who can basically fix anything with any available materials; in short, an all around good for nothing Bohunk from Prague.

And I can never resist a shot of Sophie with her cousins. Anna Catherine, below, served as flower girl for the wedding despite coming down with a yucky G.I. virus and throwing up all over her Dad at the rehearsal dinner.

Here she is with the other McGraws: James and Lulu. Lulu is one month younger than Sophie but a size bigger, so we came home with a suitcase full of hand-me-down clothes. Lulu's mother is a consummate shopper of both antiques and baby clothes.


We also got to share a meal with some very interesting friends who recently moved to Athens. Wayne Coppins is a young man we've befriended over the years at the annual Vinson New Year's Eve Party. We never saw Wayne outside of this one event, as he was studying at Cambridge and we were living D.C., but I met up with with him and his Norwegian bride, Ingie, last year in London and was able to share the premiere of crooked with them. Wayne is now an assistant professor of religion at the University of Georgia, while Ingie turns her dissertation on Norwegian missionaries in South Africa into a book. Here's to hoping Ingie grows to love Athens as much as I do--I have a feeling it's going to take her Nordic blood a little time to get used to the hot humidity!


And yes, that's Sophie, not a baby Coppins!

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut falls; finches wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough,
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.


Yesterday Sophie and I visited Heartland Farms, an intentional ecumenical Christian community situated about an hour South of Hays, where a handful of Dominican Sisters and Mennonite families live, pray and eat together. Their lifestyle is a template for simple, holistic living: a commitment to small-scale sustainable, organic agriculture; holistic health; alternative energy; community; justice and non-violence. Our afternoon visit was a good reminder of how the natural world illuminates the spiritual, and how "the tyranny of things" (a phrase I borrow from my good friend Katie) often keeps us from community with others.

Here Sister Ginger holds Sophie in front of the flower garden. The Sisters were overjoyed to have a baby visit and their great delight gave me great joy in turn.

Here we are among the alpacas. The community uses their wool to make yarn. In the background, you can see three-year-old Michael in his baby blue galoshes. Michael introduced us to Heartland along with his mother, my good friend Heather, who is one of the gems I've discovered out here in the middle of nowhere. She's a Pacific Northwest, Quaker transplant to Kansas who has the most fantastic legs and wisdom to match.

At the center of a meditation labyrinth.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

Rocky Mountain Weekend

Sophie and I left the high plains this week-end and headed West towards the peaks and valleys of the Rocky Mountains. We stayed at my friend's cabin, tucked away on a mountainside near Nederland, Colorado, where we birdwatched on the deck, ate Colorado peaches, and sojourned to the Rocky Mountain National Park.

I should say, after all the complaining about Sophie's behavior during month two, that she has transformed into a champion of babies: smiling, cooing, kicking, and sleeping through the night wherever we lay her down. She was a dream on the trip, allowing her mommy to have a good time with her friends!

As we crossed the tree-line and hit the tundra, Sophie didn't seem to mind the extreme change in elevation too much. Her mommy, however, got cold feet and didn't carry her all the way to the top but remained at a mere 11,800 feet instead.



With my good friend, Casey Rackaway, who navigated the mountain terrain like a champion driver and who has become Sophie's favorite Auntie in Hays.

And what week-end retreat would be complete without loads of good food and stellar company? We ate, told life stories, ate, cried, took walks, and ate some more. Pictured here are Janet Holden, our hostess extraordinaire, Katie Morris-Cline who took all of the photographs featured above, and Casey.

In short, although the high plains possess their own stark beauty in the yawning skies and bright sunflower fields, it's very nice to know that THIS is just around the corner.

Okay, down a rather long corridor called I-70.