Day at the museums

After a very taxing evening, we decided that we should keep a bit simpler today.  So we headed right for the National Mall.  We walked past the J.Edgar Hoover FBI building and the National Archive, and had some conversation about the FBI, or SGI as Bear referred to it. Then we started talking about the Constitution, which seemed appropriate since we were walking down Constitution Avenue.  Al had no clue what we were talking about, so we filled him in a bit.  

Sometimes it hard to remember when you didn't know something... Like you've know it forever, but you haven't.  But when you learned about it you have no memory.  Well, I'm hoping Al especially has some of those moments in the future after this vacation.

Having visited the Natural History Museum on Thursday... See below for highlight

We decided to hit the Air and Space Museum and the American History Museum.  Al said he wanted me to see Kermit.  Well, not a single Kermit sighting, but we did see Dorothy's ruby slippers, and Count Von Count, and a wicked cool colonial grandfather clock.  And those were all in one exhibit.

I would say my favorite part was America on the Move about the history of transportation in America.  Really cool to learn about.  Some really cool vehicles on display from all over the country.  "Oh," Bear said, "vehicle means car."  She's so damn smart.  But then she also said "I don't like museums." At which point she started so I handed her a lollipop and she fell asleep, the stocked candy stuck to her jacket.  Sometimes we just gotta get through.

We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo... You can come too, too, too

DC certainly has a lot to offer for kids (and people like me who have never been).  Today we ventured to the National Zoo and saw the animals.  I was impressed that the Zoo is run by the Smithsonian Institute, and that it is dedicated to learning and preserving species.  It's been an active zoo for 125 years, and began to save the American Buffalo from extinction.  The grounds were pretty lovely and closely mimicked the natural settings for a majority of the animals there.  

Of course my favorites were the elephants.  They had a beautiful setting for the 6 female elephants and the singular male had his own space as well.  

I think Bear's favorite part was the fish in the Amazonia exhibit. The Amazon was recreated in the climate controlled building with amazing plants, humid conditions and waterways filled with rays and fish. 

The funny thing is that she told everyone on the plane that she was going to Washington D. and going to see the fishes. She even told the mom from another Waterbury family staying in our hotel this morning she was excited to see fishes at the zoo. She got her wish. 

We took the long way

OIWe decided to take the kids to DC. It will be fun, we thought.  It's not even that far, we assured ourselves.  So we booked train tickets right from our door seep practically.  12 hours and we're there. We made lists of things to pack; books, iPads, kindles, games, etc.  This should do it, we said. We got this, we assured ourselves. 

Then I got news that Alissa's Grampy had passed.  The service was on Wednesday.  Wednesday!  Change of plans. Separate paths were planned. One was the original, the other a very different route. Bear and I would take a late night bus to New Hampshire and then a flight from Manchester Airport.  Sar and Al would choo-choo it all the way. 

Long story short, neither trip was short. Both were draining and hard, and magical all the same.  Bear got to ride on a bus, one of her life long (3 years) dreams. She had the first plane ride in her memory and could not have been better on the plane. The look on her face when she looked out and saw that we were, in fact, above the clouds, was priceless.  She made people smile the whole way, apparently alleviating a little bit of stress for those around us.  She stopped in the tube that connects the plane and the terminal and snapped a few pictures, and caused even the most stern faces to smiles.  

The train was a long ride. A visual schedule kept them going, they knew their last stop was held a big pay off; not only would they be here, we would all be together.  

They had to knock a lot and then even call the hotel room to wake me when they arrived, having fallen to sleep like a rock when Bear finally drifted off.  How relived this momma hen felt when we were all here.  

everything has changed

Well, the fact that I am beginning this blog post with a Taylor Swift quote says a lot about the turns my life has taken since I last decided to post.  Big three:

1. I am now the proud parent of two children.
2.  Frozen or 1989 are always playing in our cars.
3. date nights are few, far between and cherished.

What a weekend!

I realize that I have not been blogging for quite sometime. But then I realized that I've been posting pics on fb just to have a timeline... This works better as a type of journal. So I am relaunching to document a fantastic summer (so far). :)

This weekend was pretty amazing. Saturday morning Sar and I got up ultra early and headed to the Black Cap to meet Noelle. She overslept which led to many jokes and laughs. Luckily the rain had held up the launch and so we were actually able to watch them progressively take off into the slightly overcast skies over Stowe. It was amazing. We topped off the perfect morning with breakfast at the Green Goddess. Mmmmm.

The day was low key at home with the pups, with the chickens enjoying their new coop. For dinner we made pizzas with our freshest CSA stuff. Love the Pete's pantry option. We got pizza crust, sauce and mozzarella all in the same share.

We loved the balloons so much, we woke up early again today to watch the balloons launch again. Even more spectacularly mind you. 20-25 balloons launched together, speckling the sky with blacks of color. Noelle, Sarah and I "chased" the balloons to the cow field up near Trapps and got some dynamite photos of balloons and cows.

girls posing... check out the heart on her head in the middle

We went back to Noelle's to wait for Pete to finish his run on the bike path and packed lunches (after we stopped for chips :)

Then we were off to Lake Willoughby. Neither Sarah nor I had ever been there, and although I was worried about having a long day, with summer school starting tomorrow, it was so worth it. The winds were high, the water was choppy, but the paddle was awesome. Picnic lunch and we headed home through beautiful green hills.

behind the eight ball...

actually I am behind all the balls these days. i need a vacation to catch up.... ugh...
remember the magic eight ball? you could ask it all your most important questions and it would magically answer something like "it is not likely."
So magic eight ball, will I ever feel caught up? "the future is unclear, ask again later."

The Tax Man is my nemesis

Ugh... thank goodness

We often come back around to the discussion that goes something like this: " we make more money than a lot of people around us, how 'come we never have any money?"
I have a feeling we will continue to have this conversation for some time... thanks uncle sam.

76

Two days ago was my grandmother's seventy-third birthday. I sent her flowers, wanted her to know I was thinking of her and how important she is to me. I can never remember if her address ends in lane or drive, so i decided to look it up. googlemaps and mapquest had no such address so I figured I would just google her to see if the sales announcement for her house was listed... nothing... but I did find her on a website called peoplefinder.com. It listed her as living in Merrimack, NH and aged 73. but then it had two little names next to hers (possible relations): Dana age 76 and Julie age 56. weird. dana was my grandfather who passed away almost 20 years ago, at the age of 57. it was so weird to see that he would be 76 if he were still alive and that according to some database somewhere he is 76. What would he be like at 76?

dci

You know when you laugh so hard that you cry? well, that was us tonight at the Palace 9 movie theater.
I guess I should start at the beginning... the other day i was looking online at 7 days for a mortgage seminar that noelle had told me about, saying that it was a hit because it had free food. yeah well, i didn't find the seminar listed but i found this contest to win free movie tickets for the movies at the film festival. many of the movies had already had their drawings, but i just entered us to win ANY movie tickets. sure enough, about an hour later I got an email saying that i had won the tickets. yahoo, i thought (having been my second win of the kind since moving to vermont). so i looked up the title and found that the movie would be about a drumming competition. i'm thinking TaiKO drummingthen I thought maybe it would be like STOMP... i loved that show.

nope. it was not about that kind of drumming....it was this kind of drumming.





http://www.dci.org/

but that wasn't the funny part.... it was kinda cool once we realized what the hell we were watching. the funny part was there was a room of spectators watching old film of drum corp and rating them, and there were these two announcers who said thing like, "that brought a tear to my eye." I was like what the hell is this?

it was a great night.... unexpectedly great.

mothers day

celebrating mothers day with my family felt empowering. i watched my mom and grammy closely as we ate lunch together. these are the women who raised me, who molded me and influenced me to be the woman i am today. i hope that i can take what i learned and become the best mom that i can be.

Teetering

you know it is a bad sign when your dog's daycare provider tells you that you seem stressed. Alas, I am stressed, and evidently, I am also transparent. Too much is going on this week, especially given that it is the week before vacation, but no doubt, it is exactly as the universe intended, for won't it feel like I hit the jackpot to have a whole and half off?? So the meetings, and the assessments, and the evaluations, and the paperwork will all just melt away as of Friday and I will have an abundance of things to look forward to; friends, family and some long awaited time to relax and spend outdoors.
I liken this week to riding a bicycle straight up hill. Your legs burn and so many times you have to talk yourself out of turning around and cruising down hill. But I know the the pinnacle is in sight and soon I will be able to feel the cool breeze through my hair as I give my weary legs a break.

opaque and permanent

there have been countless times in my life when i felt completely invisible. i've often felt as though no one in a crowded room even knew i was there. All of that changed when i fell for this beautiful redhead. she always sees me.
so now i am looking forward to forever with a woman who makes all the difference, she un-does all that. She truly is the heat that forces the words written in lemon juice to magically appear.

yikes and rings

Can't believe it's been so long since i wrote. PNB... poor neglected Blog. So many things have changed... actually progressed is a word that more accurately describes the happenings as of late. The daunting thing for me has always been picking that pen back up and getting back into writing, especially in a journaling type situation. I am overcome with the many things i could describe in detail, or chronical minute by minute. A lot of life has been lived since November, but as I have said, it is all going in a good direction. I have a lot to be thankful for.
Rings is my jumping off point... to be continued

we shoulda had the day off

i have been having a hard time keeping track of my pacifca key, i'll admit this. the word pacific, like the ocean, means peaceful. Henceforth shouldn't the car provide the same? but those who experience EL NINO probably would argue that the pacific can be anything but peaceful, and the pacifica as well. it's the not the car itself, although it does have a hard time getting up the mountain. The truth is, I love gracie. the problem lies in everything that surrounds her. case in point: the registration is missing, I cannot register her here in vermont until i can prove that i paid tax on her in massachusetts, and guess where the proof lies. yep, the lost regestration. So because of this, I can't insure car until i have it registered. And to top it all off, i can't seem to keep track of the keys...
which brings us back to today... well, before we even go there, we should probably visit sunday. so i had to work on the moutain and sarah had taken the other car to hinesburg to do a little work at school. i went to leave for work and the pacifica key was missing from my ring...no key=walking to work. i was frustrated... even more so when i huffed it up the mountain at a good clip and spent the next 20 minuted catching my breath (stupid asthma).... and exponentially more frustrated when i found the key in my pants pocket later that night when i was doing laundry.
fast foward to this morning. Sarah asked if i was going to wear my green puffy vest. i told her she could wear it if she wanted, i hadn't really thought about it very much. then 20 minutes after she left with lisa, i realized that the key to the ONLY car in the driveway was in the vest pocket, the same vest sarah was wearing, 20 minutes away. ugh. so i had to call her, but she beat me to it. she called to let me know some unfortunate and yet sortof amusing news about our lanldord. i had to break it her that in order for me to get to work i needed her and lisa to turn around. that sucked. lisa, being the godsend (if i believed in god) she is, turned the car around and brought me the key. i guess they made up a song about me to the tune of the classic barry manilow hit... i guess they could have done worse.
today was verteran's day and all our friends in framingham, mass had the day off... and that would have made today alot better, i mean, i'm just saying.

making history

I mean, come on... So they announced it, Barack won the 3 electoral votes from Vermont. We were two of those votes, in a state we knew would vote our way, overall.
It's funny that everyone keeps saying how historic this election is. it is historic. in reality, everyday is history. as we go from today to tomorrow we carry some and leave everything else behind. As i move toward tomorrow (or quite literally toward bed in just a bit), i know that today meant something, but what will really travel with me? what do i want to bring? I will always remember voting for the first time in Vermont, the tiny gym at the Smilie School, the fact that Sarah asked if there were lines and i laughed.. out loud. Will I remember what i had for lunch (left over spanish rice), or the socks i wore (leopard print), or the fact that jack's collar got chewed at camp? doubt it. these were other things i could have written about today in my blog... but i thought, nahh, in the end, this is what i will want to remember.
When Bill Clinton won the election way back when, I was a teenager and i wrote an entry in my journal about how cool it was to have a president that played the sax and liked rock n' roll. How cool is that? if left to my memory alone, i would have forgotten that i even cared about the president way back then. I would have thought i was too busy being a bad-ass and not caring. luckily i wrote it down.

babies, babies everywhere

I guess you get to a certain age, and i guess 31 is that age, when all your friends either have babies or are having babies, or are having trouble having babies. it's odd that in one day one can be so inundated with something. Just today I spoke with a co-worker about her new nephew and the jealousy she is feeling about it. Her sister was pregnant when she wanted to be and now the sister has the prize and my friend is still without. Instead she is faced with a process in doctors' offices and sterile instruments. this while, two of my friends on facebook had appointments today to find out the sex of their babies. And on a sadder note, today i also got a message from one of my oldest and dearest friends about her second miscarriage. within this baby phenomenon there is wrapped so much emotion, so many tears of joy and pain, and jealousy, and longing....etc.
I want one... we want one. we are nesting. The journey we will embark on is exciting, but i am reminded when i look around at my friends that anything can happen...

loyal

so everyday i've been looking for things to write about, like back in the old days when i took creative writing with mrs. bruce. who, by the way was a vermont native... full circle. so yeah, this morning i was driving and saw the kids who are waiting for the bus just about everyday, and there's one house that has two teenage boys that wait outside. Everyday a pointer/hound waits patient with them. he stands next to them as they stand by the road. The dog knows when the bus approaches and waits for it to come to complete stop. one of the boys reaches down and pats his head and the dogs head tward the house and indoors. now, you may wonder how i know so many details, but it is because sometimes i get stuck right there, with the bus lights flashing and have the chance to watch it transpire; the complete devotion of a dog. I think about how amazing it is everyday, and just this morning i decided i really needed to write it down. it was my obvious blog choice.
like the fifth graders i so enjoyed teaching, i immediately made connections: connections to my life, to texts and to the world. First i thought of how cleo and jack are loyal and attached to the two of us. just this evening, cleo was feeling a little under the weather after gorging on dog food that lily had knocked over during the day (a whole other story), and she hopped up on the ottoman and then made her way to sarah's lap. she hasn't sat on a lap in years. she is simply not a lap dog, but not feeling well, she just wanted to feel safe and be held a little. the converse is true though. many nights lately sarah has had one of her migraines and cleo makes her way upstairs and into bed with sarah, snuggling up and trying her hardest to make her mom well.
I made a connection to where the red fern grows which i finally read in the last few months. It made me cry... so cliche, but true.
And then i thought of that story of the dog in japan...

Hachiko (pronounced HA-chi-ko) was born in November 1923 in Odate, in the Akita province of Japan. The next year, Ueno brought him to Tokyo. Hachiko followed Professor Ueno everywhere. He accompanied Ueno to the Shibuya train station every morning and then returned and waited for him every afternoon. But, one day in May 1925, Professor Ueno didn’t come home; he’d suffered a fatal stroke at work. Mrs. Ueno gave the dog away to some of the professor’s relatives. But the devoted dog came back and returned to the train station every afternoon for nearly 11 years, at precisely the time that Ueno’s train was due, waiting for the professor. Hachiko did this until his own death in March 1935.

thank goodness for cleo and jack.

SNOW!!!

these first photos are from last night















And these are from this afternoon:

my friends in beverly hills

so, lately i have been indulging in some 90210. i mean, it is a good show. This week my friends are freshmen in college. They just got through christmas break and finals. they really are quite a crew. Tonight Andrea is pregant and Erin is missing because David feel asleep while babysitting, because he has been doing meth to stay awake for the radio show.... oh the drama.
when i was in high school, there were a bunch of kids who got together every wednesday to watch 90210. Thursday everyone would talk about what happened on the show and what happened at Gabe's house (where the gathering usually took place). I never joined in the festivities. I watched 90210 for the first season, alone on wednesday nights and then when it got out of control popular, i decided i did not want any part of it. i always figured it would get canceled like my favorite, my so called life. so i was a little anti-establisment... i doubt anyone reading this is surprise. So, a couple of my friends and i would hang out and watch Ellen. (ironic huh?)
Then in college I did not have fox on cable my freshman year, although my affection for the walsh's and their buddies had resurfaced. so i waited until sophmore to check back in. they were well into college and having a time of it. I missed kelly's brush with the cult life and brenda and dylan's big break-up among other things. i caught up with my friends while brandon and kelly were falling for each other and valerie was just being a plain old bitch to everyone. Then they graduated, just a while before i did. they found jobs (sort of)... and blah, blah, blah. don't worry i've seen all the shows i missed the first time... like 7 times each now...
it's crazy because i remember all the little stupid stuff like the fact that donna's birthday is near christmas, but they never mention it until the last couple of years, and that in the first season donna and dylan's parents were played by different people. it's odd how attached i am to these californians... imaginary ones at that. I look forward to getting them all on DVD, making sure future generations of 90210ers exist. Thank goodness i can check out SOAPNet anytime and catch up with them.

ps. Cleo was born on the exact night when the final episode aired, you know the one where donna and david get married. I should have named her kelly taylor... nahhh, cleo was the perfect name for her.

snow on the horizon

literally, snow is coming. you can smell it. the snow brings winter. winter brings a world of opportunity, especially this year. it is time. it is time to ski and snowshoe, to exercise and fall in love with the outdoors again.
snow also brings the dire need of snow tires and worries about "the worst road in the state". skis would be more effective transportation on a snow-filled day, i will admit, but i pledge to be safe. I have too many good things to get home to to chance not getting there.
tomorrow, no doubt, as i write the snowflakes will start to flutter, leaving a dandruff-like dusting on the already soggy ground. i will spy it sticking to the trees and will marvel at the shear glimmer of it all.
the smell brings back memories. they say that the olfactory sense is the one most strongly tied to memory, that smells can literally bring us back. i remember sledding down the road at wasserman park soaked to my core and still wanting more. i remember the blizzard like conditions that snowed myself and a core group of friends inside of my house. Gosh, i remember snow days, as a wee tike and last year, snuggled and content to watch the wite stuff delightfully short of ice. i remember being stuck in Maine for an extra day of vacation. Somehow being 'stuck' really has a positive connotation, but only when speaking of snow. i hope we are stuck in this winter for at least one day. some would say that i am crazy and that i better knock on some wood. i say bring the snow. i have everything i would need for a lifetime within the walls i reside.