Virginia. North Carolina. South Carolina. Georgia. Alabama. Florida.

Return to Alabama. Georgia. North Carolina. Tennessee (oops). North Carolina. Tennessee (meant it this time). Virginia.

At dinner on Thursday evening, I was standing outside a restaurant talking to a woman I didn’t know, and I had to think really hard to remember where I was and what day it was.

I’m just glad it’s Saturday and I have nowhere to go and nothing to do (except unpack, do laundry, etc etc etc).

After I got down to Alabama, Bill sent me this picture. I had already seen it a week or so earlier, but he felt it was appropriate. I didn’t set any land speed records, but I did have fair winds and cooperative kids and made it south-west of Atlanta before I stopped on the way down.

I don’t happen to have a rosary hanging from my rear window. I may be the only Catholic who doesn’t these days. If anyone can find one of these, though, I would hang it there.

All in all, the vacation was pleasant. I helped with dinner and housecleaning, but none of these were my primary responsibility. Even with laundry, I would put a load in the washer and come back to discover my sister or my mom had dried and folded it. There were extra eyes to watch, extra arms to hold, and extra legs to chase the little one(s).

I read one book of fiction (unplanned), but got only halfway through one of the non-fiction books I brought. Fiction is so much easier to put down and pick up and get through. One day, I’m sure I’ll be able to get to all these other books I want to read.

While we were at Fort Rucker, AL, we visited Lake Tholocco, which the kids really enjoyed; we went to the pool a few times; we went to the circus; we went to the aviation museum on post; and we saw this statue in the city of Enterprise, just off post. It is called the Boll Weevil statue. My sister had seen it before, but didn’t realize just how special it was. Yes, that is a Boll Weevil being held aloft by a woman. This statue happens to be the only statue in the whole world honoring a pest. And it’s right there in southern Alabama. They honor the pest because it destroyed the cotton crop, which led them to plant peanuts instead, which made them wealthier than they had ever been planting cotton.

After a week, I left my sister’s house and drove down beautiful rural roads to my parents’ home on Florida’s panhandle. I loved the rural highways I traveled. The kids were engrossed in some video; I considered turning it off, but chose instead to selfishly savor the scenery in peace and quiet.

Bill flew in on Saturday, and we were all happy to have him join us for the last week of our trip. Me especially.

While in Florida, we went several times to Eglin Air Force Base which is on a bay off the Gulf Coast. There is a nice, free swimming area with water shallow enough that I didn’t need to worry too much about Jenny, but deep enough for the boys and Katie to swim around. Fritz spent quite a bit of time with his face in the water watching the little fish and the hermit crabs. He tried snorkling but couldn’t keep his head straight and kept getting water in his air access.

My dad took the boys back to this bay to go fishing. Fritz caught his first fish – a four-incher! He was excited. Billy caught something, too, but it was much bigger and whatever it was managed to escape the small, non-barbed hooks my dad was using. Only 6, and he’s already got a story about “the one that got away.”

One day, my sister and her kids came down to my parents’ house and we all went to Eglin together. My dad rented a pontoon boat and took us out for a few turns on the bay. Only 10 people could go on at a time, so my sister and I and Pete sat on the beach the first lap. When it was my turn, Jenny (absent a nap) was getting cranky and I told my dad we needed to start heading back. Thank goodness she fell asleep in my arms, and we decided to do one more circle. A minute later, I looked out and saw a dolphin. It was the highlight of the day. We made a few loops and ended up getting about 30 feet from a pair of them. The kids were thrilled. We all were.

We also made one trip to the Gulf and played in the water. It was the worst weather of our trip. A front came through and we had rain, thunderstorms and temps that dipped below 80 degrees. Despite that, the kids had fun in the waves and wanted to go back. But it takes about an hour to get there from my parents’ house and Pete was so cranky at being strapped into his seat that I tried to eliminate trips of longer than 10 minutes the last few days we were there.

On Wednesday we headed back up to Fort Rucker and spent the afternoon and night at my sister’s house. We began the drive back on Thursday morning before 5 am. This was a nice, but tedious drive. The kids didn’t sleep as late as I had hoped, and so we began the cycle of rest stops much earlier than I wished.

We got into North Carolina and after lunch found the end of the Blue Ridge Parkway. As my dad said, you don’t count miles on this sort of road, you count hours. There are few intersections, so once you are on it, you stay on it for quite some time. The speed limit is 45 mph, but we generally drove at about 35 mph up and down twisting mountain roads with little to no shoulder. And we frequently pulled over to the “scenic overlooks” to look over the scene. Very pretty.

We drove to the Asheville area, which is where the Biltmore estate is. By the time we got there, it was past dinner time and we were cranky and tired. We had dinner and then drove to where the Biltmore entrance is, but of course it was only open until 5 pm. Oh well. We knew the kids wouldn’t tolerate a guided tour anyway. I’ll have to go back some day, though. The gate house at the entrance has a cubic volume that exceeds the house in which I currently live.

We checked one hotel and found it booked solid, so we decided to just press on. We headed into Tennessee and picked up Route 81 North. It was a beautiful drive there too. Much better than Interstate 95. We pulled into a Motel 6 somewhere in Virginia at 1030 pm, and moved the sleeping children with ease. Six hours later, we moved them again into the car and dragged ourselves home yesterday by mid-morning.

Today will just be a gentle day, I hope. If the kids watch TV all day, that just might be ok with me.

Yes. We are.

Home.

Safe. Sound. Tired.

Well, friends, I’m leaving on vacation. I will miss you.

Blogging should be minimal, if at all. I am bringing an armful of books to read, and I plan to get through them all. I plan to practice relaxing. My goal is to do nothing for at least 30 minutes per day, hopefully working up to a full hour by the time I get back in 2 1/2 weeks.

See ya!

I didn’t mind so much when Fritz didn’t remember what Independence Day was all about. It has been a year since the last Fourth of July.

I didn’t mind so much when my explanation of it being the day the founders of our nation read the Declaration of Independence to the masses drew a blank stare.

I didn’t mind so much that the name Thomas Jefferson failed to stir his soul and once again drew a blank stare. That biography we read together about him was read at the beginning of the school year last year. That was a long time ago, I suppose.

But when my litany of names, places, and events – Revolutionary War, Boston Tea Party, “One if by land, two if by sea,” “The British are coming! The British are coming,” George Washington, the crossing of the Delaware river, the founding of of nation, Betsy Ross, Benjamin Franklin – continued to elicit glazed eyes and not a shred of evidence that a single brain cell was functioning, I became a bit annoyed.

Oh, that’s right, I sarcastically thought to myself, it’s summer. Schooltime is for knowledge and summertime is for killing as many of those little gray cells as possible so mom’s job is that much harder in September.

So, I pulled from my shelves a small book on Thomas Jefferson that we didn’t read last year. It has only 64 pages and lots of pictures.

We will have no fun today until we have read this book and thanked God for the giants upon whose shoulders we now stand, by golly.

Jenny: Mom, are you going to sit with me, or what?

Isn’t it great, the phrases a 2 year old can learn when she spends all her time with older siblings? And, it turns out, she doesn’t want me to sit with her, because her bevy of Care Bears are neatly arrayed on the couch and there is no room for me.

I went for a one mile run today. My left foot protested from step one. I limped the whole way around my neighborhood and then limped home. I’ve rested for a half hour, and it feels fine (well, it hurts, but not excessively so), so I’m really not sure where to go from here. I’ll have to talk to my personal trainer…Bill. I can already predict his advice: no running for the rest of the week; try again next week. So, if I ask his advice, I’ll have to plan to follow it, and I don’t know if I want to follow that advice, so perhaps I’ll wait to ask.

My sister and her family departed last night for Fort Bragg, NC. They’ll visit friends there and watch the fireworks tomorrow night. Our insane scheme is for me and the kids to drive on Wednesday to Columbia, SC via Fort Bragg meeting them either in the Fort Bragg vicinity or in Columbia. We spend the night in Columbia and then finish our journey to Fort Rucker, Alabama on Thursday.

This will be a painful trip. Pete has finally hit that age where sitting in a car for longer than 20 minutes is torture to him…and to everybody else. I did get a DVD player installed in the van, which will be fine for all the other kids, but Pete won’t care. Since Bill was told to take Wednesday off too, I’ll have his help getting out the door. I hope to have everything loaded on Tuesday night. The kids are usually sleeping or sedentary until 9 am most days, so my plan is to pull them out of bed and put them straight into the car at 6 am. Between juice boxes and dry cereal, I hope to get 3 of the 7 hours under tire before taking a break. If I can make it to Fort Bragg by lunch time, I hope to take a long break for lunch and do a big switch around with passenger seating between my van and my sister’s car. Repeat process on Thursday and get to Alabama with no problems. Right.

And today and tomorrow are like a second weekend for us. Not much planned. The boys want to play baseball with Dad. Maybe we’ll all do it. Maybe we’ll go see the movie Cars. Maybe we’ll go to the pool. Maybe today I will try to teach my children the joys of lying on the grass under a tree and watching the clouds roll by.

Blessing for Going on Vacation:

Loving Father, during this time of rest and relaxation, please repair in me whatever is weary or broken and revive my drooping spirit…Let this vacation be a graced time of recollection and rejuvenation, of deeper self-awareness and eager self-giving. May it be an occasion of refreshment and reinvigoration for me – a time to reclaim my friendship with Jesus Christ, who is our Lord now and for ever. Amen.

Magnificat (July 2006)

I love this picture that my sister took of my daughters.

Movie night. We watched the Narnia movie finally. Notice the empty chairs? Yes, my kids all prefer the safety and comfort of mom’s and dad’s laps when things get a little tense.
My BIL, Bill, and my nephew and neice Jack and Morgan.

And my sister, Barbara. Barb and I are in close contact all the time. We talk to each other at least once or twice a week on the phone. I hadn’t seen her in seven months, though. Just over a year ago, she embarked on a life-changing mission to lose weight. When I saw her last Thanksgiving, she had lost over 60 pounds, and I thought she looked good. When I saw her last Monday, I started crying. She’s down over 125 pounds total and has only 25 more to reach her goal. She looks awesome and I’m so happy for her. She is half the woman she used to be…isn’t that great?

The mandatory baby-eating-cake photo.

Pete was very expressive when we opened his presents. This look, captured by my BIL, had us all chuckling. Hard to decide who liked his presents better – Pete or any of his siblings or cousins.

And the day after his birthday, we gave him his first haircut. He looks like such a big kid. Notice my piling laundry in the background. Went to a water park instead of doing housework!

You need a haircut.

You have tan lines.

You prefer to walk, shunning your knees, the stroller, and the grocery cart seat.

You chirp merrily in your own tongue incorporating a smattering of English phrases like “hey-wo, dada” (said into any object held to the ear like a phone).

You have definite preferences and are not shy in voicing them.

You laugh heartily, especially at Jenny’s antics.

You eat all sorts of foods and are willing to try anything. You love cherries and blueberries, and, alas, your siblings have already taught you about chocolate.

You dislike the high chair preferring to stand.

You can just reach things on the kitchen table and things overhanging the kitchen counters. You cannot be left alone in this room.

You know exactly where the toilet paper is in every bathroom and enjoy unrolling it.

You have, in your mind, mastered the stairs enough that you are no longer obsessed with climbing them. Your current project is climbing chairs or step stools to discover new fun things previously out of reach.

You are no longer a baby. Welcome to toddlerhood.

Happy birthday, Peter Damian.

Our house in New Jersey is still not finished and does not yet have tenants.

But this has been a good week. First off, finding the chance to get up there to finish the job has been difficult. The boys’ sports ended, but then my sister came. My sister proposed that instead of Bill going up this weekend, we (as in me, her, her husband, and our combined 7 children under age 10) would go up today and get the work done. This is exactly the sort of ludicrous idea that I find appealing. She didn’t even have to double dog dare me to try it.

Bolstering my opinion that this was a great idea and all would turn out well was my success at Home Depot in finding the exact same medicine cabinet to replace the one that was broken. We feared having to patch and paint drywall if we couldn’t find one to fit the hole.

I was undaunted by the new knowledge that Home Depot no longer carries wallpaper. There is a small patch job (one wall) in the hallway, and I didn’t want to rip all the wallpaper down and re-do it with a new pattern the way I had to do the living room. A three-minute brainstorming session with Bill yielded agreement that one hall wall with paint and three with wallpaper was perfectly acceptable. Drive on.

Next issue: tenants. We’ve had two strike outs thus far; two families with multiple accounts up for collection. We’re not in a position to take a financial risk that threatens our mortgage payment, so we had to turn them away.

Another woman with twin toddlers, who seemed so very nice and polite and was persistant but not pushy, wanted to rent, but she was Section 8. For Bill, it was very easy to say no. For me, it still makes me sad that I wasn’t willing to give her a chance. Our neighborhood is modest, but very nice. The neighbors are the kind of people who work 40 hours a week, mow the lawn on Saturdays, rest on Sundays, pay cash for Christmas presents, and live within their means. It’s exactly the sort of neighborhood for someone who needs to break the cycle of poverty. But I admit I have a tendancy to romanticize poverty and simplify solutions, and fortunately, I have an extremely practical husband who is quick to point out that someone who isn’t paying for the rent is less likely to take care of the property since they have no stake in it. He knows it would grieve me to imagine weeds growing in the garden or soil or scratches marring the wood floors. And he’s savvy enough to know that I prefer to avoid interactions with the government, and Section 8 housing is way too intimate a relationship for me to stomach.

Thankfully, on Monday, another woman called about the house. I gave her the address and told her to look at the outside, peek in the windows and call me back if she thought it might suit her. We spoke last night. She and her husband had both stopped by and were very interested in seeing more. She gave me her credit info so we could do a credit check, and her husband will stop by today to see the inside and take pictures for her. And the best part is that they are looking for a long term rental having rented their current home for 12 years. Dare I get excited? You bet.

So today I’m off on a merry adventure which will hopefully be extremely successful. I can barely contain my exuberance!

Danielle Bean has an interesting discussion about family size at her website.

My husband says he wants one more and then he’s done. Hmm. He keeps reminding me of the number I quoted before we were married as though it were part of the contract.

Father Hilliar: Michelle, do you promise to love, honor and cherish Bill all the days of your life?

Me: I do.

FH: Do you promise to be open to life, to having children and raising them in the faith of the Catholic Church?

Bill: Oh, Father, remember we’ve specified that number?

FH: Oh. Right. Michelle, do you promise to have between four and six children, raise them Catholic and all that?

Uh, no. Perhaps at the time I would have, but since that wasn’t an option, and it wasn’t vowed before God and man, I won’t be held to it. I don’t think a prior verbal agreement is legally valid over a latter verbal agreement made before witnesses.

That said, I plan to take things one pregnancy at a time. No sense in wasting energy on what could be a moot point. I know two women who each lost her uterus, one after her fifth child and one after her second. They didn’t choose instantaneous infertility. I know another couple who unhappily discovered they were having their fifth. Now, they both eagerly await the arrival of their seventh.

Another woman I know, while pregnant with her sixth, said that her husband often worries about having so many children. “I just get into bed naked. It’s not my fault if he finds me irresistable.”

Circumstances and people change. At least Bill and I agree that permanent, self-inflicted infertility (vasectomy or tubal ligation) is not a good solution for what may be a temporary desire to limit family size.

Right now, neighbors and friends who see the typical 2 year space between my children are already starting to ask me if I’m pregnant yet. The Army Ten Miler is in early October. I’ve paid the entry fee, I know I can do it having done 8 miles a few weeks ago, and I don’t want nausea or sciatica to keep me from that goal.

My answer: ask me in November.