An Occasional Epic

Usually, when cars break down or horses throw you or things get out of control, its not fun.  But there’s an excitement that builds when no ones hurt and you’ve gone from a normal everyday adventure to an adventure with a little more danger or something unexpected.  This is true for me at least, until you add 3 very hungry kids and 100º+ temperatures.  Then please don’t give me an adventure, give me air conditioner and a mechanic.

Usually, when cars break down or horses throw you or things get out of control, its not fun.  But there’s an excitement that builds when no ones hurt and you’ve gone from a normal everyday adventure to an adventure with a little more danger or something unexpected.  This is true for me at least, until you add 3 very hungry kids and 100º+ temperatures.  Then please don’t give me an adventure, give me air conditioner and a mechanic.

This summer in Kansas on the way back to Colorado, the truck was making a funny noise and we noticed, but we didn’t stop (it was 104º and windy and we were late for dinner and looking for our campground and really, that truck always makes a noise) But then everything did stop. At least we made it to an exit first.  I pulled out the phone to call AAA, Peter opened the hood.  He looked in and sighed, “this isn’t something I can … oh … “  He ran back to grab tools and I started to get excited (maybe we wouldn’t spend the night waiting in the super heat for a tow truck, maybe we wouldn’t spend all our money fixing something dumb!)  He did something and asked me to start it again.  It made the same scary electric-y grate-y noise as before and I sighed and resigned myself to call the tow truck.  That is an expensive noise, and Peter always says electric stuff is scary and not for him.  So I got the dogs out for a walk and told the kids they could unclip and go back to the Airstream for snacks. But he put his hand in again and with a quick movement and a little cussing he did something else.

“Try again,” he said.  And I’ll admit, I didn’t really trust him.  “Are you sure?” “Yeah, lets see what I did” “ookaay” If you listen close you can hear the patronising rise in my tone of voice, because, we were here for good and we should just except it and make the AAA call and I was a little worried that the engine would fall out of the truck if we tried again.  But I turned the ignition and there it was, no noise, well there was noise, but not the electric, metalic, grating noise.  We all did a dance as we moved back to our seats and we were on our way again, the whole break down lasted all of 7 minutes.  We survived the worst that could happen.

We’ve come home with stories of some difficult “push yourself so hard you didn’t know you could do” moments.  The ones where you were completely miserable, worked to the bone, wish someone would come carry you, and you are angry at everyone but yourself.  Then when you finish you can’t wait to tell everyone that you climbed a mountain and stood on a steep scary windy ridge and pushed through a 6 foot deep cornice and the whole time you thought you were going to throw up.

Our sabbatical was really unbelievable and I’m not sure if I’ve said that here.  We didn’t need things to go wrong to have great adventures, simply living in the airstream added that element.  I am, however, grateful for those infrequent experiences that measure your personal reserve and provide a focus for all those involved in it (except the one where my kid went to the ICU, I’m not grateful for that).  Our biggest challenges came from finding camping, and the cost of gas, and the heat, and learning the ins and outs of the vehicles.  But I think that is for a future post.

Fall

Around here you can’t take pictures of the mountains of golden trees anymore.  All the high aspens have lost their leaves with a rain spell a couple of weeks ago.  The riparian cottonwoods are still colorful.  I imagine that the leaves haven’t even begun to really change in Tennessee.

This is parents’ weekend at the school and there are parent conferences for days.  Peter comes home from the meetings on Sunday.

Wrenny is carrying little figures around giving them a flying noise.  Yesterday she set up her stuffed animals and dolls up for a tea party.

Pumpkin Carving

I love the look on Big Dan’s face here.  He’s really the best dog ever (other than Moki), those eyes really pull you in.  I just wish we were better dog walkers.  The boys like to use their arms as guns and though Tucker Mac kind of looks cool here, its really not so fun when he does it to strangers.  But this afternoon was fun, we had Star Wars cut outs for the pumpkins and went at it.

Tucker Mac chose a scary Star Wars face for his pumpkin, and got a little help from dad.  But if we’d had all the time in the world and he had just an ounce of patience, he could totally do it on his own.  Those knives that come from the pumpkin carving kits are great for little kids, we use them all year round.

The boys helped Sister chose the R2D2 figure for her pumpkin.  She made sure to grab the tools needed by Tucker Mac 4 seconds before he realized he needed them.

Otter chose light sabers smacking together.  My review of these Start Wars cut out kits is, wow they are really cool.  And there are lots of tight corners, not great for young kids – or parents really.  And the knife broke on the first pumpkin.  And now the cold has shrunk the picture on the pumpkin so it looks like a wrinkled and shrunk old man R2D2.  But they are Star Wars and the kids love Star Wars – so what if we have 2 unfinished pumpkins on the deck.

The only one that got finished before everyone lost interest.

Distracted

Tucker Mac is our little naturalist.  He notices things that surprise us often.  I don’t know how long this was in the tree in our yard, but Tucker Mac saw it last week.  I guess they abandon it in the winter.  It’s beautiful even if its a little scary.

There’s not much happening here, Wrenny doesn’t have a diaper on today.  But neither of us are committed.

Sand Dune Mountains

We went away on Friday after working furiously to build the beginnings of our garden and finish Peter’s school responsibilities and and, oh yeah, pack.  We didn’t forget many things, but our meals weren’t amazing and we borrowed the sled.

No Snow!

Sand dunes are unbelievable.  Its like mountaineering, you walk on ridges and choose your route and yet, you don’t have to worry about a 2 year old falling of the steep ridge. You’d have to really work to get hurt on the sand dunes.

We walked up with very little whining and ran, sledded and sand glissade-d down the sand mountian.

We arrived late Friday night to wind that tried to pull up our tent.  No one slept very well, especially Louisa Wren.

When she woke up the next morning, she saw her brother first and smiled really big and yelled, “IT’S MY BRUDER!”  She didn’t get grumpy until late in the afternoon.  She was adopted by her friend Lucy and they walked together all day.

Peter was able to get hurt in camp, though, a sprained ankle slowed him down.  We had a great weekend.  We even saw some old friends in Salida.

First Braids

This was our first try.  I need to get faster and better at holding steady while she’s moves around.  Or maybe find a good distraction.

She loved it though, even the sitting still part and they lasted a few hours before she wiggled them out.

People say there’s a big difference between boys and girls and I’ve seen some, but not the immediate attraction to dolls (Louisa Wren plays with legos, unless her brothers are showing an interest in dolls or teddy bears, then they are her favorite too) or colors (my boys loved purple and pink too). But the ability and willingness to sit still is shocking after those two boys.  They love to sit and snuggle as long as I’m petting them or reading or they’ve got a truck in their hands, but brushing hair was never something they could let me do.  Its the reason we have scissors in the house.

You know I like to Cook, Right?

I don’t get to very often.  We live at a boarding school that serves meals and are living with one salary so we eat at school lots.

But its apple season and any time I cook in the fall, I cook apples.

I’m pretty proud of my pie.

It was tasty, too.  Its a wet, cold-ish day and beautiful only because we’re not in Tennessee where I understand it hasn’t stopped raining in days (weeks?).  The boys have Thursday and Friday off.  We’re going to try and go camping for the weekend. (I’ve probably jinxed us and we will all be sick instead.)

Playing in the Sand by the River

We’re not in tank tops anymore.  But I don’t have any good new pictures and I figure that with the thousands of pictures in Flickr, surely there’s something good that I haven’t posted.  I think I did post one of these, but I think they are neat as a series.

I love the faces she gave us.  This is how Wrenny smiles for the camera.

pudgy cheeks serious

This one needs a caption, but it eludes me.

The one thing I don’t want her to do when she grows up.  I think she’s got a bit of a model pose going on here.

Wrenny in her Otter Shirt

There are some clothes that I just love and all the kids will wear until they are worn through.  We got this Otter shirt in the first few months after he was born at the Tennessee Aquarium.  We went with Papa and pushed him, sleeping, around the aquarium to see the Otters. Then, since he never opened his eyes, we got the shirt so he would know we saw them.

I remember that visit to Riverpoint, we stayed up at dad’s house on the farm with Uncle Frank.  We took turns staying awake every night with Otter, who got his first cold from the airplane ride on the way there.  During the middle of the night sessions I would sit with him over my shoulder, sitting upright so he could sleep, I would sit and obsess about the reclining green glide rocking chair that was in my home way across the country.  And about sucking all the snot out of baby Otter’s noise so he could breath.

Branding

I don’t like my kids to watch TV because I don’t want them to see commercials.  I don’t like the idea of frying their brains either, but really, it’s the commercials that grate at me.  It’s too early to throw all the merchandising at them.  In Tennessee, Tucker Mac really wanted something and he kept telling me over and over all about it.  I knew he’d never seen this thing before.  I couldn’t figure out where he’d found it, that it was so important to him.  Then I watched a little of the show he liked and there it was.  Oh.  My kids don’t think critically when the commercials are on.  They don’t hear a pitch, they see a cool picture and hear someone say this, *this* is the right toy for you.

But then it comes my turn to shop and choose what we eat, what we wear, where our money is spent and there it is.  My reasons might be more thought out than Tucker Mac’s, but I am also attracted to things that are healthy or organic or well designed. I may not watch commercials but I am really loyal to certain brands.  I find myself making convincing arguments *to myself*  to spend $45 extra dollars so we can get the broiler king electric grille that Cooks’ Illustrated says is the best.  I did and pancakes take half the time now, without three skillets.

We live in a really wealthy area and its easy to get sucked in.  I don’t know if you’ve been to the rocky mountains lately, but there are not many ‘unattractive’ people here.  I took t-mac to school today and we have comparatively raggedy, holey, stained things. No one here ‘dresses up’ for anything but a funeral.  But they always wear really nice clothes.  Sweat pants are 100 dollar yoga pants.  Our clothes are fine, they are clean and somewhat hole free.  But there are stains I can’t get out, and we don’t have every outfit to match.  Honestly, I’m too self conscious to wear nice clothes most of the time.  I feel guilty when I’ve got on nicer clothes than others and I apologize to complements.  But I hate the shredded fronts of all Tucker Mac’s shirts and jackets where Otter chewed on them.

When I look at old pictures I don’t see the stained clothes or the unpolished child, I see a smiling kid having fun or getting dirty. I can then take myself out of the vacuum of our valley, I can see that my kids wear fine clothes.  We have nice things.  This isn’t a subject that eats at me, I only notice occasionally and visiting Tennessee last year makes the unrealistic materialistic expense of living here stand out.

Today I’ve been looking at warm jackets for the kids.  We’ve currently got 4 warm jackets that are fine for Tucker Mac and LW and every one of them has a broken front zipper and its cold cold here so we have to get them something.  I’ve been online looking today and the ones that I love and know will keep them warm are too expensive for us and its hard not to want them.  I love this jacket for Tucker Mac.  But this one will be warm enough or this one.  Or better yet, we’ll go see what’s at the second hand store.  Or maybe not, when it comes to jackets and shoes our luck is 50/50.  We’ve gotten some good shoes and jackets, but just as many that have zippers that break 2 weeks in and shoes that give blisters.  We wear jackets here from late September to early May, and Otter’s last good one lasted 3 years.  Maybe its one of those things that I can spend some money on.

All this being said, I love Patagonia and the mattress company that makes the organic mattress we couldn’t afford (not because it was organic, it was less expensive than most in the store) and I love beautiful things, made with strong, socially responsible materials, but I have to look at things from a perspective of family.  Because we all want to ski this year and it’s time to sign the kids up for ski passes and lessons and ski boots for Peter.  And its time to think about getting our pool passes renewed.  We want fun things for the family and its nice when the things that we spend money on can be for all of us.