We spent much of the day today with our dear friends the Uhrigs. They saw our new digs, we had brunch, “the grown-ups talked and talked and talked” (this is a direct quote from Kyle), the kids played and played and played (you can quote me on that), there was a kids vs. dads basketball match (and later, a re-match), we took a walk on campus, went out for ice cream and coffee, hung out, and generally had a very fabulous time. The J-Ms love the Uhrigs.
I have always felt like you need to go through all four seasons in a place before you really know it. When we moved to campus Braydon and I promised each other that we’d see our family through all four seasons before we made any firm proclamations about what we thought of this new life of ours. So, the snow seemed especially pronounced when it came for the first time this week.
The campus was beautiful, especially up here on the hill where we live. It was a bright white snow that stuck to the trees. Even the deer, that we see in the woods almost daily, seemed more breathtaking in the crisp white of it.
We don’t need to have the driveway plowed; we don’t need to shovel our paths; or lay down salt; or worry about a thing where our home is concerned. It is all done for us. By a budget that is not ours, and by people we so deeply appreciate. A year ago I couldn’t even imagine what it would feel like to have those burdens lifted. Now I just relish the relief of it.
But the most profound difference with this snow — compared to all the others in the past eight years — was that I could easily and seamlessly take a chunk of time away from my office/work/day to play in the snow with my child. I’ve forced myself in the past. But this time was different: it wasn’t forced. It felt easy and light. I was, after-all, right here.
When home is work and work is home it can sometimes feel like it is all work. But sometimes (lucky for me, it is often), it is actually the opposite– and it feels like all play.
Students at Sayre saw us playing. They walked past us on the pathways and they looked out their dorm room windows. I wondered what they were thinking as I watched them watch us, them trying to hide smiles, but with smiles creeping across their faces nonetheless. Here, at one of the biggest crunch times of the year, smack in the middle of the 2nd to last week of classes, when the pressure cooker is blasting on ‘high’ and we’re a week away from finals and the tension in the air of campus is so thick you could slice it with a knife… here, amidst all the stress and angst and aggravation… here, amidst the self-doubt and insecurity and desperation to prove ourselves… here, on campus, during the first snow, is a tenured professor building snowmen and making snow angels with her four-year-old sprightly daughter.
You couldn’t miss us in the lawn of Sayre– Meera with her pink snowsuit and shrill shrieking laughter as she ran in the snow-covered lawn and called out to students, with clumps of snow in her mittens, “You should taste this! It’s delicious!!!” I wondered then, and I wonder now, what those kids all thought, and felt.
We invited some of them to play with us, but most of them declined, unthinkingly, quickly saying, “I can’t! I have to study!” Meera knows they have to study. She hears it all the time. So she’d run off smiling, totally unaffected. “You know?” I’d call out, “You can learn so much more from this four year old than you ever could from those books in your backpack!” And they’d smile or chuckle and wave back at me as they shuffled off to the library to study.
This afternoon we celebrated the snow and worked really hard on this snow-individual. Meera insisted that it was not a “snowMAN,” but rather a “snowGIRL.” Our neighbor/friend/student Aymee is one of our favorites. She ran out into the snow to make sure she could get a picture of her with Meera and the “snowGIRL” in Lehigh’s first snow of the season. I love love love all three girls in this photo!
After the boys headed out for school, Meera had a chance to try out her “sled-board” with Niomi. Sometimes it doesn’t matter there isn’t really enough snow to sled; it’s all in the experience of it. Not sure Niomi had the same experience Meera did however.
The bambinos had the whole week of Thanksgiving off from school. Here’s our Top Ten Things We Did List (in chronological order):
We left NYC, driving home, sipping our hot bubble tea, with a beautiful sunset over the highway. We came home to gear up for this week of back-to-school/work. We are ready for the holiday season. It was a good Thanksgiving Break Week.
In our decision to move to campus, Braydon and I always factored in that there would be certain weekends and times of year that we’d have to go away. We knew there were a few key times that would be important for us to exit the scene — mainly Lehigh-Lafayette weekend, and the Eagles Summer Training Camp (and, in addition, possibly some Greek Week/Rush times as well… although, at this point, I’m pretty confident we won’t need to worry too much about those).
For our first Lehigh-Lafayette Weekend Away we decided to do something totally kid-centric and very unlike our daily-life-on-campus. We decided to go somewhere where we’d be practically guaranteed to not run into any college-aged students. A true Get-Away Mini-Vaca!
There was very little we needed to do to prep for this trip… other than this for Meera and I the Sunday before:
Friday afternoon we picked up the kids from the bus with the car packed. And then made the short 3-hour trek, to the Fingerlakes Region of New York, to Hope Lake Lodge. The main attraction for us? The Cascades Indoor Waterpark. We had never been to an indoor water park. It did not disappoint. And everyone there was pretty much either a parent or a (relatively) youngish child (i.e., no college kids). It was a great place to take a break from our reality.
The bambinos were in heaven! Their favorite part? The water slides.
We knew K & O would be in their glory. But we hadn’t anticipated how much Meera would love the water slides too. She is just like her brothers: a fearless, water-loving, ear-to-ear-smiling, fully-immersed-in-the-moment-of-it, little dare-devil. She rode those water slides again and again and again.
We had hoped it would be a great way to spend the weekend. It was. It was also an amazing bonding experience to get away from campus, just the five of us, and focus in on just our little family. By mid-morning Saturday I could already see the sibling bonding that was happening — it was awesome to see it. I guess an indoor water park can be a great place for family bonding. Who knew?! (That, alone, was worth every penny.)
We just had so much fun.
My favorite part was the indoor-outdoor heated swimming pool. We spent a lot of time in that pool that day. (And we all got quite a kick out of seeing the lifeguards in parkas, boots, and wool hats!)
The resort was really nice, which was great, because we spent the rest of our time just hanging out in our room. We did our own food for breakfasts and lunch, and got room service both nights for dinner. The kids watched a lot of Disney Channel (funny thing: they have no clue that we have Disney Channel at home… they somehow think that this is something that is only available at hotels!?!!! We’re not doing anything to correct them on that anytime soon). Braydon and I drank gin & tonics and talked and talked (our favorite pastime). We all went to bed late and woke up even later. I don’t think we’ve ever had such a lazy, sit-around-the-hotel-room, trip. The fact that our room/suite was so clean, cozy, and well-equipped made it possible to truly just sink in deep and relax.
After I got Meera to bed Saturday night, Braydon took the boys back to the water park for some late-night fun to max out our water park passes. They probably could have stayed there forever. I think we went for just the perfect amount of time: a quick, 2-night, weekend of water-logged fun. And then we came back home to a very tame (and quiet, tired, hung-over) campus on Sunday afternoon. A great Lehigh-Lafayette weekend for the J-Ms!
Sometimes you have to just let things unfold. And when you do, it can be wonderful.
Catching up on research. Students carrying a keyboard into the lodge. Boys asking to play soccer. After a “stress relieving” game, discovering the piano leading to hanging out and playing four hands (or at least an 8-year old’s version, which includes sticking hands into the piano).
Learning to blend work with life: for us, for students; as a role model.
 |
 |
Sometimes an impromptu transcends.
Lehigh-Lafayette Weekend. The energy on this campus right now is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! When we decided to live on campus we knew from the start that we’d go away for this weekend. As exciting as it all is, it just isn’t the place for the bambinos to be (let alone their parents). Since living here we’ve remarked again and again and again that it is soooo much more quiet and soooo much more tame than we ever expected it would be. The last two nights have been the most rowdy — by far — and we’d rather not be here to witness whatever goes down for the next two. So, we’re glad we made this plan in advance. We’re exiting the scene for a couple of days. I keep telling students, “Have fun! And be safe!”… and I mean it.
GO LEHIGH!
We had a great day today with our dear friends the the Petsch family. A Saturday of tailgating, football gaming (Lehigh vs. Colgate… too bad, LU lost), and catching up by non-stop playing (the kids) and non-stop chatting (the parents). So much fun. True ‘family friends’ — like, when one whole family truly gets along with another whole family — are super special. And it is an extra special time in friendship when “new friends” start to become more like “old friends.” It is starting to feel like the Petsch’s and us go way, way back (check out this post: click here). We love you Lori, Shelli, and Zoe! xo
Amy Grant Concert!!! Hanover Theatre, Worcester Massachusetts — Fri, Nov 2, 2012
For a while this was planned… several weeks. But for even longer it was dreamed of… basically my entire life. Our family’s first Amy Grant concert!
Ok, you have to understand: I am a life-long Amy Grant fan. Some — mainly, the three members of my family-of-origin plus Braydon — would say that I am The World’s Greatest Amy Grant Fan. One day, when I was about 10 or 11 years old, my dad came home from a work trip to Nashville, Tennessee, and gave me an Amy Grant tape (this was back in the days of cassette tapes — something my digital-age-kids cannot comprehend). Anyway, I was immediately hooked and I listened to that tape until I wore it out. That tape kicked off a life-long relationship with Amy’s music. It has seen me through good times and bad, I have bought and memorized every single album she’s ever put out, and, while I’ve loved all sorts of music throughout various phases of my life, Amy Grant has always been the foundational musical background to my life. I’ve seen her in concert several times over the past 25 years, and I always dreamed of the day I’d bring my own kids to see an Amy show. I LOVE AMY GRANT. I’m going to try to stop there. But I could go on and on. But I won’t.
So, anyway… For months I’ve known that I needed to go to Boston for a work trip on Saturday, November 1. And then I found out that Amy Grant would be in Worcester the night before, and immediately snatched up five tickets. So, we planned for the whole family to go to Massachusetts for Mommy’s work trip.
My bambinos (who have been listening to Amy’s music for their whole lives as they ride in the backseat of my car), and my loyal husband (who inherited Amy’s music the day he met me), and me (Amy LOVER), had such a great time. I was shocked at how my kids know just about every single song by heart. Meera bounced in her seat to the music until she fell fast asleep on my lap halfway through the concert. Kyle quietly sang the lyrics and sat close to Braydon asking for explanations for everything happening all around him. Owen sat next to me, belting out every song at the top of his lungs, and so fully enthralled in the entire experience that I could barely contain him. It was everything I’d ever dreamed it would be. A major life highlight.
The next day brought us to Boston. While I was off giving my talk, Braydon met up with his mother, and they brought the bambinos to the Boston Children’s Museum. K, O, and M loved loved loved it.
There is not much these three kids love more than a night or two in a hotel. I swear!
And Monday it was back to school and work. Our goal for this week was to try to get back on track post-Hurricane-Sandy. Braydon took the photo below with his iPhone as the kids were headed off to school on Monday morning. We take a lot of pictures of our kids. Every once in a while, for whatever reason, a photo rises to the top. Somehow this one (below) just captures my heart and mind. I think the bambinos look exactly like them in this. It captures them, right now, just as they really are.
Monday afternoon was a freezing cold soccer game. Last game of the season. We fans froze our tushes off as we routed for our team.
K & O played on their school soccer team for the second year in a row this fall. They are the youngest players on the team, and “playing up” is very good for our uber-athletically-talented twin boys. Also very good for our uber-athletically-talented twin boys is the fact that their soccer team never won a single game this whole season. Yes, they lost every game. It keeps our sports-gifted duo humble. It is a good experience for them.
They still love it even when they lose (and even when they lose over and over and over again). And, win or lose, one thing is for sure about K & O: they play their hearts out.
Tuesday was the 2012 Presidential Election. Obama won. And we five were thrilled.
Wed-Thurs-Fri brought a nasty cold/flu bug for Kyle and Meera. Bummer. Threw our week way off track (just when we were trying to get in the groove). Such is life.
These days are filled with all sorts of things that don’t make it onto the blog. Kids’ fights; parents’ fights; annoyances and aggravations to the 9th degree; bedtime battles; school-day mornings’ hurry-hurry-hurry-rush-rush-rush; work stress; school drama; errands and bills and To Do lists; ridiculously complex coordination of schedules to fit it all in; juggling a million and one things. Life is crazy and complicated and it is very simple at the same time. We are grateful for the mess of it and the peace of it. These days us five have so, so much to be thankful for.
One of the things we loved most about our old neighborhood was Halloween (our Halloweens there were awesome! 2011; 2010; 2009; ETC!). All fall I wasn’t sure how to proceed with Halloween 2012 in our new scenario. Eventually we made grand plans for a Pumpkin Carving Party (to which we had invited all 150 residents of Sayre Village), complete with a pasta dinner (the catering had already been ordered), and then we were to go trick-or-treating with our good friends the Kishore-Famolari family in Easton (the only area near us that planned to trick-or-treat on the 31st instead the weekend before). It was a good plan. But Hurricane Sandy made short work of completely ruining it.
As with most everyone in our region of the county, all-things-Halloween were cancelled outright. We woke up on the morning of October 31st, as Hurricane Evacuees, in a hotel in Rhode Island, and the last thing on our minds was Halloween. In fact, it wasn’t until we reminded them, at around noon that day, that Kyle, Owen, and Meera even realized it was Halloween. When the ramifications of the situation hit them, they were truly distraught. This, one of their very most favorite days of the year — and definitely one of their top 2 or 3 holidays of the year — felt completely ruined. Owen and Meera both cried. Kyle stoically began trying to figure out how to solve the problem. And Braydon and I had bigger fish to fry: like, trying to get home and attempt to get life on track. We hit the road that day, headed back to Pennsylvania, with no plans whatsoever for Halloween 2012.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that sitting in a large plastic bin, in our basement storage area, were my kids’ 2012 Halloween costumes. Costumes I had worked hard to assemble over the past few weeks. Costumes that they had been so excited about. Costumes they’d probably outgrow by next year. And three big orange pumpkins were sitting in our apartment, just waiting to be carved. It seemed so wrong to just forego Halloween completely. Plus, there were still some students on campus. Students who surely had all sorts of crazy Halloween plans, that were now dashed. Granted, there weren’t many students around, but what were those few going to do?– just totally bypass Halloween this year? It all just seemed not right.
So, on the highway, as Braydon drove and the bambinos watched videos in the backseat, Mama and some exceptionally awesome LU students hatched a Halloween plan via text messaging.
Lehigh had been evacuated, but there were a few students still on campus, including about a dozen Gryphons (student resident assistants) and some Student-Athletes. These college students hadn’t had an easy past couple of days, and surely Halloween was just about the last thing on their minds, which made what they did for my three kids that night even that much more extraordinary.
By the time we got home, a plan was in place. A plan which turned out to give my kids the best Halloween EVER… thanks entirely to 7 Lehigh Gryphons and 4 Lehigh Football Players.
– – –
We carved pumpkins!
We turned off all our lights, listened to Night On Bald Mountain, and admired our jack-o-lanterns! (don’t worry LU Res Life! — no candles — those are battery-operated tea-lights inside)
And then we had the great reveal: Owen, Kyle, and Meera’s 2012 Halloween costumes!— Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, and The Tooth Fairy!!!
(The costumes were Kyle’s idea and we ran with it. Best J-M costumes ever!!!)
The bambinos had never had so much attention on Halloween as they did that night! There was more clapping, cheering, oohing and ahhhing, and smart-phone-photo-taking-facebook-twitter-posting than all of their other Halloweens combined.
And then we all headed out for trick-or-treating. Trick-or-treating in Sayre.
We had it all planned out. We would trick-or-treat to the rooms of the only 4 other people in Sayre (all of whom were part of our evening’s little Halloween festivities group). So, while the group of us went to each of our four stops, the student who lived in each one would run ahead to get ready for our arrival.
First stop, the football players who live downstairs from us! Big knocks on their door, with loud shouts of: “trick or treat!!!”
These guys had just arrived back on campus less than an hour before, so Braydon and I had no idea what (if anything) they’d have to hand out when we trick-or-treated there. Much to my complete amazement, when the door opened, K, O, and M were each greeted with whole fully prepared goody bags full of treats. I was completely stunned. It will be a long time before I forget that completely pre-meditated, simply sweet, act of kindness on behalf of four huge football-playing guys to my three little in-costume bambinos.
Next stop, our Head Gryphon, Sarah’s, room!
Much to our complete surprise, Sarah had somehow managed to rush back to her room and change into complete Flapper costume before our arrival!!! My jaw hit the floor when I saw that she was in costume. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! And then she gave each of the kids a mega-sized Hershey’s bar, which single-handedly led to Owen proclaiming this to be his “BEST NIGHT EVER!”
And we were off again!
When we got to Arielle’s, she was dressed up as a witch!
Kathryn and Olivia were dressed up when we got there too!
There were four stops on our Trick-or-Treat route this year. But each was crammed full of more Halloween spirit than 100 stops combined. And the love was spilling over, and it was just exactly right to make these three trick-or-treaters as happy as could be!
After trick-or-treating, we headed home…
…for pizza, and salad, and roasted pumpkin seeds, and Halloween candy, and playing.
It was all very heart-warming and soul-soothing in the midst of a very intense and draining hurricane of a week. And it was that for all of us that night — not just for my family of five, but for my much-loved friends/neighbors/students too.
Luckily, the Candy Witch had been prepared several days in advance this year. So, much to the bambinos’ delight, we even had a visit from the Candy Witch later that night!
We kept all of our Halloween traditions, only this time around they had lots of fabulous new twists. It was all good.
So, despite having moved, and despite a hurricane of historic proportions, and despite Halloween being officially cancelled, we ended up having the most unforgettable, most unique, most heart-warming Halloween ever.
– – –
Dear Kyle, Owen, and Meera,
This year you were The Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and The Tooth Fairy for Halloween! It was awesome! You were so adorable, and so joyful, running around Sayre like the happiest three kids on the planet.
The three figures you dressed up as represent what can be the very best of childhood joy and magic. These mythical characters, in the imaginations of many, gift children all over the world with treats, presents, money, and — most of all — happy excited thrill. They make kids feel special. But in real life, it is real people who do these things for children. Not just parents, but everyone involved every step of the way, on the mornings of Easter, Christmas, after a tooth falls out, and every single day and night of the year. I hope that you three are learning well from living on campus. We have a community here. A community filled with lots of good people. And the fact that they are all 18-21 year olds means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of true community. These are our neighbors and friends, and although they are also my students, we can learn from them. I want you to never forget the lessons they are teaching you about what it means to pull together, pull through, and make good happen. They made joy and magic for you this Halloween. And someday, I want you to follow their lead and do the same for others.
Happy Halloween my sweets! It was the best ever!
love, Mommy
– – –
Recent comments