The Travel Tree

I was cleaning out my old purse last night and came across the key I thought I lost to our cabin last summer when we spent a few days off the grid in the mountains of West Virginia whitewater rafting. 

It's just a generic, old-school plastic blue key chain with the place we stayed stamped on it, and our cabin #784 written in black Sharpie, with a silver Lowe’s key attached. 

I was about to pitch it, and Chris says in passing, “We need to hang that on the Travel Tree.” 

Brilliant!

Lucky for us, I keep the Travel Tree up until at least Valentine’s Day each year. 

So, another experience was added to our family tree of adventure last night.

The Murray Travel Tree is resurrected in our master bedroom every holiday season, and it seems to mean something slightly more special with each passing year, as we continue to add our favorite memories of destinations visited.

I often leave this unique holiday tradition up and shining bright through Valentine's Day, because I love the warmth it provides our home during the dreaded season of cold and darkness that inevitably follows Christmas every winter in Southwest Ohio. 

Our “firsts”: Santa Cruz & Monterey

I grabbed an ornament on a whim from a little souvenir shop on the boardwalk in Santa Cruz during our honeymoon touring along California's Highway 1 in July of 2000. 

And, then another was added from the Monterey Bay Aquarium later that week. 

Both ornaments were special to us at the time, if only for being quaint little keepsakes from our first vacation as a married couple. 

Little did we know these two holiday relics would come to symbolize the iconic start of an extraordinary family tradition for decades to come.

Our first few years of marriage included several getaways. We marked our one-year anniversary with a vacation to Key Largo & Key West that July, and headed even further south to Cancun that October (only one month after the dreadful September 11th attack on our country).

We ventured down to Florida several times thereafter (and even lived in the Sunshine State for a while!) – Jacksonville and Amelia Island, the legendary St. Augustine, Orlando and Disney, Tampa/Clearwater/St. Pete and the like scattered throughout the Gulf Coast seashore. 

We also sailed the open seas on a few cruises down into the Bahamas during these single years of fun and adventure! 

And, I snagged up an ornament every new destination we visited.

By the time we moved back to Cincinnati in 2004, I had accumulated quite the collection of destination-based ornaments from our travels. Our first Christmas season in our new home was when the notion occurred to purchase an artificial tree for our master bedroom whose sole purpose would be to hold those precious vacation memories. 

The Travel Tree was born!

Unique family memories captured

Sometimes I’ve had to be creative through the years, like the key on the blue, plastic keychain from West Virginia this past summer. 

Or, like when we went to Cabo San Lucas for our fifth wedding anniversary and I was unsuccessful in finding an ornament, so I converted a magnet from a Cabo market into one that Christmas. 

We have sand dollars that were plucked by hand from the bottom of the ocean floor while visiting Florida's Hutchinson Island in 2016 that are used to “fill holes” throughout the Travel Tree each season. These organic round ornaments hang from shiny red gift wrap ribbon. And, the boys and their daddy often reminisce about filling our bucket with them that hot July afternoon. 

Another random favorite is from our first boating trip to Kentucky's Lake Cumberland in 2013 - a red neoprene unsinkable keychain dye-cut into a life jacket. 

Some of the boys’ favorites when they were younger were the Disney ornaments - I'm sure for all the "magical" memories the destination conjured up in their little minds from our family vacation there in 2013, as well as the other colorful ones mommy & daddy collected when we visited as DINKs a decade prior. After all, who doesn’t want to commemorate every moment of time sprinkled with pixie dust in Disney?!

They’re teenagers now, and old enough to remember the origins of many of the ornaments that adorn our Travel Tree, like the one from Hilton Head, and North Carolina's Outer Banks, and San Diego & Catalina Island, and Florida’s Treasure Island, and the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, to name just a few.

But, I loved fielding the many questions that would arise each year when they hung ornaments from destinations they had not visited with us, as the tree contains not only family vacation memories, but ornaments from our getaways before they were born, and even business travel we both experienced. 

One of my favorites is that round, red glass Las Vegas ornament. Little does our oldest know HE is our most beloved Vegas souvenir from our 2005 Sin City getaway!

Timeless treasures of past, present & future

Much has changed for our family-of-four through the years, including a big move in 2017 to our 5+ acres about 45 minutes east of Cincinnati. But, that tree has remained our constant, holding our precious memories on its branches in the timeless fashion it was destined for years back when I first purchased it.

As our boys have grown, it has morphed into something that Chris and I genuinely enjoy decorating as an “old married couple,” since those knuckleheads have far less interest these days.

And, that’s okay. 

He and I appreciate this tree’s symbolic nature, as much as we do the way it lights up our bedroom with memories every holiday season. And, one day I’m confident they will “get it” (when they're no longer testy teenagers!). Until then, we’re keeping the nostalgia and fond thoughts of great adventure close to our grown-up hearts.

Murray adventures of past years. Check.

Murray adventures of the present year. Check.

Excitement for many more Murray adventures to come in the future. Double-check!!

Every destination we’ve been blessed to partake since our West Coast honeymoon is represented somehow on this tree - those of every family vacation, boating excursions, every special getaway shared as a young couple.

Some of them are touristy and make us laugh. 

Some are beautiful and make us smile. 

Some display photographs that capture our getaways in timeless fashion, while others were created out of vacation desperation!

However each ornament may have ended up on this tree, those that adorn it are treasured family mementos that fill my mind, heart and soul with unadulterated happiness. 

And, because I needed a little extra joy a little earlier this past holiday season, the Travel Tree went up a few days after Halloween in 2020. What better way to escape the turmoil of a pandemic year than to daydream of sunnier days - both past and future.

It's now Valentine's Day 2021, and it makes me smile that our Travel Tree is still shining bright more than three months later. Although, last week I noticed its lowest few branches no longer lit. I mentioned it to my 15-year-old, and his response was candid, and admittedly quite dramatic. 

"Well, mom, probably because you put it up on Halloween!"

I replied back with a chuckle, “It was like November 2nd or 3rd, thank you very much!”

So, after some consideration, maybe I'll take it down sometime this week when we're all housebound with #winterstorm2021.

Maybe not.

Because, in the darkest days of winter I truly treasure the sacred time spent daily on my knees at the foot of my bed saying my prayers with it shining bright. I look up and thank my God for the memories this beautiful tree holds for our family, and the hope it contains for whatever journeys and adventures lie ahead for us. 

Christmas is the season of perpetual hope...especially amidst all that was stollen from us in 2020. And, keeping the Murray Travel Tree up just a little longer into 2021 makes my heart full of peace, hope and joy for better days ahead full of laughter, sun and adventure.

 

Carpe Diem

There is humility found in the simplicity of this single day of life, as there will never be another today.

 

I used to think being simple was a characteristic of weakness - that those who took life "one-day-at-a-time" were people that were struggling with their current reality. 

It's taken some of life's greatest losses to appreciate and admire those that have learned to embrace a simpler life, those that just enjoy today. For true joy in our soul is found when we acknowledge the basic blessings around us.

The contentment gleaned from believing in a power greater than ourselves.

The food on our table, and a roof over our heads.

The love and adoration of our spouse.

 

The health and well being of our family.

Nature and the great outdoors. 

All the things we muddle through life taking for granted have become crystal clear during this recent season of drought - a season when so much was taken, yet so much remained. A season in life where God seems to be trying harder than ever to get our attention.

My mother was a simple human being. Her preference for the mundane was one of the characteristics she possessed that often drove me crazy when she was alive. 

Didn’t she want more out of life? 

Didn’t she have goals and dreams that she aspired to achieve beyond the basics in this life? 

Did anything truly rattle her to the core? 

I often asked myself these questions when I was in her presence during the less-than-ideal circumstances she often found herself living, and it puzzled me. But, she never wavered. With my momma, the simpler the life, the better. 

She loved the sun and being outside. She enjoyed working with her hands and watching things come to life before her eyes. After years spent overweight and discontent, she strived for strength of body and soul. Exercising fueled both. She was a homebody. Although, in her forties she became a little more adventurous! She got a taste of the beauty beyond her home state and enjoyed the exploration. In fact, in her last few months of life she was planning to marry the love-of-her-life down in the mountains of East Tennessee. They were working on a fixer-upper - a small ranch at the base of the woods that they gutted to the studs. Mom was simple.

Now as a mother, I look back at her outlook on life and cherish the person she was. With her, life was generally not at all complicated. Mom's mode-of-operation was quite clear to those of us that knew her.

Be more in the moment. 

Get outside for some fresh air.

Enjoy the sun. 

Live for today.

If only we could all live our lives like this. Imagine how different our world might be?

The twenty-first century rat race robs the majority of us of our joy. Today’s family is far too focused on where we are going tomorrow to appreciate where we are today. It’s not that we don’t genuinely desire joy, but we’re just far too busy to embrace what's right in front of us. The journey is often wasted away by keeping up with the Jones'. 

It's a tough lesson to learn when so much of our current reality is fixated on where we're headed. But, contentment can never be achieved until we slow down long enough to truly appreciate the day at hand. Instead, we're focused on everything we wished we had.

A bigger home that's decked to the nines.

A fancier car.

The best private school or select ball team for our kid to join.

Always moving on to bigger and better than what we currently have. 

Yet, before we know it, we’re in our “dream home,” our babies are all grown up, and we find ourselves at the brink of divorce, because we never stopped along the journey long enough to truly appreciate the pure joy we could have shared with one another each and every day. This vicious cycle is why more than half of all families are left broken.

Granted, I’ll be the first to admit I don’t deserve the mother, nor the wife-of-the-year award. 

I'm short with my family. 

I yell. 

I'm impatient.

I get "hangry" at least once a day.

And, I probably drink too much wine!

But, one thing's certain - I can look back on the years of my boys' lives and say with confidence we did our best as a team of parents to teach them what’s truly important in this life through our actions – family, faith and an appreciation for the world around them. 

When they were littles I tried to live each day to its fullest with them, because I knew they would only be my babies for a short season in this life. I may have lost a little bit of my sanity in the process of being a stay-at-home-mom back then, but if I lost it in order to produce a solid foundation for my two boys, it was worth all the sacrifice.

We made the decision for me to be a stay-at-home-mom when my oldest was just a babe - a decision that was partly fueled by the loss of my mother to a brain hemorrhage shortly before his conception. My pregnancy and post-partum experiences weren't the typical season many mothers are blessed to partake, but instead was manhandled by the giant elephant in the room - her death. 

Grief. It's a beast.

The circle of life can bring us to our knees, stripping us of all we thought we knew to be true in this life, and simplifying our existence to the utter core. And, it changed me. 

Losing her and gaining him in a single season in this life proved that so much I "valued" was truly fleeting in the grand scheme of my existence. Not my extravagant plans, nor my career; not my newly-built house in the suburbs with the large mortgage, nor my new SUV meant much of anything next to her passing soul, and his thriving little life in my arms. The material is truly fleeting. 

Me staying home strapped us financially. I put my career on hold in my early thirties during a time when most of my friends were still climbing the corporate ladder and banking cash for their future. I traded intellectual stimulation and adult conversation for insane amounts of Thomas the Train and poopy diapers for nearly five years. 

But, I didn't miss a single milestone. 

Not a single step, or a single new word. 

I made their baby food, and we enjoyed countless days outside in the great outdoors. 

I taught them both their ABCs and their 123's. 

My oldest was even counting in Spanish by the time he hit preschool! 

Life with them back then was exhausting and exhilarating all in one fare swoop. 

There wasn't going to be anybody raising my babies in those early years but their momma. The experience sucked the life out of me some days. But, our littles are only little for a season in this life. Experiencing every ounce of them is what a momma should do. It's simple, and it's mundane. But, it's what lays the foundation for good humans.

No truer words were spoken about the early years of raising children - the days are so very long, but oh the years so short.

I eventually went back to work. And, my babies grew up. Life got away from me, and it became slightly more complicated. 

Two careers, and two in sports year-around.

Homework, and dinners on-the-run.

Life happening for four different human beings under the same roof.

Okay, so like nearly a decade-and-a-half got away from me in the blink-of-an-eye, and everything in this life has become more complicated. And, now all of the sudden I have a high schooler and a middle schooler. 

And, in the words of country music singer, Kenny Chesney, "Don't blink."

But, somewhere in the thick of those years in between the monotony of the baby blues and the terrible-two's; the frisky-four's and the now raging teenage hormones, were a lot of amazing experiences together, and important decisions that have inevitably molded our boys into respectable young men. 

The long Saturdays spent at the nearby state park. 

The weekend getaways and family vacations we made priority (even when the funds may not have been abundant).

Church every Sunday. A prayer before our meals, and before we close our eyes every night.

Simple life together. That's what we do.

I'm confidant we've taught them to appreciate this life, and the world around them, and to live it with some level of simplicity and appreciation. And, I'm equally as confidant that our God played the biggest role in guiding our family down the right paths at just the right time.

Several years back we made the decision to move our family out of the rat race of suburban life. We downsized our home, and upsized our property. 

Out in the country we can breathe a little better and life is a little slower. It's where our boys spend hours-at-a-time outside getting dirty, and swimming in our pond, and shooting hoops. It's where we can see the stars at night. And, wow are the sunrises and sunsets something to behold. They get tired of me snapping pics of our beautiful landscape out here, but oftentimes it takes my breath away.

Don’t get me wrong, years later into this parenting gig, and years since losing my beautiful mother, I still have not found the purest of joy in this life. The evils of our world get the best of this mom - competition, and comparison, and jealousy, and exhaustion.

But, when I look back on these days spent as a parent, the last thing I want is to have regret. Because, I’ve also learned that regret is a powerful force that can rid us of our ability to experience the joy God intends for us in this lifetime.

As parents, our simple actions speak volumes more than our words ever could. 

How we invest our time.

Where we invest our money.

Children are sponges. And, they are watching...soaking it all in.

That’s why it’s so important to seize each and every day with our kids. Building memories today will reap benefits beyond anything we could ever communicate to them throughout their lives. Every season should be experienced as "the season" that will mold them and shape them into the beings God planned for them to be. That's our job as their parents - to be God's heart & hands & feet in their lives. It's really quite simple.

Parenthood has taught me the true meaning of the phrase Carpe Diem. 

Seize the day.

And, it's a shame I didn't "get it" when mom was alive. But, I hope she sees that I've grasped it as the mother of her two grandsons. I hope she's proud of this daughter I've become...slowly and surely... with time & grace.

All too often we lose sight of how important it is to focus on what is happening today, because we’re too busy planning for tomorrow. But, our little ones have no concept of time. Their joy is found in the simplicity of the day at hand. And all the “today’s” added together produce the journey we experience with them as a family. And, wow, does it go by quickly.

Best selling author and founder of The American Wellness Project, Greg Anderson, said it best. 

“Focus on the journey; not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity, but in doing it.” 

It doesn't get any simpler than that. 

So, inhale, and take it all in. 

Embrace your journey together. 

Live this life to its fullest as a family.

Time spent together is a simple concept. And, it's one we genuinely do not appreciate until it's gone.

So, always remember this day is a gift. That's why we call it the present.

It's really very simple.