Kyle and Owen hanging out in Rathbone with one of their favorite LU Basketball players (K & O still in their own bball uniforms after a game)
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The thing that seems to astound people the most about our life on campus is the fact that we eat, as a family, regularly, in the dining halls. People are very curious about this experience and are also often shocked (and dismayed! lol!) that we do this. Eating in the dining halls is definitely the topic I get asked most about.
The thing is, at most boarding schools, and at some residential colleges/universities, it is a regular occurrence to see faculty families eating in the dining halls. But at Lehigh, a place that historically has not had faculty living on campus, and a place that has not — until now — had faculty families eating in the dining halls (at least not in recent decades), it is truly unheard of for a professor — let alone with his or her family — to be eating amongst students in the dining halls. You just don’t see it; breakfast, lunch, dinner, it just doesn’t happen.
When we moved to campus we had every intention of taking full advantage of the dining halls as a way to ease up our often-very-frenzied-and-harried evening routine. We also knew that if we were going to do this (live on campus), then we were going to jump in with both feet to the deep end of the pool. Eating in the dining halls is part of that for us. I think that eating in the dining halls — with students, where students eat — takes the residential campus experience to a whole other (deeper, broader) level. It is symbolic: it means, ‘we are the real deal, we are in this fully, we are even eating with you!’ There is something very humanizing and humbling about eating together.
Meera, so proud of her developing chopsticks skills, eating dinner at Rathbone
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And so, despite the unprecedented nature of the Faculty-Family-Eating-In-Dining-Hall act, despite the sheer social awkwardness of it, despite the stares and quizzical looks and whispers from the students and the dining hall staff– “who the heck is that?! and why on earth are they here?!”… despite all that we plowed forward as a family of five and proceeded, right from the start, to eat in the dining halls 1-2 times per week. We’ve done that for the past six months.
The first few times we ate in the dining halls were CRAZY. For one thing, we were trying to get a lay of the land. But the biggest challenge was to rise above the awkwardness about the fact that everyone — from the students to the cooks to the dishwashing staff — noticed us, looked at us, stared at us, or (best case scenario) just came right out and asked us what in the world we were doing there. I’ll be honest, as a faculty member it was very challenging for me to hold my head up high and just plow forward.
We’d bring a booster seat for Meera, get situated at a table, get our food, and eat. But it was impossible to not feel totally 100% out of place, and in a fishbowl, and under the microscope. It took some serious OOMPH to go back again and again the first several times. I probably would have chickened out, but Braydon was adamant that we plow forward, and the kids were always chomping at the bit to go to the dining hall (they love it).
Gradually, though, over time, we’ve become less of a curiosity, and it seems that most students and staff have come to not bat an eye at seeing us around. So, now it is becoming more normalized for us to eat in the dining halls each week. I think most students and dining hall staff have seen us by this point, they’ve heard through the grapevine who we are, and the stares have turned into cheerful smiles and nods of acknowledgment. It is now totally comfortable for me to eat in the dining halls with my family. We are still, however, virtually the only non-students doing it. In the past six months I have only seen one staff person (a Resident Assistant {hello Brandon!!!} who lives on campus) eating in a dining hall, and I have never once seen a faculty member.
Owen’s dining hall dinner choices mimic precisely what he observes the football and basketball players eating: pasta and cereal / Kyle is more adventurous and will try lots of things most nights (I don’t have any idea what he is eating in this picture)
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Before living on campus, I never ate in a dining hall at Lehigh (had never even seen one). Why don’t faculty and staff eat in the dining halls? There are surely a whole host of reasons. But one of them, definitely, is that people presume that the food must be horrible.
I’ve been really surprised by how non-horrible the food is. In my opinion, the food is mediocre (which is not horrible). But for institutional food (remember, I am familiar with institutional food; I grew up at a camp!), I think it is really good. There is a huge variety, always a fresh salad bar, lots of vegetarian and vegan options, and relatively healthy offerings. These are the things that make me comfortable having my family eat there. But the issue with institutional food is that it is institutional food — it is generally not the highest quality ingredients — and there is just no getting around the mediocrity of it.
The thing about our family, though, is that we are not above eating mediocre stuff (and I have a philosophical problem with anyone who thinks they are). Yes, we like our fancy food, and yes, most would quickly label us (especially me) Foodies, but we can chow down on the basics just like anyone else. And we can also be creative– a couple nights ago I got some rice from the Asian station, a grilled chicken breast (minus the bun; it was supposed to be a chicken sandwich) from the grill station, and some stir fried veggies, and made a nice plate for Kyle. Being creative at the dining hall is something my kids will excel at early I suspect! (This is an important and relatively invisible skill of some people who have lots of experience with institutional food! You can always spot a kid who has been to boarding school because they are so creative mixing-and-matching to come up with a dinner in the dining hall!). The other thing is this: through the dining halls my kids have been exposed to all sorts of Non-Foodie-Foods that they otherwise would not have been– jello, “Chinese noodles” (those thin hard crunchy noodles that are sometimes on salad bars), a variety of canned fruit that they never knew existed, and all sorts of other things. Granted, they have discovered they don’t like most of these things. But still, I’m glad they’ve tried it. Honestly.
And for the most part, the dining hall food is good. We can always find something decent to eat. This isn’t the school cafeteria of the past. This is a modern version of eating on campus. Schools like Lehigh go all out with their student food services.
above: a typical dining hall dinner for Meera (salad with ranch dressing; roast beef; penne pasta with alfredo sauce; milk)
below: a typical dining hall dinner for me (Heather)
Meera ALWAYS gets ice cream after dinner in the dining hall
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From the start we established a dining hall routine. Here’s our deal:
- First we find a table. We sit alone, as a family of five. We don’t (except for a couple of rare exceptions to this rule) invite students to eat with us at our table.
- We all go to the salad bar first. Everyone gets a salad, and we sit down to eat it together before proceeding to our main entrees.
- The only allowable drinks are milk or water. Period. No exceptions. Ever.
- You can choose anything for your main entree (everyone always chooses different things and we inevitably always try everybody’s choices). If you eat pasta and cereal for dinner, that is fine (O). If you eat a hot dog and fries for dinner, that is fine (M). If you eat a waffle for dinner, that is fine (K). This is all fine because we already had a big salad!… and we’re only eating in the dining halls once or twice a week. (And, if truth be told, the bambinos are making better and healthier dining hall choices all the time as the novelty of the pasta-bar-&-bottomless-fries-&-Belgian-waffle-maker begin to wear off.)
- If you eat a good dinner you can have dessert. (Meera is the only one who consistently opts to have dessert anyway.)
- After you’re done eating a good solid dinner, you can go socialize. (The bambinos know how to work a room… I am telling you!… They know more people on campus — by far — than Braydon and I combined… And there are always lots of people they want to chat it up with after dinner in the dining hall. This is their main incentive for wanting to eat at the dining hall.) p.s. You should see the way they can light up a student’s face, just by hanging out with them while they eat.
This routine has been working for us.
Owen, the Master of the Post-Dinner-Socializing, in (above) Cort Dining Hall, and (below) Rathbone
above: hanging out in Rathbone (left), and hanging out in Cort (right)
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Last week we had a first. Thursday night I had to teach a graduate seminar 4-7pm, and Kyle and Owen had to be picked up from a basketball game at 6:00. We didn’t want Braydon to have to drag Meera out on a school night to pick up her brothers, so we got a babysitter (sooooo sooo so ridiculously easy for us to get a babysitter now!). Our regular babysitter Kathryn (she is in photo below, far right, with white headband) was available, so we planned for her to watch Meera. So, we arranged for her to take Meera to the dining hall for dinner. I’m sure this was the first time in the history of Lehigh University that a four year old ate in the dining hall without parents. Meera had dinner with Kathryn and a couple of her friends. All reports were that they had a great time (of course they did). I get a kick out of this whole thing every time I think of it — Meera, at age 4, having dinner in the dining hall, with a bunch of her 20-year-old friends. What a hoot!!!!!
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Our kids do not love the dining hall food. Braydon and I don’t either. We’d choose a meal made by me, or a lovely dinner out, most any day. But the dining hall is convenient, relaxed, and relatively healthy. So it works. It works in a big huge way. Here are some of the best things about it:
- On a busy work night, it is such an immense and huge relief to me to not have to get dinner on the table. Oh my gosh. Huge. Immense. Relief.
- At the same time, it is such an immense and huge relief to me to not have to: a) go to a nice restaurant that will be very expensive and where the expectations for our family members’ behavior will be unmanageably high, or b) eat at McDonalds, or some other such place, that would make me feel horrible [physically], from eating it, and would make me feel horrible [emotionally], from having my kids eat it
- The expectations for behavior are very low at the dining hall. It is loud and noisy. Lots of people are rowdy and lots of people are grumpy. My kids (and me! and Braydon!) fit right in at the end of the day when they/we are hungry and tired and just being the not-always-perfect-people-that-they/we-are. Just like the students we are sometimes rowdy and sometimes grumpy. That is all ok at the dining hall.
- If you try something and don’t like it, it is ok. It isn’t like we’ve just wasted $25/plate for a restaurant meal, or hurt Mommy’s feelings that we don’t like what she just slaved over the stove for the past hour making. This is an all-inclusive, all-you-can-eat buffet. If you don’t like it, try something else. We try to be cognizant and verbal about food wastefulness in the dining halls. But at the same time, it is ok if the kids try something, don’t like it, and then get something else. It is really ok.
- We wouldn’t want to eat in the dining halls every night, but once or twice a week we like to do it– it is fun to see students we know, to touch base with folks, to have a good laugh, or to chat it up with a football player (Kyle), or learn a new tidbit of inside info from a basketball player (Owen), or play chase-me-around-the-table-100-times-giggling (Meera). And while the kids all work the room, Braydon and I have that amazing luxury of just sitting there, the two of us, catching up on our day. No, it is not completely relaxing (we are in a college dining hall!!!), but it is very, very nice for us.
- No clean up. No dishes. No nothin’! Folks, that — in and of itself — is worth it!
We’ve done breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the dining halls. But the only thing we do regularly is dinner. There are two main dining halls on campus that we eat in regularly (for LU folks: Cort and Rathbone). We ate last night in the Upper UC Food Court for the first time (we were coming home late after K&O’s basketball game).
However, by far our favorite place for on-campus dining is the Faculty and Staff Dining Room (Asa Packer Dining Room) in the UC. This is a whole other league. The food is very high quality, it is waited tables, and it is all-around-the-polar-opposite of the regular dining halls in setting and atmosphere. It is only open for lunch on weekdays. And you rarely see students eating there (unless they are invited by a faculty or staff member). It is filled with faculty and staff Monday-Friday. The bambinos LOVE the food there, and consider it a real treat to be able to have lunch there any time they don’t have school.
above & below: eating at the Asa Packer Dining Room on President’s Day a couple weeks ago (the kids did not have school but LU did)
above: my current favorite picture of all time– Kyle with MaryAnn (my absolute favorite LU employee — I adore her — I’ve been sitting in her section for years) — he was having linguine with sun-dried tomatoes
below: Meera gets a brownie with pink sprinkles for dessert (super exciting!), Owen’s lunch was, according to him, “absolutely delicious!” (he asked MaryAnn to please tell the chef he said that) — he had Greek spinach strudel (he had 3 helpings of that), herb crusted cod, and grilled lemon chicken
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So, there you have it. Eating, as a faculty family, in the dining halls. Not for everyone, for sure. Definitely not for the faint of heart. But a real benefit of living on campus for us.
O, M, K at Rathbone
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{By Braydon!}
Let me surely call out this truth: while we have downsized, others have downsized (and done other radical things) even more than we have. And for much of the world “downsized” is the way life has always been and having less is not desirable. In the western, privileged world, needing and choosing to downsize is quite a luxury. And maybe in part our attempt to rid ourselves of some of our material overhead is a tacit recognition of our place in the world and what’s right.
That said, we still have a couple cheats (a small storage area in the basement for living items and a Units/Pod storage unit for stuff we think we’d want when eventually move on). So it’s with that acknowledgement and admission that I reveal our downsizing effort.
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All in all, we gave away around 3/4’s of our material possessions. And we went from 3,200 sqf to 700 sqf of living space. After 9 years of living in a large house and going from 0 to three children and the baby years of their life, we had collected a vast amount of stuff.
It was weird though. If you’ve looked at photos of our old house on this blog, it didn’t feel like we had a ton of stuff. We worked hard to reduce clutter and keep things very clean and clear. We didn’t have lots of knick-knacks around and we continually got rid of outdated, broken or otherwise unused items. But, it turned out, we had vast amounts of stuff. Just stuff. And more stuff. Stuff that defies definition, but some how accumulates where you don’t realize it’s hiding.
Stuff, stuff everywhere and not a notion how. And ours was not extreme stuff either.
So, after we had mapped out exactly what we would be moving into our new space (down to the inch, the placement of decorations and the items that would sit on shelves and everywhere else, we had to go through and get rid of things.
The first wave was the hardest by far. There were many many waves, but the first felt like a real barrier to walk through. Or a mountain of stuff to climb. We did that first wave in full spirit of doing it but later realized that it was only half-hearted. We meant well, but it was just not easy. And that was just mostly the “junk”. Things that were broken, or old electronics (which I had a real tendency to keep and keep and keep and horde), or old clothes (like 2o year old college t-shirts – what’s up with that?) or broken toys (which we had kept since the boys had played with them for a while when they were 3).
Maybe it’s because I am inherently a packrat. I have always really struggled with getting rid of things. I have kept every card that Heather has given me since the very first one she gave me when we were dating in college (which could be sweet, but when it takes up a box, it’s just kind of weird). I kept notebooks from high-school and college. I kept old clothes. I kept old guitar picks. I kept old patches from awards and paper awards themselves. I kept old books and magazines, and maps and notes and trinkets and my old toys (that sadly I never let the boys play with because I was worried they would break them, only later to have them not be interested and find myself donating them to someone else – I really regret that). I kept nuts and bolts and screws and wires and cables and everything. And yet somehow it didn’t seem like too much.
But then after wave one, we looked around and realized we had a looooong way to to. So we embarked on Wave 2. Then Wave 3, and Wave 4, and 5 and 6. And I don’t know how many waves we really did, but it went on and on for months.
We took the seats out of my minivan (aka the “Rox Box”) and filled it 9 times. And donated it all to a local charity/thrift store that serves the local community. Then we rented a 14′ U-Haul and filled that and made a huge donation (although 2 couches did go to my office). Then we set up a day for anyone who wanted to come and take anything else that we had not earmarked to keep ourselves.
It was like a tidal wave of purging had come over us.
And as we went, it got easier. And it made more sense. And it felt lighter, and clearer and more focused. And a few waves into it, we looked back at the first few waves and almost laughed at how we had wanted to hold on to certain things. I remember going through the closet in our bedroom (again) and finding things I thought I couldn’t part with, that now I couldn’t believe I would have ever held on to.
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The very last thing we did was go through the closet in the basement. The one place that had all family items, memorabilia, photographs, momentos, collectables and things we felt we couldn’t part with them. We had been saying that we needed to get to it, but I think we really did need to do that one last. Had we not gone through all the waves previously, we never would have been able to go through that last one.
We sat on the floor for several hours, pouring through memories and picking things that we wanted to keep. We supported each other on what should go and what should stay. Things from our parents, grand parents, great grandparents, and great-great grandparents. Things from own childhoods, things we remembered, things we didn’t. Lost friends reappeared, lost achievements and hopes and dreams floated by in a sea of paper and cardboard boxes. Our lives seemed to unfold before us as we pared through the chaff.
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And then we were done.
And the moving truck was packed, the storage unit was packed. Then the home we had became a house and was empty.
It felt weird. Giving it away felt weird. Seeing our friends excitedly take away our furniture felt weird.
And it felt really good.
And although we can recall some of our material possessions and memories along with them, we have not missed our stuff at all.
I believe we are now different people than we were before, and it feels right.
Model train set in the lounge.
Play tent, unicorn, and princess girl ready for a tea party in the hall.
As we’ve discovered this winter, one of the best parts of living in Sayre is the sledding! We’ve only had a couple of bigger snow storms, but both times we took full advantage of the hills outside our residence hall. The first big snow was during Winter Break — students were all away; we were the only people on campus; so we had the sledding slopes all to ourselves. It was amazing to have the entire campus all to ourselves, and we savored every minute of it. The second big snow was just a couple of weeks ago — students were here and many more than I would have imagined were excited to play in the snow on a Saturday morning! It was amazing to see my kids sledding, and playing, and just having so much fun with some pretty incredible students.
Our life on campus is a mix of alone time (just our family), and together time (interacting and engaging with students, staff, and faculty). Sometimes we do things alone; we have a lot more “alone time” and privacy than many might think (and more than I had imagined we’d be able to have); we do not have an “open door policy” and students have greatly — with no exceptions (knock on wood!) — honored and respected our families’ boundaries, personal space, and need for “alone time.” And sometimes we do things together with students or other members of the campus community. At times our “together time” is planned and organized (events, etc.), but a lot of the time it is very spontaneous and casual (for example, after sledding with the students in the photos below, we invited them over for hot chocolate… which turned into a memorable and deep conversation at our kitchen counter). There are so many times that the “together time” brings such a rich layer to our experience — our kids, especially, benefit so much from it. For example, in keeping with the Sayre sledding theme, that day while sledding, students built a huge sledding jump that we would never have been able to –or at least not have had the energy to– build on our own– the bambinos loved it! Then later that day some other students helped the bambinos turn the jump into a snow fort– which the students soon abandoned, but which K, O, and M played with for days. And another example from that same day: when we were making hot chocolate and the whistle on our tea pot sounded, Braydon and I could not answer the boys’ questions about why/how the whistle whistles when the water boils. I said, “Oh, that’s what these students are for! Just ask them, I bet you at least one of them can give you the answer!” And sure enough, they got a full and lengthy explanation — which, I must say, was very child-centric and age-appropriate — about the physics and chemistry of tea-pot-boiling-whistle-sounding… an explanation that their Sociology Doctorate and Music Composition Doctorate parents would never have been able to give!
Although family life on campus is definitely not for everyone, it works for our family. While we value a lot of “alone time,” we are also a group of five extrovert-oriented people who really appreciate the multiple dimensions of the “together time” too.
{By Braydon!}
I thought I would do a “Top ten awesome things about living on campus”. Then I thought it would be “Top ten things about radically downsizing”. Then I realized that I could have sliced up a Top Ten list about 100 ways (logistic improvements, finance changes, community engagement, environmentalism, work life balance, etc).
I guess that’s just how life is – refuses to be easily categorized.
So, here are the 10 Ten things I love about our crazy living situation.
- Yard work and Maintenance – better than I could ever do: In our old life, I had to worry about grass mowing, spring/fall clean up, gutter cleaning, snow removal, tree issues, pool care, weeding. Door hinges, window screens, fence repair, garage door issues, water system problems, heating and cooling systems, pool pumps, roof repairs were concerns. Basically everything that comes with owning a house – and in our case a rather large house. Of course if we rented an apartment that would mostly go away, but here on campus it’s all done by professionals who do better than either I or the people we used to hire could or even in an apartment complex.
- Massive financial savings. Mortgage, utilities, services, repairs, reduced driving, overall reduced stuff. Do I need to elaborate?
- 9 vs 110 lightbulbs. In our old house we had 110 lightbulbs. Now we have 9 light bulbs. Incredible electricity reduction. Granted, we don’t pay for it, but that’s not the point. Have you counted how many you have lately? And it’s not just that, it’s heat, air conditioning, cable tv, etc.
- Three washing machines and dryers. Family of 5, being able to do 3 loads of laundry in the time it takes to do 1. Awesomeness.
- A vibrant, living community. You might not think of students on campus as a community per se, or if nothing else a transient community, but it really is a community. We live here together, we play together, we work through challenging world issues together. After having lived out in a country setting with little interaction in our community and honestly, a bit of lonlieness, it’s incredible to have an engaged group of people around who you interact with daily and build meaningful relationships.
- Proximity to lots of things: work (2-5 min drive or 15 min walking), restaurants (2-5 min), shopping (2-10 min), airport (12 min), lots of other activities (2-20 min). It’s less drive time, less gas and less of an obstacle to life.
- Overall reduction in all material things. Not only did we get rid of 2/3-3/4 of all our earthly possessions when we moved, we also just buy less now. A lot less. It’s not just that we don’t need to fill our space with stuff, it’s that we actively have to keep at bay the purchasing of things. I went into a Lowes a couple months ago and said “gosh, there is nothing here I could buy even if I wanted to”.
- Eating in the dining hall and having it be fun. It’s not just that Heather’s cooking load is lower. When we eat in the dining halls, it’s like being at a restaurant with 100 of your friends. There is no pressure to be on your perfect behavior, you get to have great conversations together or with others all over a really good meal.
- Living in a smaller space is just good. Everyone is closer together physically and emotionally. Our rhythms are more noticeable, how we dovetail into each other is more pronounced and it feels good. When our kids are playing around us they don’t feel far away and that feels really good.
- Reconnecting to my wife and kids. All that logistical and financial overhead and stress, the missing social interaction, the energy it required to sustain our own little community, the energy it took to psychically fill a large house all took its toll. Heather is much less stressed, I am much less stressed, our kids are much closer to us. This unique solution has brought me back to my family and I deeply appreciate it.
In the months leading up to moving, we noticed over and over again, that our whole family would all be in one room in our large house. We’d all be in the kitchen, or the living room, or the family room, or the bedroom or the dining room, or the garage but we were always in the same 200 square feet within a 3200 square foot house. That is, except when we put the kids to bed – then they were upstairs and we were downstairs. They seemed so far away. Now our life is tightly together in so many ways.
Now our family feels tight and mightily alive. There is a lot that contributes to that sense.
Last weekend we hosted a brunch for Eckardt Scholar students. The Eckardt Scholars Program is a highly selective honors program in the College of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh. This is my second year as Director of the program. I have been loving this new (it still feels very new to me) role. I had been wanting to host an event at our home for Eckardt Scholars, and a Sunday brunch seemed perfect because it allows for students to have the rest of their day free (Eckardts are a very ambitious bunch and, for the most part, Sundays are not at all “off” for them, but rather are spent intensely studying and/or devoted to working on the many other activities/organizations/clubs/etc. in which they take part and lead). The brunch was probably the most successful event that we’ve hosted so far on campus (and we’ve hosted quite a few!). About 40 students came. The sun was streaming in, everyone was relaxed, and the food was delicious and plentiful. I’ve never seen this particular group of students so care-free, social, and happy. It was such a great event.
For the past week I’ve been marveling in how grateful I feel for being able to pull off something like that brunch. In the past, it would have been a major stressor to try to make it happen. But now, it was so easy and stress-free. There are two things that stand out to me as making the most major difference:
- Living on campus makes it so easy to invite and embrace students into our home. Hosting a brunch like this in our old home would not have been impossible, but it would have been much, much harder. On a residential campus like Lehigh’s many students don’t have cars/transportation. And even if we could have arranged for transportation, the drive-time (even though we only lived 20 minutes away) would have added to the time commitment for already-overly-busy students. If we had done something like this in our old home it would have felt so much bigger– and thus the stakes would have felt so much higher– the pressure would have been on for all involved– and there wouldn’t have been much at all relaxed about it. Being right on campus makes a huge difference in the logistics — and the tone — of the event!
- Living on campus allows for us to easily take advantage of Lehigh Catering. And OH MY GOSH what a difference that makes. Everyone knows I love to cook and entertain, but seriously… a brunch for 40?!… it would have meant a whole weekend of planning, prepping, shopping, chopping, and cooking for me. Not to mention set up, take down, dishes, ETC. We had Lehigh Catering cater with a wonderful brunch menu. They did the entire event for us (set up, take down, and a catering staff assisting through the entire event with replenishing/cleaning/, etc.), which meant I could spend the brunch focused on the Eckardt students, and the rest of my weekend focused on my own kids. Having it catered makes a huge difference!
MorMor and MorFar gave the boys unicycles for Christmas. Kyle really hasn’t been very interested in his, and rarely takes it out. But Owen loves the challenge of trying to ride his unicycle, and has been practicing almost daily. The dorm halls make for great unicycling practice in the dead of winter! He’s getting pretty good at it!
Oh my goodness gracious… the kids are long in bed asleep, the “Spa” was hours ago, and Braydon and I are still cracking ourselves up laughing about this and grinning ear to ear just thinking back on it. Seriously– this was so much fun and SUCH a riot!
We had a very long President’s Day weekend. The kids had school off on Friday and Monday, so it was four days straight of togetherness. Which is good. And which is challenging. By this afternoon we were all ready to combust. We had a busy four-day-weekend (including, among many other things– a babysitter/date-night Friday night, a bowling birthday party Saturday, a brunch (for 40 guests) that we hosted at home on Sunday, and a pretty miserable trip to IKEA today [we are not a family who enjoys shopping]). The highlight of the whole loooong weekend, though, was late this afternoon, a grandiose high of an ending to our mediocre-four-days-“off”: MOMMY & PAPI’S SPA.
Late this afternoon, while the kids played, showered/bathed, and generally drove us to the brink of insanity, I made a menu of treatments/services (above), and a spa drink menu (below), and set up our bathroom and hallway as a “Spa.” Complete with dim lighting, candle, and spa music (thanks to Braydon who I delegated with the task of finding ridiculously-over-the-top-spa-ish-music and setting it up in the bathroom). It was all very spa.
I set up our bedroom as a “dressing room” and laid out “spa clothes” (Braydon’s undershirts) for the kids to change into. They got changed, placed their drink orders, and familiarized themselves with the treatment options. Their drinks were delivered with fresh “cleansing carrots,” and then they placed their spa treatment orders with the spa staff (i.e., Braydon and me).
They all got facials. The full treatment. They took this 100% seriously. Braydon and I were in character as the spa staff. It was an absolute total RIOT. I cannot look at this picture (below) without fully cracking up~~~~
Meera chose to receive a manicure. The boys both chose massages. I was the nail tech. Braydon was the masseuse. This all took place in our bathroom.
At the end of it all, we had 1 very messy bathroom, 3 very happy kids, and 2 very stress-reduced parents (giggling your way through a very serious spa experience will do that to you — especially when your clients are taking it completely seriously). The whole idea of a spa is to promote health and relaxation for the clients. Our clients might have walked away more healthy and relaxed than they had come in, but their spa-workers/treatment-provider-parents benefitted the most from this experience for sure.
Still cracking up here in Never-a-Dull-Moment-Land… (a great way to start off another week of the February Funk)!
Our school has a ban on store-bought Valentines. The idea is to get the kids to make hand-made gifts that are “from the heart” (Kyle’s quote… seriously). I love this idea, in concept, but man-oh-man am I ever put to the test at V-Day each year. They have a Valentine’s Day “Secret Pal” tradition at the school, where each kid brings hand-made gifts to their secret pal for the 3 days leading up to V-Day. Then, on V-Day they gift them with a “big special gift” (Owen’s quote) which is — according to K & O — preferably, homemade sweet treats of some kind. Meera’s pre-school class is still too young to be included in the Secret Pal routine… so she wanted to make valentines for all of her classmates. Good thing I like crafting.
It has been a long week (we started in on our crafting in earnest this past weekend, and wrapped up tonight with our grand finale: homemade [cheater] cake pops***). I almost lost my mind once or twice. But we survived and came out on the other end with some “awesome!!!” (K & O & M’s quote) hand-made V-Day gifts.
All I can say is: THANK GOD FOR PINTEREST!!!
And: If we can do this, you can too (nobody hates crafting more than K & O). Not that you’d probably choose to… I’m just saying, if you have to — or dare to — you can do it for sure if we can.
Happy Valentines Day Y’All!
***FYI: the cheater cake pops were super easy to do. Buy lollipop sticks, some good store-bought doughnut holes, some microwavable chocolate/vanilla coating (the stuff you’d use for chocolate-dipped-strawberries, etc.), and some sprinkles… and you’re good to go! The boys are sooooo excited to give these to their secret pals!
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