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I don’t know how people do it. I mean, really. These lists of required school supplies? I know that some schools are worse than others with these. I don’t know how long or short other people’s kids’ lists are… but ours seem real long to me. Especially when there are THREE lists (I cannot imagine what this is like in large families with many children).

We conquered the lists today. The bambinos and me. At Staples. ALL MORNING LONG. (Not really, it was actually only 1 hour + 15 minutes, but it seemed like it was allllll morrrrrrning looooooong.) I had laid in bed last night, unable to sleep, trying to plan my strategy for this monumental task. I think we did a pretty good job of it (I walked in, the three of them trailing behind, on a mission, and projecting all the confidence in the world [all the while shaking in my boots], the lists on clipboards, a pen for each one of them, three baskets in the cart, and we went aisle by aisle until we had everything checked off that we could). Still, it was enough to make an end-of-summer-mother-almost-lose-her-marbles.

Really. I should have just done it myself. But I had no babysitter today (and I need to use my babysitting time VERY carefully this week — as things are up and running with First Week of Classes at Lehigh, but school is not yet started for the bambinos). And I figured we’d just make it happen.

It did happen. But I left Staples feeling like I should get an award, or at least a gift card or something, just for having pulled it off without completely losing my mind.

There was no award. Instead, we went out for pizza for lunch. The kids thought that was awesome.

We’ve got the school supplies. The whole lot of them. Somehow, miraculously, we pulled it off.

We’ve got the new sneakers too, and the back-to-school clothes (for the most part), and we’re working on the rest of the million details that go into the Back to School Project.

Our first day of school is nearing. These last few days of “summer” don’t really feel like summer at all. We teeter between “can’t wait for school to start” and “wish it would never come.”

As soon as quiet hours end, at 10am sharp, the hall b-ball begins. And it proceeds, for every spare second, all day long, until they are in bed at night. And then they get up the next day, and it starts again. After a long summer away from the hall, they are right back at it.

p.s. the Fairy Forest is alive and well!

The Class of 2017 arrived on Thursday. The campus is popping with energy and things are kicking into full gear. With upperclass students due to move in Saturday and Sunday (Sayre is all upperclass students), we decided we should get out of their way for at least some of the weekend (move-in is a crazy, crazy time to be living on campus).

Saturday we went to the Lehigh Valley Airshow. Oh my word. What an experience! We had no idea what a huge event this would be. There were thousands and thousands and thousands of people there. We were supposed to spend the day with Shalinee, Kavya, Alex, and Dave, but we were never even able to find each other amidst the masses. This is not my kind of way to spend a day, but even I had to admit that the plane stunts were unbelievable. It is hard to not be absolutely astounded by it all.

Kyle, Owen and Braydon — all airplane lovers to the Nth degree — were in their glory. Meera… not so much. She was so unimpressed.

Today (Sunday) was a day the bambinos had been looking forward to for a long time — their 2nd Annual Move-In Lemonade Stand (for post from last year, our 1st Annual, click here).

Owen did the outreach marketing (riding around on his bike all afternoon announcing “Lemonade for sale!” and drumming up business), and Kyle and Meera handled the actual stand. They had many customers. I think they gave away many (many!) more cups than they actually charged for, but they made up for it in tips. At the end of the day they made $33!

While the bambinos spent the day selling lemonade, we (Braydon and me) over-saw their business from a short distance away on Sayre lawn… where we had the pleasure of spending a lovely afternoon with one of our favorite new alum, Sarah (our Head Gryphon from last year, who graduated in May). She had come back for the weekend to attend the rally last night, and it was such a sweet day of catching up and sipping iced coffee together.

(Braydon used a new camera setting to make this very cool image!)

Tonight is the night before fall semester classes begin. Everyone is moved in, and a new year is upon us. We spent the evening hanging out on the Sayre Lawn and attending the start-of-year Hall Meetings with our friends/students/neighbors for this year — some new, some old, all ready to get the year rolling. After 3 months of having them all away, it felt really good to have them all back tonight, crowding the lawn, playing volleyball and tossing the frisbee with Kyle and Owen, and making Meera giggle like only college students can (they know just how to play the very best, most silly, games with her).

I know this sort of life is not for everyone. But we’re really enjoying the here and now and we’re ready to embark on a new year.

It’s funny— for me, growing up, my favorite comfort food was my mom’s tuna casserole. Oh yes, canned tunafish and cream of mushroom soup and frozen peas and egg noodles all baked together in a circa-1970s casserole dish. That was, for me, the quintessential comfort food. I haven’t had it in years and years, although my memories of it are alive and well and I remember it being so, so good.

But times have changed (oh how they have changed!) and what qualifies as comfort food is an indicator of that change. The bambinos’ current favorite comfort food is the dinner above— a gingery/sweet/sour stir-fried chicken, brown rice, and stir-fried green beans. This is so not tuna casserole.

After being away all summer we needed some comfort food this week. And this is currently my go-to comfort food meal for our family. It is absolutely delish. The best part about it is that all five of us love it equally — it is our comfort food right now. Here are the recipes:

GWYNY’S CHICKEN

(This is just what we call it; this recipe comes directly from Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook, My Father’s Daughter. In her cookbook it is called “Best Stir-Fried Chicken.” I’ve posted before about this chicken— that post can be found here.)

4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into small cubes
2 tbsp cornstarch
Coarse salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/4 cup peeled and minced garlic
1/4 cup peeled and minced ginger
1/2 cup minced green scallions (white & green parts)
Pinch red chili flakes (optional)
1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp coarsely chopped fresh cilantro

Toss the chicken with cornstarch, a large pinch of salt and quite a bit of pepper. Heat oil in large, non-stick wok over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, ginger, scallions and chile flakes (if using) and cook, stirring, for one minute. Add the chicken and cook, stirring occasionally, for five minutes. Add the vinegar, sugar, and five or six grinds of black pepper. Boil on high for three minutes, or until the sugar has caramelized and the whole mixture is dark brown and sticky and lovely. Add the soy sauce, and cook for another 30 seconds. Serve immediately, sprinkled with cilantro. 

* * *

BROWN RICE

I have a rice steamer that I absolutely love. I’ve posted about it here. It makes steaming up some ridiculously perfectly delicious rice so ridiculously easy to do!

* * *

STIR-FRIED GREEN BEANS

I do these in the wok over high heat. Here’s how I make ‘em: Put about a tablespoon vegetable oil in a hot wok, add about 3-4 cloves of minced fresh garlic, and about 2 pounds of green beans. Sprinkle generously with sea salt. Stir fry until almost done (we like them very firm, almost crunchy). About 2 minutes before they are finished, add a handful of thinly sliced fresh red pepper (this is mainly just for color and texture, so it is unnecessary, but it really does add a lot). Serve immediately!

* * *

This summer we spent seven weeks away. We travelled up and down the east coast in our trusty Loser Cruiser minivan. We spent 5.5 weeks in South Carolina, a week in New Hampshire, a weekend in mid-Pennsylvania for our Haiti Reunion, and logged many hours on the road. We spent one night at home in early August — 19 hours to be precise — unpacking from SC and re-packing for NH. We had a few fun stops along the way (including a fun overnight in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor which involved a ride for Braydon and the bambinos in a dragon boat!), loads of car-trip-snacks, and a lot of time to think and reflect on life in the fast lane.

Braydon and I are so lucky to have careers which are, generally, at least in the summer (the ‘slow’ point of the academic year and the ‘slow’ point of the business year), very mobile. For a few weeks in summer we can manage to swing it to work from pretty much wherever we are. With the exception of one work trip that Braydon could not avoid (he had to go to NYC for some meetings while we were in New Hampshire), we were able to work remotely. We give thanks and praise to the inventors of the internet, the iPad, the iPhone, the laptop, and the world of technology that made our summer possible!

Last year I had several low points where I truly questioned our decision to sell our house, give away most of our earthly belongings, and move our family of five into an 800-square-foot apartment in a dorm on campus. Yes, it was a pretty intense transition and shift in lifestyle. But this summer, walking on the beach with my three bambinos, looking for shells and counting pelicans, I thought to myself about a hundred million times, “It was all worth it.” I’d do it all again just to be able to have this summer. And we’ll do it again this year knowing that we have the pay-off of the next summer. Don’t get me wrong: we love living on campus, and there are many great aspects to it way above and beyond the summer perk. But there are sacrifices we’ve made and tough decisions we’ve had to make and risks we’ve had to take in order to live the life we’re currently living. We’re also very, very lucky to have had incredible opportunities available to us.

It was the best summer of my life. For sure– we had our meltdowns, and rip-roaring fights, and low points, and times when we were about to tear our hair out in frustration with each other and with the constant stream of annoyances and challenges that life throws at all of us. Still, the sunny days outweighed the rainy ones. And I wouldn’t trade this summer for the world.

Now we’ve snapped back to reality. We’re home. And our reality is not all that bad. We just hit our one-year anniversary of moving to Lehigh as a Faculty in Residence Family. Students are moving onto campus, with all their energy and enthusiasm and late-night-thumping-bass-music-blaring. We’ve got a pretty good thing going here, I’m not afraid to admit it.

A new school year is upon us. I’m drowning in ‘To Do’ lists and I feel like I’ve got a 10-ton weight on my shoulders when I think of all that has to happen to transition us into the year, establish our rhythms, and get us back on track with regular life. But lodged deep in my psyche is the 7 weeks of summer, 2013. And I’m counting on that to even out some of the rough patches in the hours, days, weeks, and months to come.

This past weekend was our annual Haiti Reunion. This was our 7th year attending this gathering of our people. I say that purposefully: these are our people. These are our kin. Our get-togethers are like going to a gas station when your tank is on empty and getting a fill-up.

Last year I wrote a post about our Haiti Reunions that really attempts to articulate how we feel about them. I re-read that post tonight and it made me cry. It expresses so well pretty much exactly what I want to express again now. Please read it by clicking here.

These four (above) have so much in common it is almost hard to fathom: two sets of twins, born within a few days of each other, in Haiti, placed in the same orphanage (years apart), and adopted into American families in the state of Pennsylvania. How amazing is that? Now, imagine, always being so unique: you’re a twin, you’re Haitian, you’re an adoptee, you’re black with white parents, you’re a kid with dreadlocks, you’re smart-as-a-whip-and-super-quick-and-uber-reslient-and-have-a-ridiculously-high-pain-tolerance and you’ve got gumption-enough-to-spare and spunk-enough-to-light-a-fire and you’re-pretty-darn-willful and everywhere you go you are noticeable as very much unusual in so many, many ways. You can’t just slide by or slip in because you always stand out. And then, for one weekend a year, you get to be just-like-everyone-else and “normal” and — phew! what a relief! — not so unique. For one glorious weekend you can breath, and just be, and you don’t have to be self-conscious or concerned because everybody — everybody around you — gets it. Like, really gets it. For most of your life, you’re the unique one. But for now, you fit right in, and everything is easy, and you’re not so remarkable or noteworthy. That’s what it is like to get together with these kin of ours each year. It feels so good.

It isn’t just our Haitian Sensations for whom this weekend is such a special, and important, time. It is just as profound for their siblings and parents too. We’re with people who really know — in a way unlike any other — what it is like to be us in this world. Don’t get me wrong: we embrace our uniqueness (we wouldn’t be the families we are if we hadn’t been 100% willing to take that on). But we enjoy the respite of one weekend of being “normal.” It is just so pleasantly wonderfully incredibly nice to be able to just be us, without worrying about how we’re perceived and received and conceived of. We can just be. And that is such an amazing feeling.

I took the picture below from the front passenger seat of our car as we were about to pull out of the parking lot to leave the reunion. A bunch of kids were barely outside our car’s door, almost overflowing into it, as they said a hundred “goodbye’s” and “I’ll miss you’s” and “see you next year’s” back and forth with Kyle, Owen, and Meera.

The picture is worth a thousand words. We gather around each other, wild and crazy, with glow sticks flaring, and voices at full volume, and every bit of ourselves just adoring each other just as we are. From start to finish we are just us. And entirely accepted and fully embraced as just us. That gives us something so valuable. And we go home from the reunion feeling all fueled up.

A year seems too long to wait to do it again. But we’ll wait. And we’ll do it again. And us J-Ms are in it for the long-haul.

To our inner circle of Pennsylvania-area-Haitian-Adoptive-Families — our kin — THANK YOU. We love every one of you so dearly and so deeply. We’re with you every step of the way. Love, the J-Ms.

Every year I post about our summer trip to my family’s cottage on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. (One of my favorite posts on the subject can be found here). Each year we J-Ms make our annual pilgrimage to the cottage that has been in my family for 5 generations. I’ve written lots about our trips to the cottage — how they are an anchor in the rhythm of the J-Ms year, how much this place means to us, and the roots of the history. Summer cottages like this one are a rare and precious treasure passed down to the people who get to enjoy them. A tiny fraction of the population will ever experience what we get to live out at the cottage every summer. This profound form of privilege is not lost on me. We did nothing — absolutely nothing — to earn this. We do not deserve it. But we have it. What lessons will we learn from it? What will the next generation receive in the riches of all this? And how are things constant, yet evolving, all the time? We are so much not what the generation before us was. But we are not all that different either. How can we be intentional and purposeful about how we inherit all this and pass it forward? These are the things I think about as we speed over the surface of the crystal clear waters, with wind in our hair, and astounding landscapes all around us.

From the back of the boat I’m also usually spotting our young water-skiers, and snapping photos of them, and cheering them on as they fall and get back up again. I feel like that is sort of a metaphor for my life right now — as we speed along at incomprehensible speed and I try to capture these moments and encourage and uplift, all the while just hoping and praying that this next big wave won’t be a big one that knocks us over for good in some unpredictable way. And I can’t help but have other thoughts too (like, ‘how many black kids ever learn to waterski?’ and ‘how will the fact that we do this for a week — and see no other non-white people the entire time — impact our boys?’ and all sorts of other things like that). All of it is a lot. So much. And, like I said, we don’t deserve it. But it is ours. For now. And so I try to use it wisely, be humble and grateful, and be thoughtful in how we proceed.

This summer was special at the cottage. They always are. But here I want to record some of the really outstanding things that made this year’s time at the cottage most notable. For one thing, there was a whole day when we were all there. By all there, I mean — as my mom says, “the whole family” — my parents, us, my sister and her family, and Maria and her family. It was really, truly, a glorious thing.

Photo above: all of us out for ice cream at Bailey’s Bubble in Wolfboro. This pic is precious. So is the one below: Maria and Meera on the boat. For anyone who knows Braydon and me from way back, you can just imagine the emotions this evokes. How many weekends did we spend with Maria, at the cottage, on the boat at Winnipesaukee, when she was the age that M, K, and O are now?! It is just so crazy to think about. Here are our two girls — our ‘first’ girl, and our ‘last’ girl. To say “we love these two” just does not cut it.

This summer was Lukasz’s first trip to the cottage. My sister now has a family of four! A beautiful thing:

Here’s another beautiful thing– Kyle and Owen finally have a boy cousin! This photo just melts my heart:

And this summer, at the cottage, Braydon turned 42. Thanks to MorMor, Meera got to make him a cake:

And, perhaps the biggest milestone-marker of all from the cottage during Summer 2013… Kyle caught what was the biggest fish ever caught in the memory of recent generations! He caught a 22 inch largemouth bass right off the dock! This is really, really, really noteworthy!!!!!!!

Just for the record: we threw it back. We throw them all back. “We are Sports-Fishermen-And-Women” (I repeat this to the kids, over and over and over, as I put countless worms on hooks and spend endless hours untangling lines. Note: although I’m willing to deal with the catch-and-release of pulling hooks out of fishes, I am not yet willing to embark on the whole filleting and chopping process.)

It was, truly, a memorable annual summer trip to the cottage. Here are some of my favorite pics:

Kyle, Owen, and Sadie are becoming very good water-skiers. This was their 4th year water-skiing (they started at age 6 [K&O] and 7 [S]). We’re all anticipating next year to see if Meera will start, or if she’ll wait until she’s 7. This year we spent hours and hours with the “big kids” behind the boat. Waterskiing 2013 — Kyle, Owen, Sadie:

The big deals with waterskiing this year were that we took the connector out from the skis, lengthened the rope, and all three kids were working on going outside-and-inside both sides of the wake. Outside the wake — Kyle, Owen, Sadie:

Waterskiing is definitely the big kids’ favorite activity at the cottage. Luckily for us all, MorFar has the infinite patience and sheer dedication to drive that boat in circles around the cove for hours and hours on end.

Tubing. They love tubing too. But that isn’t nearly as fun to photograph. So, I have only this:

My favorite to photograph is kayaking. There is something so beautiful about it. It just fills me up in some indescribable way to see scenes like these:

Hopefully we can store up these images and save them for the dead of winter when we need their warmth the most. Or for times in our future when we need to rely on memories from the past to keep us afloat. Here is my favorite kayaking pic from 2013:

This annual summer trip is filled with traditions for us. Some are newer, some are older. Here are just a few:

We started this just last year — a Sunday early morning boat ride across the lake to the waterfront park in Wolfboro, where we dock the boat, and set up our own chairs and blankets for a 30-minute-max church service. This is a win-win-win! Even the kids like it. And my parents can even bring their dog! As we walked down the street to get donuts afterward, Braydon and I couldn’t help thinking that if church could be like that all the time, we’d happily go every week! 😉

A much longer tradition (as in, at least 3 generations long) — trying to catch the Mt. Washington Boat and waving like crazy to the passengers on board:

And hold kitties:

Thanks to these two:

And thanks to the generations before them.

“I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual…O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Kyle, Meera, Owen – Harbor Island, Summer 2013

Over the past five weeks I’ve taken hundreds of photos that never showed up on the blog. I don’t want to just toss them all, or have them get lost in the nether-land of the computer hard drive — so many of them are family-photo-album-worthy, and each one represents a memory I want to try to keep. At the same time, I am feeling self-conscious about the blogosphere seeing all these pictures and hearing me go on and on and on about how wonderful our summer has been. The problem is that we don’t have any other way that we’re documenting our lives or saving our pictures — this blog is it (unlike many bloggers who blog primarily for their audience, I am blogging primarily for me and my most inner circle). So, please, those of you bored to tears from all my South Carolina posts, and/or those of you who are sick and tired of seeing photo after photo of all this… just disregard this little series of posts. These are for our family-memory-keeping. If you’re interested, go ahead and take a look. Otherwise, go ahead and skip it. Many of these were taken with my iPhone, and I’m posting them mainly unedited.

K, O, and M — this one’s for you! We have had a GREAT summer so far. The best summer of my life (and I am pretty sure the best summer of your lives too). Some memories to keep:

sunrise from the back deck of the beach house

Harbor Island Beach

Kyle in front of the Gantt Cottage, at the Penn Center (this is where Martin Luther King, Jr. would stay when he’d come to the Penn Center with other activists to plan their strategies for the Civil Rights Movement)

iced coffee on the beach

the back seat of the car, on the 5-minute-drive to Hunting Island beach

Meera at the pool — she made new friends almost daily

Kyle and Owen at the pool — they made new friends almost daily too

Owen and Meera on the dock at Port Royal (although the bambinos make friends everywhere they go, they are still each other’s first and foremost; and this summer was a summer of bonding for this fierce threesome)

Owen and one of his many favorite Lowcountry treats: stone crab claws

I sometimes got up early and went walking/jogging on the beach by myself. Those were amazing mornings for me. Spectacular beauty. Photos above, and several below, were taken with my iPhone during those times.

late nights watching Red Sox games

K & O at the pool

Meera’s artwork was hanging everywhere, all over the beach house

fruit on the beach

lazy mornings, playing

beauty everywhere

5 beach chairs and an umbrella

M, K, O — Harbor Island Beach

grocery shopping

Owen

ice cream at the pool shop

we lived by these tide charts

‘chillaxin’

Owen bike riding to the beach house, down Ocean Marsh Road

a brief rain at lunch = picnic in the back of the car

Kyle and Meera, Harbor Island Beach

cool as a cucumber.

the boys play chess

Meera tries the Beaufort clams — raw on the half shell

K & O spent hours and hours and hours boogie boarding

Meera and Heather spent hours and hours and hours making “dribble castles”

OMG. I LOVE THIS GIRL.

Papi reads a book

Mommy reads a book

Spanish Moss

never a dull moment.

a (rare) quiet moment

Hunting Island State Park & our 2013 car pass tag

playing in the tidal pools at Hunting Island

matching necklaces (I call them “starfish”; Meera calls them the correct name, “sea stars”)

football in the surf on a Sunday afternoon, Hunting Island

history everywhere

pure Owen

pure Meera

pure Kyle

wide open spaces

wide open spaces II

our go-to guide for the past 5 weeks

South Carolina peaches

Owen and Kyle at the top of the tower, Port Royal waterfront

Meera, pool float

in front of the lighthouse, Hunting Island

shrimp boat off of Harbor Island

riding in the golf cart

Meera & Braydon in Charleston

shrimp scampi — I was going to do a Food Friday blog post about this — how amazing the shrimp here is, and how incredible it is to buy it right off the boat, etc. I was also going to link to the best shrimp scampi recipe ever (I made this weekly while we were here: Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Linguine with Shrimp Scampi) — click here!

I was also going to try to write a post about my observations of the reactions of people in the South (as compared to the North) to seeing/interacting with our black-white-adoptive family. But I never got to that. Above picture is precious to me: Kyle and Owen just very comfortably hanging out with an older black gentleman on the waterfront in Charleston. He let them feed the birds with him. And he talked with them, in depth, about God. Our boys are embraced by the black community (almost always), and it is truly amazing to watch and witness as an outsider-yet-their-mother.

I was also going to write a post about Owen’s newfound obsession (discovered on this trip) with pralines. His new favorite food.

I was also going to write a post about The Shrimp Shack. [I guess I never got around to a lot of the posts I was going to write.]

I was also going to post about fiddler crabs (above left), and alligators (above right).

I did post about hermit crabs! But I forgot to include this awesome picture in that post.

my summer “desk”

reading at the pool

Hunting Island

the bambinos in the hammock on the back deck of the beach house

* * *

It has been an amazing and inspirational five weeks. Tomorrow we leave and head north.

I’ll end here, with my favorite photo from the summer (Braydon took this with his iPhone one night when we went for a walk on the beach at sunset):