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Our dear friend Gaby came yesterday for an overnight visit. It was so good to spend time with her. We had such a great time playing, eating, and drinking. There is just nothing like old friends.

And, sorry, but I just have to brag on her a little tiny bit. In addition to all of the other amazing things she is currently doing with her life (including, for example, her highly important work at a very prestigious school; coaching; and regular trips to lead volunteer work in Africa), Gaby was stopping at our house on her way back from — get this! — racing in the 400 Meter Master’s Exhibition at the U.S. Olympic Trials. She placed 6th. Which means that in the entire United States of America Gaby is the 6th fastest female age-40-and-over in the 400 Meter. Awesomeness!

(You can see a picture of Gaby running at the recent Olympic Trials by clicking here — she is on the far left!)

Summer at the halfway mark, and we are deep into the thick of it. Summer soccer (photo above) gives us a little bit of a routine– two steamy hot nights a week our little athletes rock the soccer field while us other three J-Ms cheer them on from the sidelines. It is just enough of a ‘schedule’ to keep us on our toes. The rest of the time — at least for the bambinos — is purposefully unstructured. And the desired effect has begun to take root: summer boredom has started to set in. This is a good thing. It gives them time to let their minds wander, gets their creative juices flowing, and allows them the space to soak up every little bit of summer.

I want summer to settle into their souls to sustain them for another big year. I see that year coming — I’m already scheduling fall piano lessons for Owen, a regular babysitter for Meera (her preschool program this year will only be three days a week), and I just ordered new Wrap-n-Mats for school lunch boxes — but I try to buffer them from that looming-start-date where we’ll begin-it-all-all-over-again. For now, my most important job is to keep them firmly in the grips of summer.

Bikes and scooters and sidewalk chalk are in full use in the driveway. Toys and games that have gone unused for months have been rediscovered. The basket that holds our bandaids and Neosporin is pulled off the shelf at least once a day.

When I’m at home during the day they pester me incessantly — and I do mean incessantly — and I repeat my mantra over and over and over, “Go play!” But every 5 minutes or so, one of them is there again, asking for yet another snack, begging to play with the iPad, tattle-taling on their sibling, and generally acting agitated and bored. They never dare say, “I’m bored,” but they sure come close, and they drive me absolutely to the brink of insanity until… finally…. they eventually settle in. It is hard to settle into summer — with its relatively very slow pace and its unscheduled days. But inevitably, just when I think I might truly lose my mind, sure enough they sink into it. Without my help they find something to engage in. And the result is deliriously good as I see them get lost in their own worlds, deep inside their imaginations, doing summer just beautifully.

A lot of it is like a summer haze in my mind’s eye. But there are moments of crystal clear clarity. Like watching them run across the yard chasing fireflies at dusk. In pajamas and bare feet, running to me to show off their fistfuls of fireflies in their grubby little hands.

And for Meera there seems to be a little extra time in the day to stretch out a bit. I can say ‘yes’ when she asks me to read a book to her at the kitchen counter while we wait for her omelet to cook.

This is summer at the halfway mark. Soon I’ll probably get desperate for the school year to start so we can get back into a “normal routine.” For now, I’m trying my best to sustain — and savor — the non-routine; to be truly in the summer moment (despite a million things on my mind); to make the most of this season; to give them summers that will be good building blocks in their foundations.

I’m starting to get sentimental about moving. Our move-date is coming quickly, and now — just about a month out — I can feel myself trying to get us to soak up as much as we can of the things I know we’ll miss. We have this amazing little ice cream shop 8 minutes down the road from us. The ice cream they make is unbelievably good, all organic, and they heavily rely on small local farms for their ingredients. The place is such a treat. We’ll probably visit it every-once-in-a-while once we move, but it won’t be the same as having it close enough that we can spontaneously spring for ice cream after supper on a hot summer night. We will miss OwowCow.

I hate to complain, I really do, because our life is so very, very, very fully richly good. But every once in a while, I just need to be completely real about just how totally ridiculously exhausted I sometimes am. Because someday I’m going to look back at this old blog and I’ll want to remember the whole spectrum.

We have had 3 house showings in the past 5 days. One Friday, one Sunday, and one today. It is totally exhausting. I’m sure anyone who has ever tried to sell their house, By Owner, while living it, with three kids, during summer (i.e., kids are home all day so the house does not stay neat/clean for more than 5 minutes), while also fully in the throws of sorting/purging/packing/preparing-for-a-major-move-and-drastic-downsizing, while also in a full-time-dual-career situation, while also trying to make the most of summer (and trying to make the most of our last summer in this house), completely understands what I’m talking about here… seriously… it is INSANE. Totally exhausting. If I let myself sit still for more than 10 minutes in a row, I fall asleep.

P.S. for those wondering— over the past couple of months we’ve had lots of showings (which is good), but no offers (which is bad). Which all just adds to the very high levels of stress/anxiety/exhaustion.

This year us J-Ms were away in Colorado for Maggie & Eric’s wedding over the weekend during which much of the USA celebrated the 4th of July. So, we hosted our traditional 4th of July with my side of the family the following weekend. 4 days of “4th” festivities which included:

• A perfect heat wave just in time for a string of perfect pool days.
• By far MorFar’s biggest and best fireworks display ever!
• The traditional sparklers and snaps.
• A quickly developing relatively newer tradition — doing a puzzle — reveals the uber-intensity of the Johnson side of the family (!).
• A couple of Saturday morning “appointments” at “Meera’s Make-Up Salon.”
• Ice cream at OwWowCow.
• Glow sticks in the pool at night (does anyone else do this?! super fun to do!).
• Dinner out at K,O,M’s favorite restaurant– hibachi at Kome.
• And of course lotsa lotsa pool time & lotsa lotsa good food and drink!

When they all left this year it was bittersweet. Sweet because we had a great time. Bitter because this was our last time hosting the 4th of July at this house. One of the very best things about this house is how great it is for hosting guests… especially in the summer… and our 4th of Julys are the epitome of that! We will miss that. A lot.

Us J-Ms dream of keeping on hosting the 4th of July for the Johnson side of the family… so now we just cross our fingers and hope that they’ll keep on coming each year when we invite them… to wherever we are… for the 4ths in our future! (And when they come, we like to make it worth the trip, in hopes they will come back next year!)

One of my strongest memories of growing up is of listening to John Denver playing on the record player as I fell asleep at night. My dad was a huge JD fan. We listened to those songs all the time– in the car, in the family room, everywhere, round the clock, all year long — and to this day I know every single line of every single song by heart. But what I remember most was falling asleep to it. It was like a great thick fluffy down comforter surrounding me as I drifted off dreaming of the great big world. And one of my favorite John Denver songs, despite never having been to Colorado, was always, and still is, Colorado Rocky Mountain High.

I always wondered if Colorado was all that John Denver sang that it was. And this past weekend, I got to find out. And yes, it was.

We returned Monday night from a whirlwind, 5-day, completely awe-inspiring, life-affirming trip to Colorado for Maggie and Eric’s wedding. John Denver’s Colorado Rocky Mountain High was the literal and figurative soundtrack to our trip. I started playing it for the bambinos about 24 hours before we left. They hadn’t heard it before, but started hearing it over and over and over again blaring from my iPad through stereo speakers. Luckily, they liked it. By Day 2 of our time in Colorado, they knew the song by heart and were belting it out from the backseat of the rental car. The whole entire trip was a Colorado Rocky Mountain High for us. Them singing JD at the top of their lungs is the perfect symbolic memory of our experience.

Don’t get me wrong. There were lows. There always are. It is a choice to focus on the positive. A choice I choose.

“But the string’s already broken and he doesn’t really care. It keeps changing’ fast and it don’t last for long…”

The wedding was in Maggie’s parents’ hometown: Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Waldo Canyon Fire was blasting flames and smoke throughout canyons and ridges for the days leading up to the wedding. It was scary, overwhelming at times, and extremely troubling, to be visiting that place (and trying to celebrate a wedding) during the time of such a massive disaster. That can’t (and shouldn’t) be sugar coated. It was awful.

above: smoke in the mountains, along the side of the road as we drove into Colorado Springs from Denver on Thursday

above: fire and smoke coming over the ridge, view from our hotel room after the Rehearsal Dinner on Friday

“I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky…”

There is no way around something like that. When a major disaster is occurring in those precious days right before your wedding, you can’t go over it or under it either. It is just something you have to go through. I know about this firsthand since my own wedding took place just four days after September 11th. I know how it feels to be a bride in the midst of a terrible crisis. What we learned (again) from this Colorado trip was that the best that we can do is to go through these things together; to be the best we can be for the people who need us to be present; to not try to push it under or blow it over, but to really just be there, to go through it together.

above: early morning firefighter thanks, on a street corner as we drove by to Pike’s Peak on Friday morning

We learned so much from that experience.

There were other lows too. Not so profound, but lows nonetheless. Like the time difference. It is only a 2-hour-difference, so we hadn’t expected it to be a big deal, but it turned out to be a very big deal for our three kids. The bambinos (Owen and Meera, especially) didn’t adjust until our very last day (just in time to come home and face it in reverse on the other side… ugh). It wreaked havoc on our sleep schedules and we’re still not recovered from it. Our time in Colorado involved late nights (for wedding events), and very early mornings — with Owen and Meera up at 4am, raring to go. While the rest of us tried to sleep in the hotel room, those two tried to play quietly by the light from a crack in the bathroom door on a blanket on the floor.

But this low had a silver lining (at least for them). They won big with front-row seats for amazing sunrises from our hotel room window~~

And that’s where I’ll end with the lows. Because really, the Lows List is a very short one. Those two items — plus some fussing and whining from an over-tired 4-year-old, some hard-core sibling fighting, and some attitude from a certain set of 8-year-old twins — that’s all I’ve got. Because really– the rest?– it all gets put on a very long list of highs.

“But the Colorado Rocky Mountain high…”

Did I mention our hotel room window? The view. The view was a high in and of itself.

Oh my gosh it was beautiful there. We loved visiting it. This trip to Colorado will be long remembered in the folklore of our family. It was an amazing experience. A big huge Colorado Rocky Mountain high. A high that was such a high, in part, because of the lows that were folded into it. We found Colorado to be just as John Denver sings about, all beauty and brilliance and rugged and ragged wrapped up together. And that, in part, is what makes it so darn beautiful– the complexity and simplicity, the good and bad, the high and low, all at once.

In addition to the above, I’ve tried to make a short list of the top three highs of our trip in the following posts:

Colorado Rocky Mountain High: Maggie & Eric’s Wedding

Colorado Rocky Mountain High: Pike’s Peak

Colorado Rocky Mountain High: The J-Ms Travel

Maggie & Eric’s wedding was long-anticipated by the J-Ms. This was a very special wedding for us (earlier posts re: Maggie & Eric here). It was also a first for me, as I (Heather), was their Officiant. As it turned out, I absolutely loved playing that role. I think it was my favorite role I’ve ever played in a wedding, and it definitely helped to make this one of my most favorite and most memorable weddings ever. Maggie & Eric had also asked Kyle, Owen, and Meera to be the Program-Hander-Outers at their wedding ceremony. The bambinos ended up loving that role too. Because of all these fun duties we had, we got to be involved in a lot of the weekend’s wedding events… which made the whole experience so much richer for us. We got to know many of Maggie & Eric’s family members and friends. We got to spend lots of time with the bride and groom. And we got to be a part of a very special weekend for two of our most very favorite people.

Photos below are of what was probably the highest high of the entire trip for me~~ After the wedding ceremony, we got in our rental car to head to the reception site. We were all high on life as we were driving from Colorado Springs to Manitou Springs. We had just been a part of a most fabulous wedding, and we were all super excited for the reception. Spontaneously the bambinos began singing at the top of their lungs a crazy-fun-loud-3-part-acapela-version of JD’s Colorado Rocky Mountain High. The drive was gorgeous (the mountains jutting up just ahead of us), were were all soooo happy, and that moment just felt like perfection for me.

“Its Colorado rocky mountain high…”

The reception was, for sure, the bambinos favorite part of the whole experience. They were in their element. To say the least (and as anyone at that wedding reception can surely attest: these three were LOVING it).

By 11:15pm (1:15am our time), Meera was about to crash hard, and we decided that for her sake we needed to duck out. We felt pretty proud that we had stayed until just about the very bitter end of that sweet, sweet night. When we finally fell into bed back at the hotel it was midnight (2:00am our time), which Kyle and Owen were very thrilled with because it set their new record for Latest Night Ever. It was so, so, so, so fun. Every bit of it.

A Note About the Boys’ Ties: K & O had wanted to wear matching ties to the wedding, in the color orange (their favorite), but Kyle wanted a traditional tie, and Owen wanted a bow-tie. After searching high and low I found Kyle’s necktie & Owen’s bow-tie on Etsy at the Little Gentleman’s Closet. I can highly recommend these beautiful ties for little boys, in a fabulous array of fabric designs, handmade by Michelle.

{for post 3 of 4 click here}

Oh my goodness gracious, this was one of the most spectacular things we’ve ever done. Maggie had told me in advance that going up the Pike’s Peak Cog Railway was a MUST-DO for our family while in Colorado Springs for the wedding. So I had booked it long in advance and we had 8am train reservations for Friday morning. It was an awesome experience from the minute we got on the train until the minute we got off it. The views were stunning in every direction and the 3+ hour roundtrip train ride went by unbelievably fast.. Despite the fact that our sweet Ky Ky suffered from a serious case of altitude sickness (poor baby! throwing up anywhere is no fun, but it is especially no fun at the summit of a 14,000 foot mountain while everyone else is oohing and aaahhhing over the views)… but even Kyle agreed that it was totally 100% worth it (he seriously did– it was that good!). Meera conked out on the ride down, but the rest of us were wide-eyed the entire time. We were so glad we got to do this! Talk about a Colorado Rocky Mountain High!

“He climbed cathedral mountains, he saw silver clouds below. He saw everything as far as you can see…”

{for post 4 of 4 click here}

There are all sorts of reasons why traveling with kids is not easy. But there is nothing we love to do more, as a family, together, than to travel. We feel so grateful to have the privilege to prioritize travel the way we do. We only see a tiny slice of this great big world. But the tiny slice we get to see is one we feel so thankful for.

We are raising three little Travel Lovers. They are into it. In a big way. One of the things I always think about during our travels together is the fact that so much of the fun of it for us isn’t even in the actual experiences, but in the entire experience itself. It isn’t just what we go there for, but it is the going there itself too. Part of our Colorado Rocky Mountain High was the adventure and bonding of simply going somewhere, and doing something, together.

“Now his life is full of wonder…”

So, now we are home for awhile. And life resumes to our normalcy. Which is good too. But we have these trips in our memories and they live large in our family folklore and they sit in us and shape us and impact who we are in the world. This one was a really good one. We’re still feeling it. It feels wondrous.

* * *

Thank you to Maggie & Eric for inviting us to Colorado, to your wedding, and into your lives. We luv ya!

Thank you also to some of Maggie and Eric’s friends from whom I stole a few photos (from Facebook) for these Colorado posts!

Thank you to our dearly beloved John Denver — all quotes in these posts are song lyrics from his Colorado Rocky Mountain High.

Thank you readers for indulging in these long and involved trip posts that I write. They are mainly for our own sake, but thanks so much for reading along!

This year the bambinos seem to have a love-hate relationship with sparklers. 2 love. 1 hate. Nevertheless, we had a great day remembering that despite all of our many differences, and all the work that still needs to be done to make this world all that we wish it to be, we’re lucky to live in a country that has allowed us to be a family. A strong, proud, inter-racial, adoptive, 1st-generation-immigrant FAMILY. And tonight we celebrated our freedom with a First: we had ice cream — and nothing but ice cream — for dinner! (I should admit: we had a big lunch, and we’re in the midst of a heat wave!) Regardless, it was fun (and we learned that although Meera hates sparklers, she loves hot fudge sundaes!). Happy 4th y’all!

Today I had what has got to be one of the Top Twenty most hilarious/crazy-fun/interesting experiences of my 8 years of mothering. In my own mind, this experience is sort of the epitome of our life in Never-A-Dull-Moment-Land.

This afternoon my three bambinos and me went and got pedicures together at our local nail salon. In so many, many ways and on so many, many levels it was an off-the-charts experience.

The fact is that it all kind of happened unwittingly. We have a very special occasion coming up this weekend. I had planned to get a pedicure today in preparation for it. But our babysitter had to leave at 2pm, and the big deadline project that I had looming at work took much, much longer for me to complete than I had anticipated. So, I had to rush home straight from work with no time for my planned stop for a pedicure on the way. Out of desperation, and on a whim, upon arrival home, I said to the kids: “Jump in the car! We’re going to the nail salon! I’m getting a pedicure, and anyone else who wants one can get one!”

I knew Meera would jump at the opportunity, which she did. What I hadn’t expected was the Kyle and Owen jumped at the chance too. And so off we went. And amazingly, as walk-ins, the salon could accommodate all four of us at once.

So, there we were, me and my little crew, all lined up in the massaging-pedicure-chairs, getting pedicures together. We each had a different nail tech, and all four of them spoke Vietnamese together at a very rapid pace, clearly confused with our family make-up, and getting quite a kick out of us, but none of them spoke much English. Of course, us J-Ms speak fluent English, but no Vietnamese. So, there was this massive language barrier layered on top of an already quite unusual nail-salon-situation.

The boys went nutso, in love with the vibrating massage chairs and the remote controls that control them, and had about a million questions about every tool, salt scrub, creme, and oil that was used on their feet and legs (almost none of which could be answered because of the language barrier). Meera was in her element as the Little Diva, quiet as a clam, and enjoying every minute. And I was there, just sort of laughing at the whole entire thing every single step of the way.

It was a hoot.

I wish I could blog here and now about all the gory — and hilarious/crazy-fun/interesting — details. I mean, all wrapped up together here we’ve got race, class, gender, ‘family,’ culture, beauty, identity, socialization, ETC. But, alas, I have way too much to do to prepare for the very special occasion we have coming up this weekend to be sitting here blogging.

I hope that someday, when I’m old and gray and needing some memories to brighten my day, that this blog post will remind me of how much FUN I had when my kids were young, and how INTERESTING (i.e., never dull) our family life was.

Over and out y’all~~ I’ll catch you back here in a week of so!

Last night was Meera’s end-of-year ballet show. The culmination of 9 months of Saturday morning ballet classes. It felt like a massively monumental day for our family– the end-marker proving that we had somehow managed to get through an entire school year of ballet classes for Meera. The 30-minute early Saturday morning drive each way to-and-from her class was KILLER, and the wrench the ballet classes often threw into our weekend planning was a royal pain in the rear, but we stuck it out, and we pulled through, making finishing the year of ballet a major achievement for us all. And after a whole year of Meera cheering on her brothers from the sidelines of their (many) sporting events, it was payback time (big time!)~~

I took the boys to get the roses. They came to understand this ritual in the only way they know how: with a sports analogy– “Giving flowers to a Ballerina is like giving trophies to a Sports Star” they told the guy behind the florist desk. “Yes, that’s right,” he said to them, “but girls like flowers anytime– especially roses– and the earlier you boys learn that, the better.” And so, Kyle and Owen had their first lesson in Flower Giving. But still, they were pretty unsure about the whole thing. They really thought Meera should be receiving a trophy, “or at least a medal” Kyle said, “or a ribbon or something,” Owen said. That was all until we arrived at the show venue. And there they saw that just about every single family had flowers for their girl. And then, they were very happy that they had those gorgeous big bunches of pink roses in their hands. {And the Most Important Rule of Life was re-affirmed once again: Mama knows best. 😉 And of course I made sure I pointed that out to them a few times.}

I also had to point out to them — more than a few times — that yes, this whole Ballet Show thing is not really their style, and yes it is extremely long, and yes, it is hard to sit through, but YOUR SISTER HAS SPENT THE PAST YEAR SITTING THROUGH YOUR SPORTS SO YOU WILL DO THIS WITH A SMILE ON YOUR FACE AND YOU WILL DO IT WELL AND YOU WILL NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT IT FOR EVEN ONE SECOND. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Yes, it was payback time. Payback time in a big, big way. The show was a ballet rendition of The Little Engine that Could. It was 3 hours long. And Meera’s class appeared on the stage for 1 minute and 48 seconds of it (Braydon timed it). No joke.

But we did it. They did it. Those big brothers sat through the entire 3 hour thing, with only one 15-minute intermission. And they learned some important stuff along the way… like, classical ballets do not have words, and ballet productions are long, and people don’t clap along to the music, and they learned what it is like to sit on the sidelines — for real — finally. And they learned what it is to have a whole entire show/performance/audience/evening be all about someone else… someone else with entirely different interests than their own, and someone else who really needed to be in the spotlight for a moment doing her own thing. And our boys did a good job of it. And Meera was ridiculously cute for her 1 minute and 48 seconds on the stage. And when that show was over, we had one proud ballerina on our hands. (And two proud big brothers.)

(And two proud parents.)

It was a good, albeit long, night for the J-Ms.

And then we headed home, stopping on the way for ice cream (which, despite her love of, and appreciation for, the pink roses, is what Meera really wanted to do to celebrate)…

…and sitting right where she wanted (on Owen’s lap), eating ice cream (her favorite: vanilla with rainbow sprinkles), things resumed to normalcy and we found our balance again– with costumes off and classical ballet productions behind us we quickly got right back to the usual business of making messes, elbowing brothers in the gut, cracking dumb jokes, etc.

And then our ballerina promptly fell asleep in the car on the ride home, and didn’t wake up again until the next morning.

And upon waking up she found that her roses were all arranged in a big vase in the center of the kitchen table, and the big show was finally behind us, and life was chugging along on forward. It was good to wake up to.

If I had to venture a guess I’d bet that we won’t be sitting through any more ballet school shows in the future. What we learned this year was that while Meera liked ballet well enough, what Meera really loved (and what we all needed) was to have something — something real and legitimate and substantial and requiring us all to cooperate and coordinate — that was just for her. I don’t think ballet is our thing (or hers). But I can assure you, there will always be some thing that is Meera’s thing. I will make sure of it. And I’ll also be sure that we’ll all rally around our girl when it is her moment on the stage. What I hope Meera learned this year, more than anything about ballet, is that she’s got a very strong family behind her.

“I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. I know I can.”

― Little Engine That Could