In Search of Winter

It's been a crazy winter, unseasonably warm and very dry. With the roads so clear and the weather so mild, Jeff's been on bike rides every month (although February still hasn't seen him on the road...yet!). This is the year that Jeff and I finally upgraded our 15+ year-old skate skis to brand new really nice ones. And this is the year that we have no snow to skate ski on! It's dreadful!

So when we've had time, we've gone up north to find snow. Three times we've taken the whole family to Harriman State Park (Island Park) to ski. The kids do great, even "Little Legs", our four-year-old Charlotte, makes the 3-mile round trip ski in to the warming hut and back. Eleanor stays with me, more or less, and I stay with Charlotte, while the boys go on up ahead at their own pace. When Jeff comes to spot me, then I get a chance to skate ski a while.

Our last trip on Friday (no school!) was simply amazing. The warm sun and breathtaking beauty of the snow-topped trees just made us happy. When the snow sparkles, Eleanor says that the stars have fallen on the ground. The sparkling snow sure looked starry on that sunny day! Little Legs skis remarkably well, gliding and using poles appropriately, as do the other kids, but she tends to take a little - okay, a lot - more time to cover the distance. So to pass the time as we made our way to the warming hut, the girls and I took turns reciting parts of one our favorite books, "The Gruffalo" by Julia Donaldson (Alex Scheffler did the great illustrating).

Eleanor narrated,

"A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood

A Fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good."

Mom (me) spoke the animal part,

"Where are you going to, little brown mouse,

come and have lunch in my underground house."

Then Charlotte was the mouse,

"It's terribly kind of you fox, but no,

I'm going to have lunch with a grufflo."

And so it went, on and on until we'd recited verbatim (more or less) the entire book.

Then it was on to the next book, "The Gruffalo's Child", with special attention to the parts that went, "Aha, oho, tracks in the snow! Whose are these footprints, where do they go?"

It was just plain fun. Samuel and Oliver, meanwhile, had found a hill up ahead and were gleefully nearly killing themselves skiing down on their cross-country skis, then up, then down, again and again.

We caught up to them, then all headed up to the warming hut (which was closed this time, but has been open in the past) for a snack on the picnic table outside the hut.

Jeff was skiing with a couple of friends - Brian and Dave - who met us at the warming hut. On the way back to the car I got to take some skate skiing time for myself. I absolutely love the exhilaration, the thrill, the pure joy of skate skiing. The feeling of moving through air, across snow, gliding like flying, the sun shining, the woods deep and sleepy, it all makes me feel so alive and free... Until I get tired, then I just feel like plopping down in the snow. It's all good.

Last month, for a Christmas present, my parents watched the children overnight while Jeff and I took a trip to West Yellowstone.

That has to be the best Christmas present ever. The kids love being with the grandparents, the grandparents go overboard on spoiling the kids, and Jeff and I get some time to ourselves. We spent Friday and Saturday skate skiing on the Rendezvous Trails in West Yellowstone.

That weekend were the qualifying races for Junior Nationals, so we got to watch teams from around the region compete in the skate skiing races. It was delightful, especially because I remembered all the excitement and nerves of racing on a skate skiing team when I was their age, too. I never would ever have come close to qualifying for Junior Nationals, but I did have the fun of racing. I have to admit, as fun as the memories were, I didn't envy those kids one bit. It's a lot of pressure and it's nice to skate just for the fun of it.

I've been pretty sick the past few weeks with a terrible cough that keeps me up all night. I'm trying to avoid narcotics - they make me itchy - and just endure until it ends. Thankfully all the aches and sore throat and fever are gone, so other than fatigue I feel fine. My abs have certainly had a workout with all the coughing fits! I've been swimming pretty regularly, taking a swim clinic from an Olympic triathlete and learning tons. The boys are playing indoor soccer "Futsal" and loving it. I actually think they like their neon-bright shoes as much as they do playing. The girls are considering a gymnastics class, but I'm still on the fence with that. The three older kids take piano, the boys have scouts, I'm on the PTO board, Jeff's a scoutmaster...it just seems like there's already too much to do. Plus I'm supposedly beginning training for my May marathon (being sick hasn't helped). Anyway, I'm grateful for the life we've been given and the many many many blessings God has given us as a family - especially that of being a family.

Mommy Days

Heads up: this post is just some ramblings on, things I want to remember and feelings I hope to hold on to when the inevitable and all-too-frequent tough days of being a homemaker hit. :)

I wish my kids would slow down. They're growing up too fast. And although I find each new phase and stage delightful and amazing, I still want to just hold on to how things are right now. I want to hold my children and just be as we are for a lot longer than I'm given. It's exciting to see the adventures of the days that unfold before us, but I feel the loss of the days that are gone and cannot be recovered. But I am thankful for the days I have and the memories that are mine.

Yesterday was a Mommy day for my four-year-old. Charlotte has those sometimes - in fact, each of the kids have them sometimes (even my older kids). She wanted nothing but to be with me. She followed me around the house, and when she couldn't find me, she'd yell out in a bit of a panic, "Mom, where are you?" I was there. She said she wanted me to stay where she could see me. So I did.

On Mommy days, I get to have a little shadow. I love it. We baked dinner rolls together, then we traipsed off to the library to get "just a few books, right?" Forty books later, we waddled back to the car (those books are heavy!), then popped off to the store. Back home, we had lunch then cuddled up on the couch to read some of the treasures we unearthed in the library. Naturally, I fell asleep reading, bitten by the sleep bug. Sweet Charlotte agreed to "watch something" so I could nap for a good long 20 minutes - just enough to satisfy the sleep bug. The rest of the afternoon we played board games then took down Christmas decorations. When she got bored with that, she found some toys and played literally at my feet (that girl has an astonishingly deep well of imagination, by the way!). Then it was back in the kitchen to cook dinner while we waited for Eleanor and the boys to come home from school. My little helper chatted away the whole time, interrupted only by spontaneous hugs and kisses from both of us to each other. Oh, my heart...how my heart did smile. Charlotte needed me, and I was there. Turns out, I needed her, too.

That's how it works. Our hearts are turned to each other and we both end up with our proverbial buckets filled to overflowing.

I thanked Jeff last night for supporting our family so I could be home. I remember how hard it was to leave my baby to go to work, even though I knew we needed my income and even though I enjoyed my job. I admit that occasionally I wonder where I'd have been in my career had I kept it up, but then Mommy days like these wipe out any twinge of longing for worldly success and accolades. I wouldn't trade a Mommy day for anything. I may not be a "real" lawyer anymore, but to one little girl yesterday (and to three other sweet little people), I was everything that mattered, worth more than the world itself. It's nice how that works - I get to be their world, while they, and especially my husband, are my world. Cheesy as it may sound, there's nothing more real, nothing deeper, nothing truer, and nothing more liberating than the ties that bind husband and wife, and parents and children. I am thankful for Mommy days, and so very grateful that I was there.

I just wish I could freeze days like those and exist in a perpetual Mommy day. Somehow I'd have to arrange it so all four kids had a Mommy day on the same day, and I had enough of me to divvy out without being overwhelmed...Ah, yes, reality hits. Well, I'll just enjoy what I have when I have it and be grateful that I can be there.

Oh, speaking of being there, wanna know the best part about this past Christmas vacation? Having my husband and kiddos around for days at a time. Would that it were months at a time, or even eternity... ;)

Disneyworld/ Harry Potter (Universal Studios) - Late November

I'm not going to write about each picture (I don't have time), so here's a general re-cap of our Florida trip the week after Thanksgiving:

Charlotte's favorite rides included E.T. (save the alien!), the carousel (rip-roaring fun) and the flying triceratops (we hopped between Disneyworld and Universal Studios during our 5 days of park-time). Charlotte clung to Daddy's leg or hand most of the time - she was definitely his little buddy or shadow or something like that.

Eleanor - well, what can I say? We flew clear across the country and she found her favorite place at Disney's Animal Kingdom: a petting zoo. Of course. And, just to add icing to the cake, there was a caged display of exotic creatures, including (drumroll....) a giant Madagascar Hissing Cockroach. She was in heaven. She also LOVED the Hippogriff ride at Harry Potter's theme park.

Oliver's favorite part of the trip (this child is a FOODIE!) - an Indian restaurant that we ate at in Utah on our way home! Okay, but for the Florida part he loved the butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks and Hogs Head cafe. He decided he does not like pumpkin juice, though. He also loved all the scary rides that I refused to ride. I did join Oliver and Sam for two memorably miserable rides (Everest in Disneyworld and Dragon Challenge in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter).

Samuel was picked as the guy to get a wand testing done at Ollivander's wand shop. It was actually pretty amazing and Sam was on cloud nine. We all loved it. He, like Oliver, actually had fun on those fast, upside down feet dangling in mid-air, rides. They're crazy. They got me to do one of those rides and it wasn't really that bad, but I wouldn't consider it FUN. (I LOVED the ride through Hogwarts, though).

Sam and Oliver were ridiculously hard to get good pictures of - they kept dodging the camera or making funny faces, but I did grab of few keepers.

Jeff was the general sheep herder, keeping us on track and the little 'uns in tow, and searching out palatable and healthy foods (what a nuisance! Not a lot of good food and drink options, and the drinking fountains spewed forth the nastiest water I've ever had). He had some cool apps on his phone that told us the current wait time at different attractions, as well as the predicted crowds for the upcoming days. Thankfully, there weren't very many people in the parks anyway. So the low numbers plus the phone app plus using our child swap and fast pass options made it so that we literally walked straight on to most of the rides. Our longest wait was 20 minutes for the thrilling, extremely popular, crazy Small World ride. (Hey, it's a Disney classic so it was worth the wait, right?) :)

Jeff also made I.D. tags for the kids with their picture, written descriptions, and phone numbers on each tag. Thank you, Jeff! Although we didn't lose anyone for more than a few seconds (and it was almost always Charlotte, who would then run back to cling to Jeff's leg), it was nice to know they had at least that info on them.

I was the Great Picture Taker (of mostly NOT great pictures, but great subjects!), trying to capture memories on camera. I actually took a lot of pictures of the queues because they were empty! "This is a picture of the line that wasn't."

It was so nice not to have crowds around us and little to no wait time. Of course, Jeff and the boys also took pictures, but it seemed I was always the one saying, "Look at mom, now SMILE!". No trouble smiling - the trip was a delight. When we came home I suffered serious withdrawal. I really really really missed being with Jeff and the kids 24/7. And reality hit when the kids went back to school after having missed a week: homework ad nauseum. Poor kids. Eleanor took two days to catch up, Oliver's work took four days to catch up, and Sam's took six. And that was straight homework from the time they got home until bed (with the exception of piano lessons and scouts). But since this was the time when Jeff could get away, this was the time we went. It was worth it.

I was also the one who kept falling asleep on my feet the first day or two. I didn't sleep a wink on the flight there (I do NOT recommend red-eye flights!). The first evening I took the girls back to the hotel early and we all crashed while Jeff and the boys got in some more park time at EPCOT.

Oh, a word about the final picture. Charlotte found a little red leaf and turned it sideways on her lips. It looked so cute that each of us with a camera (Jeff, Oliver, Sam, me) took a picture.