Upon our return to Indiana, after a luxurious Thanksgiving break with Chelsi and her family in Philadelphia and a wonderful reunification with Aaron, we hit the ground running. The time together gave us a chance to parse through and pick a pathway to travel on--but we were behind! We spent December scrambling to catch up. Luckily, there were unexpected blessing awaiting us.
On our night alone together, Aaron and I had taken some time to talk through and write down a list of what we were looking for/hoping for in a rental house in California. The first day we were back, a rental meeting those exact specifications popped up! I called Aaron as soon as I saw it and told him to go take a look. He brushed it off at first, but because he was in the area that morning anyway, he drove past. Shocked by how perfectly it met our specifications, he called the property management company and begged them to let him see it even though they weren't planning to have anyone through until the following week. As soon as he'd seen it, he started on the paperwork to get it, and had them run us before anyone else had a shot at it. Amazingly, we are now the proud owners of a 1-year lease for a 5-bedroom house that is walking distance to an excellent elementary school, 6 miles from the beach, and has a gorgeous, large backyard. It is so perfect for us that it's actually starting to get me a little excited about moving.
A few days later, as Aaron and I were talking about holding an open house to rent out our Indiana house, a family from Boston showed up on our doorstep with a realtor. They had seen my rental listing (to which I had added pictures at this point), and even though there was no address listed, they had figured out where it was and really wanted to see it. I showed them through, and they were thrilled with it. Though it took some convincing to get Aaron to go along with our first offer, we decided to go with the unexpected blessing, and managed to get a wonderful family to rent the home without even having to endure the stress and annoyance of holding an open house.
After that, the work began. I finished teaching my last regular classes, scheduled a recital with a teacher who will be continuing to teach some classes, and started packing everything up. Of course, I also had to finish up preparations for Christmas, which was no mean feat either. Luckily, several times I had my visiting teachers and some of the sister missionaries show up on my doorstep and offer to pack boxes with me. One way or another, we managed to get most everything packed up.
Between packing and taping up boxes, I took the girls to a performance of Messiah, and the kids played in their last school concerts, with Addy singing with her school choir at several retirement homes, Asher playing in his final band and orchestra concerts, and Emerson singing in his final school musical at Whispering Meadows. That was the kicker. Here are the lyrics to one of the songs his class sang: "Indiana! Indiana's my home. Indiana! Indiana's my home. Go north, south, east, west, I think that my state's the best. Indiana! Indiana's my home." It went on to list a bunch of the funny town names in Indiana, and you better believe that I was all choked up listening to it. There is something so homey about Indiana, and I'm glad that we haven't cut all ties yet. In my opinion, there aren't many better places to raise kids than in the heartland of America. I'm going to miss so much about Indiana, its wonderful people, and the great schools that I know are molding my kids into better humans. I certainly can't rule out a return one of these days. In an attempt at a proper farewell, I planned one last "going away" party for the kids, which gave us a last chance to say goodbye to some of the people who have made it so incredibly difficult to leave this wonderful state.
On Christmas Eve, when all the presents were wrapped and we were ready for a break from the stress of our preparations, I packed the kids into the car in their Christmas best, and we went to our first Catholic mass. I have always wanted to attend a real Catholic mass, and we have a gorgeous cathedral in downtown Fort Wayne, so I figured why not? On the way down, I told the kids a bit about my own visit to Bethlehem when I was in college. The older kids had heard me mention it before, but apparently it was all news to Sera, who kept breaking in to ask questions: "so you saw Jesus being born?" she asked. Then as we arrived "so this is Bethlehem?" Hopefully we managed to answer her questions properly between explosions of laughter. The mass itself ended up being considerably less interesting than I had expected--since it was listed as the "family mass" I had hoped for a children's program or choir at the very least, and considerably more incense. Still, it was very interesting to see the original Christmas mass, or as near to it as can be had in modern times. The next morning, the kids woke up to a tree with presents beneath it, and got to enjoy their stockings for many hours while we waited for Aaron to arrive. His flight was delayed and delayed again, but finally, at around 8 pm he landed and we picked him up at the airport. We waited until the next morning to open gifts, but really, the greatest gift was to be together again.
After another day packing up odds and ends and all the packages, our moving truck showed up. It was a few days earlier than we had wished, because that was the way it worked into the moving schedule, so we were scrambling to get everything together as the movers loaded the truck. They weren't the most competent movers in the world, and when the truck wasn't done being loaded late that night, I was pretty shocked and annoyed that rather than taking a break and coming back in the morning, they kept packing things into the night. Aaron and I took turns falling asleep, first on our bed, and then when they packed that up, on an inflatable mattress. Finally at around 4 am, they drove away--only the next morning did we notice that they had forgotten several things which we then had to find homes for. It ended up taking an additional two days beyond that to really wrap everything up and make sure it was clean before we hit the road, but somehow we finally did it.
California, here we come!
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
December 2013 photos
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| Going Away party |
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| This bunch has been great friends and great piano buddies |
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| Everyone's favorite photobomber (because it's about the only way to get him into pictures!) |
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| Asher with a couple of his besties |
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| Love our neighbors and friends the Rybkas--also great piano buddies |
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| This trio has been friends since 4th grade |
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| Love this bunch |
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| No matter how you stack them |
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| I adore Addy's friends--such wonderful girls! |
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| She is sure going to miss them!! |
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| Nathan has been Asher's best little buddy at church |
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| Best buddies across the pond |
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| And the big brothers |
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| Asher has loved babysitting Jake a few times over the last few months--they are tight! |
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| Sera and Sophie have been great church buddies over the past four years |
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| And here is basically our only Christmas picture (though we did get video). Check out the awesome origami decorations Emerson made for us! We were all so grateful to be able to enjoy our holiday before packing up and leaving town. Merry Christmas to all! |
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Sometimes We Have To Leave Home to Find It
As we near the holidays with nothing firmly in place for our family's future, anxiety is starting to creep in. Using my brother-in-law Scott's super-stealth method, I have gotten quite a few inquiries about renting our house out, which is great news, but still complicates things. We came extremely close to buying a beautiful home only about 2 miles from the beach in Carlsbad, CA, but when mortgage approval took longer than expected and my feet got colder than expected, we ended up pulling out. These are such monumental decisions, and maybe they would be easy if Aaron and I could just see eye to eye on everything, but the sad fact is that we don't. I feel like I'm being super-supportive by agreeing to give this whole California caprice a chance, but I don't want to get in too deep to get back out again. Aaron can already see the future spread out before us there, and can't figure out why I would drag my feet about something so exciting. Still, we're growing in a lot of unexpected ways by having to work with each other through this experience, and I definitely feel like if we make it through this, we will come out on the other side with a whole new bag of tricks in our relationship repertoire.
Besides, all this absence is actually making the heart grow fonder. I'm especially missing Aaron's parenting skills when it comes to Asher. He's always been a handful of a kid, but trying to work through the first hit of puberty without a dad to look to for guideposts? I'm about to keel over from emotional exhaustion. I'm figuring out that I have never even been in the neighborhood of male adolescence before. I grew up in a family of all girls (my only brother was born when I was 16), and other than giggling about them in the bathroom, my exposure to boys this age is pretty much restricted to TV shows. It turns out that the drama doesn't always disappear after 22 minutes and a handful of commercial interruptions--who knew? Apparently it's not entirely unheard of for boys this age to be angry? To rage, even? To someone like me, these angry outbursts feel like something from another planet, and there are times when I want nothing more than to drop my child off on the side of the road and leave him for a while--oh wait, I've already done that. Twice. By the way, the car is not a great place to be whacking on brothers and sisters, for any interested parties, and yes, I picked him back up eventually. It's sad that our best weekends right now are the ones that Asher spends at a friend's house, but I'm hoping we'll be able to iron things out, if not immediately, as soon as Aaron is around to take the reins on this one.
Meanwhile, I've continued to just try to enjoy these fleeting days that we have in this little paradise that I love so much. I go running every morning around the two ponds near our house, and I just try to inhale all the things I love about this place, to make them a part of the marrow in my bones. I love the reflections of the birds as they land on the water, the rainbow of fall colors every time I go outside the house, the sound of the wind whispering through the willows, and the barbequed dinners we can still manage on the patio on warmer evenings. The days have been cool, but some of the gloriously colored leaves have been sticking it out to the end.
I guess I didn't mention before that in September we managed to make it to the annual Johnny Appleseed festival, where we had a really lovely time. I gave each of the kids some lunch money and let them spend it however they wanted, even though in some cases that meant a lunch of gigantic cookies and caramel popcorn. We ended up not staying all day, and by the end of it, I felt ready to let this tradition go and move on to whatever California has in store--hopefully that's a good sign. Another weekend, we drove up to Shipshewana together and had a lovely afternoon visiting old antique shops where the very kind shop owners told us all about early leatherworkers and metal-smiths. We spent that afternoon browsing markets and sweet-shops, including an old-time candy shop with an adjoining carousel ride, then we finished with a nice evening meal at the Blue Gate restaurant. The kids would have loved it unconditionally if it hadn't been for my shrieks of wonder about the leaves on the drives up and back--I know I might go a bit overboard, but I would hate for them to miss that much beauty!
Since school started, I've been downright diligent about taking each of the kids out for lunch dates every week, and we've discovered some fun little joints, including Moe's Southwest Grill which has pretty good burritos, but excellent chips with an assortment of salsas, not to mention one of those super-cool Coke machines where you can get whatever bizarre flavor combination you can come up with--raspberry peach Fanta is my current favorite. Cookie Fridays are charging forward better than ever as Payton and Gillian, friends from across the pond, often join us and have hosted a few at their house as well. In other interesting little vignettes, Emerson has gone nuts with origami lately, staying up late at night to fold new creations, and while I'm not an ecstatic fan of the elaborate airplanes that zoom through the living room to find their final resting spot, I love his unique way of scratching that creative itch.
The awesome end to our month came only after I spent a fair amount of time convincing Aaron that it was somehow necessary--I made good on my plans with Chelsi to drive out for the Thanksgiving holidays. We ended up working the holiday backwards--we left the Friday before Thanksgiving and the kids took Monday and Tuesday off of school, then we returned on Black Friday rather than staying the second weekend. We even ended up with a surprise when Aaron joined us partway through the trip!
On Friday, we drove first down to Washington DC, an eight-hour drive filled with a lot of movie-watching and only a moderate amount of fighting, where we met up with Chelsi and Sam and their kids at a hotel for some pizza-eating and some grown-up chatting while the kids (at least her kids) conked out. The next morning, we crossed the Potomac into Washington DC. Wow.
True to form, I spent the month leading up to this trip up to my eyeballs in books about US history (okay, maybe that's an exaggeration--I wanted to be up to my eyeballs, but I probably ended up only ankle deep). Still, I was somehow unprepared for the majesty of our capitol city. Though I've seen pictures all my life, I found the trip across the bridge just breathtaking. The beauties of the birthplace of democracy cried out jubilantly from every corner, from Mount Vernon to the US Capitol building. Flashes of flaming scarlet and gleaming gold lingering on autumn treetops set off the alabaster white of the "city set on a hill." I admit it stirred something strange inside me--I can't rule out some future run for office, be forewarned.
We spent the day getting to as many places as seemed reasonable (okay fine, I kept trying to drag people to even more places long after they were clearly exhausted and beyond bored), managing to tour the Capitol Building, the Library of Congress, and at least one building of the Smithsonian. I could have stayed for a week or more, but I'm glad that at least we got to see all the inner-workings of the Capitol Building first-hand. We learned about the early meetings of Congress and the Senate, and how they differ from the meetings today, saw sculpture portraits from every state in the union (including, the kids were startled to see, Brigham Young from Utah), saw some of the famous early art of the United States, including the baptism of Pocahontas (who we've been told is an ancestor of ours), and the assumption of George Washington on the ceiling of the capitol rotunda. We saw the early housing of the Supreme Court, a place for which I have a special reverence, and walked the same halls that Senate and Congress members walk every day.
Afterward, while Chelsi snuck away to feed her baby and Sam and the other kids went for some food, I forced my kids to soldier onward through the Library of Congress, which has arguably some of the most beautiful architecture in Washington DC. Although there wasn't much to look at in the way of books and artifacts except behind closed doors, we did have a chance to see an original Gutenberg bible, and compare it to its immediate predecessor, an biblical manuscript illuminated on vellum. Though the kids acted like they would die if they had to listen to me any more, I gave a full-fledged lecture on how amazing it is that the words of the bible were preserved and transcribed over centuries, and what it must have meant to have a printing press that made its text available for only the equivalent of a few hundred dollars. We also got to see Thomas Jefferson's original library, which was just stunning in the context of the time period in which he lived. Having recently read extensively about Jefferson's relationship with John Adams, I particularly enjoyed imagining the two sparring over details of the philosophies which eventually shaped our nation. One of the things I've become increasingly aware of through my reading, is just how messy democracy really can be--really is, in truth. As much as our national mythology idealizes the Founding Fathers, when looked at through the lens of the time period and circumstances in which they lived, they really couldn't look into the future to see how it would all work out. They were naïve in many ways, and they made misstep after misstep in hindsight. What really stands out to me though, is that they were not just thinkers, they were doers. I spent a lot of time pondering the differences between the American and the French revolutions, with their very different results. The few things that made all the difference, in my mind, were that the Americans had somebody with a great sense of selflessness to navigate the country from the presidency in the early years, that compromise was valued over "rightness" even when some of the compromises were morally malignant, and that a spirit of community prevailed throughout. I really respect that the Founding Fathers, while not always "right," always went back to the table and kept hammering away until they had something they could work with. There is a valuable lesson in the ethic they had.
As it started to get dark, we got back into the van and drove north to Philadelphia, listening to the only American History book on CD that I'd been able to dig out of library before we left--it was an account of a yellow fever plague that swept through Philadelphia in 1793, and while it didn't necessarily have much about nation-building, it gave a bit of insight into what daily life might have been like for the people who lived in Philadelphia around the time of the revolution. Along the way we got an awesome call from Aaron. After listening to me beg and chide him for over a month, at the last minute he decided to use some of his air miles and come out to join us on Monday!
We arrived at Chelsi's darling little house late that night, and I just about died over how cute and perfect her little house is!
Inside it was all wood floors and there was a little wood-burning stove, and she has it decorated so cute, you can just imagine hopping back a century or two. We found everyone a place to sleep, and crashed for the night.
The next day, I took the kids to see the ward where Aaron and I lived ten years ago while he was in the choral conducting masters' program at Temple University. When we first started attending, church was held in a few rooms of an office building--the "Smylie Times" building. During our stay, they began construction on a large and beautiful new building on Red Lion Road, which is where I took the kids on Sunday. I was amazed at how many people were still there! While we were there, it often felt like most of our friends were other students, and many of them, like us, moved away afterward. But some of our very good friends, the Ackermans, who had a daughter, Grace, who was Asher's age, and another, Lily, who was Addy's age, were there, and in fact the week of our visit was Brother Ackerman's first Sunday as bishop of the ward. It was so great to see them, and how their lovely daughters had grown, as well as their other two children, several years younger than our younger two. We also got to see Asher's first nursery leader, some of the parents of the youth who I had served with when I worked in the young women's program, the L'heureux family, who had lived further away but had children close to ours and participated in the family home evening group we had, as well as Ashley and Nolan Mauer, who went on an on about how the organ had never sounded as good as when Aaron played it. Strangely, though, it was the spirit of the meetings themselves that most brought back memories of our time in Philadelphia. The area we lived in was not particularly well-to-do, although there were some areas with more established families. For the most part, we lived in an area rich in diversity, selflessness, and people working hard to improve circumstances for themselves and their children. I feel like our church has so much to offer for people in those circumstances, and I could feel more strongly than in the more affluent areas where we've been blessed to live since, how powerful a tool for change the gospel can be in the lives of those who seek it. The sacrament meeting, though there were many children there, was very reverent. The stories shared by those speaking were incredibly moving, recognizing the hand of God in the smallest details of their lives. Such interesting points came out in Sunday school and Relief Society--people really pondering the meaning of gospel principles, comparing them to other sources of knowledge in their lives--there was a sense of sincerity and interest there that one doesn't often find in congregations made up primarily of people who have grown up with those principles from birth. The kids seemed to enjoy attending their classes as well, with Asher and Addy meeting up with faces from their very early childhoods. It was such an enjoyable morning that I hated to leave. On the way back, we drove past our old apartment, above the Wetzel and Son Funeral Home on Rising Sun Ave., as well as the little Tookany Creek Park where I used to walk with Asher, the Krispy Kreme doughnut store where we used to stop for free doughnuts (now a Dunkin' Donuts, the shame!), and several other old hangouts.
That evening, we spent time letting the cousins get to know each other a little better around the house, and sitting and talking together. It's fun and crazy to see my little sister doing much the same thing I was not many years ago, as mother to four children five and under--they were crazy times! I loved getting to snuggle up her little James, who is just the sweetest baby--when I could wrestle him away from Addy for a few minutes. We made a plan for the week and started figuring out Thanksgiving dinner.
The next day, while LucyMae was at school and Chels was busy with her regular life, we moseyed on down to the Franklin Institute, which I had never visited during our time in Philadelphia. We got in free with our Science Central membership, and it was fantastic! In addition to the usual awesome science center fare, we got to see a heart dissected and attend a fantastic planetarium show. Of course, somewhere along the way, Sera managed to lose her coat, so we spent the last hour of our visit trying to locate it before we saw somebody who was there with a school group wandering around with it and looking for its owner. Thank goodness! It would have been a cold remainder of the trip without it. When we finally left, we had acquired a lovely parking ticket, lest we get too nostalgic for Philadelphia apparently.
We headed to the airport to pick up Aaron, and what a reunion it was! The kids were thrilled, thrilled to see their dad, and I was too! The rest of the trip was a blur of fun and excitement for everyone. Having Aaron there to parent Asher was a huge break for me all by itself, and he really started behaving better almost immediately (not before getting in trouble several times though). We went with Chelsi's family for cheesesteaks for dinner, and were once again reminded of Philadelphia's unique hospitality when our server walked away in the middle of our order. Though delicious, we were also reminded that cheesesteaks should really not be eaten more than once every few years--they're heavy!
On Tuesday we knocked out a visit to Independence Hall, where we got to see both the room in which the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed and where congress met for the first several years of American history, as well as the room where the original Supreme Court sat before the seat of the government moved to Washington DC. We were able to tour the original statehouse, where George Washington lived and carried on affairs of state. It was quite remarkable to consider that what has grown into such a great nation came from quite humble beginnings.
After seeing a handful of other sites in the city, we went back to Bluebell (my sister's town) and she very kindly let us leave our kids with her for the night so that Aaron and I could sneak away for a few hours alone together (a few hours which would have been enhanced if I had known that Aaron would make it out for the holiday in the first place and had managed to pack a little more lingerie and a little less flannel, let me say). Aaron got us a lovely room at a nearby hotel and we spent a relaxing evening spending time alone together and hitting the pool (even though I somehow turned up with only half my swimsuit--don't worry! I found a substitute!). Among other things, we had a chance to talk face to face about some of the upcoming changes we're facing. Although we tossed around the idea of me staying in Indiana for the remainder of the year (a possibility that has some significant advantages as well as drawbacks), we decided that our most important priority should probably be getting our family back together again sooner than later. We managed to agree to rent initially, though finding a place may be a significant roadblock. Aaron has already looked at several, and rents are high, besides which, choosing a neighborhood in such a large city is no mean feat. After seriously considering the Poway area, near where Aaron grew up, we are leaning toward the Carlsbad area, north of San Diego, not far from the coast, where we nearly bought a house. We talked out some details and wrote up a list of the characteristics we hope to find in a rental. Now, hopefully we'll be able to find it! We also tentatively scheduled ourselves for a move over the Christmas holidays, which as insane as that seems to me, may be the only realistic possibility given Aaron's schedule.
The next day, after reuniting with everyone, we started Thanksgiving preparations. Thanksgiving is seriously so much better when there is someone to share the cooking with! When Chelsi and I had most things underway (which is not to say that Aaron and Sam didn't pitch in--they did! And so did the older kids), we broke away to brave the falling sleet so we could see Valley Forge. We got there just before dark, and though the grounds were open, the small museum was already closed. Aaron and the kids were nice enough to let me force them out of the van a handful of times to take pictures between reading to them from a George Washington biography about how hopeless the American Revolution must have looked in the winter of 1777 and 1778. I think it was a good time for all of us to take stock of how really not-hard our lives and decisions are by comparison. I especially appreciated the chance to consider how much good came of the decision made to stand strong, to weather it out, and to come through the other end, both in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, and in the generations succeeding it. Maybe, after all, some good will come of our decision to leave a place of comfort and peace, to try something newer and harder.
Thanksgiving was all kinds of wonderful. We managed to have the requisite extended-family spat (over what time to hold dinner), but otherwise, I can't imagine a more lovely way to spend a holiday of gratitude than with the Evans family. The food was all outstanding, and the only sad part was that there just isn't enough room in the human stomach to fully appreciate it all. Afterward, we made all the kids get up and perform for each other, from little Benjamin on his cardboard cut-out violin, to Samantha and LucyMae on their little real violins, to all our kids at the piano. It was funny to see which kids got nervous performing for each other, which ones couldn't care less, even if they missed notes and rhythms, and which were clearly born for the stage--I love that we have a family that can undertake a half-hour of entertainment at a moment's notice!
When we were fully worn out and ready for some serious digestion-via-sleeping, we rolled off to bed to catch a few winks before I had to wake up at the crack of dawn to take Aaron to the airport. When I got back, we said our goodbyes and packed the kids back into the car. Surprising nobody who really knows me, I couldn't actually hit the road without just a couple more teeny-tiny stops. We ended up spending a couple of hours at the Philadelphia Art Museum that I love and adore, and even though I had to spend about 15 minutes of each hour stopping the kids and reminding them that a) they seriously can't touch stuff and b) they seriously can't make noise I mean really how old are we now, and c) telling them crap about art is practically the most fulfilling thing I do as a parent so for goodness sake look up and pretend like you care about what I'm saying, I think it went pretty well. We spent quite a while in the Impressionist wing (though it may or may not have ended in a blitz of giggling at a painting populated exclusively with small nude children), spent considerably less time in the Asian and Classical/Romantic wings, and managed to get through the Art of Warfare wing in less time that I expected--apparently at least some of my many lectures about how killing and war are bad sunk in at some point, and they were all (even the boys) more concerned about what in the world someone small enough to fit in the child-sized armor was doing going into battle on a horse than they were fascinated. Since there are abysmally few of them, I'm going to pocket that as another parenting win. We nearly as much time outside the museum as inside, looking at the city from those glorious steps, and taking pictures of everybody as Rocky. I can never quite get over the beauty of the architecture of that place--truly one of the great monuments in America.
Even though the trip to the museum took quite a lot longer than I intended, I packed us back into the car and started driving. I had planned on sidetracking to visit both Hershey and Gettysburg, but as it ended up, Hershey was so much more fun and delicious than another historical site that we spent too long in the one and ended up at the gates too late to get into the other. However, after entirely too many lectures about American history, you better believe that the kids were thrilled with the Hershey factory. We stood in line and enjoyed the journey through the life of a chocolate kiss before hitting the Hershey store and getting a treat or two for the road. Given our late start and all the stops along the way, we only made it to Ohio before it got too late, so we stayed the night in Lima and finished the journey on Saturday.
All in all, November was packed with adventure, and I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out. For whatever reason, filling our lives with great adventures is one of my most important goals, and I really enjoyed the chance we had to have this one. Now as we head into December, the clock is ticking on all the things that need to happen if we want to be together in the new year. But at least we have the joy of family and good experiences to propel us through them.
Besides, all this absence is actually making the heart grow fonder. I'm especially missing Aaron's parenting skills when it comes to Asher. He's always been a handful of a kid, but trying to work through the first hit of puberty without a dad to look to for guideposts? I'm about to keel over from emotional exhaustion. I'm figuring out that I have never even been in the neighborhood of male adolescence before. I grew up in a family of all girls (my only brother was born when I was 16), and other than giggling about them in the bathroom, my exposure to boys this age is pretty much restricted to TV shows. It turns out that the drama doesn't always disappear after 22 minutes and a handful of commercial interruptions--who knew? Apparently it's not entirely unheard of for boys this age to be angry? To rage, even? To someone like me, these angry outbursts feel like something from another planet, and there are times when I want nothing more than to drop my child off on the side of the road and leave him for a while--oh wait, I've already done that. Twice. By the way, the car is not a great place to be whacking on brothers and sisters, for any interested parties, and yes, I picked him back up eventually. It's sad that our best weekends right now are the ones that Asher spends at a friend's house, but I'm hoping we'll be able to iron things out, if not immediately, as soon as Aaron is around to take the reins on this one.
Meanwhile, I've continued to just try to enjoy these fleeting days that we have in this little paradise that I love so much. I go running every morning around the two ponds near our house, and I just try to inhale all the things I love about this place, to make them a part of the marrow in my bones. I love the reflections of the birds as they land on the water, the rainbow of fall colors every time I go outside the house, the sound of the wind whispering through the willows, and the barbequed dinners we can still manage on the patio on warmer evenings. The days have been cool, but some of the gloriously colored leaves have been sticking it out to the end.
I guess I didn't mention before that in September we managed to make it to the annual Johnny Appleseed festival, where we had a really lovely time. I gave each of the kids some lunch money and let them spend it however they wanted, even though in some cases that meant a lunch of gigantic cookies and caramel popcorn. We ended up not staying all day, and by the end of it, I felt ready to let this tradition go and move on to whatever California has in store--hopefully that's a good sign. Another weekend, we drove up to Shipshewana together and had a lovely afternoon visiting old antique shops where the very kind shop owners told us all about early leatherworkers and metal-smiths. We spent that afternoon browsing markets and sweet-shops, including an old-time candy shop with an adjoining carousel ride, then we finished with a nice evening meal at the Blue Gate restaurant. The kids would have loved it unconditionally if it hadn't been for my shrieks of wonder about the leaves on the drives up and back--I know I might go a bit overboard, but I would hate for them to miss that much beauty!
Since school started, I've been downright diligent about taking each of the kids out for lunch dates every week, and we've discovered some fun little joints, including Moe's Southwest Grill which has pretty good burritos, but excellent chips with an assortment of salsas, not to mention one of those super-cool Coke machines where you can get whatever bizarre flavor combination you can come up with--raspberry peach Fanta is my current favorite. Cookie Fridays are charging forward better than ever as Payton and Gillian, friends from across the pond, often join us and have hosted a few at their house as well. In other interesting little vignettes, Emerson has gone nuts with origami lately, staying up late at night to fold new creations, and while I'm not an ecstatic fan of the elaborate airplanes that zoom through the living room to find their final resting spot, I love his unique way of scratching that creative itch.
The awesome end to our month came only after I spent a fair amount of time convincing Aaron that it was somehow necessary--I made good on my plans with Chelsi to drive out for the Thanksgiving holidays. We ended up working the holiday backwards--we left the Friday before Thanksgiving and the kids took Monday and Tuesday off of school, then we returned on Black Friday rather than staying the second weekend. We even ended up with a surprise when Aaron joined us partway through the trip!
On Friday, we drove first down to Washington DC, an eight-hour drive filled with a lot of movie-watching and only a moderate amount of fighting, where we met up with Chelsi and Sam and their kids at a hotel for some pizza-eating and some grown-up chatting while the kids (at least her kids) conked out. The next morning, we crossed the Potomac into Washington DC. Wow.
True to form, I spent the month leading up to this trip up to my eyeballs in books about US history (okay, maybe that's an exaggeration--I wanted to be up to my eyeballs, but I probably ended up only ankle deep). Still, I was somehow unprepared for the majesty of our capitol city. Though I've seen pictures all my life, I found the trip across the bridge just breathtaking. The beauties of the birthplace of democracy cried out jubilantly from every corner, from Mount Vernon to the US Capitol building. Flashes of flaming scarlet and gleaming gold lingering on autumn treetops set off the alabaster white of the "city set on a hill." I admit it stirred something strange inside me--I can't rule out some future run for office, be forewarned.
We spent the day getting to as many places as seemed reasonable (okay fine, I kept trying to drag people to even more places long after they were clearly exhausted and beyond bored), managing to tour the Capitol Building, the Library of Congress, and at least one building of the Smithsonian. I could have stayed for a week or more, but I'm glad that at least we got to see all the inner-workings of the Capitol Building first-hand. We learned about the early meetings of Congress and the Senate, and how they differ from the meetings today, saw sculpture portraits from every state in the union (including, the kids were startled to see, Brigham Young from Utah), saw some of the famous early art of the United States, including the baptism of Pocahontas (who we've been told is an ancestor of ours), and the assumption of George Washington on the ceiling of the capitol rotunda. We saw the early housing of the Supreme Court, a place for which I have a special reverence, and walked the same halls that Senate and Congress members walk every day.
Afterward, while Chelsi snuck away to feed her baby and Sam and the other kids went for some food, I forced my kids to soldier onward through the Library of Congress, which has arguably some of the most beautiful architecture in Washington DC. Although there wasn't much to look at in the way of books and artifacts except behind closed doors, we did have a chance to see an original Gutenberg bible, and compare it to its immediate predecessor, an biblical manuscript illuminated on vellum. Though the kids acted like they would die if they had to listen to me any more, I gave a full-fledged lecture on how amazing it is that the words of the bible were preserved and transcribed over centuries, and what it must have meant to have a printing press that made its text available for only the equivalent of a few hundred dollars. We also got to see Thomas Jefferson's original library, which was just stunning in the context of the time period in which he lived. Having recently read extensively about Jefferson's relationship with John Adams, I particularly enjoyed imagining the two sparring over details of the philosophies which eventually shaped our nation. One of the things I've become increasingly aware of through my reading, is just how messy democracy really can be--really is, in truth. As much as our national mythology idealizes the Founding Fathers, when looked at through the lens of the time period and circumstances in which they lived, they really couldn't look into the future to see how it would all work out. They were naïve in many ways, and they made misstep after misstep in hindsight. What really stands out to me though, is that they were not just thinkers, they were doers. I spent a lot of time pondering the differences between the American and the French revolutions, with their very different results. The few things that made all the difference, in my mind, were that the Americans had somebody with a great sense of selflessness to navigate the country from the presidency in the early years, that compromise was valued over "rightness" even when some of the compromises were morally malignant, and that a spirit of community prevailed throughout. I really respect that the Founding Fathers, while not always "right," always went back to the table and kept hammering away until they had something they could work with. There is a valuable lesson in the ethic they had.
As it started to get dark, we got back into the van and drove north to Philadelphia, listening to the only American History book on CD that I'd been able to dig out of library before we left--it was an account of a yellow fever plague that swept through Philadelphia in 1793, and while it didn't necessarily have much about nation-building, it gave a bit of insight into what daily life might have been like for the people who lived in Philadelphia around the time of the revolution. Along the way we got an awesome call from Aaron. After listening to me beg and chide him for over a month, at the last minute he decided to use some of his air miles and come out to join us on Monday!
We arrived at Chelsi's darling little house late that night, and I just about died over how cute and perfect her little house is!
Inside it was all wood floors and there was a little wood-burning stove, and she has it decorated so cute, you can just imagine hopping back a century or two. We found everyone a place to sleep, and crashed for the night.
The next day, I took the kids to see the ward where Aaron and I lived ten years ago while he was in the choral conducting masters' program at Temple University. When we first started attending, church was held in a few rooms of an office building--the "Smylie Times" building. During our stay, they began construction on a large and beautiful new building on Red Lion Road, which is where I took the kids on Sunday. I was amazed at how many people were still there! While we were there, it often felt like most of our friends were other students, and many of them, like us, moved away afterward. But some of our very good friends, the Ackermans, who had a daughter, Grace, who was Asher's age, and another, Lily, who was Addy's age, were there, and in fact the week of our visit was Brother Ackerman's first Sunday as bishop of the ward. It was so great to see them, and how their lovely daughters had grown, as well as their other two children, several years younger than our younger two. We also got to see Asher's first nursery leader, some of the parents of the youth who I had served with when I worked in the young women's program, the L'heureux family, who had lived further away but had children close to ours and participated in the family home evening group we had, as well as Ashley and Nolan Mauer, who went on an on about how the organ had never sounded as good as when Aaron played it. Strangely, though, it was the spirit of the meetings themselves that most brought back memories of our time in Philadelphia. The area we lived in was not particularly well-to-do, although there were some areas with more established families. For the most part, we lived in an area rich in diversity, selflessness, and people working hard to improve circumstances for themselves and their children. I feel like our church has so much to offer for people in those circumstances, and I could feel more strongly than in the more affluent areas where we've been blessed to live since, how powerful a tool for change the gospel can be in the lives of those who seek it. The sacrament meeting, though there were many children there, was very reverent. The stories shared by those speaking were incredibly moving, recognizing the hand of God in the smallest details of their lives. Such interesting points came out in Sunday school and Relief Society--people really pondering the meaning of gospel principles, comparing them to other sources of knowledge in their lives--there was a sense of sincerity and interest there that one doesn't often find in congregations made up primarily of people who have grown up with those principles from birth. The kids seemed to enjoy attending their classes as well, with Asher and Addy meeting up with faces from their very early childhoods. It was such an enjoyable morning that I hated to leave. On the way back, we drove past our old apartment, above the Wetzel and Son Funeral Home on Rising Sun Ave., as well as the little Tookany Creek Park where I used to walk with Asher, the Krispy Kreme doughnut store where we used to stop for free doughnuts (now a Dunkin' Donuts, the shame!), and several other old hangouts.
That evening, we spent time letting the cousins get to know each other a little better around the house, and sitting and talking together. It's fun and crazy to see my little sister doing much the same thing I was not many years ago, as mother to four children five and under--they were crazy times! I loved getting to snuggle up her little James, who is just the sweetest baby--when I could wrestle him away from Addy for a few minutes. We made a plan for the week and started figuring out Thanksgiving dinner.
The next day, while LucyMae was at school and Chels was busy with her regular life, we moseyed on down to the Franklin Institute, which I had never visited during our time in Philadelphia. We got in free with our Science Central membership, and it was fantastic! In addition to the usual awesome science center fare, we got to see a heart dissected and attend a fantastic planetarium show. Of course, somewhere along the way, Sera managed to lose her coat, so we spent the last hour of our visit trying to locate it before we saw somebody who was there with a school group wandering around with it and looking for its owner. Thank goodness! It would have been a cold remainder of the trip without it. When we finally left, we had acquired a lovely parking ticket, lest we get too nostalgic for Philadelphia apparently.
We headed to the airport to pick up Aaron, and what a reunion it was! The kids were thrilled, thrilled to see their dad, and I was too! The rest of the trip was a blur of fun and excitement for everyone. Having Aaron there to parent Asher was a huge break for me all by itself, and he really started behaving better almost immediately (not before getting in trouble several times though). We went with Chelsi's family for cheesesteaks for dinner, and were once again reminded of Philadelphia's unique hospitality when our server walked away in the middle of our order. Though delicious, we were also reminded that cheesesteaks should really not be eaten more than once every few years--they're heavy!
On Tuesday we knocked out a visit to Independence Hall, where we got to see both the room in which the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed and where congress met for the first several years of American history, as well as the room where the original Supreme Court sat before the seat of the government moved to Washington DC. We were able to tour the original statehouse, where George Washington lived and carried on affairs of state. It was quite remarkable to consider that what has grown into such a great nation came from quite humble beginnings.
After seeing a handful of other sites in the city, we went back to Bluebell (my sister's town) and she very kindly let us leave our kids with her for the night so that Aaron and I could sneak away for a few hours alone together (a few hours which would have been enhanced if I had known that Aaron would make it out for the holiday in the first place and had managed to pack a little more lingerie and a little less flannel, let me say). Aaron got us a lovely room at a nearby hotel and we spent a relaxing evening spending time alone together and hitting the pool (even though I somehow turned up with only half my swimsuit--don't worry! I found a substitute!). Among other things, we had a chance to talk face to face about some of the upcoming changes we're facing. Although we tossed around the idea of me staying in Indiana for the remainder of the year (a possibility that has some significant advantages as well as drawbacks), we decided that our most important priority should probably be getting our family back together again sooner than later. We managed to agree to rent initially, though finding a place may be a significant roadblock. Aaron has already looked at several, and rents are high, besides which, choosing a neighborhood in such a large city is no mean feat. After seriously considering the Poway area, near where Aaron grew up, we are leaning toward the Carlsbad area, north of San Diego, not far from the coast, where we nearly bought a house. We talked out some details and wrote up a list of the characteristics we hope to find in a rental. Now, hopefully we'll be able to find it! We also tentatively scheduled ourselves for a move over the Christmas holidays, which as insane as that seems to me, may be the only realistic possibility given Aaron's schedule.
The next day, after reuniting with everyone, we started Thanksgiving preparations. Thanksgiving is seriously so much better when there is someone to share the cooking with! When Chelsi and I had most things underway (which is not to say that Aaron and Sam didn't pitch in--they did! And so did the older kids), we broke away to brave the falling sleet so we could see Valley Forge. We got there just before dark, and though the grounds were open, the small museum was already closed. Aaron and the kids were nice enough to let me force them out of the van a handful of times to take pictures between reading to them from a George Washington biography about how hopeless the American Revolution must have looked in the winter of 1777 and 1778. I think it was a good time for all of us to take stock of how really not-hard our lives and decisions are by comparison. I especially appreciated the chance to consider how much good came of the decision made to stand strong, to weather it out, and to come through the other end, both in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, and in the generations succeeding it. Maybe, after all, some good will come of our decision to leave a place of comfort and peace, to try something newer and harder.
Thanksgiving was all kinds of wonderful. We managed to have the requisite extended-family spat (over what time to hold dinner), but otherwise, I can't imagine a more lovely way to spend a holiday of gratitude than with the Evans family. The food was all outstanding, and the only sad part was that there just isn't enough room in the human stomach to fully appreciate it all. Afterward, we made all the kids get up and perform for each other, from little Benjamin on his cardboard cut-out violin, to Samantha and LucyMae on their little real violins, to all our kids at the piano. It was funny to see which kids got nervous performing for each other, which ones couldn't care less, even if they missed notes and rhythms, and which were clearly born for the stage--I love that we have a family that can undertake a half-hour of entertainment at a moment's notice!
When we were fully worn out and ready for some serious digestion-via-sleeping, we rolled off to bed to catch a few winks before I had to wake up at the crack of dawn to take Aaron to the airport. When I got back, we said our goodbyes and packed the kids back into the car. Surprising nobody who really knows me, I couldn't actually hit the road without just a couple more teeny-tiny stops. We ended up spending a couple of hours at the Philadelphia Art Museum that I love and adore, and even though I had to spend about 15 minutes of each hour stopping the kids and reminding them that a) they seriously can't touch stuff and b) they seriously can't make noise I mean really how old are we now, and c) telling them crap about art is practically the most fulfilling thing I do as a parent so for goodness sake look up and pretend like you care about what I'm saying, I think it went pretty well. We spent quite a while in the Impressionist wing (though it may or may not have ended in a blitz of giggling at a painting populated exclusively with small nude children), spent considerably less time in the Asian and Classical/Romantic wings, and managed to get through the Art of Warfare wing in less time that I expected--apparently at least some of my many lectures about how killing and war are bad sunk in at some point, and they were all (even the boys) more concerned about what in the world someone small enough to fit in the child-sized armor was doing going into battle on a horse than they were fascinated. Since there are abysmally few of them, I'm going to pocket that as another parenting win. We nearly as much time outside the museum as inside, looking at the city from those glorious steps, and taking pictures of everybody as Rocky. I can never quite get over the beauty of the architecture of that place--truly one of the great monuments in America.
Even though the trip to the museum took quite a lot longer than I intended, I packed us back into the car and started driving. I had planned on sidetracking to visit both Hershey and Gettysburg, but as it ended up, Hershey was so much more fun and delicious than another historical site that we spent too long in the one and ended up at the gates too late to get into the other. However, after entirely too many lectures about American history, you better believe that the kids were thrilled with the Hershey factory. We stood in line and enjoyed the journey through the life of a chocolate kiss before hitting the Hershey store and getting a treat or two for the road. Given our late start and all the stops along the way, we only made it to Ohio before it got too late, so we stayed the night in Lima and finished the journey on Saturday.
All in all, November was packed with adventure, and I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out. For whatever reason, filling our lives with great adventures is one of my most important goals, and I really enjoyed the chance we had to have this one. Now as we head into December, the clock is ticking on all the things that need to happen if we want to be together in the new year. But at least we have the joy of family and good experiences to propel us through them.
A Capitol Thanksgiving
Here are the photos we scrapped together of our trip to Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia over Thanksgiving. My camera died the first time I took it out, and I somehow didn't take a spare battery. Asher's generosity in letting me use his iPod was much appreciated, and Aaron caught a few with his iPhone once he joined us in Philadelphia. Most of them are pretty grainy and low-resolution, but I'm so glad we have at least a few photos to remember a wonderful trip by! It really was one of the best Thanksgivings ever!
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| Arrival in Washington DC |
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| Steps of the Capitol building |
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| Inside the dome of the Capitol building |
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| Frieze and windows |
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| I've always loved this painting, but the entire gallery beneath the dome was filled with paintings of important events in American history--loved it. |
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| Library of Congress--the kids hated me for taking them there when they were "so tired," but it has paid off all the times since when they've recognized the building in movies and whatnot. |
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| The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum |
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| This guy loved it! |
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| We visited the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia--so cool! We saw the dissection of a lamb heart and a star show in the planetarium. |
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| Philadelphia skyline from the Art Museum--I spent so many days here when Asher and Addy were tiny. |
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| "Rocky" poses in front of the museum |
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| This guy needed his own--and since his sharing of his iPod is the only thing that made any of these pictures possible, we were glad to oblige! |
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| How much more thrilled could these guys be to see the scene of the birth of this country? This is the room where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were debated, voted on, and signed. |
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| Pretty sure this is how I looked the entire trip, as I provided history lesson after history lesson to my eager and attentive students, ha! |
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| Upstairs ballroom of Independence Hall |
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| Together in Independence Hall |
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| Outside Independence Hall |
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| Liberty Bell |
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| Valley Forge |
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| The Anthony Wayne monument at Valley Forge (Fort Wayne is named for Anthony Wayne, and we learned a bit more about him on this trip) |
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| Asher and his best buddy-cousin Ben at the Turkey Bowl on Thanksgiving morning. |
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| This was Aaron's spot of choice--and about the only picture he (unwillingly) let me take of him on this trip |
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| The Mitchell and Evans clans on Thanksgiving morning, 2013 |
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| Chels and I oversaw much of the food prep, but Aaron and Sam did their share too--what a beautiful and delicious meal we had! |
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| A stop at Chocolate World in Hershey, PA on the way back--no better way to break up the trip than with a delicious chocolate stop! |
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