Schooling for the Stays: A Q&A

A Q&A About the Schooling Right Now

Well, as most of you know, we’ve been homeschooling for the past six years. As it comes time that so many of my homeschooling and public school friends back in the States are starting up their school routines, it seemed like I should probably eventually just mention what we’re up to. And... drum roll, please... the three older kids are going to formal school this year!

WHAT?!? you ask. Okay, maybe that’s just me. I had to do a lot of thinking and praying and just taking deep breaths about this. It’s... different. And now for a Q&A.

Where?

A private Steiner/Waldorf school. The educational philosophy meshes with mine surprisingly well, and they do all sorts of awesome things.

Why?

Look, there are a lot of mixed up feelings about this, but I’ll try to sort some of them out. First, the facts: I had happily been planning on continuing to homeschool in Australia and had already connected a little with the homeschool community here. Then I kept on seeing Facebook stuff about the Steiner school here, and it looked honestly amazing. When we came here, there was an open house at Steiner about two weeks later, so we went to check it out.

It’s beautiful. The grounds are lovely and relaxing, the playgrounds are awesome, there’s sticks and dirt and rocks, there’s a garden and just... Well, we went and looked and I sort of teared up because I could tell it would be great, and I didn’t want to do it. The kids were excited about the possibility of another new adventure, of course, and they loved the grounds and met the teachers as well. So, to make a long story short, we signed up! They’ve been in school for term 3 for about a month now.

What’s cool about Steiner?

It’s very hippie. They have gardening, sewing, crocheting/knitting, music (the girls are doing violin, and there’s also recorder and lots of singing), morning tea (just a small snacktime in midmorning), time outside, bushwalks, festivals, etc. They do their lessons by writing their notes in big blank books and illustrating them, and the books are rather lovely in the end. The dress code doesn’t allow for branded clothing or images from movies and TV, etc. They have to wear wide-brimmed hats outside (the girls have worn them elsewhere, and many people recognize them as Steiner kids). Lunches have to be healthy, no packages and processed stuff (okay, this is honestly a pro—healthy!—and a con—eek! no bags of crisps or granola bars). It’s a very slow, rhythm-focused sort of school. Pretty much in philosophy it’s a lot of what I love about homeschooling, but I’m not doing any of it. The kindy area (and the teacher!) is so happy and soothing it makes me feel a little teary sometimes. :)

How are the kids liking it?

The kids are doing really well there so far. They love it and are having a new, very different experience. The 11yo went on a five-day class camp to Uluru and King’s Canyon, with camel and bike riding and hiking and all sorts of fun. She is also learning that the entire school day, every weekday, is tiring. She is handling it very well, though, and adjusting nicely. She got cast as Julius Caesar for their class play, and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing her get stabbed by all her classmates (as is she!).

The 8yo’s camp is coming up (a shorter camp), and she’s excited too, though a little nervous. She is my little creative dreamer, and I was worried that this transition would be hard on her. But her teacher is a lovely woman who understands that all kids have different strengths, and she’s made the 8yo feel at home and help her adjust. It’s lovely to see.

The 5yo has 3.5 days per week, and his teacher (as I already mentioned) is so fantastic. She reminds me a lot of a teacher he had at our homeschool co-op (Mary Kate, we love you!). So chill, so loving and right there with the kids, so focused in on them. Totally unflappable and really kind and just wanting to be supportive of the kids. The whole kindy area is enclosed with a fence to keep it protected and so no one can accidentally wander off, etc. There’s a huge play area with plants and buildings that you can climb in and a huge sandpit and stuff to garden and hammocks and... etc. It’s really lovely. The kids all bring a piece of fruit in the morning that gets cut up for snacks they can graze on when they’re hungry. They each have their own teacup for water. They have weekly breadmaking and a weekly vegetable soup (where the kids all bring vegetables and they make the soup). A weekly bushwalk. Lots of stories and playtime and some sewing. He is really enjoying it and seems happy to be going, and he gives me a giant hug when I come to pick him up.

This leaves me and the 3yo alone most days, which I confess is kinda hard. We’ve done errands a number of times, and we’ve done tons of baking together—more than I normally do. So there are advantages (the baking, the focused attention), but it’s also harder because I’m so used to having other kids helping to entertain him. It has been years and years since I’ve tried to do this with just one kid! It is not my favorite.

And how are you?

Well, there are lots of good things about this, but I’d be lying if I said I was thrilled about all of it. A lot of my negative feelings on the subject are wrapped in insecurities—did I do well enough with homeschooling? am I doing the right thing now? are others going to perceive this as giving up? or will they assume I have suddenly realized that homeschooling was a mistake? Blah blah blah, I could go on for hours about this. But the point is that there are lots of things I worry about, some stupid, some legit. The feelings, they are legion.

Also, I really don’t like being on the daily school schedule (though even that has its benefits—consistency in bedtime and getting up, which is a thing I’ve always struggled with). And having to prepare lunches every. single. day. is pretty much the worst thing ever (I’m only mostly kidding). And did I mention how much I dislike being on someone else’s schedule. Look, I know that’s normal for a lot of the working population of the world. But still, yuck. I almost blew a gasket the other day when I had to call my kid in sick. I am realizing more and more that I have a streak of rebellion, and I think it’s getting wider.

Did I do well enough at homeschooling?

Yes.

Am I doing the right thing now?

Yes.

Are others going to perceive this as giving up?

Maybe. But are they right? No.

Have I suddenly realized that homeschooling was a mistake?

This is possibly one of the things I hate most about the change—the idea that my friends who always thought I was crazy to do it will suddenly believe they were right. I mean, I realize this is stupid to be so worried over what people think, but there it is.

The fact is that NO, homeschooling was not a mistake. It was the right decision until now, just as Steiner is the right decision for the moment. Truthfully, my suspicion is that once this adventure is over, homeschooling will be the right decision again. (Yes, even in high school.) I think that’s the place they’ll do the best in the long run, both for themselves and for others.

Truthfully, I think that doing school for a while like this is going to give them a new appreciation for homeschooling. They knew intellectually, but not yet viscerally, about how much free time they really have always had to pursue their own interests. How little time they had to spend on formal “school” in order to finish all the work that was needed for their grade levels—or more. Now they’re learning it by experience. Both girls have mentioned that it’s so much harder to do all the things they want to do now. So we focus in on what different experiences and learning they’re getting right now—new things they hadn’t done before.

Truthfully, I may be wrong about what the future holds. I was wrong about homeschooling here, for now, so I could be wrong again. Maybe we’ll do... *tries to say the words, gasps* ... public school? (Look, I’m not trying to spit on all my friends who public school. I’m just saying it realllllly isn’t for me, and I’d rather not do it for my kids.) Maybe more private school. Maybe it will be a different style of school altogether. But I’m crossing my fingers and praying for homeschool again.

What will you do next?

Um, oops. I already answered that question above.

Time for another serious moment?

Yes.

I’m still having a lot of ups and downs about school, honestly. I see all the fun new opportunities that they have, and I’m happy about it. I see all the things that they’re missing out on, and I’m sad about it. I get asked what school my kids are in, and it just about kills me that I can just name a school instead of saying, “Oh, we homeschool.” I had no idea how much of my identity had been tied to homeschooling until I voluntarily relinquished it. It has, honestly, left a gaping hole. I’m still figuring out how to fill that and how to leave room for change in the future. The old adage about “the one constant is change,” blah blah blah... I’ve never been great with change, so I’m stretching those muscles and trying some new things. It’s hard, and I miss who I was. But I’ve always really liked Elastigirl, so maybe this is my chance to learn to be more stretchy.

But honestly, don’t you just love having everyone gone from home?

Ummm, the 3yo is still home. So it doesn’t really count. (And no, not really.)

Summary statement?

Change and flexibility and growth: good. Having to pack daily lunches: bad. Outsourcing lunch packing to children: good. Never getting to pack crisps or juice boxes: bad and good. Learning to make healthy muffins and yogurt and whole wheat bread: good.

Net effect of learning to change and do something new: grudgingly good.

Travel Recap, part 2

Here I am, already way behind on sharing what we've been up to so far! But here's the rest of the travel recap at least.

The next leg was the hard one. We were already totally exhausted, and our flight didn’t depart until 11 p.m., with a 15-hour flight time. Fortunately, though we were last-minute adds to the flight (since we were a full day behind our original itinerary at this point), a very wonderful lady on the flight traded places with us so that we could have two full rows instead of a row, a pair, and a single. People like this make the world go ‘round.

Good thing I didn't need to get up too many times, because this was my life for most of the flight.

Here’s how the flight went: Koa fell asleep in the stroller before we even boarded the plane. (Our stroller! Another blessing! We were going to send it in the car but discovered that wasn’t allowed—so we had it for all these adventures, which was so necessary when Koa started getting sick and tired). Ammon fell asleep in Brice’s arms. Coriel and Addra were dead on their feet. So I sat between Koa and Coriel, and Brice sat with Ammon and Addra. Coriel flopped all around for many hours, sometimes into my lap, sometimes on my shoulder—it was funny and a little sad watching her try to get comfy, but at least she was getting some sleep!). Koa too flopped around a bit. Predictably, he threw up again. I had these fancy, wonderful Medline barf bags that Dawn had given me (bless you!), and... I won’t go into more details here, but let’s say they were wonderful but not quite perfect when you can’t get the kid to hold still. Anyway, we got that taken care of. Ammon slept a bunch, Addra too I think (I was too full of the other kids to notice). Brice and I slept very little.

But we all watched a lot of movies! Eventually it was starting to feel like morning to us, so we got movies galore. (Okay, I think it was only 3-ish, but it felt like more.)

I watched Christopher Robin with Koa. At least until we both fell asleep during it, then I kept waking up and feeling like I hadn’t really missed anything. It was EXACTLY as I would have predicted from the first three minutes or so. So yes it was sweet, but it didn’t do much for me.

Our caravan at the Sydney Airport. The luggage trolley behind Coriel was mine.
(Also, I dumped this pic here because my internet decided to make it annoyingly
difficult to move photos. So this is where I gave up.)

Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse! I watched this one alone. I realize I’m really late to this party, but I really enjoyed it. I had heard good things about it, so I went into it hopeful but uncertain. Well, it was just so much fun to watch. Very different in terms of style, made fun of itself and the genre just a bit, pretty good storyline. Totally worth the watch, in my opinion. Seriously. I really enjoyed it.

I watched How to Train Your Dragons 3 with Coriel. My kids have loved the others, as well as the TV series, so she was very excited to see this. I thought it was fine, a fitting end. But I wasn’t super invested in the franchise, so it didn’t thrill me to pieces. Still, it was fun to watch with the kiddo.

And then, finally! We got off the plane at the end of a very long flight. Oh, it was so good to finally be on land again, not feeling like a sardine. Customs wasn’t terrible, and it was a delight to find that luggage trolleys didn’t require payment for use. Which was great, because we had three luggage trolleys. Brice and I each pushed one (with Ammon in the basket on Brice’s trolley), Coriel pushed one, and Addra pushed Koa in the stroller. We were quite the caravan!

Brice had (brilliantly) booked us at the airport hotel. And when I say “airport hotel,” I mean that it was literally across the street from the airport exit. We even got to keep our luggage trolleys with us. Anyway, we checked in, got our luggage to our room (using the elevator three separate times because we couldn’t fit much on it), crammed in the luggage (seriously, we could barely move around it in the hotel room, but at least we didn’t have to take it off the trolleys again!), and got ready to explore Sydney for the day.

Why didn’t we just go straight from Sydney to Alice? Because there is exactly one flight from Sydney to Alice per day. We couldn’t have made it through customs with all of our luggage, then gotten from the international terminal to the domestic terminal and gotten re-checked in, etc., all in the 1.5-ish hours that we would have had. So a lot of people take the one-day layover in Sydney. I’ll do a different post about our day in Sydney, with pics. Spoilers: It involved a zoo, an aquarium, some pretty tasty food, and some throwing up!

We went to bed soooo early and slept a little too late. Well, we didn’t think it was too late. But it turns out we didn’t account for how long it would take to...

* Get all our luggage downstairs

* Wait for the shuttle bus between the international terminal and the domestic one

* Ride on the shuttle

* Get off the shuttle and find a way to haul all our luggage (no longer on trolleys, alas!) into the airport

* Skip breakfast

* Check in

* Discover that the government travel system hadn’t correctly dealt with all our extra luggage, so we had to figure out exactly how much to pay

* Wait while the very helpful, very stressed-out desk agent had to print and reprint our luggage tags because the printer kept jamming and shutting down

* Run Run RUN! through the airport as they were calling our names for final boarding

So that was exciting. But we did indeed make it to the plane. We were the last ones on, and they were clearly waiting for us, but hey, at least we made it.

This leg of the trip was easy peasy, minus the fact that by this point I was feeling sick to my stomach. Spoiler: There is no throwing up in this section of the story! But I did hold a barf bag in my lap the whole time, in between a little bit of dozing. Actually, now that I think about it, I have no idea whether this leg of the trip was easy. I was too busy either napping off the stomach suffering or deciding if I needed to run to the bathroom or just use the little portable bag. But again, no throwing up in the end, and by the time we landed, I was feeling much better.

We got off the airplane straight onto the tarmac, which was pretty exciting for the kids (oh, who am I kidding? I enjoyed it too). Then we were greeted by three of Brice’s co-workers inside the airport. They were undoubtedly showered (unlike us), awake and perky (unlike us), and full of brain power (unlike us). They were also really nice and helpful, and they picked up our luggage easy peasy and helped us get loaded into a shuttle van.

Then they drove us to our new home!!!! And finally our travels were over and our Alice Springs adventures were beginning. And that will be a new post too.

A Not-So-Brief Travel Recap, part 1

The first part (because the whole thing was getting very long indeed)

Well, our travel plans didn’t go especially smoothly in the beginning, but there were lots of good things along the way too, and it was clear that we were blessed in lots of little ways.

As you may know, we took Addra to the ER in West Virginia (where we were staying with my sister) early on Sunday, the 26th. She was mildly dehydrated from a 2.5-day bout of a wretched stomach bug. She was also quite lethargic, semi-incoherent, and making me, her mother, really worried. After an anti-nausea med prescription and an IV drip, she was perkier than she’d been for two days. We’d planned to leave already for Maryland again to stay at our hotel, but we left a day-ish late but with her in slightly better shape. (Sadly, this meant we missed our branch’s farewell potluck, and we were sad not to get to say goodbye to lots of people, but... nothing else we could do.)

Monday was crazy with last-minute stuff to do. So much stuff, including saying goodbye to a couple of our friends, the Meyers and the Muellers, who have been with us through soooo much. The Muellers were the first family to invite us for dinner when we moved to Maryland, and they’ve been good friends ever since. Elissa Meyer and I (along with another friend, Meghan) single-handedly created and sustained our beautiful book club, from which all of my best Maryland friends have come. And she is the person who gave me the courage to really jump into homeschooling.

And even though we got to see friends (and give some air hugs), still Addra was a pretty floppy Addra some of the time, but she was now at least keeping food in her system, so things were getting better.

Monday night Brice had to do ALL THE THINGS: Get our last few suitcases and boxes from our house so it was totally empty. Clean out the car like mad so that he could drop it off to the car transportation folks Tuesday morning. Drive down our 3/4-full gas tank to 1/4 tank for the car transportation folks. Etc. He was up until about 3 or 4 am, and then he had to wake up again around 6:30 to get the car to its appointment.

Oh, and somewhere along the way here (Sunday night I think?), Koa threw up. Just once, and then he was perky. Until Monday night, just once again.

On Tuesday I discovered that I needed to fill out customs forms for all eight of the packages I was mailing to us. Packages that I’d pretty much dumped a bunch of random stuff into. Plus, those forms take forever to fill out. Happily, my amazing friend Elissa was willing to help me out (seriously, so many good friend points to Elissa for this!).

As a side note to this story: I was apparently so rushed and stressed out about this part of the day that I messed up the zip code on five of the eight packages. They went to Guam. Sigh. But they are slowly being re-routed to us, so hooray for those customs forms in the end, since they’re the only thing on the packages that indicated we were in Alice Springs, not Guam!

Finally we packed up our suitcases (twelve! plus two car seats, a booster, three carry-ons, and backpacks for everyone) and took the hotel shuttle to the airport around 3:30 pm for our flight at 6:40. We used an airport curbside helper dude to get all our suitcases inside, and that man was slick! Sooo fast, so on top of everything. He helped us tag all our luggage, check it, everything. It was amazing. I wanted to hug him. I hope we tipped him enough.

We eventually boarded our plane and then sat there for a while. They told us there was a maintenance issue they were trying to figure out. Long story short: The flight got canceled. Brice waited in line for a veeeerrrry long time to rebook for the next morning (the rest of us just sat and played, etc, while we waited for about five hours). Here’s where several really lovely blessings come in:

- We were able to book the flight out of BWI again, instead of Dulles (which would have been a long drive, early in the morning, after already being sleep deprived).

- Because we wanted to check out of our hotel late, we had just booked an extra night there. So when the airline ran out of rooms they could easily give to people for the night, we were still fine because we had a place still reserved to us!

- We chose a hotel that had an airport shuttle. Originally we were just going to get a ride on Tuesday afternoon from our friend April, who has a HUGE van (and who also, I should mention, did a great job of cleaning our house for us). But then we figured we’d use a shuttle instead. This was a huge blessing because when we needed to leave the airport at 1 am with our 12+ suitcases, we just called the shuttle back over. No worries about waking people or panicking over finding a taxi or anything. And then same thing at 6:30 the next morning. Soooo nice.

- There was a couple in line next to Brice who were very friendly with the kids and played with them and entertained them from time to time. We were all essentially the last folks in line, so it didn’t matter if we were all over the place. It was lovely.

- My sisters Dawn and K-onna had packed all the kids little bags of activities and stuff for the plane. We used them a lot while we were waiting in the airport. It averted many crises.

So while it was all very ugh, there were also so many blessings to offset it all. Anyway, we went back to the hotel, where Koa once again threw up once and then slept. The other kids slept like rocks. Brice and I slept like rocks. There were a lot of rocks until far-too-early in the morning, when we headed back to the airport and finally had our mostly painless flight to San Francisco.

Here’s another great blessing: Brice’s brother Trace and his family live in the San Francisco area. So instead of being stuck at the SFO airport for ten hours until our late-night flight, we got to play with them for part of the time, going out to a park and the ever-exciting Taco Bell! It was lovely to get one last chance to see them before we headed off to the other side of the world.

And you’ll get part 2... eventually!

P.S. There are more pics, but they’re on Brice’s phone.

Sick Addra

Elissa is the best!

Snuggling and listening to/watching a show with headband earphones.
While we wait for the official flight cancellation.

He did this lacing card all by himself! :)

Windy, cold, fun times with Brice's brother and family.

The Saga of the Washing Machine

The Saga of the Washing Machine

Day 1, Saturday: We arrive in Alice and plan to get some laundry done. This is suddenly bumped up in priority when Koa throws up all over his clothing and socks and our kitchen floor. Brice turns on the faucet to let hot water into our washing machine, and it spray/leaks. So he turns it off. We try the cold water. Nothing. Happily, we also have a laundry room sink, so Brice does a bit of handwashing. Using our mop handle as an agitator. Because barf laundry is gross.

Day 2, Sunday: We take the day off from worrying about laundry.

Day 3, Monday: I call maintenance. They say they’ll send someone on Tuesday.

Day 4, Tuesday: At 5:05 pm, I suddenly realize no one has come. I call, and the office is closed.

Day 5, Wednesday: I call maintenance first thing. The plumber comes a few hours later and fixes the leaky hot water, makes sure the cold is working, and leaves me to start my laundry.

I get two loads of laundry done before I realize something odd: The “warm” load is steaming hot (literally). The “cold” load is steaming hot (still literally). When I turn off the hot faucet to try to force cold, we get no water at all.

Day 6, Thursday: I am now on a first-name basis with Sharon, the maintenance office lady. She’s very nice, by the way, very friendly. I let her know about the “cold” laundry, and she sends out the plumber again. I’m pretty sure they’re thinking, “Stupid Americans can’t turn the faucets the right way.”

The plumber comes. It turns out that, at least in this case, I am not a stupid American. Sure, the cold water hose works, but it still doesn’t come into the washer. The plumber informs me I need the actual machine serviced, not just the plumbing.

Sharon calls to schedule a new machine to be delivered to me on Friday.

Day 7, Friday: The switch-out is incredibly fast. We’re talking less than ten minutes. One machine out, one machine in, done. While the nice service guy is finishing up, Ammon comes to talk to him, informing him that he let a bee in the open door. The man chats with Ammon, pointing out that without bees, we’d have no honey and no flowers. Ammon then tells him that if there was no honey, the bears would start breaking into the human houses to try to get all our stores of honey. This is all very important because Ammon is adorable and distracting.

I start up a load of laundry before he leaves, to make sure it’s working. Hooray! We have cold water! The maintenance guy leaves, and Ammon and I hang out in the living room while the other kids play in the spare room. Ten, maybe twenty minutes pass.

Ammon gets up to walk through the kitchen (which is connected to the laundry room) to join his siblings. There is a strange, sloshing sound.

The whole kitchen and dining room floor is flooded.

I call Sharon. Hysterical laughter.

The maintenance fellow and his partner are back again to help us clean up the mess. (Oh, I’m so glad they came to help clean it up because it would have taken hours with just me and the kids and our towels and wimpy mop.) It turns out that Ammon was so charming with his deep thoughts about bears and honey that the maintenance guy forgot to connect the drainage hose to the sink. He is abjectly apologetic. I can only laugh. These things happen, after all.

Day 7, later. I do several more loads of laundry. Everything works. The dryer is kind of wimpy, but who really cares at this point? We have clean clothing! More than we even have hangers for! We sigh happily.

The End

Happy Mother's Day!

I have the best wife in all the land. She is a great mom (see exhibits C, A, K, and other A). She is beautiful and kind and good and creative. Happy Mother's Day my dear.

Also thank you to my mom for the years of care and concern and tender nurture. You are great. And a superb grandma!

We went to church today. I got to help Jeanna in the nursery, which was great. We only had two kids including Ammon, so pretty easy.

The kids made sweet pictures for Jeanna. The younger ones also sang a nice song for the moms during church.

Luckiest man and most wonderful woman ever

Popsicles for dessert

Fashi

Saturday: work then fun

Today was a day for projects around the house. Watching walls, washing the siding, buying supplies, cleaning. Then Jeanna and I went to see avengers endgame. It was ok. Lots of cameos. Good job good guys, neener neener bad guys. Then home, food for kids, sushi takeout for me and Jeanna, then bed time.

Work was at a different location today. About 2 hour drive to work (leaving at 630) and almost 3 hours coming home (leaving at 1430). Very grateful that's not my normal location!

I got home in time for our before leaving going away potluck party for friends and neighbors. We also have away as much of our extra stuff that won't store or travel well as we could. Thanks for everyone who took things. Grateful the thunderstorms were mostly before and after the party : )

I mostly neglected to get pictures of out guests at the party. Sorry!

Coriel snuggling baby Camron (sister Crites grandson)

Jeanna and Miss Frankie, the homeschool co-op mastermind and lovely person.

Ammon hiding in a shoe cubby

Random red bugs (spider mites) swarming just one tire at work yesterday. Odd!

I love blueberries in plain Cheerios.

Ammon enjoying the clean carpet and mostly empty room the other day

Ear ache for the littlest bug plus carpet cleaning

Yes, Ammon has an ear infection. Last night was rough for him (and therefore some for us). But he finally slept and this morning I took him to the CVS minute clinic. My favorite part was when the nurse practitioner asked Ammon what his pain was on the smiling / crying scale. He said I'm feeling better and then pointed at the crying face. Then the nurse asked him again and he said zero pain. I laughed and told him he was the most unreliable witness. Thank goodness for amoxicillin! We're grateful he'll be able to swim again before our adventure to a water park.

Then we moved some furniture out of the way so we could get the carpets cleaned. We'll probably have them cleaned again once we're out since this company (oxiclean) didn't get some stains out. Which was expected because they were in there good.

Jeanna prepared for co-op tomorrow and got lots of cleaning and organizing done. Plus kid wrangling.

After I got Ammon settled, I went to work. I got to talk to the person I'm replacing in Australia. That was nice. I also put a presentation I've been working on into a new temple and streamlined it a lot. It's mostly done, just waiting on final comments.

Then I came home. Coriel made German pancakes for dinner. Jeanna cooked some sausage to go with it. Then Addra and Jeanna went to activity day girls. Ammon was feeling much better and had lots of energy, so I took him, Koa, and Coriel to Skyzone again. Their main court was broken, so me and the boys spent most of our time on the dodgeball court. Happily, mostly occupied by other little kids, so it was friendly for us to be there.

Then home for second dinner (cereal) and now bedtime.

No pictures today sorry

Moving day, round 2, fight!

Yesterday was or second shipment of stuff. This one goes by air instead of by ocean. Afterwards I took the kids to Skyzone to get out some wiggles. Everyone had lots of fun and got all tired out. Coriel also had an orthodontist appointment in the morning. Things are going well, although we'll have less acres to orthodontist where we're at in Australia.

Sad news, tonight Ammon is sick! Fever and pain : (

In other news today, Jeanna and I both got lots done. Me at work and cleaning out accumulated junk from the branch president's office. I also went for a jog tonight in the lovely weather. Jeanna did appointments including getting 2 booster shots in preparation for going, caring for the kids, paying bills, and cleaning so the carpet cleaners can come tomorrow.

Skyzone jumping chasing and racing

Addra is fantastic at climbing these posts. So fast!

Movers loading stuff into wooden crates

Kids hanging out. Check out the fashion.

Shipment #2, mostly just what you see, but it still adds up quick.

Our neighbors showed me this picture of our house in 1954!

Sunday May 5th 2019

I got called as assistant branch clerk today. That means I'll help update callings, count tithing, and get things organized for a few weeks before we move. Mostly as a temporary thing until the branch president calls a new long term clerk.

Jeanna cooked vegetable soup to use up more of our dehydrated vegetables, pretty good. She also made peanut butter chocolate chip banana muffins. Oh, and some whole wheat bread. What a feast!

Girls drawing magnificently. A witch riding a broom on the left. A shape shifting fox girl in the other two. And a silly Ammon trying to jump in on the picture.

Can you carry boxes bigger than you?

We made silly faces during our mini date tonight. We recorded ourselves blowing raspberries in slow motion. Pretty funny. Then we watched some random videos from the Slow Motion guys. Impressive dedication to their art.

Tomorrow is packing day. Oy!

Today was heavy on packing and sorting, especially for Jeanna. Her brother West also came and visited. He brought us some delicious Indian food. I got to take Ammon with me to Brother Kevin Sites' baptism, which he asked me to perform. What a privilege!

Family picture with West

Sibling time over dinner

Ammon's new creation, rice-topped pizza

The wonderful sister Crites helping Ammon during the baptism

Me with Kevin and part of his family

Time for fun during packing

The boys absolutely love selling pretend ice cream from their shop at the top of the stairs to the attic. You never know what flavor you're going to get. Today Ammon was selling chocolate and or vanilla. Koa was selling cinnamon cream.

Cute present from Addra. One benefit of going through old papers!

Happy Sunday to you tomorrow.

I love spring when you can go on a walk and the weather is lovely.

The girls came on the first part then I jogged with the boys the rest of the block. Oops, turns out I'm more out of shape than I thought

Bye Ray! Gave him a ride to his aunt's house. Here's hoping North Carolina treats him well.

Here's a fun little post office I saw when trying to drive detour around a wreck on the freeway. (Everyone else felt the same, so it wasn't any faster). But I got to see this so maybe good.

Happy birthday little friend! Our lovely neighbors Shannon and Tim as well as the missionaries from our church came over and had dinner with us. It was a good evening.

The last one is Ammon in a new snuggly ice cream blanket. Yum!

We saved a groundhog yesterday. Its head was stuck in a peanut butter jar. It scared Ammon a lot; he fell and scraped his foot on the sidewalk. The groundhog was just standing there calmly. It twitched when I first went to grab the hat but I got a good grip the second time. Then I pulled hard. That lifted the critter off the ground. I yanked and the jar came free. The groundhog flopped on the ground and ran away, seemingly fine. Weird experience!

How Goes the Driving These Days? A Tale of Terror

[insert the usual self-flagellation and apologies about how long it’s been since I posted here... moving on]

Hey, remember how I’m totally driving phobic* and it took me forever to get my driver’s license?** Well, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how far I am from that time. It’s been about ten-ish years since I finally got my license (after flunking the driving test the first time, as an adult with a new baby, and feeling utterly humiliated). I drive most everywhere I need to drive these days, but I don’t drive into Baltimore. At all.*** Thanks to the GPS, I also drive a few places where I’ve never been and I’ve even survived getting lost a few times. I’m so much more functional when it comes to driving that I don’t actually even have to think about my fear on a regular basis.

But then things happen that remind me, and I’m back to remembering what a quivering mess I can be when it comes to driving.

Yesterday was our homeschool co-op’s winter showcase (a social gathering where the kids show off cool stuff they’ve done), and I’d been secretly hoping all day that it would simply be postponed so I wouldn’t have to drive through potentially dangerous, slushy, and slick weather to get to somewhere I’ve never driven before (a major trigger for my fear). But the weather held off, so I had no excuse to not go. It was only mildly raining when we headed out and got on the freeway.

My windshield wiper made a couple weird noises and wasn’t working great, but at least it was working, so I just carried on and gripped the steering wheel a little tighter as I listened to my GPS (I had, of course, already read all the directions in preparation for the drive) and as it started raining a bit more. Then, as things were going along smoothly, suddenly my windshield wiper pivoted, popped off, and flew past me into the road (sorry, driver behind me!).

Well, of course my adrenaline shot up and I mentally freaked out, but I think I did a surprisingly good job of sounding calm as I asked one of the kids to offer us a prayer of safety. Meanwhile, I leaned over so that I could see through the windshield at least a little, and I tried to adjust my driving so that I didn’t steer into another lane.

Long story short: We made it to the activity safely, but I was internally panicking and trying to figure out how we were going to get home. I looked around the co-op group for anyone who knew how to fix windshield wipers, but I didn’t explain things well, and no one could help. I looked up an auto supply store nearby (it was only a four-minute drive away) and considering driving there to pick up a part. But I was honestly too panicked right then to be willing to make even that tiny drive (and also I really didn’t want to miss Coriel’s choir performance; that was pretty much the only reason we went in the first place).

So I texted Brice, who was at a meeting that he needed to be at (stake conference), and he ended up coming to my rescue.**** He came, bought the part, fixed it, and helped take care of the kids until the end of the activity.

And then I had to drive back home (because of course Brice couldn’t drive both cars). In the dark. In the rain. On a badly lit, badly marked freeway section that I rarely drove. But at least I had working windshield wipers!

By the time we got home, I had to hide in the bathroom and take deep breaths for a while.

So that’s how I know the phobia isn’t gone, but it’s also so much more manageable than it used to be, and I’m really grateful for that. (Although, who knows? Pretty soon I’m going to have to learn to drive on the left side of the road, so the situation is ripe for plenty more trauma!)

The End

* If this is the first time you’re checking in on the subject, I’m not talking about a minor inconvenience here. I’m talking about how I was diagnosably phobic about driving for many years and how I have only overcome it slowly and now it is more of an inconvenience most of the time, but it still keeps me from doing a lot of things that I wish I were okay with doing.

** Full disclosure: It didn’t start out as a blinding phobia. It started out as not having good enough eyesight, not having practiced driving enough, a strong discomfort with driving, and not having money or oomph to deal with any of these things. The debilitating phobia built up over the next few years.

*** I did once, trying to be brave, and it was a white knuckle disaster that involved a terrible, terrifying blind left turn and almost backing into a lady with a stroller. That pretty much ended my Baltimore driving days.

**** And yes, I feel utterly idiotic about that and I had to remind myself multiple times that I’m not a total loser and that I really am so much better about driving than I used to be, and Brice was very kind about it and very reassuring, but it’s hard to talk over the voices in someone else’s head, you know?