light, wood, stone and trees

Our new house has some pink carpeting, peach walls, piles of boxes and a lot that needs to be done. But, if you look around the mess and beyond the pink you see what endears this house to me.








We bought our first piece of new, high quality furniture. Everything we have owned up until has been handed down or bought on the cheap. Much of our handed down furniture is beautiful and will stay with us, but we are excited to furnish this new space with things we love. So far we have acquired a new dining room table which will fit more people and has a bench on one side which Jove has already said solves his squirming in a chair issue. He is a free boy now.



And there is the setting: the trees and the lake. This morning I saw a red-tailed hawk sitting on a branch above the mini-van. There are so many windows that the outside feels as if it was inside. Here are some photos of our place right after one of our many snowstorms this winter.

home

We have lived in our new house for a little over a week and I still walk in every afternoon and can't believe it belongs to us.

We still have a lot of unpacking to do, furniture to buy and rooms to redo, but we are enjoying being here every day. I took the kids to get our new library card and books (priority number one) even though I still don't have a garbage permit. The house is near enough to civilization but feels like we are on a retreat (on a lake!). The lake is frozen but I dream of warmer temps and swimming and boating. We saw deer cross the lake and we're wondering if the ice will ever be thick enough to let us ice skate.

The house on the inside is all wood beamed ceilings and windows. There are so many windows that you don't have to use lights during the daytime. The kitchen is big enough that the kids can join me while I cook and I don't bump into them. We have lots of space, enough that we were able to ask my brother to come live with us. And Jupiter's mom will have her own room for her weekly visits.

There are a lot of staircases (one spiral) and two balconies. On one balcony the previous owners left a piano and small organ, so the kids have music time up there. Jove has requested piano lessons which are in the works.

I love this house and know that we will live here for many years to come. I also love that all the work of selling the other house and buying this one is done. What a relief! Just teaching and taking care of the family seems very manageable right now.

The house is perfect for summer guests. We can't wait to have parties and house guests in a few months.

Jupiter is moving down his home improvement to do list; a list which grows everyday.

So happy we found this house!

gratitude

As we celebrate this new year, I feel incredibly grateful for the love of my family and all of our blessings. This year has been momentous and very difficult at times. The plan was to get our house ready to sell and move, which meant that a lot of our year was spent cleaning up, working what felt like three jobs and doing paperwork. It should all be over very soon and we are so happy about the new community and home we are moving into.
The hardest moments this year were the times that both of our children had to be in the hospital, Miranda for surgery and Jove after a seizure at school. It felt as if time stopped and my heart was floating outside my body until we knew they were okay. These glimpses into the life of having a sick child have humbled me. On the ride home from taking Jove for follow up tests, I listened to an NPR story of a mother in Florida that had a child in a vegetative state that was going to lose benefits for her child because of health care policy changes. I felt overwhelmed with sympathy for her and realized that along with the great joy our children bring us, being a parent makes us emotionally raw and vulnerable in a way that nothing else does. I am no longer carefree. I am responsible for other people. Little ones...

I really did not intend this post to be a tearjerker (for me).

In the midst of the craziness of packing up our house, a few things have grounded us as a family. Good stories, making art and dancing have kept us smiling and sane as we work. I love reading classic children's literature to Jove: seeing him fall in love with a great story and myself reading stories for the first time that have shaped our culture. We just finished the "Wizard of Oz" a week ago and watched the movie and then we read the original Nutcracker by E.T.A. Hoffman and we saw a local ballet production.
I have actually been surprised at the level of normalcy our life has retained during the whole packing progress. Miranda and Jove are my two little gurus who constantly bring me back to the present moment and remind me that the only thing that really matters is love, everything else can wait.

From our family to yours, wishing you all a joyous and love-filled 2011.

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