Vacation Phase 4: Mamoorials

Jul15

Today is my grandma’s birthday and so it seems fitting that I’ve coincidentally reached the point in my vacation recap of writing about her memorial services. We called my grandma Mamoo and so I refer to her committal and Celebration of Life events as her Mamoorials and these were the real reason we went to California in the first place. When I tell people that my grandma died, I’ve noticed two common responses: “How old was she?” and “Were you close?” It is as if people are evaluating how “sorry” to be or much condolences to offer, with the older the person, the more appropriate the loss, or something like that. Anyway, she would have been 84 today. She has a beautifully long and vibrant life that was full of activity and experiences right up until the end. However, I had great-grandmas of my own until my late teen years and I fully and completely expected my kids to have the same experience. I heard from my mom that my grandma’s life insurance company still had her life expectancy at 15 more years, so forget the “how old” question and believe me when I say that her death came as an unexpected shock, even if it was in the “right” generational order and even though she was “old enough” that it doesn’t count as tragic. Since we always lived far away from each other and thus often went six months without seeing her, it is easy to forget that she’s gone and not at her home in California volunteering at the zoo and working in her sewing room. There is a definite sense of her life being “cut short,” regardless of her actual age. When we were at the beach following her Mamoorials, Zander found a whole tiny crab. He saved it and took it back to the condo saying as we walked, “I’m saving this for Mamoo! She’s going to love it!” (She did the children’s program at the zoo and she often carted strange artifacts of the natural world back to California from her visits to Missouri, including a whole donkey skull, but also things like a turtle shell and a hummingbird’s nest, and a whole well-preserved stag beetle. My dad often saved weird, dead things for her and she was always happy to receive them and add to the zoo’s demo collection.)

When I left off my vacation recapping last we had finished a fab stint at Legoland and were still in Carlsbad, California, which is about a six hour drive from Fresno, where my grandma lived. We opted, perhaps bizarrely perhaps geniusly, to fly to Fresno from San Diego, rather than making a long car trip. Tickets were only $60 each between the two and it seemed worth it to us. However, in my frenzy before leaving, I neglected to notice the difference between AM and PM on the tickets and accidentally booked a 10:00 PM flight to Fresno. After some intense lamenting that actually involved flinging myself on the bed and sobbing hysterically and then yelling about my own stupidity and what kind of IDIOT does that?!?! Someone who is too busy and MUST QUIT EVERYTHING AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, I decided to then, again perhaps bizarrely and perhaps geniusly, to buy new plane tickets for the correct AM flight, thus completely wasting $300, but restoring the “rightful” order of my plans. I tried to never think about it again, though as we enjoyed pizza with our extended family that evening in Fresno and rehearsed for the Mamoorial, I wondered if they were paging us for our PM flight back in San Diego…(why not switch tickets you ask, because there was a $200 penalty per ticket for doing so? I may not be a genius, but I can do enough math to realize that paying $200 to change a $60 ticket is not a realistic option).

The San Diego flight was awesome and easy and we got to Fresno right at 11:00 (a.m. 😉 ) and my dad picked us up at the airport in my grandma’s car. I knew as we started to descend into the Fresno airport and saw those so familiar flat, flat, flat squares of irrigated desert farmland, but without my grandma waiting there to meet us for the first time in my entire life, that I had significantly underestimated how difficult this was going to be. Getting into her familiar boat of a car that smelled like her and that had her sunglasses under the seat and her water bottle in the console with her name tidily written on it with Sharpie was hideous. Pulling into her little condo was even worse, but going inside was the worsest. My aunt and mom and sister were already there and had been there since the night before and they had a sort of rhythm and plan going on with sorting through my grandma’s things. The “bandaid had already been ripped off” in their case, as my aunt put it. I, however, was a complete mess. I could NOT believe how awful it was to be there and see her home without her in it. Again, there was that sense of her life cut short—her mousepad by the computer, her zoo jacket hanging on the door, her calendar on the wall with her writing on it, her exercise video in the VCR. So familiar and so over. I cried and cried and felt sort of stupid and also “drama queenish,” because everyone else was so busy and methodical and I felt like I was all like, “but look at me, I’m totally sad!” My aunt sat with me and then suggested I go ahead and keep ripping the bandaid by advance-watching the memorial slideshow for the Celebration of Life luncheon the next day. This was a spectacularly good idea and really helped. Her house was so full of things familiar to me from my childhood and it was also remarkably and beautifully full of us, pictures of my kids all over, things I made for her on walls and shelves. It was a mirror experience of what I already observed at my own home on the day that she died:

…it is amazing to think about all the ways her presence is woven through my days even though she lives 2000 miles away–the sweater I put on every morning is one she knit for me, her quilts are on my kids’ bedroom walls and on all our beds, magazine subscriptions she gifts us with are in the car and bathroom…we’re connected in many ways and I don’t know what life will look like without her in it.

Dinner with cousins/siblings.

via Goodbye | Talk Birth.

After losing it with all the pictures and memories, I then sort of helped my mom, sister, aunt, and sister-in-law go through my grandma’s things. Later we checked into our hotel and Mark took the kids down to the pool while I rehearsed for my Mamoorial speeches/service. I cried and cried as I practiced my speech until my eyes were horribly puffy and I looked awful. “At least I’m getting this out before tomorrow!” I thought optimistically. I texted my mom that my plan for the next day was “teary-eyed and with a tasteful catch in my voice” rather than the wreck I was today. We had a family dinner that night at a cousin’s house and while there, I enlisted my cousins in a plan for a grandchild responsive reading of a version of “Song of the Open Road” at the first Mamoorial. We actually had a really fun time laughing and rehearsing our poem.

At least the kids hitched a ride on a luggage cart.

We stayed a horrible hotel with the worst breakfast in the history of hotel breakfasts. We so missed our beloved Drury Inns on this trip!

We headed over to the Chapel of the Light where Mamoo’s ashes were to be placed in the above-ground chamber in which my grandpa is interred. I was asked to officiate at a brief committal service before we placed the ashes and this ceremony was attended by only close relatives. After my grandpa died in 1989, my grandma remarried so my step-grandfather and most of his children and their children were there. Mamoo always kept our families kind of separate, even though she was married for more than 20 years to this “new” husband. It was easy for me to forget that she had another life with a whole set of other local grandchildren that I didn’t have a lot of contact with, but for whom she was the only grandmother, the only Mamoo, they’d ever known too. I quickly enlisted the aid of these grandchildren as well for my Song of the Open Road plan. The service I planned went well, but the grandchildren piece was the highlight, in my opinion. I’m not sure if other people specifically liked it, but it was so important to me that each grandchild’s voice be represented during the ceremony. While I don’t know that she liked Walt Whitman at all, my grandma was a traveler and so this poem felt absolutely perfect to me. My grandpa loved his boat and they used to go on boat trips together as well and so the section about taking to the seas, to me, felt like this perfect tie-in to our return of the remains of her body to his:

Song of the Open Road (responsive)

(modified from Walt Whitman)

Riding an elephant in Africa

Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road
Healthy, free, the world before me.

Henceforth, I ask not good fortune—
I myself am good-forturne
Strong and content
I travel the open road.

I inhale great draughts of space;
the east and the west are mine,
and the north and the south are mine.

All seems beautiful to me;
I can repeat over to men and women,
You have done such good to me,
I would do the same to you.

Ready to hit the road!

Whoever you are, come travel with me!
However sweet these laid-up stores—
however convenient this dwelling,
we cannot remain here;

However sheltered this port,
And however calm these waters,
We must not anchor here;

Together! The inducements shall be greater;
We will sail pathless and wild seas;

We will go where winds blow,
Waves dash, and the Yankee clipper
Speeds by under full sail.

Forward! After the great companions!
And to belong to them!
They too are on the road!

Onward! To that which is endless,
As it was beginningless,
To undergo much, journeys of days,
Rests of nights,

To look up or down no road

As I made Mamoo's name, I thought about how I hadn't had any "signs" from her. Then, in the middle of that thought, I looked down and right by the "M" in her name was this rock. I held it all through the memorial service I did at the internment of her ashes and all through my speech at her Celebration of Life luncheon.

I held this stone all through the memorial service I did at the internment of her ashes and all through my speech at her Celebration of Life luncheon.

But it stretches and waits for you—

To know the universe itself as a road—
As many roads—
As roads for traveling souls…

It was a lot of pressure to be responsible for this ceremony. I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted it to be what she deserved. I wanted it to “speak” to every person there. I wanted it to be worthy of her. I hope it was enough.

Before she died, Mamoo got some details l all planned out with my aunt. She wanted a specific banquet center for a celebration of life lunch with chicken salad, no traditional funeral. She wanted the theme music from Out of Africa played and she wanted chocolate chip ice cream bon bons (which was the only thing that couldn’t be worked out–we had chocolate chip cookies instead and the rest was just like she asked for). After the committal service, we went to Tornino’s banquet center for the Celebration of Life. People came and came and came. We exceeded the capacity of the banquet room and emergency additional food had to be prepared. She didn’t want a “funeral service” type of feeling and it wasn’t. The slideshow played, the theme music from Out of Africa played, we ate chicken salad and visited with distant relatives and friends. My aunt spoke briefly and explained the planning of the event. She did a beautiful job honoring my grandma’s wishes and planning an special, lovely lunch in her honor. My grandma’s stepson read a poem written by my step-grandpa about “My Lyla, My Lyla.” It was heart-rending and I suddenly realized I might have made a huge mistake in saying I’d be the last speaker. My grandma’s stepdaughter spoke. My uncle spoke. And, then it was my turn. I was speaking on behalf of all the grandkids, each had sent me a favorite Mamoo memory to share. Remember my plan for the tasteful, teary-eyes? Yeah, that. Instead, I failed to even see the handy Kleenex on the podium and instead wiped my nose with my hand while I was talking. There were 260 people there, which is a much larger group than I’ve spoken before in the past. I didn’t feel nervous really, but I did feel sad and I cried much more than I’d wanted to or expected to. People afterward told me they’d never experienced anything like what I’d said at a memorial before and they hoped someone would do the same for them someday. I apparently talked really fast, but that is not a big surprise. It was hard, but I did it.

For the story from my boys for the speech, they had this to say: Mamoo was really epic.

And, she was.

For my own memory contribution I shared that I picture her in a little jacket and jaunty scarf and zoo necklace and her ball ring, with slightly bent knees and open arms ready for a hug of greeting and she’d smile in that welcoming way. We got too big to be greeted in that way, but I saw her do it again with my own kids. And, I shared what I wrote in my last card to her:

I’ve always been proud of you—your smart, creative, adeventuresome self. Best. Grandma. Ever. You’ve been a beautiful example to us of how to live, both in the practical sense in terms of being frugal and in the more esoteric sense of how to be of service to the community, to take risks, to be productive, and to age gracefully and with a neverending zest for new experiences. We’re grateful to you also for her generosity over the years, particularly for the gift of my college education and the debt-free legacy that left for us and our children. I don’t know that I can ever explain in full what a potent gift that was—one that lasts our lifetime.

I closed with a slightly edited version of a poem I originally shared here:

Last Words

We learned from you
we loved with you
we heard you
we saw you
we hugged you
and held you
we mourned with you
we mourned for you
we have been dazzled by your radiance
inspired by your adventures
and touched by your generosity.

Three generations of people
sat in your lap as children
were covered by your quilts
and zipped into your sweaters
you carried each of us on your hip
and held us each in your heart

We respect you
we cherish you
we appreciate you
we’ve learned so much from you
we’ve laughed with you
and lived with you
and traveled with you

and now
we open up our hands
we open up our hearts
and we let you go.
Be free.
Continue your travels
on the currents of time and space…

Go in peace
go in love
and go knowing that you have left behind
something beautiful
something marvelous
something that matters
The fabric of a life well-lived
the hearth of a family well-tended
the heart of a community strengthened
and a never-ending chain of generations
unbroken.

You’re our Mamoo

You’re our grandmother
and we say goodbye
and thank you.

Sink deeply
and gently
into the arms and lap
of time
the great mother of us all

She holds you now.
We let go

Then, we left the Mamoorial and headed out for the beach, a little over three-hour drive. We drove her car…

When we got home from California, the Mamoorial blue hydrangea we’d planted was blooming beautifully!

One of my earliest memories of Mamoo is of sitting on her lap and playing with a gold ball ring on her finger. I don’t know the story behind that ring, I feel as if I should, but from the time I was a tiny girl she always wore it when she visited her grandchildren and we all liked to play with it. I imagine it was a coincidence that she wore it around a grandchild in the first place, but then it became a thing that she did and that all of us associated with her. When my aunt and mom were going through her jewelry they asked if there was something I wanted and I asked for the ring. Later, my two sisters both mentioned it as well and I feel guilty or selfish for being the one to get it. At this point, I can’t wear it. It makes me feel awful to see it on my own hand. Its hers. It belongs on her hand. The whole reason I wanted it was because it was something that reminds me very concretely of her, but that is the exact same reason that I can’t wear it right now. I hope my own grandchildren will play with it though when I wear it to meet them. It fits on the same finger on my hand that it fit on hers.

They also gave me her Hitty doll. Hitty: Her First Hundred Years is a classic children’s novel by Rachel Field. It was published in 1929 and was one of my grandma’s favorite books. Hitty is a small ashwood doll who travels the world. In 1997, my grandma bought her own Hitty replica and did, in fact, take Hitty with her on some travels as her travel doll. My dad made replicas of Hitty’s key furniture pieces for my grandma and they were all set up as a display in her house, along with a tiny wooden peg person Hitty I’d made for my grandma, but completely forgotten about. I sat the ball ring on a Hitty’s lap for a while and then ended up putting it into a little shadow box with her on the replica of Hitty’s bench that my dad made for my grandma and a set of my grandma’s Dionne Quintuplet dolls. Those who know me in real life may puzzle somewhat over my extensive and non-frugal American Girl doll collection, but I come by this doll thing genetically, I swear. It is in my blood! I remember the Dionne Quintuplet dolls from when I was a little girl. They were my grandma’s when she was a girl herself and she was fascinated by the story of the Quints.

Last month, I took the ring to the woods and wrote a sort of “poem” about it, excerpted below. After doing so, I became obsessed with finding a picture of her wearing the ring, because suddenly I worried that I’d imagined or exaggerated that she always wore it to see us. Indeed, I don’t know if she ever wore at other times, but around the grandchildren, it was a fixture. And, I did readily locate pictures from her eightieth birthday party in which you can see the ring on her hand where it belongs and pictures from when I was younger and pictures from when she came to meet Alaina.

…Ball ring
has been a lot of places
told a lot of stories
seen a lot of things
and it is still here
a reminder
of what has gone before.

Thank you.

(6/6/13)

I had to include this picture even though I, personally, look like a mutant, because Mamoo is so cute in it!

She passed along her smile to my whole family! 🙂

This is the kind of picture that really twists my heart, because she looks like Alaina in it and the world spins so fast…

Happy birthday, Mamoo! My mom sent me a text to tell me that your birthday club friends went out to lunch for your birthday. They’ve been going out to lunch on birthdays for 50 years.

And, today the investment statements came from the college funds you set up for my kids. Thank you.

Vacation, Phase 3: Legoland

Jul6

I apologize to any new followers who are wondering where the birth stuff is on this birth blog anyway! I’m on a roll with my vacation recap posts, so bear with me as I finish my series, then I’ll get back to business 🙂

After the tourmaline mine, we checked into our new hotel, The Carlsbad by the Sea Resort, and left behind our beloved Ramada Carlsbad (lamented over for every day we spent in a hotel after that!). We went to the beach and out to dinner with Mark’s best childhood friend and his wife who coincidentally now live not that far away from where we were in CA. The next morning, we hopped up for phase three of our journey, two days at Legoland. We started out the day feeling like we’d made a pretty grievous error in thinking it was remotely sensible to go to two different theme parks back-to-back (three if you count California Adventure as separate from Disneyland–you do have to pay more for it and go through a totally separate gate to get in, have your ticket scanned again, etc.), with only a single day’s break doing hard manual labor digging through rocks in the hot sun in between the big park adventures. We were all super tired, the kids said they would rather just go to the beach, and it was Memorial Day. Actual bleeping Memorial Day and there we were headed off to join the masses of other yahoos getting spun around in the sun. I was also worried that Legoland’s rides/atmosphere would not measure up to Disney’s and with only a day’s separation, the contrast would be just too clear. We ended up leaving the hotel a little later than I wanted and got to the park only fifteen minutes early. I fretted all the way over about the “crowds” and we cooked up a plan to leave and go to the attached SeaLife Aquarium as soon as it got too crowded at Legoland, then return to do the rest of the park the following day when we anticipated it would be less crowded. We decided to pay to park there, so that we could go back to our car to feast upon peanut butter sandwiches rather than expensive park food. Imagine our surprise to pull into a nearly empty parking lot…then walk right through the entrance gate and straight up to stand right by the rope closing off the attractions until the opening moment. Turns out that Memorial Day at Legoland was the best. It was practically empty all day and was basically perfect.

Since I didn’t have a lot of foreknowledge or expectation of what the park would be like, I just enjoyed it a lot. Very Zen of me, but this loosening of any attachment to outcome or experience, really freed us up to just enjoy what is. Legoland was one of the highlights of our whole trip for me because we actually felt laid back and relaxed there and it was so unexpected. Alaina was big enough to go on just about every ride and we were flexible about stopping to play on “little” stuff we would have breezed right by at Disneyland. I’d read a tip online not to go to Legoland for the rides, but to go for the experience. The post I read said that if you went for the rides you’d be disappointed, but if you went to watch your kids have a good time and to enjoy the full experience of just being at Legoland, you’d have a blast and we did. We sat in the Duplo Village and let the kids build with huge Legos and climb into big Duplo playhouses, we actually went to The Big Store and to the Minifigure Market and let them buy (surprisingly affordable) souvenirs. We never shopped at all at Disneyland, too much GO! Keep MOVING! Oh, and remember my “get your money’s worth” obsession? Legoland is practically free compared to Disneyland too. And, we actually found on clearance cool stuff at one of the shops that we bought for people for Christmas—cheap, significantly discounted, things that people will actually want (can’t say what in case they read my post!). When I think about Disneyland, I remember how hard we pushed and how we “triumphed” and enjoyed pretty spectacular highlights like working the single-rider line at Radiator Springs Racers. I felt really successful about getting the max we could out of Disneyland for our dollars spent. And, almost all of the rides there truly amazing events and not mere “rides.”

When I think about Leogland, I remember things like watching the kids play in the water park area and pushing Alaina on the swing and watching her “drive” the blue Lego car she was obsessed with and of all of us sliding down the big slides of Dune Raiders in sacks as a family and riding up to the top of the Beetle Bounce all together and feeling our stomachs wooosh as we rode back down, of sharing tasty Granny Apple Fries without feeling like we were “missing” something or “wasting time,” of my boys’ faces as they ran through the Aquarium exclaiming in amazement at everything they saw as well as their sheer delight at touching real sea cucumbers and sea stars. I remember Alaina lifting her arms above her head and screaming as we zoomed around the Coastersaurus together and of Mark shoving another mom and kid’s little Lego boat around as we crept around the little Lego boat school riverway at a total snail’s pace, but with our kids really driving their own Lego boats. We did almost nothing at Disneyland that involved all of being able to go together as a family, since we had to keep switching off with one adult going on the little rides with Alaina and one boy, while the other maximized the efficiency of going on a big ride with the other boy. Legoland is built for kids in the 3-12 range, basically. It was all families with kids at about those ages—we saw no teenagers in the whole place, it was like an entire demographic was missing. Lann, at almost ten, was almost “too old” for a lot of it (but he wasn’t and he never said anything like that). Alaina, at two, was “just right” for almost everything and probably had the most fun of us all. My expectations of Legoland were lower, but the experience was actually richer in many ways. I loved it! Of course, I loved Disney too and it was a trip to remember, but there is something to be said for just having fun with your family. Duh.

As far as the rides, think kind of like basic carnival type stuff, no show-stoppers or big thrills. The very “biggest” rides at Legoland are about as good as the rides at Disneyland like Gadget’s Go Coaster and Goofy’s Sky School and most of them were much tamer and not as good as things like Alice and Little Mermaid. And, they’ve got no clue how to do ambiance like Disney does. It is really a park for pretty young people, which is fine, because that’s what we’ve got! Many of the rides were very sloooooow paced, but having the whole family be able to ride them together was pretty priceless. And, my boys never complained about anything being too slow. I will always remember the thrill of shared discovery of going together to somewhere that none of us had ever been and didn’t know what to expect and of the sense of the “bonus” surprise of having a practically empty park to ourselves to enjoy. It put us on the same playing field in a sense, in which we could all discover and experience things together for the first time, rather than having the parents already know everything about Disneyland.

Oh, they had big signs all over about NO OUTSIDE FOOD OR WATER, so we dutifully left ours in the car and went back out at lunchtime (which was a genius plan, btw), but everyone and their brother brought water in…we saw them…and no one ever said anything to stop them.

The second day was surprisingly much more crowded than actual Memorial Day—there were lots of school buses there for end-of-the-year trips. So, after enjoying some of the things we missed the day before, we headed to the Sealife Aquarium, which was another unexpected sleeper hit. It is structured oddly in that they only let you in as a group and you have to wait for group to go in with. And, once inside, you process sequentially through without any real opportunity for backtracking to see anything you’d like to see again. It had a very one-way-street feel and you just kept going until you came out at the food court at the end. Alaina desperately wanted to go back to see tiny turtles, but there was no real way to do that without being re-admitted. Anyway, at the Aquarium is where we finally saw the looks of joy and delight and excitement on Lann and Zander’s faces that we’d expected to see at Disneyland. They had so much fun and acted like it was the greatest place they’d ever been.

Interestingly, I note that I have way more pictures of our Legoland expedition as well, because I actually was moving slowly enough to pay attention and enjoy what was around me! As always, click on any picture to enlarge and then scroll through slide-show style to see bigger images and captions.

: Heading in! Imagine me saying, “this is the least crowded we’ll see it all day, HURRY!”

: Hmm…surprisingly low-key inside. Time to linger and look at the water while we wait for the line to drop.

: I expected all the dang buildings to be freakin MADE OF LEGOS. Hello!! I was a little disappointed that the big set-type buildings were just boring non-Legos.

: See what I mean about tame? This moved about .25 miles an hour.

: But, there was a fake sack pig outside the BBQ place…

: We had an embarrassing moment here where Mark and I both crammed into this tiny helicopter together and they had to tell me to get out! (I hurt my leg too, wedging myself into the tiny seat!)

: This was cool! Alaina was too small for this tea-cup-esque Bionicles ride though and that was disappointing.

: Wave Riders was pretty cool.

: I’ve rarely seen such cheese-tastic, questionnable “moral” lessons, disguised advertising crapola as the two “4-D movies” at Legoland. They should be embarrassed by them! At least Zander is a cutie-pie!

: Swinging at the water play area by the Pirates Landing stuff.

: We actually had the time to go change into bathing suits and come back for some water play!

: Birth Goddess at Legoland?! Oh, yes.

: Me and Indy hanging out. We both like birth goddesses.

: This was one ride that we actually had to wait a spell for. I loved it though!

: Yes, you do actually have to pedal to make it go. We thought that was a psychological effect only as we watched people’s feverishly and ridiculously pedaling along in the air, but we experiemented and if you stopped pedaling, the car did, in fact, also stop.

: This was a cool actual-size minivan made totally of Legos!

: This kind of thing is weird and unncessary and I took a photo in feminist disapproval (there is a Lego man taking a picture of her)..

: The sought-after blue car. It doesn’t go anywhere, but that doesn’t matter!

: Alaina got uber-crabby right before the Duplo village and stood in this playhouse yelling at me.

: (I said no)

: See what I mean about the rides? BUT, this was one our three kids could go on sans-adults and with like one other person on the whole thing.

: And, see their little faces?!

: Miniland!

: Darth Vader!

: Star Wars Miniland was amazing!

: One cool, unexpected thing about Star Wars Miniland to me was that they use NO minifigs in it. All the characters are built out of Lego bricks.

: Big Minifigs! The kids loved these and had to stop and be photographed by every single one.

: Lann smooched Wicket, but we said that was probably a bad idea because one thousand other kids could have done the exact same thing…

: Alaina sneaked through the barrier for a hug.

: I tried to get Mark to hug or smooch R2D2, but alas, he refused.

: Darth Maul is such a snuggler!

: Coooool!

: Posed at Miniland!

: But…also an outtake capturing how I was REALLY starting to feel! Time for those PB sandwiches! 😉

: SeaLife Aquarium had cool stuff like this that was just ideal for our hands-on, active, climb-around kids.

: Sticking their heads into this bubble actually puts them IN the tank with the fish! Cool!

: Thank goodness for big brothers who can cram into bubbles with their little sisters so she can see too.

: This underwater tunnel thing was A-MAZING. We could have stayed for ages. We all loved it.

: See?! Finally awe-struck instead of asking to go back to the room to watch cartoons!

: Looking at stuff.

: These were my favorite. What the heck are they? Little snakey-fish things peeking out of the sand! Loved em.

: Alaina was similarly entranced.

: A real Nemo looking picturesque.

: Sea cucumbers!

: I took this picture as a means of communicating the lower key vibe of Legoland compared to Disneyland. The Lego tix are on the left and Disney on the right!

Legoland closed at around 5:00, so we actually had plenty of time to go back to enjoy the beach!

: Ah, the gorgeousness of beach stones…

: I decided to make “names in the sand” beach rock pictures. The first was for my friend’s baby girl.

: The second for my own Noah.

: Stopped for some sandy nonnies.

: Mark kept looking for rocks for beach names for me.

: We did Mamoo’s name last.

: As I made Mamoo’s name, I thought about how I hadn’t had any “signs” from her. Then, in the middle of that thought, I looked down and right by the “M” in her name was this rock. I held it all through the memorial service I did at the internment of her ashes and all through my speech at her Celebration of Life luncheon.

Tuesday Tidbits: Vacation!

Jun4

When this post publishes, we’ll be in an airplane on our way home from our vacation to California. Our first purpose in going was for my grandma’s memorial services, but we decided to make a full-scale trip out of it. We went to Disneyland, to Legoland, and to go tourmaline mining. We went to Fresno for my grandma’s committal, which I planned and facilitated, and for her Celebration of Life luncheon, which was beautifully planned by my aunt and had an excellent and touching turn out (260 people when we only planned for 200). Then, we ended with four days at Pismo Beach where my uncle has a condo. Everything went well overall and I will post some trip picture albums soon. For my Tuesday Tidbits this week though, I’m just offering a couple quick shots:

Lann ended up going on Space Mountain three times! I like this picture because the strangers behind us look so casual and like they should be on an ad for Disneyland.

Playing at the beach in Carlsbad.

Waiting for the gate to open at Legoland! We went on Memorial Day, which I was dreading, and it was shockingly deserted!

Couldn’t resist a pic with Lego Indy because he’s holding a birth goddess! The classic golden “idol” from Raiders is really an Aztec birth goddess figure—for some reason in the big Lego version, there is no baby emerging though. 😦

Alaina loved the “tea party ride.”

Had to have one of these iconic pix, taken by friendly passerby!

Lego Darth Vader!

We were dragging by the time we got to Miniland and to Star Wars land, but these guys were so cool!

The crew getting ready to catch some waves. My brother and sister-in-law, plus my uncle and cousins and Mark. (I love Zander in this picture!)

My uncle showed us how to take silhouette pictures at sunset at Pismo and I love how they turned out.

Okay, so that was more pictures than I originally thought!

I’ve heard my grandma’s blue hydrangea is blooming at home and I miss my woods and my own house! Homeward bound…

Birthdays! (and lots of other stuff)

May20

My birthday was at the beginning of this month. I uploaded some pictures and was going to just post a quick post, but then some days passed and then some more days. I added some more pictures and thought of more things to write and it has just been languishing in my drafts folder. Things keep happening and so I think I’ll add a couple more pictures before I post, blah, blah, blah. I almost deleted the whole thing since now May is practically over and my bday was weeks ago, but since I bothering uploading the pix, I’m just going to post it!

May is a busy month for us. It is my birthday and then Mother’s Day and then my mom’s birthday and my dad’s birthday and Zander’s birthday. We also have a whole group of our work party friends who have May birthdays (and playgroup friends too!). May 12th was the 18th anniversary of my first date with my husband. May 16th was the fifteenth anniversary of my college graduation. I feel like I’m getting old! And, it is weird to think about how close that college student girl feels and also how very far away she feels. My parents both turned 60—I had a surprise party/healing ritual for my mom as part of our spring women’s retreat as well as a ceremony for our 12-year-old work party friend whose birthday was the same day. On Mother’s Day, we had a family memorial ceremony for my grandma. In the middle of all these celebrations, I’ve been wrapping up the school session (including grading almost 100 papers…split up in two batches of almost 50), preparing for the summer school session, plotting with Mark about him quitting his job, trying to help motherbabies breastfeed happily, trying to stick with some kind of homeschool “schedule” for my kids (using the term extremely loosely). Oh yeah, and my tiny little sweet daughter also had major dental work under general anesthesia last Tuesday. One of my Facebook friends pointed out that no wonder I’ve been feeling taxed. Yeah, duh. I don’t know why I can’t extend myself that grace. Instead, I’ve been berating myself at various intervals about my “inability” to handle it all. I’ve also been planning our big trip to California. $2300 later and WAY too many hours thinking, checking, and strategizing, I ended up with five plane tickets and we’re going. We decided to to go ahead and make a full vacation out of it—Disneyland, tourmaline mining, Legoland, and Pismo Beach! My grandma’s committal service (which I am planning and facilitating) and her celebration of life luncheon is in Fresno in the middle of our trip.

This week as I tried to finish those last bleeping papers, I found out that I’d made a mistake with our plane tickets—having a p.m. flight from San Diego to Fresno rather than the a.m. flight I thought we had. I almost lost it. Flipped out. I’m serious. I felt like I had officially exceeded my actual ability to cope and that I may possibly break down in some way. More. Than. Humanly. Possible. To. Handle. As it was, we made the semi-bizarre choice to just buy some new tickets that restored the “rightful” a.m. flight schedule. These middle-of-the-journey tickets were only $68 each and we decided it was really a fairly trivial amount and we should just do it. We’re taking our family of five to CA with carry-on luggage only and we’re packing like a boss! Seriously, we’re rocking this thing.

Oh, and just this afternoon I also finished my twelfth class for my D.Min degree. I’ve got about 14 left, plus my dissertation. I have three in progress and signed up for two more to start during the summer session. How do I do it?!?!? Heck if I know. 😉 Maybe it is time to feel impressed at my own capacities again rather than mad at myself for not getting more done, for being “behind,” for staying up too late, for taking too long to return phone calls, for leaving some emails unanswered and books unreviewed, for being sometimes short-tempered, for screwing up a.m. and p.m., for not getting around to the blog posts I’d hoped to write, for not keeping up with requests for new sculptures, for not having a birthday surprise of some kind for my dad too, and for never feeling “finished” enough to rest.

Here is what I originally swiped from my Facebook to share about my birthday:

Uh oh. I spent the first 8 minutes of my 35th year still working on these dang bibliographies. This has been my worst/least productive grading stint yet (the CA trip planning/purchasing ate up my usual “free” day). I’m determined to have a FREE day tomorrow (okay, technically, today, but it doesn’t count until I go to bed!)–I’m going to wallow around in books and listen to guided meditations (you know, with the three kids climbing on me!) and plan rituals and celebrations and not do anything I don’t feel like doing 🙂

It is SO flipping hard to focus on grading these bibliographies when my brain is turning over Disneyland plans, hotel reservations, car rental, and also finding just the *right* stuff for my grandma’s memorial service. The good news is that I have some really rocking students this session and they make some of the grading easy!

—

Later update:

Thirty-four years ago I was born! As my birthday present to myself, I DID manage to finish grading the last bibliographies and I’m taking the day off to hang around and wallow in books. I think I might do a tech-off day (or, at least, a class-off day!) Oh, and I bought two tiny little Japanese dolls for myself at Goodwill too. I do birthdays right!

When I wake up and hear rainfall on my birthday I always feel like the planet is wishing me a happy birthday too (there was a heavy rainstorm the day I was born). Alaina told me I should have a cake with “nonnie babies” on it. On my actual birthday, my mom took me to a tea room in a neighboring town for a birthday lunch and then I came home with three kinds of tea and the kids and I had a tea party! (in many ways an excuse to eat sugar cubes and this involves sort of obsessive negotiation over them rather than just enjoying ourselves!) I asked the boys if they would play with Alaina so I could have an easier time getting ready to go. After about ten minutes, Lann said, “whew, she’s pretty much like an energy tick.” I rolled! I love having a nine-year-old and a toddler. So much different and easier than having a toddler and a preschooler was.

Okay, so here is a gallery of the pictures I meant to post on several occasions, plus some more I just added in today:

: Birthday rosebush from my good friend!

: Kids and I have a sort-of-fun tea party after my birthday lunch.

: Alaina became obsessed with this mother-baby butterfly card from The Mother’s Wisdom deck. She really, really wanted to be able to “hold. dat. bufly. baby.”

: Birthday sculpture by Zander already shared in prior post.

: Mark made me a nifty necklace with a lobster claw where a pendant would usually go, so that I can swap out central pendants at will, or layer multiples together like I did with these two beauties that I also got for my birthday.

: Tiniest Shaker carrier ever! My dad made this for me.

: Sculpture by Lann for my birthday (shared in prior post).

: Mini Shaker box and carrier by my dad.

: Little Japanese dolls from Goodwill—one has a baby inside! (they both are supposed to, but one is missing)

: Stonehenge necklace from myself.

: Bracelet of awesomeness.

: Mark surprised me with this cool bronze Artemis statue.

: Birthday rosebush, Hathor, and tiny crocheted Goddess of Willendorf

: The tinest crocheted Goddess of Willendorf by my talented mother. She is the coolest.

: Lunch at the adorable little tea room in Licking, MO.

: First attempt at the crocheted goddess.

: Second attempt.

: Hathor—I requested her because she was described as “Goddess for the Exhausted.”

: Lilacs bloomed! Oh wait…this was the ONLY flower on the whole bush.

: My friend helped me plant elderberry plants during the work party we had at our house the day after my birthday.

: Alaina scoping out the amazing progress the work party made on the aquaponics system in the greenhouse.

: How much work is it to get 12 people arranged for a group photo with a timer cam app after having a memorial ceremony?

: Actually, only two shots and we look amazing, if I do say so myself (my timer cam app and that is why I’m crammed in with awkward legs).

: Baby chicks hatched on Mother’s Day. Me loves ’em!

: Alaina loves them too!

: Another good friend made and embroidered this shirt and jumper for one of my dolls. I love it! No one has made me doll clothes since my grandma used to. Isn’t she cute? My friend said it was from her inner child to mine 🙂

: Curly-haired cutie playing at the river during a friend’s birthday party.

: Arranging “tools.”

: The memorial blue hydrangea we planted for my grandma.

: The day after surgery: showing off new teeth (the previously poorly repaired ones WERE able to be saved!) as well as a new baby chick!

: Beautiful print of a babyloss mandala by Amy Swagman. My mom surprised me with this for my birthday after thoughtfully contributing to our Amethyst Network fundraiser and receiving the print as a premium.

: I took this picture of my precious, sacred overlook in the woods, so that I can look at it while traveling.

: Lann finished his first year of gymnastics and got a medal at their spring show!

: This one almost makes me cry–it was amazing to see his confidence increase over the past year and I feel like a “good” homeschooling mom to be taking him to classes based on his own interests. I also think it is really good for him to interact with and develop relationships with people outside of my direct scrutiny.

: Set of trading cards Lann drew for me for Mother’s Day.

: My sad little groggy post-surgical sweetie.

: Right before going in for her dental work.

: Maiden threshold cord.

: Spring motherhood and healing altar set up for our spring women’s retreat.

: While we were having ceremonies, Alaina was chilling at the river with our friends. When I saw this picture via text, I also felt like crying to see my big girl!

: Right after the close of the healing cermeony/birthday ritual for my mom.

: Just today we had a substitute birthday for Zander since we will be gone on his actual birthday (embarking on that screwed up time San Diego to Fresno flight…twice if we want to!)

: For his birthday party, I ordered movie makeup supplies ala Face Off and Alaina jumped in on the action and made herself have a “ceepy arm.”

: Zander working on putting makeup onto his latex scar (not pre-made, we made them from scratch with liquid latex!)

: This is a bad close-eye special, but I had to include it because I was so proud of my first foray into “special effects” makeup. I do not have enough talent to take this show on the road, but I was stil happy with how it turned out.

: Zander’s scar and make up work looked amazing!

: And, so did Lann’s!

: And, I gifted myself with (yes, *another*) new ring. This one (the one with the malachite stone on my ring finger) is a “travel” ring present for myself to ease my jitters at traveling away from my beautiful home and woods.

Kidbits

Apr22

“They look so small and frail but they are so great and magnificent. They are born of the same womb that birthed the cosmos and knitted together the galaxies. If you could see them as they truly are, you would be astounded. You would see not little children, but dancing clouds of light, energy in motion, swimming in an ocean of love. They are so much more than what you see. As are you.”

-William Martin
The Parent’s Tao Te Ching

Some things I saved recently to remember about my funny little children:

Adorable toddler nursling moment: I was carrying Alaina in the kitchen and she patted my chest and said, “love you, nonnies.” Then, she said, “sank you, mommy.” 🙂 ♥

Another charming moment: Alaina standing before me and giving that cute toddler hands raised sort of shrug gesture and saying, “babies…grow…up!” She has also started doing a thing wherein she points at her own belly and says, “baby…belly…me…grow…up,” telling me that she will grow up to have a baby of her own and then points to herself and says “Mama…ME! Babies…grow UP! Mama…ME!”

Zander bought hair gel and spiked up his hair, put on a gold chain and sunglasses, took off his shirt and started doing some rocking dance moves and handstands in the living room. Lann said: “hey, we could start a band and call it the Wiggly Brothers.” Zander continued to groove with no response. Lann repeated himself about three times and then said kind of to himself, “I guess I’ll be the weird one…” ;-D

At the beginning of this month, Lann brought me an illustrated “breakfast menu” and said I could start ordering breakfast from him in the mornings. Each item is 50 cents or $1. SOLD! He has been making me a spinach and cheese omelet many mornings and I really appreciate it. The café is called Big Spoon. It is so fun to have a kid that is nine!

Alaina found some shiny tappy shoes at the thrift shop. The same day, we also bought the Gremlins movies (which I’d never seen) and she energetically explained how she will use her new shoes to kick bad gremlins–she will “hug good Gizmo” and “kick bad Gizmos” (complete with demo-kick shiny shoe action). In case anyone cares, we didn’t let her keep watching it after they mutated and we muted the computer during the “Santa dad in the chimney” story, which Mark mercifully remembered (due to his own past childhood trauma) just in the nick of time.

Said tiny girl likes to push (literal) buttons and last week while still in bed in the morning I was surprised by the serenading CD from the living room where she must have programmed it to be on a timer (I don’t know how to do that myself!) She woke up and I said, “did you make the radio start playing?” And she said, “yes, mommy. Me do dat ting.”

Me last week: “Argh! I have SO much I want to do.” Lann: “Me too, Mom. It IS kind of the primary feature of our family.” ;-D

: Shiny shoes, a bathing suit, a nursing baby doll, an Ergo, and a cat. What could be better?!

: A friend sent the boys California Pug t-shirts in support of their Operation Pug endeavor.

: That’s our Zander! Note small wild girl zooming by on the side wearing a bathing suit (she’s also carrying a thing of cream cheese to eat) and feet of Lann at stove where he is making me another tasty (50 cent) omelet for breakfast. 🙂 ♥

: Curly hair!

: This bathing suit is popular attire lately.

: Nursing outside at last month’s faculty conference.

: Delight at genuine pug experience at Baker Creek Seeds in March

: Skirts and mud puddles definitely mix!

And, video special: Alaina dancing in the car while we waited to get Lann from gymnastics.

Blog Integration (and Greenhouse!)

Feb20

I go back and forth a bit on my relationship to blogging. Sometimes I feel like maintaining separate “spaces” in the form of different blogs and sometimes my attention feels too splintered and I feel like integrating everything together under one umbrella. I originally started out as a book blogger and kept my book blog going for several years as well as starting a blog specifically about birth art. I started this Talk Birth blog really as just a website for my local birth classes, but as it took off (while the classes themselves did not) I started to devote more energy to it. As time went on, I started a blog for Citizens for Midwifery during my time on their Board. I retired from the Board several years ago, but maintain the blog on a limited basis. As the role and presence of Facebook grew, I steadily moved more of the content I normally would have shared on the CfM blog to the CfM Facebook page instead and find this seems like the most effective use of my time. I was one of ICEA’s bloggers for a short time and wrote book reviews for CAPPA for two years. With all of these, I get an itch to centralize my writing in one location…here…rather than dividing my attention (hence the retirement of my book and birth art blogs several years ago also).

However, then sometimes things happen for which a separate space feels more appropriate–this was true when I had my first miscarriage-birth and felt very strongly that my writing about miscarriage needed a new, distinct home. Interestingly, now that three years have passed, I’m bringing more and more of my miscarriage writings over here, mostly in conjunction with The Amethyst Network, and I feel like it is important to include and acknowledge pregnancy loss in the spectrum of topics covered on a birth blog. After Alaina’s birth, I felt my miscarriage-specific blog was officially complete and I no longer update it. This summer I became ordained as a priestess and again the urge to differentiate blog spaces struck. I started a separate blog for my more spiritually oriented writings and my thoughts about feminism and religion. More recently still I became a contributor to a blog on Patheos. While these blogs intersect, my interest in Goddess spirituality having been born out of my own commitment to birthwork and women, separate spaces at the time feel most comfortable to me.

I’m not sure if anyone noticed and the actual words on the screen are hard to see in my blog header’s layout, but in an effort to communicate my own expanded focus, a while ago I did add “WomanSpace” to the title of Talk Birth.

I’ve minimally kept up a separate farm/land blog as well in various incarnations and this brings me to my motivation for the current post, as I’ve decided I’m going to go ahead and just include those farm life/land picture posts here in the future. This is my primary internet home/presence and I’d like to integrate the two spaces. I’ve resisted because I don’t want to turn off any regular, birth-oriented readers (same logic behind separating out to a new spirituality blog) by “boring” them with greenhouse pictures. Likewise, I have nonbirthy family members and friends who follow me here just for the few slices of “other life” that I include amidst the birth and breastfeeding content!

So, that brings me to…updated greenhouse pictures! 😉 The greenhouse has been almost exclusively a work party project. Mark has done a little bit of independent work on it, but it has primary been built by the members of our work party over the last year (we started it in March of 2012). During our work party this month, we got the building finished and got the grow beds (for aquaponics system) much closer to being finished!

Soffit and fascia up!

Washing river gravel for the grow beds.

New grow beds!

Cat investigating the ooky muddy water coming from the river gravel.

Grow beds looking the other direction.

The clear front wall.

This picture was taken before the greenhouse was actually finished, but it is still my favorite greenhouse picture!

Annual retreat

Feb1

I held a blue flower in my hand, probably a wild aster, wondering what its name was, and then thought that human names for natural things are superfluous. Nature herself does not name them. The important thing is to know this flower, look at its colors until the blueness becomes as real as a keynote of music. Look at the exquisite yellow flowerettes in the center, become very small with them. Be the flower, be the trees, the blowing grasses. Fly with the birds, jump with the squirrel! –Sally Carrighar in The Earth Speaks

It is that time of year again…time for a retreat! I recognize a pattern in my own life that I’ve been conscious of since my first miscarriage, the deep call to retreat beginning in November of each year and finally having a chance to be held in February. I’ve been feeling it coming. I started hearing the call in late October/early November and I was like, oh yeah, THIS. This call for silence, for mindfulness, for taking heed, for regrouping, for calling my spirit back, for resting. I set aside the first week of February each year to take a “computer-off retreat,” in which I unplug Facebook and take a break from blogging. Since the rest of my life doesn’t necessarily recognize this rhythm, I can’t take a completely computer-off retreat this year (having the computer off isn’t really compatible with teaching online, especially during midterm week!), but I can take a Facebook retreat and a retreat from feeling compelled to write/blog and to stay “caught up” with a variety of miscellaneous time-eating, online-based activities (like clicking on interesting articles or updating my ScoopIt page). I will also try really, really hard to check email only once a day. I’d like to actually deactivate my FB account, but that will take away my pages too (from what I understand) and I don’t want to do that—if I’m wrong, tell me please! (and, I’ll see your message when I check my email once a day ;)) And, guess what?! This year, I’m not making a to-do list. I know what I want and need and it isn’t a list.

I went out to the woods to think about this and this is what I said:

Keep vigil
bear witness
hold space

open heart
open hands
open mind

share stories
share healing
share laughter

Keep vigil
hold space
circle round

Amazon affiliate link included.

This is mainly a noise-silencing thing for me. I’ve been looking forward to it since November. I’ve been feeling it coming. I need it badly!

My favorite retreat resource is Woman’s Retreat Book: A Guide to Restoring, Rediscovering and Reawakening Your True Self –In a Moment, An Hour, Or a Weekend by Jen Louden. I also treated myself to a Breathe Peace online class (ah, the irony, since I’m having a computer off retreat! Luckily, the online class lasts throughout the month of February, so I can take my break and still come back to it!)

“Turtle” rock in the woods 🙂

Holiday Pictures

Jan14

Now that the first week of January has passed, the holidays seem like a distant memory! However, I purposely took several pictures with the intention of doing a personal holiday-in-review post, since it also seems unfortunately easy to forget favorite gifts of the season. So, here are some photos from our family’s Christmas in 2012!

: I actually had a chance to spend some time dressing some of my dolls up in their holiday finery!

: Nursing Alaina while she nurses her Breast Milk Baby doll!

: New clubhouse for the kids! (this was their 2012 solstice goal and we got it done just in time!)

: Plenty of room for a punching bag in the clubhouse!

: Zander lost his first (natural) tooth during Christmas Eve dinner!

: Best. Present. Ever! My aunt gave Alaina a purse full of tiny purses–each purse had something in it like a necklace or a bracelet or a little item and she worked so hard unzipping everything and putting on her adornments!

: Feeling very pleased with a great ebay, antique find from my sister! (photobombed by Creeper hat)

: Knock, knock. A little elf is visiting her grandparents!

: My new sculpture found a home outside the front door.

: Magic expanding socks from my aunt!

: Felt lunch made by my mom!

: Awesome felt food by my mom for Alaina.

: The boys sitting on their new twist scooters and sporting Creeper hats made by my mom and zombie sock monkeys made by her friend.

: Lovely new chalice for my altar (hand thrown by my mom, the potter)

: My sister in law made this sweet unicorn for Alaina.

: Custom ordered birthstone pendant by Home Baby Crafts.

: I gave myself a sweet new “Medicine Healer” ring 🙂

: Ah, my husband is such a good present buyer 🙂 (I got a Kitchen Aid too, but didn’t take a picture of it)

: Books! Why, yes, please!

: More books!

: Outfitted with new skirt, new gloves, new necklace, and rockin twist scooter.

: Conked out on Christmas night!

“May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder”

–J. Donohue

Grand Gulf/Mammoth Spring Mini-Vacation

Oct17

This post is one of those primarily-for-myself/family members-as-well-as-memory-record/virtual-scrapbook sorts of posts. Will return to more appropriately birthy, womanist posts soon…

My college classes run on 8 week sessions, 5 sessions per year. This means I get five breaks of 2-3 weeks each during the course of the year. We have a family tradition of taking a vacation during my October break. This year, due to multiple weekend commitments (my brother got married! Yay! It was beautiful! Our close friends are building a straw bale house and the big bale-raising is this weekend. More yay! I’m really excited for them!) and due to the fact that Alaina is still too young to be a very awesome care traveler, we planned a mini vacation rather than a full-fledged vacation.

Since long before we had kids I’ve wanted to visit Grand Gulf State Park in Thayer, Missouri right by the Arkansas state line. It is billed as a “little Grand Canyon” and while the real Grand Canyon is also on my bucket list, it doesn’t make any sense to go to the big one when the little one is right in your own two-hours-away back yard! Grand Gulf is a collapsed cave system that collapsed about 10,000 years ago, leaving a true chasm behind. The Gulf is a mile long and 130 feet deep. Water flows underground in the remainder of the cave system and emerges two miles later in Arkansas at Mammoth Spring, where it produces nine million gallons of water an hour and is the tenth largest spring in the world. After driving for about 2.5 hours, we visited Grand Gulf on Sunday afternoon. Then, we continued on for 18 miles to our hotel in Hardy, AR which is a small, historic town with little shops. On Monday, we spent the morning checking out Mammoth Spring and then the afternoon visiting the shops in Hardy. On Tuesday, we ate homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast at the hotel and then headed back home, arriving in plenty of time to take the kids to taekwondo and to get me to my faculty meeting that night.

Here is a gallery of pictures from our three destinations! (if you click on any picture, it will open up a large version and then you can page through all of them like a slideshow)

: Looking down into the “sink.” This was HIGH UP. It made our stomachs feel weird to look over into it!

: Looking down into Grand Gulf.

: More looking down into the Gulf.

It was hard to get good pictures of what it actually looks like from the top looking down. No sense of perspective really. This was one of the main parts of the chasm.

Alaina peeking over into the canyon.

Zander sitting on some cool rocks.

It was hard to get good pictures of what it actually looks like from the top looking down. No sense of perspective really.

Checking out the canyon.

Here go the adventurous boys heading to the bottom of the Gulf.

Heading down the steps to the bottom of the Gulf!

There is a long set of steps leading into part of the canyon.

Hiking around and having some na-nas.

From the bottom of the Gulf.

These slabs of rock are the remains of the collapsed cave roof (from 10,000 years ago).

Little cutie capable of walking both down and up this massive set of 119 steps!

Taking a rest and looking at the scenery.

Check out these stairs down into Grand Gulf!

Coming back up the stairs. She climbed all the way! (119 steps, theoretically, 130 feet down!)

Probably too many pictures of these stairs, but I thought the kids were cute on them!

Family picture taken by strangers at the bottom of Grand Gulf as far in as we could reasonably get without better hiking gear/preparation.

Mammoth Spring dam and old (no longer operational) hydroelectric station.

Lann took lots of pictures with his iPod. I need to check them out!

Water flowing away from the Mammoth Spring dam.

Charming ringlets, powerful shoulders, and sturdy neck…

I cannot express how much I love her hair. It is adorable and I must take many photos of it apparently.

Peeking down the slide (and the zoomed down on own!)

The lovely point at which Mammoth Spring emerges (80 feet below) and produces 9 millions gallons of water an hour!

Little sweetheart scoping for ducks.

A very common and frequently exhausting sight. Accompanied by small voice repeating, “up, up, up, uppy!” Frustration of almost constantly needing to hold 25+ pound, approaching two year old is made up for by the fact that she then says, “happy, happy” or “uppy, happy, up, happy!” when I pick her up.

Nursing in the bamboo.

A fun surprise was this nifty, professional-looking, unstaffed aquarium at Mammoth Spring near the fish hatchery. When the women at the welcome center mentioned it, I assumed it was going to be big open tanks of fish (like the hatchery). Instead, it was this nice little exhibit of various species of Ozarks-region fish (and fish that are being preserved/re-introduced into the area), as well as a little alligator and some turtles.

Alaina and Lann checking out the exhibits.

Zander loved it!

Looking at big fish at the Mammoth Spring fish hatchery.

Marching along looking for big fish at the Mammoth Spring fish hatchery.

Waiting for their grilled cheese (and BBQ beef)

View from the Riverbend Restaurant where we had lunch on Monday.

Alaina stalked through the flea markets scooping up all the dogs she could find. Then, she melted our hearts into buying several because she went to the counter and held up the tags so the cashier could cut them off–we thought it was adorable that she paid attention and knew how to “buy” something like that.

Partially making up for the horrible sign was this sweet little collage-type wall hanging in a pottery shop.

Cool wood carvings in the same shop with the bad sign.

Family photo taken by strangers at the location where Mammoth Spring emerges from 80 feet underground, 9 million gallons an hour!

I was horrified and dismayed to see this sign for sale in one of the little shops in Hardy. I felt hot and sick and we left without buying anything. I wonder how many politicians and maternity care providers have a sign like this hanging invisibly in their heads… 😦

Alaina became obsessed with dogs and found a nifty dog purse and a regular stuffed dog that she will not relinquish for anything, not even swimming time.

Zander got two McDonad’s-type toys from a flea market.

Lann bought a sword with skulls and bones…

My own Rosie sign (reproduction) for $10. I like the revised image in which she has a baby on her arm better, but this one will do just fine!

Strings of gems for $3 each from an antique shop. I’m probably going to make other jewelry out of them.

Cool glass globs from the ends of millefiori bead-making canes that I bought from the Mammoth Spring Park gift shop.

Neat statue I bought for $10 at an antique shop.

Family mini-vacation officially earns a two-thumbs up from all of us. It was low-key enough of a destination to do everything in the time we had without feeling rushed at all and being able to take leisurely pace with detours as need be. It was close enough to get there in under three hours with three kids, but far enough away to be located in “exotic” Arkansas so we could feel like we actually “went somewhere.” The trip was short enough in duration that we’re not exhausted and struggling to recover and the kids didn’t get overdone in the car. We’ve already thought of some other potential destinations for future class breaks and also discussed drawing a circle on the map with a four-hour radius and see how many places we could go.

Dress Deja Vu (Remember to Look)

Oct3

My family is in a whirlwind of activity and excitement preparing for my brother’s wedding on Sunday and we have relatives visiting from out-of-town. The wedding is at my parents’ house and so there has been a frenzy of cleaning! During said frenzy, my mom found several sweet little smocked dresses made by my grandmother. Alaina wore one to homeschool co-op on Wednesday where she was complimented on her “vintage look.” That night, my grandma arrived from CA and we were talking about the dress. I said I thought it had been mine and a vague memory of Easter pictures of me wearing it surfaced. I snagged my infant photo album and sure enough there it was! (and, appropriately, I’m actually wearing it when we were visiting them in CA.)

Check me out:

I took a picture of my aunt holding Alaina before I found the pictures of myself and coincidentally, she was looking off the same direction!

Hmm. Look familiar?! I’m only about a year old here though and Alaina is now closer to two.

Since my grandma is visiting for my brother’s wedding and she is the person who made the dress in the first place, of course I had to get a photo of her with Alaina:

Back to me with the Easter egg I was happy to find!

And then one of the former dress-wearer and current dress-wearer together:

In this picture, I’m also wearing a lovely new sweater that my grandma knitted for me. It is gorgeous!
If I feel weird about this picture, how must my mom and grandma feel?!

Moments like these are sweet and beautiful, while simultaneously feeling shocking and almost depressing.

And, I’m reminded of this poem I have previously shared:

“Holding tight to my neck, my son
trusts – he knows no other way – my touch lightly
dries his tears. I am his queen, his goddess, handily
his slave. Blink, it’s a photo again, a trick of the eye,

a frozen captive of time, paper, light and silver: my son
is a grown man: he drinks from his own hand.

Reader, I urge you,

spin slowly, take pictures, remember to laugh.”

(emphasis mine)

I would say, remember to look. Remember to feel. Remember to notice. Pay attention. Tell about it.

This is what I looked and noticed yesterday when we went to pick my boys up from taekwondo class:

Oh, does my heart both swell and ache to see those little tippy-toes.