Fearfully and Wonderfully

Sometimes it is the smallest of things that makes the biggest impact on a day. A few kind words from your boss when you haven't been sure how your work performance has been lately. Your hair coming out perfectly on a busy morning. Your husband coming up quietly behind you and rubbing your tired shoulders. A note from your mom saying she misses you. Bible gateway's verse of the day. The squirrel running by on his wire outside the window stopping and staring at you for a moment.

Sometimes it is the small things that you know are on their way to becoming big things. A smile across the room from someone you hope might some day become your friend. That engagement ring promise. The nest egg that is embarrassingly small at first. A sloppy bubbly weird looking sourdough starter blob.

Dinner with this guy
(he is unbelievably good to me)

and our PA relatives.

Rose, you are our small thing, the tiny blob that is becoming the big thing in our lives. You are our quiet, hidden, beautiful, strange, surprising, overwhelming little living person. You are our future. You are our hope. You are our perfect creation whose creation has very little to do with us at all. You are our questions and our answers. You are our laughter and our confusion. You are our daughter, lovely and unknown like a song we don't quite understand yet but love the faint melody of on the air. 

You're still quite small, but unfolding and changing and growing at a wonderful rate. Today we reach 20 weeks, which means we are halfway to holding you in our arms. Twenty weeks seems a little long to wait for something you are eager and happy and aching for. But twenty weeks is actually a long time to have already had your heartbeat here under my heart. It is a long time to hold this gift. Time is beginning to go by quicker and quicker, until some days I make myself stop and look at us in a mirror and the shape you are pushing and pulling me into because I know that I won't look just this way for long. I know that time already passes too quickly for me.    

 19 weeks                                If I lean forward a bit, I can still see my legs

In all of life, it is picking up pace and going just a bit faster every year, every month, maybe every week. It can be so easy to spend our time looking forward and waiting impatiently for the things we hope God is bringing us or just a change from now, or even looking longingly back at things and times that were sweet and wonderful for us. But we are also given a now. And it is in the now that we make decisions and feel sunshine and say warm words and move our bodies in strong and beautiful ways. It is in the now that we lean toward someone or taste things or feel the softness of socks or get pierced deep by our conscience. Now is life, too. And I want to feel and see and love all that I can of each of these moments that will be gone before I can really grasp them. 

- - -

They say you are about 10.5 ounces now and 10 inches long. When I look down, I see evidence of you, and I can feel your steady rhythmic kicks at times, and you are changing everything about how I feel and what I need to eat and how much sleep I need to have and when I laugh and cry. 

We got to see you Friday on what has got to be the coolest live video on earth. We couldn't stop smiling and you couldn't stop wiggling. It took some trying to get good measurements of all your reaching limbs and twisting body parts, but you were perfect. You look perfect, too - your little turned-up nose, the mouth we saw opening and closing, the left arm thrown up behind your head as if you were chilling on the couch, even the inner parts that we never see out here like the 4 chambers of your heart pumping faithfully - perfect and amazing and human and working. I am in awe of the God who is fashioning you so well and wisely. What love.

the words you can't quite read on the last picture: '4CH HEART'

Three

News
We are three now! And we'll be able to see this little person face to face sometime in July (yes, we have a due date, but I'm not going to be stubborn about it as I'm sure Baby won't be as punctual as we would prefer). God is good, and we are excited about this new phase in our lives.


Prayers
-Thanksgivings:
     no morning sickness to speak of
     good first Dr's appointment & ultrasound
     strong heartbeat and active baby
     an attentive and thoughtful husband
     OB clinic is just down the street and hospital a few blocks further
     financial stability and good health insurance
   
-Requests:
     continued health and strength for me
     continued health and safety for Baby
     energy and cheerfulness (I am just tired so much, and it makes everything harder)
     wisdom for medical-related decisions we'll have to be making
     wisdom in planning maternity leave, and understanding what I can handle until then


Specifics
A few weeks ago (9wks):

Today (12wks):
[I know my picture is poor quality... but there is something there that's not all Christmas turkey and chocolate!]


















Twelve weeks email update! I really love having so much information at my fingertips. I love knowing what is going on in there, and what about this child is developing right now.

"The most dramatic development this week: Reflexes. Your baby's fingers will soon begin to open and close, his toes will curl, his eye muscles will clench, and his mouth will make sucking movements. In fact, if you prod your abdomen, your baby will squirm in response, although you won't be able to feel it. His intestines, which have grown so fast that they protrude into the umbilical cord, will start to move into his abdominal cavity about now, and his kidneys will begin excreting urine into his bladder. From crown to rump, your baby-to-be is just over two inches long (about the size of a lime) and weighs half an ounce"

Growing Gratitude

Gratitude is important. Spoken gratitude. It helps us name the gifts. It makes us recall the graces. It shows the giver that the gift was noticed. It deepens the love between giver and receiver. It reveals to others the goodness of the lover to the beloved.

God commands us to be thankful, and not just in our hearts. He can of course read our hearts, and yet He wants our words as well. We're supposed to meditate in our hearts in silence, and speak of His deeds in the congregation, and praise Him in the gates, and sing aloud to Him with our whole hearts, and remember His works of salvation, and tell His words to our children, and preach Him and His goodness to the Gentiles.

I'm thankful for this God.

I'm thankful for a God who loves me enough to give me sweet things, hard things, confusing things, rich things, simple things, funny things. I'm thankful for a God who gives to the body and the soul and the heart and the mind, who created and loved our emotions, and who takes us, silly and noble, strong and broken and stretching, who sees our smiles and rejoices in our laughter and listens to our complaining and hears our pleas, and loves to heal our bruises and bleeding places and the aches that no one else can see.

I'm thankful for beauty in this world, and the mixture of fullness and incompletion that it swells in me. For music you fall into, for fireworks you feel almost more than see, for sunrise through dew and under cloud, for a congregation taking bread and wine as one, for leaves spinning slowly golden on a million stems, for eyes that look straight back into yours, for hilltops in a wind that pulls you like arms. Beauty - for how it gives me dreams and lumps in my throat, how it makes me forget to breathe, and makes me at once want to capture it for the world and certain that no thing and no person could ever reproduce this feeling.

I'm thankful for home, and a home that is mine.
I'm thankful for Bible Gateway and Facebook and Google and my iphone that help me through slow lonely times at work.
I'm thankful for family members who love me unflaggingly.

I'm thankful for life and even for death. For Maria and Jon and the life they have together, and the life of baby Francis, and the life eternal where we trust we will see those loved ones God has pulled to Himself. I'm thankful for their strength and for how they handle their weaknesses in this season of their lives.

I'm thankful for love and belonging and future. For Fraser and our 15 months together, the growing and the strangeness and the words through tears and the most comfortable silences I have ever known; the unknown of next year and the known of earthly forever together; the hopes we form together and the meals we create for each other; the overlooking and the looking after, and the many many things we have in common and hold to together.

I'm thankful for this Giver, this God, this Father of lights.

Home

I've been thinking about homemaking, and making a home. About making things homey, feeling at home, turning a house into a home. About whose job it is and who it is for and why we need homes and not just hotels a month at a time. About how I can study and improve here.

I can't stop thinking about that mysterious mixture of things that goes into a good home, or at least into the home I want us to have:

the mixture of relaxed and put together,
     welcoming and private,
     tidy and lived-in,
     classy and modern,
     projects that are like work and that like play,
     masculine and feminine,
     practical and decorative,
     old and new,
     strength and beauty,
     established and evolving,
     quiet and conversational,
     clean and yet not sterile-feeling,
and so many more things.

Tonight I'm thinking about whose job it is to manage these things. And I believe that the balance of these (sometimes seemingly opposite qualities) is achieved by both man and woman being involved in some way in the house.

The 'homemaker' probably makes us all think of the wife, and it's true that often, historically and in our circles, the woman of the house is responsible for much of this because she is there more hours of the day than her husband. And because most women have an eye for beauty; they enjoy the planning and buying and arranging and decorating and cooking and cleaning that make this place run in a lovely and functional way. If that is where your strengths lie and what your husband would like and what you are able to accomplish with joy, then splendid. And I might envy you your ability to do it all.

(rabbit painting by Terri Rice)

But what if you both work and you aren't home until pretty much supper time just like him? What if he works from home and has fewer demands on his time? What if he came into the relationship with a more complete set of furnishings, dishes, art, and linens? What if you are often so busy with the care of small children that you have no energy to finish the evening meal and do more than swish out the toilet with some bleach, let alone scrub the entire house every day, and who even cares about whether there is a nice looking arrangement on the side table or there is anything hung on that one empty wall in the living room? What if he has an eye for aesthetics that you don't, or what if it just exhausts you and stresses you out, but makes him happy to set things into place and make things attractive and give to you through cooking or doing the dishes every night or cleaning the bathroom or picking up pieces of art he comes across somewhere? Strong believers in gender roles tell us it is 'femmy' or gay for a man to care about the house. We hear (sometimes aloud, sometimes implied) that the woman who lets or asks her husband to do the interior decorating is failing in her job as keeper of the house. A woman who doesn't do 90% of everything in the home (and have it mostly done before her husband gets home from work) feels guilty for not doing her job completely enough. Even the woman who has an 8 to 5 job is often expected to carry a large portion, if not all, of the runnings of the household on her shoulders.

I love beautiful homes. Sometimes I even have ideas on how to go about making an empty wall look better, but usually I have to see something in a magazine or showroom or friend's house to spark my creativity. I love cooking and baking and presenting a meal. At least a couple of times a week I am inspired to do these things and most of the time I receive compliments on my work in the kitchen. I love to clean, and to inhabit a clean, clear space. But I am not perfect in these areas (in fact, I am trying to spur myself on to do a lot better in all of them!), and I am definitely not alone in these things. My husband is very attune to the aesthetics of a room, an outfit, a meal, a wall, a piece of music, a movie or book; and he is not only aware of when they are good or bad and willing to comment (which sometimes makes a detail-oriented person terribly annoying to a spouse trying hard and not being perfect). Fraser can *do* things about his tastes. Often better than I can, or with less hesitation than I do. He is the one who has had (progressively better) ideas for laying out the living room; he is the one who brought home the Renoir print that sits on our dresser; he measured and arranged and hung most of the pictures and mirrors on the walls; he cooks at least as much as I do, and reminds me often that he WANTS to do these things for or with me. And it's wonderful.

I realize that every couple is different, and that my husband is probably (if not almost certainly) more helpful and interested in arranging the living room, or making quiche or braised chicken, or dusting the house on Saturday while the game is on, than most husbands are. Not every man wants to be that involved. Some perhaps seem to not care at all. But I think that they should care, and should be involved with how their home serves its members and those who receive hospitality there, whatever level it may be for him.

Of course, a man who takes over completely the running of the home (whether he tells his wife her work is shoddy, re-does whatever she has thought of whenever she leaves the room, or just overturns her every spoken idea for what could be done in it) is doing his wife an unkindness and a disservice. And a woman who decorates and buys and plans and cooks without any regard for the wishes of her husband is likewise doing it wrong. Theirs will not be a happy home, because it is not a balanced home, and I think it will be obvious that there is an imbalance to those who visit. I've been in a few houses where I wonder HOW on earth a man would ever feel relaxed here because there are SO MANY ruffles and everything is floral and shades of pink and teacups sit on doilies everywhere you look and is there even a place he can set his shoes that won't look silly?

I think marking out our differences and our spheres of work or specialty is sometimes done too strongly, and our partnership and likenesses and friendship and co-ownership in all our things could be lived a little stronger. It is not the woman's domain to the exclusion of the man's comfort, expression, or participation.

God made us humans first, and a man and a woman are more alike (when you think of the whole creation) than they are different. Our roles are going to differ, and our jobs are often going to be very different - especially if there are children or she is home most of the day and he isn't. But we are first and foremost partners, not opposites, and our homes should show that about our persons and our relationship; that we have done this together (even if the collaboration is as simple as running ideas past one another and asking for input) and live here together.

A Year of Yes

A year ago today was one of the best days of my life.



Saturday afternoon. Winter and cold, with some sun occasionally breaking cloud cover. I was home, in the big house on Jefferson Street, and only 2 of my 8 roommates were there at the time, off in their rooms studying. The place was quiet. I had music playing from Spotify on my laptop on the kitchen counter and was putting together an apple pie, which we could eat that evening. Fraser had told me he was coming over in a while, and I was going to have this put in the oven before he came, or if I was still finishing it up he would keep me company and I would impress him with my cool kitchen skills (which is always fun, obviously, especially as we are both crazy about cooking and spent a lot of our dates in that kitchen putting meals together).

A knock came on the door, and it was him, but he seemed nervous and didn't even take his coat off. I kept working away for about a minute until I realized how agitated he was and right about then he said he 'was going to go for a walk' and did I want to come? Well duh.

After cooking, walks were possibly our favorite pastime together. Sometimes we had places to go; usually we just ended up places because we were going, or wound around neighborhoods, looking at houses and meeting lonely cats and speaking to them in the few French words we knew and speculating about history here and there and talking about stuff or just being quiet together. Walks are amazing. I still love them with him. Or anytime. But most with him.

This was the best walk ever, of course, although it started out nerve-wracking for both of us, and though we switched courses several times (not unusual, but rough for him because he couldn't decide where to go). At one point we decided we were going to this little park at the top of a hill, and I thought I saw a shortcut to it, so we took it. It wasn't. We ended up almost in someone's back yard, and it was muddy and messy.

We could have turned around and gone back down the hill and around the proper way, but that would have taken too long and so he made his proposal right there - near someone's house, in the mud, no fancy words but all the ones necessary. The sun had disappeared again. He didn't think of kneeling. I thought with the serious way he began he was about to tell me something horrific or devastating (are we breaking up? did he do something awful he's about to confess? did I???). I realized I had never heard his voice mean so much before. And I realized why his hands were in his pockets of his coat.

And I realized there was no way I would say no.

Eventually we ended up back home, holding hands and smiling so much. We kind of remembered the pie, but it was finished much later, and not eaten until the next day. The ring was sparkly and shiny and just dazzlingly pretty without being impractically ostentatious (he knows me), and I heard the story of how he got it and where the diamonds came from. I remember taking it off to start working on the pie crust again, and then realized I should call my family to tell them, and then remembered I had roommates home and wandering through the house to tell them my news and get hugs. That evening we drove a bunch of miles to join a bunch more of the roommates and friends at a campfire at the river, and made our announcement to them, and stared at fire and water and stars, and everything glimmered on the stones of that ring and everything was better than any best of my life before that day.

(engagement photos by Chris Walker, chriswalkerimages.com)

 

Yes is a good word.
It is full of hope and promise
and joy and honesty.
It is full of grace.

And my year has been full of grace. It has held learning: learning to give and to forgive, learning to read someone else's history that is different from yours yet brought you to the same place, learning to receive with appreciation the gifts that are disguised and the ones that are difficult and the ones that are confusing as well as the ones that are just what I've been hoping for, learning to live a new life and also an ordinary life in a glad and diligent and purposeful way. Learning so much. And not being content to stop there, but learning that I/we have a lot more to learn.

My gratitude to and for this man grows, and I know it will continue to. God has made a beautiful thing of two things incomplete, and His hands are making us more to His pleasure as time goes by.

May the next 50 go as grace-filled as this first.

Still alive, and it's Thanksgiving week

Yep, still alive and thriving over here. Just not as good at posting things as I used to be; sorry.

It's almost Thanksgiving, which means I've been married for almost 4 months to my favorite fellow on earth, and it also means it's going to be easy for me to write something here. All I have to do is list some of the things I'm thankful for and ta-da! How simple and how perfect for the week we are in.

1. I'm (still) so thankful for this man. Being with him is both natural and unbelievable, and this new life together is both simple and full of things to learn. Fraser gives to me every day, somehow, and sometimes (like when we go shopping) even wants to give more than I want to let him. I love when I can surprise him with something delicious smelling when he walks in the door from work. And when he comes up with a great idea like "let's drive to Spokane this afternoon!" And when he tells me I am not allowed to go to work because I'm so sick. And when he reaches out for my hand when we are walking somewhere - even if mine is in my pocket already. He makes me laugh, and can stop my tears, and his laughter is one of my favorite things.

2. I'm grateful for our wedding photographer Chris Walker and the great job he did. Here's a sampling of our photos. http://chriswalkerimages.com/blog/2013/7/27/1/

3. I'm thankful for cooking: for the spacious kitchen, the beautiful pots and pans, and the full cupboards I have. I like baking late at night, and making quick scrambled eggs on a late morning, and steeping tea, and chopping up onions so precisely and small, and leaning down over a pot or fry pan to breathe the fire and life that is simmering there.

4. I love this book we've decided to work through (over the next few years, probably. It's 300 recipes, after all!). Thanks to whichever roommate or relative or friend happened to leave this behind and left it for us to inherit! The Italian Cooking Encyclopedia. http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-definitive-professional-ingredients-techniques/dp/0681020377/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385073811&sr=1-3&keywords=the+italian+cooking+encyclopedia

5. I'm thankful for fabric and needles and thread and irons and patterns and the Joann's store. Currently working on our stockings. And I'm not very good at it. And sometimes frustrated. But I will one day have cute stockings to post a picture of, I'm sure. Not to mention, to put presents into. :)

6. I'm happy to have family - so much family, and more all the time, it seems. Thankful for my parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles, who have been part of my world since before I could understand who they all were. Thankful for the siblings who've been best buds and good competition and tagalongs and little shadows and adorable frustrating hilarious human beings. Thankful for a new set of parents and grandparents, and their love and welcoming, and for a new sister and brother and the different surprising perspectives they give me on life, and things, and my husband. And thankful for all the kids who call me Aunt Bobbi, and the new ones who will someday. They steal my heart over and over.

7. Electric heaters. No explanation necessary.

8. Paychecks.

9. Winter sunlight. I'm about to take a walk to do a few errands, and thing that'll perk me up just about as much as I need for the rest of the day, and the week.

10. Chocolate chips. Seriously, when there isn't a good solid chunk of chocolate bar to grab, a handful of these little dudes is pretty much the best thing I can think of. I'm off to raid the cupboard and pop one at a time as I head out to do those errands.

When your little sister gets engaged

My buddy Ria.

I think she's been my best friend since we were about 4 and 8. As you can see from the photos, we've gotten better about our hair, gone from ice cream cones to the more mature treat of coffee, and have both acquired sparklies. We've kind of grown up. (Also, I just noticed our expressions are almost the same, 20-some years later, in the two pictures. What.)

And now I get to see her marry her wonderful man, just 2 months after I get married. I'm honored to get to stand up there with her, and feel strangely old and young, and so happy I have already cried a few times about this. Congrats to Ria and Jon.

Maria and Jon

Love that gives

Love gives. God gave His only Son. The Son gave His life. Friends give gifts and time to be with you. Parents give everything for their children. Teachers give because they love their subjct and their students. A man and a woman give up their own lives and names and plans to build a new one together.

When love gives, it creates. It creates worth, it makes new things, and it makes beautiful. The sun gives to the earth, and the earth returns in fruit and green. When God loves, His people are sanctified and glorified. "The Lord takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the humble with salvation. (Psalm 149:4)

Love adorns with gifts, sometimes outward objects like a circle of gold for a finger, and sometimes just by strengthening the beloved with good words: praise and wonder, accountability and correction, and shared stories and histories.

Love, karis, grace, gifts don't take away. They give by adding. They give by building up. Through it we become more who we are meant to be, can have more confidence in who we are. Confidence is a part of faith, of trust, and makes secure, makes steady. We have boldness to stand before our Maker. We know we are not alone. We feel more lovely, and that is based less on ourselves and more on one we trust, and so we don't hide ourselves or go hesitant about our lives. We have rest concerning our future, because love never fails.

---
Yesterday, it was 100 days to our wedding day. Fraser brought me roses and chocolate at lunchtime, and I made him pie in the evening. We have a long way to go together: may we learn to give more like our Lord in the coming 99 days, and every one after that.

Beginnings

It's hard to pinpoint when I started writing, or even started loving to write. There's the time my mom's great-aunt sent me boxes of her books on college english and narrative and writer's markets. There's the year my dad had us copy poems or psalms for handwriting practice, to be read in front of the family in the evening. Then there's the fact that Mom loves to write, and that I have schoolteacher ancestors, and that my sisters and brothers and I would tell one another stories as we washed the dishes every day. Writing came kind of natural.

But this is the first poem of mine that my mom saved. I was 11, and I think this was inspired by a recurring nightmare of mine about being chased up the driveway and into the house by a black bear. Don't laugh. We all have to begin somewhere.

There Is a Tree

 

There is a tree

that’s just for me.

Along came a bear

and gave me a scare!

I was up in my tree

when it saw me.

 

It gave a growl and prowled around

so I jumped down to the ground.

I ran to my house as fast as I could.

I was safe: I’d run faster than any bear would!

 

pieces and homes, and lots of pictures

(Many of these pictures were taken by other people)

 

driving north

 

              Naomi and I with huckleberries                                    The Sidney Psalter

 

 I have been an adult for longer than I'd like to admit, and moved away from home years ago now, and there is much joy and fulfillment and strength God has given me in this community and town and house which I am part of now. But still fresh in me is the uncertainty and responsibility and loneliness, the lostness and the frustration that come with leaving home for the first time and having to figure things out for yourself in the wide, wide world. You are pulled two ways. You are pulled on by the past, the things that made you who you are, the people who know you best, the habits and friends that delight and comfort you. And you are tugged at by the future, by possibility, by promise, by the expectations of others, and by your own strengths and ambitions. Leaving home is simultaneously one of the best and worst things about growing up.

Silas and I explore a culvert                       Lydia and the CdA beach

 

clear blue Pend Orielle river

 

Perhaps that was a hard time, and perhaps every young person knows it - that in-between where home with your parents doesn't quite feel the same way it used to, but you haven't married and bought a house and settled in for the long haul of establishing your own home for the rest of your life there.

Natalie and I                                                  The Cove                          

                                 Moscow Mountain cookout

 

                                     the happy orange chair

Jonte and I only wish we were hobos                             drinks to celebrate our new place

Perhaps it is true that I'm still there, in that in-between. It feels that way now and then, no matter how satisfying my job is, how happy I am in my church family, how lovely my house and roommates, how delightful my weekends and evenings with books and good coffee shopes with live music and writing and beer with friends and long talks with sisters and all of the things that fill my life.

Elsi reading in the van                                                            Ben with Alyssa

Hailey and baby




















NY Johnny's with friends late at night (Kristina, Kurt, me, Sara, Fraser, Mel, Susanna)                                                                

                                              

But I am here for now. I am building a home. And I am building who I am. I buy things for those purpose: tall lamps and old books and sweet-smelling candles and bright flowers to beautify and make useful my home, and food and clothing and more books and tuition for classes that fill my soul and body. And I hope to be building up another body, another household, with my presence and my hospitality and my gifts given to this community. This home becomes more home to me all the time.

Matt and Evelyn                                                            

Laura, Elsi and I

Snake River with Jonte, Emily and Ashley                                                     

Coeur d'Alene Lake                                                                         

                                

But one of the nicest things about not living where I was born, and about trying to accomplish this settling-in and home-making here, is being able to go home in more than one direction. For home to be not in one place means that I have bits of my heart in more than one place, and while that hurt when it first happened, it does less now. The longer we live, the more places we go, the more pieces our hearts become, and this isn't a bad thing. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also, a wise man once rightly said. Where you invest your love, you invest your life, sang someone a little less important, but he was right as well. Love means investing, love means caring, love means missing what is loved when you are far away from it. Those places you have so many memories of that parts of you want to go back to sometimes so badly that you ache? That is love. Those faces you can visualize perfectly even though you haven't seen them since the beginning of the school year? Those are your investments. That place on top of the mountain where you sat and stared out at the dark of the world and the lights of mens' lives, and stared up at the dark of space and the lights of singing planets and stars, and you felt like you could stay in that moment for all time and be content? That is the glory of being a human with a soul.

Moving into our new house: Jonte, Mel, Tali and I

Ellis and Rachel's wedding            

                                                                       

                                                    Abel, Seth and I

 

The more places I taste, the more people I shake hands and chat and eat and work and theologize and commiserate and laugh hysterically with, the more books that I open and decipher by means of ink and phonics and imagination, the more songs I discover -- the more I live, the more I love, and there is always - and constantly increasing - things tugging at me from different directions. This pull - back toward all the things I have a fondness or a sharp memory of, forward toward all the things I want to know and love and stash in me like so much treasure - is part of what makes me know I have a soul. The pull shows me I am creature.

                                                                                              outing with Ria before she moved                                                            

                                                                  

Mel's birthday. Riquel, Donny, Adam, Mel, me, Jonte, Zach, Cherie, Bridgette, Wilson, Bailey

                                                            wonderful parents

Steptoe Butte with cameras and good cheer