Archive for the 'Family Adventures' Category
August 26, 2010 @ 7:11 pm | Filed under: Cross-Country Trip 2010,Family Adventures
21 days, 16 states, nearly 5800 miles by minivan. We left home on August 4th, the six kids and I, and got back this afternoon. It’ll probably take me another three weeks to tell all the stories. I started posting about the trip while we were still on the road but didn’t want to say we were away from home until we weren’t anymore.
We got to spend time with beloved family on both sides, Scott’s and mine, and had delightful visits with friends all over the country. This was an August we’ll not soon forget.
Tomorrow we’ll tackle the mountain of laundry, but tonight I’m still thinking of the mountains west of Tucson this morning, as we moved out from under a heavy blue storm into the bright desert light.
(Grainy cellphone photo.)
Tonight we are happy to be safely home, reunited with Scott (who flew out to Virginia to join us for a week of our trip, but returned home ten days ago). Kids are bathed and still mostly on Central Time, so bedtime is nigh. Scott says we have three episodes of Mad Men to catch up on. There’s dulce de leche ice cream in the freezer. I loved our grand adventure, but I am happy, happy, happy to be home.
August 21, 2010 @ 7:12 pm | Filed under: Cross-Country Trip 2010,Family Adventures,Photos
Arizona meteor crater. Thursday, August 5th.
August 20, 2010 @ 9:13 pm | Filed under: Cross-Country Trip 2010,Family Adventures
Wednesday, August 4th: ready to roll.
Facebook log:
8/4/10.
Just discovered Rilla has filled her travel backpack with milkweed fluff. “So I can frow it in the air when we get there and chase it.”
Oh he’s cruel! I’m loading the car. He puts “Every Time You Go Away (You Take a Piece of Me With You)” on iTunes. ::::sob::::
Flagstaff AZ smells like pine and stars.
OK, so one teeny tiny little hiccup…I have lost my voice. Don’t know why. Don’t feel sick. Dry air? Faded gradually all day. I didn’t talk much. Luckily we know a lot of sign language but it’s hard to sign while you’re driving.
Today: chaparral to sand dunes to saguaro desert to pine forest. 17 audio chapters of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Older girls assigning one another shifts for answering the little ones’ “Are we there yet?” since I couldn’t do it myself. Strawberry lemonade. Incredible mountain view south of Flagstaff. Wired baby.
August 12, 2010 @ 4:16 am | Filed under: Family Adventures,Little House
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s home at Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield, Missouri. A dream come true for me. We had the most magical time.
I have loads to catch up on and no time to do it now, but I had pretty much the same reaction my good friend Karen Edmisten did just a few days earlier: a lump in my throat and a big ole grin on my face. Pa’s fiddle! Laura’s desk where she wrote all her books! Almanzo’s pink dishes! That big old cookstove he bought her! And oh and oh and oh!
The folks in the bookstore and museum were wonderfully kind to us, and we so enjoyed meeting them. I have much more to tell. Another time. For now, just a few pictures. And another big ole goofy grin.
Chasing butterflies in Laura’s yard. Which totally gives me goosebumps to write!
June 16, 2010 @ 9:05 am | Filed under: Books,Family,Family Adventures
So I’ll remember, and since you asked…
Various interests swirling here:
The orthodontist’s office is holding a contest. The person who comes up with the best name for the betta fish on the counter wins the fish. Rose’s entry: Kalliope. (Get it? A Greek name? Betta sounds like beta, a Greek letter?) She has high hopes of winning. This has spawned (ba dum bum) discussions on odds/probability, subjective vs objective criteria, and breeds of fish. The latter necessitated a library trip yesterday, and this morning I have been regaled with tidbits about various breeds of freshwater aquarium fish.
The orthodontist and his assistant were greatly intrigued by Rose’s account of the middle-grade graphic novel, Smile, Raina Telgemaier’s award-winning account of her personal orthodontic ordeal in junior high. This came up when Dr. G mentioned bonding as the final step in Rose’s treatment plan (two years from now), and Rose volunteered that she had learned all about that in “this really great book I read.” She continued to explain that she had been “terrified about getting braces, but after I read Smile I was reassured.” Dr. G got quite excited and had his assistant write down all the information about the book.
We’ll be spending most of July at Dr. G’s office: two of the girls are getting braces.
So: fish, orthodontia, what else?
Jane is absorbed with practicing for piano guild and Shakespeare Club. (Reminds me: we need to create a human thumb out of Sculpey.) Recent reading has included Dorothy Sayers mysteries; Musashi (a manga series); L. M. Montgomery short stories; a collection of Best American Short Stories; Betsy and the Great World (again); various Caroline Cooney novels; Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Othello, and a bit of Henry IV, with corresponding sections in Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (which we are grateful to Mental Multivitamin for bringing to our attention). Oh, also the book she got for her birthday: A User’s Guide to the Universe.
Jane and I are going to work through Memoria Press’s Classical Rhetoric course together. Readings from: Aristotle’s Rhetoric; Adler’s How to Read a Book; Cochran’s Traditional Logic; and Figures of Speech. We’re going to start in a leisurely way this summer. Both of us are excited. Looks like some excellent discussion fodder.
Scott and Jane have been doing a kind of informal Film Club in the evenings. Recent viewings include: Men in Black, In the Line of Fire, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, A Few Good Men, The Natural, The Sixth Sense.
Bean and Rose spend a lot of time scootering in circles on the back patio, narrating adventures in a long-running fantasy story they play. Then Rose will disappear to the back room to write up the latest chapter on the computer. The subject matter shifts every week or so: sometimes a Warriors-inspired cat saga; lately the dramatic doings of a pair of princesses, one an ancient Egyptian and one Japanese. A set of Dover costume coloring books have provided necessary reference material. Beanie very earnestly desires to learn Japanese. Our library used to have a partnership with Rosetta Stone, but no longer, alas. I’m sure there must be some good resources online, but I haven’t done the homework yet.
Current favorite Wii game: Spectrobes (the older girls); Mario Kart (Wonderboy and Rilla).
I haven’t spent as much time in the back yard as I usually do this time of year. I think it’s because I’m sad about the absence of Monarchs. Everything else is lovely out there, though. A zillion bees (including honeybee and native species). Mourning cloaks, goldfinches, hummingbirds. A profusion of bloom. Jasmine breezes. Tomatoes in abundance. A great many weeds needing my attention.
Wonderboy has a new watch which affords him great delight. If you need to know the exact minute everything happens, every day, every minute, he’s your man.
Rilla lost her pink parkly shoes, we thought. This was high tragedy. Yesterday, oh the joy!, a friend kindly dropped them off—they had been left in her yard at last week’s Shakespeare/choir practice. Of course they had!
This missive just in from Rose:
Mommy, can you send me information and pictures about the Rosy Red Minnow?
Thanks, and love.
Gotta run.
April 18, 2010 @ 7:16 am | Filed under: Family Adventures,Nature Study,Photos
Last Monday we drove ninety miles east to the Desert View Tower. I’d been meaning to take the kids there for months. Amazing view and irresistible climbing-rocks, that’s what everyone says about the place.
We’ll have to take their word for it.
Jane and I thought the sign alone—”blight or famine”?—made the trip worthwhile, but some members of the back seat brigade opined otherwise.
We all loved seeing the wind farm, though.
A ballet of giants: breathtaking.
The desert was spread with a threadbare quilt of tiny yellow flowers. Any of you know what these are called?
And as long as I’m asking for IDs, how about this skipper I spotted in the backyard? Anyone? Bueller?
Not a great picture, so I don’t know if you can see the markings well enough to identify it. Can you see what a curious at-rest position its wings have? The top wings are perpendicular to the bottom wings. I’ve never seen that before.
Jane and I had had hopes of finding new-to-us butterflies in the desert, but sometimes you have to rely on your own backyard.
Photos by Jane, except the butterfly.
February 22, 2010 @ 8:35 am | Filed under: Betsy-Tacy,Family Adventures
“…What are you looking for?”
“Presents. Five of them.” She explained, talking very fast, that no Ray ever came home from a visit without bringing presents. “It’s an old family custom,” she said.
“Hallelujah!” he exclaimed, shutting the book. “That’ll be fun, picking out five presents. I hope you have a brother. There’s a corking jack-knife here.”
—from Heaven to Betsy by Maud Hart Lovelace
Our “Betsy” came home from her trip yesterday with presents for everyone, in the grand Ray tradition. We tried to keep up our end of the tradition with a massive housecleaning, but I’m afraid I did not go so far as to scour the metaphorical coal scuttle. Jane’s equivalent of Willard’s Emporium was L.A.’s Little Tokyo: sky-blue chopsticks for Rose, stuffed Mario Kart mushrooms for Bean and the boys, and a pink piggy bank for Rilla. For her daddy, a Totoro keychain and a pack of Black Jack gum. And a bag of dark chocolates for me! That’s my girl.
Plus homemade cookies all around. Customized chocolate-chip cookies—extra dark chocolate in mine. I may have to send all my kids up to Kristen for cookery lessons. I hear Jane got a tutorial in baked tomato sauce. I look forward to sampling her homework.
And yes, I am giggling over equating L.A. with sleepy, one-horse Butternut Center. Then again, San Diego ain’t Deep Valley!
(Just ask Larry Humphreys.)
February 19, 2010 @ 8:43 pm | Filed under: 21st Century Motherhood,Family Adventures
Yesterday the five younger kids and I stood on an Amtrak platform in downtown San Diego, waving wild goodbyes as Jane’s train pulled away, headed for L.A. Big moment for us: the first venturing-forth-alone of one of my chicks. Jane is spending a few days with my friend Kristen and my soon-to-be-goddaughter, who is seriously the most beautiful baby you ever saw. (And I don’t say this lightly. I’ve had some mighty pretty babies myself.)
I thought I would be more freaked out about putting Jane on a train alone, going to Los Angeles for pity’s sake, but to my surprise I was more excited and happy for her than anything else. Maybe it’s all the time I’ve been spending in the high-school Betsy-Tacy books lately: I feel positively Mrs. Ray-ish about this trip: just tickled pink that Jane gets to have such a fun adventure. (Though of course we are missing her like crazy.)
Betsy was just Jane’s age, fourteen, when she went off to Butternut Center for a week on the farm with friends of her father’s. I was exactly Jane’s age when my parents sent me to Germany for seven weeks with a few other kids from school, to stay with some families who had known my English teacher when her husband was stationed in Kaiserslautern. Germany! With no cell phones, no internet! Mom and Dad, now that I know what it’s like, you amaze me.
It was an incredibly fun trip and I am so glad they let me go.
Jane seems to be having an incredibly fun trip, and I am so glad we let her go. 
But I had to laugh at myself just now, when I checked her Facebook page for about the tenth time today and saw no new update. Yes, I am actually complaining that my teenager doesn’t spend enough time on Facebook.
December 21, 2009 @ 7:24 am | Filed under: Advent & Christmas,California landmarks,Family Adventures,Holidays,Photos
One of the many treasures of Balboa Park is the Spreckels Pipe Organ—the world’s largest outdoor musical instrument. San Diego employs a civic organist and offers free organ concerts on many Sunday afternoons throughout the year. I’ve been wanting to attend one ever since we moved here, and yesterday we happened to think of it just in time to catch the Christmas concert and community sing-along. The timing was perfect; my mother was visiting for the weekend. (She comes out for my birthday every year, which is the best possible present.)
We wore our new Christmas hats that my sister Merry made for us.
It was really too warm for them, but we were full of Christmas spirit.
As were the many doggies who attended the concert along with enthusiastic carol-singers.
It was all very merry and bright.
Possibly a little too bright.
Our all potential Christmas card photos turned out to be outtakes. That’s okay because I’ve already abandoned hope on sending out Christmas cards this year anyway.
The best part was when the organist invited audience members to join her onstage for the carol-singing. We didn’t know we’d get to be part of the concert! Beanie, Jane, and I were eager to sing. The rest of the gang watched from the back of the amphitheater.
We thought of our snowed-under East Coast friends when we sang White Christmas.
(Out here it’s a white T-shirt Christmas.)
The best part was the final song—an enthusiastic and somewhat ad-libbed rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus. It is still ringing in my ears.
Methinks we have ourselves a new holiday tradition.
Thanks for the hats, sis!
November 24, 2009 @ 9:48 pm | Filed under: Family Adventures
There are days when your own life seems surreal to you.
I mentioned the G/I doctor has ordered a bunch of tests for young Wonderboy. For some of the tests, we needed to deliver a stool sample to the Children’s Hospital—between the hours of 9 and 11:30—within one hour of, er, the sample’s production, if you know what I mean. The first hour of the day was filled with suspense. Would he or wouldn’t he? When would he?
Suddenly, at 8:15, there it was. Cue instant frenzy of parental activity, gathering lab slips, notating the time on the side of sample containers, barking out prepare-to-travel instructions to various children. It was downright cinematic, like the scene when the transport team flies into motion to get the liver or the heart to the desperate patient on the other side of the country. You could almost hear Ride of the Valkyries playing on the soundtrack.
I’d been given three separate vials whose tops unscrewed to reveal tiny, pointed spoons with which to scoop the precious commodity. Gross. Seriously gross. Scott put his own life at risk by saying, as he watched me maneuver a loaded (so to speak) spoon into the vial’s narrow opening, “It takes a very steady hand…”
What kind of crazy man messes with a woman armed with poo?
With astonishing rapidity I found myself in the minivan, large brown bag of samples stowed in the passenger seat (ew), boy and baby buckled in behind me. Before backing out of the driveway, I invested thirty valuable seconds in tucking my Bluetooth into my ear and dialing Alice‘s number because, you know, we share everything.
“Houston,” I crowed, “we have liftoff!”
Alice happened to be at a Dunkin Donuts drivethrough window and I’m sure she was just really super happy to hear all about my adventures in poop-collecting. Sorry about that, sweetie. I hope you hadn’t ordered the chocolate cream-filled.
I could go on with this, but frankly the rest of the day was a bit anticlimactic. We made it to the lab with twenty minutes to spare, happily relinquished the brown bag to the care of gentle lab techs, waited in a line that materialized out of thin air at the stroke of nine for my poor boy’s turn in the bloodletting room (more tests), and returned to our happy home in plenty of time for an early lunch.
Not that I felt much like eating.
Later in the day, believe it or not, there was yet another doctor appointment (at the ped’s office this time, not the hospital), and then I braved the waiting-until-almost-the-last-minute crowd at the grocery store to buy cream for our Thanksgiving dessert (Scott’s famous grasshopper pie) and thirty or forty other small items I suddenly remembered I needed for turkey day. (On which, as it happens, we eat ham.)
Then I cooked and cooked and cleaned and cleaned (tomorrow is Shakespeare Club), and—dare I say it?—I’m pooped.
