fingers crossed

We have an accepted offer on a house we love and should sign contracts this week. Our mortgage application is in and both our house and the one we plan to buy have appraised well. In a month, we should be in the new house. Very exciting, but the amount of packing and organizing to be done is daunting. The most hilarious part of moving will be how our small amount of mismatched furniture will look in a much bigger house. We plan to get stuff from Craig's List and Freecycle once we move so we have places to sit and some lights.

This is my last post until we are settled in the new house after the holidays. Happy holidays to all.

to be continued...

Our day to day existence has been so hectic for the last few weeks that I find myself really looking forward to having off Veteran's day off next Thursday and I am completely beside myself that I will have 5 days off in a row for Thanksgiving and auntie Heather is visiting. We are in contract to sell our home--- can I get a boom shaka-laka!!! And we are looking for a home.... we actually found one we love, but we are investigating all possibilities. We are doing mortgage paperwork, nightly homework, grading, spending way too much time on real estate websites, freaking out a little, etc... Its probably going to get worse before it gets better, I mean we still have to pack up, get a Christmas together for the kids, keep going to work.... So, I don't think there will be much blogging here for the next few weeks as we try to get the next stage of our life put together. But, we are so excited... to move to the woods, near a very cool city, have more space, so many things to look forward to... I will probably pop back into blog exciting updates as our real estate dealings work themselves out or maybe I'll be too tired to do anything, its still to early to tell.

the wanderer

Jove is happiest when he is outside and free to explore. Lately he has been mentioning to me that he plans to be a "wanderer" when he grows up and he will backpack around and camp in the wilderness. He says he would marry but only have one child because you can't carry around a lot of children when you are wandering. One day we saw an RV on the way home from school and I explained what RVs are to him, he decided he should use his piggy bank money to buy one one day. When I ask him about how he plans to get food while he wanders, his answer varies from having me send it to him through the mail to growing it or collecting it himself. I love that he has uninhibited dreams about his future. He also says that maybe he'll be a science teacher (since teachers don't have to work all of the time, he says) or a marine biologist or he'll work with technology. He has told me to get more non-fiction books (books about real stuff, he calls them) because there is so much to learn about. I love talking to Jove right now.

Jupiter took Jove on his first overnight backpacking trip this summer after Jove got his own gear for his 6th birthday. Jove is tough, tougher than me, we both say. He will get dirty, hurt, walk long distances without complaint. He loves adventure and embraces life completely.

I find myself watching Jove get taller and more mature and I want to freeze him as his 6 year old free-spirited self... soak in his sense of wonder about the world... remember his goofy toothless grin... be patient with questions about RVs...

different lens Haiku

I find his pictures
six months of his camera
capturing moments

summer fun

Our backyard pool finally feels worth its while this summer. Jove can swim independently and it has been super hot so the pool is getting used almost every single day. Two of our neighbors have their grandsons with them almost every day and they come over to swim with Jove all the time. Miranda has made the leap from floating in a tube to swimming with the vest by herself.

We were supposed to go our good friends' house in Virginia this week but their kids are pretty sick so we had postpone our trip indefinitely (boo hoo). We were all very sad not to able to go and had a lot of open days on our calendar. Jove requested a trip to Hershey Park in Pennsylvania for the day. The park reminded me a lot of Cedar Point in Ohio but it had more stuff for kids and a water park area. Miranda rode a log plume ride and only moderately freaked out and Jove rode real roller coasters for the first time. I think he is braver than I am. This park will definitely be the one we go to for a few years.

This week Jupiter and I have started to have daily evening conversations about teaching matters. The wind down into the school year has begun. I am glad we are both teachers for so many reasons and being able to share the joy of the summer as a family is on the top of my list. We have so many ideas for extended summer trips for the future as the kids are older and able to do more things: next summer we will travel in the Dominican Republic, we want to go out West with the kids and I really want to do a multi-week trip to Australia and Indonesia. We still have some end of summer adventures planned for the next couple of weeks: Jove and Jupiter's backpacking trip, a week of nature summer camp for Jove and a trip to a Renaissance Faire. And, every evening I will be working on my lessons.

always a michigander

Going to Michigan makes me feel nostalgic and sentimental, more this year than in past years... perhaps it is because my grandparents are aging and I wish I had more time with them, maybe it is because Michigan feels like a place I visit and grew up in, but one I will probably never live in again or maybe because so many people I love so much are there and I don't get to see them that much... for whatever reason, I feel more appreciative of my time there and sad to leave it behind.

I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit, but my parents are spending their summers in retirement on Lake Huron in a beautiful home. We spent a few days there swimming and playing on the beach, the kids (including me) rode a jet ski for the first time, I kayaked with Miranda (who, along with me, was relieved it was calmer than the jet ski), my mom (the Artist) did rock and T-shirt painting with the kids, we had a beach bonfire with fireworks, swung on the swing looking out over the water, went to town for ice cream and watched birds. It is a calming place: the water, the woods, being with family.

I want my kids to know and appreciate the natural beauty of Michigan like I do. As a kid, my parents took my brother and I to hike the Sleeping Bear Dunes near Traverse City. As a child, I felt like I was trekking through the desert. My dad hiked the arduous dunes with us down to Lake Michigan which was beautiful. Can anyone who has not seen the Great Lakes understand how majestic they are? I told Jove that I did the same hike when I was young and he said that he would bring his kids there one day.

We visited one of my oldest friend's parents who have watched me grow up and change since I was a teenager and now they get to see my children grow and change.

I feel loved: by my parents, my brother, my grandparents and my chosen extended family

berries

He has brought them all up on wild berries, they say,
Like birds. They store a great many away.
They eat them the year round, and those they don't eat
They sell in the store and buy shoes for their feet.”
Who cares what they say? It's a nice way to live,
Just taking what Nature is willing to give...

From Blueberries by Robert Frost

Jove and Miranda don their berry picking outfits. Jove wears long pants because he knows the vines have spines and Miranda wears her strawberry dress because fashion is important, even on woodland adventures. We found a bunch of wineberry bushes on a trail in a nearby park last year and when I ran past ripe ones a couple of weeks ago I knew we were ready to go on our berry-picking adventure. Jove is the worker bee and doesn't eat any and Miranda eats all of them and says, "one for me, one for the basket," but in the end she has none.
I tried wineberry smoothies with disastrous results and wineberry syrup on pancakes with fresh wineberries with much happier eaters. Miranda ate the rest of them as snacks.

This past week we were invited to the family lake house of one of Jove's classmates in Massachussets. The clear, deep lake was surrounded by pines and there were blueberry bushes in front of the house right on the water. While Jove and his buddy made the biggest paper airplane ever, Miranda rode an inflatable Orca while I fed her fresh wild blueberries. Jove's buddy's mom made a fresh blueberry pie with fresh whipped cream.