Wonderful time of year: Part I

I love traditions of all shapes and sizes, and part of my favorite thing about being a mom is establishing family traditions.  But part of that is figuring out what works for our family, and in what form.  So as we start to pack up the Christmas decorations and music and books, I want to take a moment to reflect.  And to share some pictures.

We start on the first Sunday of Advent.  Our Advent wreath is some fake greenery formed into a ring around a thrift store candleabra.  We light the candle(s) before dinner and after eating sing a verse of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” and extinguish them (using a fancy schmancy snuffer, which makes it ever-so-fun).  Doing the “an-els” was also big motivation for Big Brother to take his plate to the kitchen.  He was  a little enthusiastic with the snuffer, but did a great job with some assistance.  This year I think we did verses 1, 4, 6, and 7 (at least as they’re numbered in the Methodist hymnal we use).  We switch verses every week, but sing multiple verses on Sundays.

Then, on December 6th, the presents start.  St. Nicholas Day is a fun new thing for me, but dovetails quite nicely with my fond memories of hanging my stocking by the chimney with care.  We have special orange pecan French toast (no significance, just a favorite) and discover the contents of our stockings—toothpaste, lip balm, socks and the like.  Oh, and a magazine.  A very important component.

And uploading these pictures has used up my time allotted, so I’ll have to continue next time.

California on my mind

I’m going to play a quick catch up.  Peter and I have been on the road, having lots of adventures, and I want to get some of the memories down before they spill out of my mind.  First up, a Father’s Day visit to Father’s family in CA.

I think I’ve mentioned before our unfortunate life-planning in having a baby (the first grandchild on either side) immediately after moving far away from both of our families.  And while Peter has not lacked in the familial love department, it was high time to get ourselves out to visit A.’s side of the family in sunny southern California.

The first set of plane trips were made without too much ordeal.  Peter, like his mother, loved the Biscoff cookies that Delta served.  But there was more excellent food to come!

Cuban black beans, pork, and yucca!

First trip to the beach.  My sweet mother-in-law found a cute lightweight stroller on Craigslist.  As you see, Peter is not riding in it.  We got to the beach and put him in the stroller, heading for a restaurant for some food.  He screamed.  We walked for several blocks like that, me assuring the family that he would settle in.  He did not.  Maybe he was just hungry.  Nope, did the same thing on the way out of the restaurant toward the beach.  Maybe he was just tired.  Nope, later in the week we tried during morning happy time.  No go.  I still have no idea why.

I suppose it’s another lesson about the best laid plans.  I was all set to at least take a dip in the water—I even asked the lifeguard who taught our Parent-Child swim class whether there was anything special we needed to know for ocean swimming.  And then he slept almost the whole time we were there (after the stroller fiasco, that is).  But it was still lovely and breezy, and Peter did wake up for long enough to watch the ocean for several minutes.

Morning happy time in California.  Probably around 5:30 or 6, which is not normally *my* morning happy time.  But we decided that it was easier to just stay on Eastern time rather than switching.  Peter was happy to oblige.  Until the last two days, when he switched to Pacific Time in one fell swoop.  Notice the super-stylish shorts, high socks, and sweater combination.

Other highlights/firsts?  Meeting his paternal great-grandparents.  Meeting the giant dog (my in-laws have an English Mastiff).  Meeting the tortoise (likewise, they also have a tortoise).  Spending quality time with grandparents and aunt/godmother.

Next up, Washington, DC!

Tiptoe through the tulips

Last summer we went to Europe with some friends and their daughter, my birthday buddy.  She was seven months old at the time.  In honor of her, for Peter Potamus’s seven month birthday, we took my mom to Holland.

Holland, Michigan, that is.  The Tulip Time Festival.  Etched in our imaginations from childhood readings of The Bobbsey Twins in Tulipland, Mom and I have been making plans ever since we learned that A. and I were moving to Michigan.  So, despite the fact that she’s barely been home, between tax season, heading to Florida immediately afterward, she came this past week to see the tulips, and as a tiny little bonus, get grandson snuggle time.

Mom and I went on Wednesday, toured Windmill Island with all of the retired people on bus tours, went to the quilt show, and found a spot on the sidewalk next to the bucket filling station for the Volksparade.  You see, before the official parade, there’s the streetcleaning.  Families who apparently have been the streetcleaners for generations walk down the street in costume with buckets of water and brooms, ostensibly sweeping the street clean.  The bucket filling station was a center of action.  We got a little wet from overenthusiastic bucket fillers, but it was hot, so we didn’t mind too much.  All the excitement got to Peter, and by the time we got back to the car, he looked like this: 

A. didn’t want to miss out on the fun, so we headed back on Saturday.  Unfortunately, the weather was not nearly so nice, so we got wet again, but this time it wasn’t so exciting.  But we did get to see the Dutch Dancers.  And another parade.

Now, just because this post would be incomplete without them, some tulips.

Tales of Long Ago and Faraway Places

After Adam got done with classes, we headed out for a post-exam, pre-internship, exploratory tour.

We were actually in two new states for Adam (North and South Carolina), but we weren't even in SC long enough to see a welcome station.





Near Charlotte is an absolutely amazing fabric store--Mary Jo's Cloth Store--and it just so happened that I needed some fabric (of course I needed fabric. Have I ever not needed fabric?). Quilt backing, for our summer "let's try to not spend the inheritance of our firstborn on air-conditioning" bed-covering.


We quite enjoyed wandering around downtown Charlotte, though it was less-than-spectacularly-active on Saturday night. Highlights included:

• A little mini-library next to a park (which we didn't really get to see because someone was having a wedding reception).


• Pizzeria Uno's. Despite having earned a reputation in college for being anti-Uno's, we were both in the mood for some deep dish pizza. And I guess it's a good thing. When we got back, we looked it up, and the only Uno's in the state of Tennessee is in Maryville. The only one.


• Wachovia plaza. Pretty. A really dark photo, though.


• The building with a quiz. I can't remember what it was called, but it had these touch pads, and if you touched them, there was a sound (gong, bell, etc.). Apparently if you hit them in the right order (there's a clue on the side of the building), there's some extended song that plays and the building lights up). I didn't try to test Adam's patience by actually doing it though.


• Staying in a hotel with a tv. I guess that's not so crazy now that we have a tv in our place (thanks Mom and Dad--we actually watched it for the first time last night for the Lakers/Celtics game). But in Charlotte we watched Top Chef, or something of the sort, and an episode of Project Runway.
  

And that was just the first (full) day!

On Appreciation*

This weekend, Adam and I decided we wanted to go on an outing. What with houseguests and holidays, and upcoming exams and the like, it's been a while since we've done something like that for the weekend. Tossed around some ideas of places we'd like to go (we're compiling a road trip wishlist...if you're within weekend trip distance of Nashville and want to show us around your area, we'd love to hear). Ended up driving down to the Jack Daniel's Distillery in Lynchburg, TN.


Lynchburg is this tiny, tiny town. Their sign says population 361, though the tour guide said they're probably at 450-500 now. And this distillery makes all of the Jack Daniel's sold. All of it.

Now, I'm not a super-huge fan of the alcohols. Adam thinks I was scarred by accidentally drinking my grandfather's martini at the age of 7 (I thought it was my water glass and I took a big sip. Not cool.). But I love me a good factory tour. Seeing how something is made makes me appreciate the labor that goes into a product, from the people actually running the lines, to the people who designed all the machinery and packaging. It makes me realize how many things can go wrong in the process.

Tennessee whiskey is made by mixing corn, barley, rye, and the water from an underground spring (Daniel discovered the spring and decided it made perfect whiskey. Now they say that's because the water has no iron in it). Add some yeast, and let the whole thing ferment for 6 days. They showed us a batch that had been working for 6 hours, and it looked like a witches cauldron a-brewing and a-boiling. And if you got your nose close, and got a whiff of all that carbon dioxide, well, in the words of our tourguide, "that stuff'll untie your shoelaces". This fermented stuff is called brewer's beer. They distill that (boil off the alcohol), and then drip the resulting alcohol through big tunnels of charcoal (made by burning big bundles of sugar maple wood). Then it gets put into handmade barrels and stored for about six years. The changing temperature opens and closes the pores of the wood of the barrel, and the whiskey gets sucked in and forced back out as time goes by. (Can I mention how cool barrel-making is? You can make something to hold liquid with just a bunch of wood, and something to hold the pieces of wood together. I would totally learn to be a cooper.). And that's it. They have tasters who go try the barrels that might be ready since they all age at slightly different rates.

The whole of the valley smells a little bit like a loaf of bread (it's all that yeast and all those grains). And you can almost smell it in the finished product. So I tried it again after we got home (Moore County is a dry county. So they can give their employees a pint once a month, but they can't sell any to the visitors that come through town), and...

I still don't really like it. But I think it's much cooler than I used to.

I think it's a lesson I need to learn in general: how to appreciate things I don't really like. Appreciating all people as God's children, appreciating why people might have opinions different from my own, appreciating attempts to aid that don't necessarily help (whether it's attempts to help me, or attempts to help the world).


*Okay, so it's been a long time since I've posted. I have a couple of draft posts, but I realized before publishing that they were a little whinier than I really wanted to put out there. Plus, I guess I'm still trying to find that balance of being vague enough to protect myself and some of the other people in my life, and being specific enough to make sense to someone other than myself.