Washington DC Trip! Day One

Oh, where to begin?  Maybe with this, our selfie as we headed out- we had finally made it. DC bound!

We stayed in Wilson, NC the first night. Got up that morning and rocked the free breakfast like only a family of 8 can, and we were on our way. Violet fell asleep almost immediately, and so begins the life of a toddler on the road. Translation: she was tired. But she did great and really rolled with the schedule pretty amazingly.

I took a lot of photos of her sleeping. It was too cute.

Here she is while Jackson and Libby pass the time while playing cats cradle. 

We made it to our apartment in DC after getting groceries and then ate a quick dinner, loaded up and walked to the subway, ready to meet up with Christopher and Ranen Bennage, who were waiting at the Smithsonian stop on the National Mall. 

Excited to be on the subway! Getting a family of 8 paid for and legit was no easy task. This photo was our very first ride...shortly after we got off at our stop...all but Jackson that is. He didn't make it before the doors closed. They don't keep the doors open long enough for an 8 person family pushing a stroller!! But at least it was the 14 year old. He kept his cool and Ranen is actually the one who found him. 

All our people accounted for, we headed to the Washington Monument. 

We were all pretty excited to see it! And it's impressive even close up!!

After that we walked to the World War 2 Memorial. Which is beautiful. It began at this point, though, hard to really experience it with the many tourists and the task of making sure we didn't lose anyone. 

Now we headed to the Lincoln Memorial. 

We got a view of the Washington Monument from the other side. 

I told Juliet what to do with her hands and then just took one single photo. She had no idea. I love her. 

We made it up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It was full of people and school groups but I managed to gaze up at him and tried to take a moment to appreciate his service to our country. 

And then, we took a selfie. Managed to get everyone in. Good times. I'd like to think Lincoln would love it. 

After this we headed toward the Vietnam Memorial. This one is hard for little kids. I walked the youngest through quickly. You want to be quiet. It's overwhelming when you understand it.

We headed home after this, but had to stop by the Washington Monument once more because now it was dusk and it looked beautiful with the flags blowing and the lights. 

What a terrible photo, but hopefully it will help us remember how cool it looked. 

We were all tired of walking already but we made it home and geared up for another day!

Art and Out for a Walk

Well, I have finally come up for air after my final two Art Class Fridays and our Art Show.  I've now turned my focus to house rental and our trip to DC!  We have decided to take the J Train to our Nation's Capital at the end of this month.  We are all excited.  We have been out walking a bit to get the kids in practice.

The art show was a success and I was very proud of all my students, especially the ones who belong to me.  Penelope wore blue lens-less glasses and her MLP hat which I thought was very artistic of her, to go to her art show dressed like an artist.  Meaning, strange.

We made bleached t-shirts this year with my "make art" slogan.  They came out great and most everyone wore them to the show.

One of my favorite projects this year was our "texture monsters."

Cash was more interested in eating a chicken leg than posing next to his artwork.

On our walk last night I finally, though she had been 18 months for 18 days already, took Violet's 18 month photo.  I have a photo of each kid at 18 months on the wall in our living room, so the kids have been talking about it ever since I told them I was pregnant with Violet.  Oh my goodness.  I just thought about how many times I said 18.  And I thought I should also put a photo on the wall when they are 18 years.  How extremely depressing, the thought of them being 18.  But at the same time how wonderful.  If they all make it to 18! Eighteen eighteen eighteen! Ah!

On tonight's walk I captured Violet's pink crocs, which she has worn constantly since she could walk.  She has nearly grown out of them and I need to retire them so maybe now that they are on the blog I will have the heart to do it.

Here is Jackson looking at some of her photos with Violet.

I love our family and I love going for walks with them.  These last two photos- photo cred goes to Jackson.  Thanks Jackson!

The in-betweens of a Home School

This week we have launched back into home school, having just 10 weeks left until SUMMER!  We will be planning out how many lessons of this and that we have to get done each week to be finished with all our studies so that we can rest.  But though we have opened the floodgates back into academics, I've been thinking about the real home school.  The every day happenings around here that really make up the Alley home school.  The in-betweens that are just as enriching and every bit a part of why I home school- so we can learn to love and love to learn together.

There's this:  the toddler antics.  Violet does stuff like this while we are reading or studying together.  No toddler's life would be complete without using a marker to write on furniture.

There's this scene- my oldest and my youngest, who love each other very much, holding each other and their favorite things.  A blanket and an electric guitar.

Here's another thing the toddler does while I'm teaching something to someone.

Here is what people do when I let them play in the morning and delay school to have a few minutes of peace.  Pretend with Barbies!

This is the kind of thing I find lying on my kitchen island.  It's a home school class- paper plate art.

Jimmy texts me this photo- Cash gets to take a break from school at home to get schooled at the dentist.

This is going on next to me while I'm cooking dinner- the 8 year old stands on the counter to put the dishes away.  But you know what?  She put everything away.  Didn't leave anything out for me to deal with.

And outside! We have been outside as much as possible, enjoying the wonderful weather that Spring has brought. 

Home school is not perfect.  It doesn't have everything to offer.  We can't give the same things as a traditional school.  But we certainly do like it.  I am very grateful for healthy, happy, children who love each other and discover together.

(To be fair and keep it real:  I yelled a lot on Monday, our first day back into the swing of things.  It's hard to step away from all the in between and add the "work."  But we make it through somehow.)

The Wedding Planner

"The F.O.B. Is M.I.A."

It's funny what you remember from movies. I often think about the opening scene from The Wedding Planner, when we watch Jennifer Lopez run a wedding like a boss and then go home to her apartment. This is the part that runs through my mind. How she comes in to her beautifully designed apartment, hangs her keys up, puts away her things, fixes herself some dinner and a glass of wine, and sits down in front of the tv to watch Antiques Roadshow while she eats. 

Then, after dinner, she spends her evening deep cleaning her living room and folding her shirts with one of those plastic shirt forms they only use at The Gap. It's off to bed then, with her hair in a perfect ponytail and soft puffy blankets tucking her in perfectly. 

Now, all this was to show, of course, at the beginning of the movie, how controlled her life was and also how alone she was. After this point her life is turned upside down by Mathew McConaughey. Alright, alright, alright. 

The reason I think that this scene goes through my mind so often is that it is absolutely, in every possible way, totally and completely opposite of my life. And I have to admit, while I love my life, my husband, my kids, everything about my chaos, I am drooling a little on the inside whenever I picture this scene. A scene where you eat what you want when you want and you're not interrupted. A reality where you have enough time to dust your living room. A life that involves folding your clothes on a plastic shirt form, organized closets, and perfectly made beds. 

Because there is none of that in my life. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. My reality is disorganized closets, clean laundry that sits in baskets for days (let's be honest, sometimes weeks), dust EVERYWHERE, and meals prepared on a stove that should be scrubbed with food that came from a refrigerator that should be scrubbed. 

But guess what I have in my home that the wedding planner didn't? People. A family. And families make a mess. But let's be clear. It's a good mess. A chaos forged in love and mistakes. This building of a family is exactly what it should be, exactly what a person needs in order to learn about love, grace, and forgiveness. No shirt folding forms necessary. 

So while I do usually long for solitude at least once a day, if I really did have it, I know I'd be hoping that it was temporary- that it was only the opening scene in a movie eventually to be filled with the bedlam that is marriage and babies. I'm so glad to be in the middle of the plot line. I'm surprised every day by the twists and turns that make up the arc of our story. I'm aboard the J train and I'm not getting off. Not quite a wedding planner, but planning everything that happens after the wedding. I think I need to add super glue to my shopping list...

Just a Saturday

I had semi-big plans to get some home renovation (painting) and laundry done this weekend.  My plans did not happen.  But I am glad I just let today happen.

Earlier this week Jimmy was offered two tickets to see "2 Cellos" at Ruby Diamond Auditorium on campus at FSU.  Since I play the cello, he was smart enough to accept them.  (After our friend Spencer texted him and said, "you should take Julie, since she plays the cello."  Ha!) 

So in anticipation of us needing to leave the kids with Jackson for the evening, I offered Jackson a chance to have some friends over so he could do something fun today.  After a lazy morning of TV,
making pancakes for breakfast, cleaning up, and getting everyone dressed for the day we went and picked up two of his friends.

By the time I got back it was nearly lunch so I made a bunch of quesadillas, did take a moment to throw in some laundry, held Violet most of the time while working on all of this with the other arm (she's been really clingy lately) and then took the boys to Circle K because that's where all the middle school boys go to waste time, and I bought my other kids Icees because I owed them one from an earlier promise.  Then I quickly ate some lunch myself.

After that Jimmy came in and he tagged out and I left to photograph a property in Midtown, and experienced just a little bit of house envy because I really liked the smart layout of the great room.  Sometimes I feel like a kid playing with a dollhouse when I photograph a property.  It's like I'm six years old and I'm dreaming of what my house might look like one day.  And then I wake up and realize that I will never have a house like that because it either doesn't have enough bedrooms for an 8 person family or it's way too much money, or it has no yard for kids, etc.  To be clear, I came home and walked down the hall and thought, "we have a great house."  And we do.  It's a fixer upper waiting on the next fix.  But patience is a virtue, house.  It will come.

I came home to see Juliet curled up in a ball on the couch with her fuzzy blanket and a blue mouth.  Since I was not at home to regulate the Icee consumption, I'm pretty sure she drank the whole thing, giving her self a whole body freeze, not just a brain freeze.  I coaxed her off the couch by convincing her to make cookies with me.  So me and the girls made peanut butter cookies while Violet was napping and the boys were making paper airplanes.  Jimmy tagged in again and left to write an offer at the office. 

Then I took about a 30 minute "nap" while listening to the sounds of the kids playing, Jimmy coming home, and eventually Violet babbling.  I got dressed for the concert, put on some make up, and opened the door to get Violet up from nap to the smell of a dirty diaper.  Yay!  Took care of that, played ponies with Juliet, put some chicken nuggets in the oven and got out some oranges, the boys got picked up, and we were off to our concert.

After running two real estate errands (always!) we went to get a burger (a nice one--not fast food) and headed to the concert.  I hadn't been in the auditorium since it has been renovated which has been a while ago.  It was cool to think that almost exactly 20 years ago I played cello on stage there in the USO.  And now I'm here like an old person.  Definitely different than when I was there then, and also I had memories of taking freshman Biology in that huge auditorium with 1,000 other freshman.  Crazy.

The concert was really fun and cool (sorry for the lame adjectives) and I wished Cash could have seen the drummer.  Jimmy enjoyed it too, and cracked me up at the end when he said, "I feel so old.  I'm here with all these old people who are singing AC/DC lyrics to 2 Cellos.  It almost makes me want to throw up."  I just started laughing out loud.  Because I know Jimmy, and I totally get it.  He would much rather be at a bar in college town watching a punk band playing original songs.  And there were a lot of gray hairs at this concert.  But oh, wait...Jimmy and I have gray hair, so...  You see?  It's hard to realize you're on this train and that your next stop is the A.A.R.P.

So that was our Saturday.  No painting projects got done but it turned out to be an enjoyable day with the kids and it was nice to do something different tonight.  Sometimes you are given a gift.  The gift of perspective.  The ability to every once in a while be able to hover over your life and see it with different eyes.  And today I saw my life from afar somehow.  I saw my house, in progress.  I saw my family, in progress.  And I saw myself, in progress.  And I liked what I saw.  Instead of feeling bogged down by the weight of that day-in and day-out method of progress, I felt happy that a large majority of my progress is full of pleasant and happy moments and days like today. Just a Saturday.

Words

The night I got to hang out with Jimmy for the first time we talked until 3 am. The night couldn't last long enough. There was so much to be said. I think we both sensed we had a lifetime of words for each other. That we would never tire of talking to each other. 

When we were newly married and away from each other all day we would talk on the phone if at all possible. He on the phone in his classroom, me either at home or in the office at the BCM on campus at FSU- no cell phones for us then. 

When Jackson was born I had someone to talk to all day and I did, and being the type of person he is, he loved it. Jackson and I have been talking every day for over 14 years. 

But now, in 2016, I find myself on this particular night all out of words to speak. Sometimes you just use them all up. And for me, this seems to happen more and more often the more kids I have and the bigger those kids get. I'm reading everything from WW2 history to Dr. Suess, I'm trying to communicate with a babbling toddler, I'm answering math questions, I'm explaining how someone becomes president, I'm diffusing the latest "he said, she said" in the sibling world. I'm not going to lie, it's exhausting. And sometimes I'm just plain out of words. 

(And now I am dealing with the irony of the fact that I just wrote a couple hundred words about the fact that I don't have any words left. It is maybe a way to cope.)

Yet His mercies are new every morning and somehow I wake up with a new bank full of words and I am happy to greet my children with a Good Morning! and Did you sleep well? By God's grace. And I am so greatful. 

Kids, I'm sorry when I run out of words. But there are a lot of you and only one of me and I pray for God's strength and patience and as you know, a mother can communicate quite a bit without saying a word. So, there's that.

I love my kids. They're worth the word depletion, no doubt. And hugging. Hugging doesn't need words. I'm going to try more of that. Less words. More hugging. 

And now I'm really out of wor

Juliet!

My sweet Juliet turned FIVE about three weeks ago and in the bustle of the new year I neglected to post about her wonderfulness even though I intended to.  And even though it has passed, I'd like to honor Juliet with a blog just for her.  Because she's super.

Juliet is a quiet human, and when she is loud, it is 95% of the time a wonderful happy talking or laughing about something.  Juliet is soft spoken, so it's been a little bit hard to adjust to that...having to lean over and ask someone around here to repeat themselves.  Because everyone else is pretty high volume.  She is incredibly perceptive, and interprets the world around her in a very unique and original way.

Juliet always wants to be the one to pray at dinner, and always thanks God for all our blessings and often goes on a little longer than we want.  I heard her say under her breath quite a few times this past holiday season, "All I want for Christmas is a happy family."  (Usually said when siblings were arguing or getting in trouble!)  Not too long ago she wanted to listen to an audio book reader she got for Christmas but Penelope (her best friend and roommate) said that the noise would bother her.  I told Penelope she could put up with it for a few minutes and told Juliet to go ahead.  Juliet quietly remarked, "I don't want to upset my sister."  She is so sweet.

Earlier this week Juliet told me that Barbie is the richest person on TV.  After I asked why, she said it is because she has a car, an RV, a dream house, AND a boyfriend.  I couldn't really argue with her logic.

She also told me a few days ago that she had a hole in her heart.  When I asked why she said it was because she couldn't find her tiny stuffed animal, Silky, the gray elephant.  So of course today when she found him, she held him behind her back, came to me and said, "I don't have a hole in my heart anymore!" and revealed Silky to me with a big smile.

Monday I played ponies with her on the coffee table and discovered, as we were playing, that a large majority of playing is setting up everything for playing.  This makes me so happy, because I love to sort and set up figures, what I have trouble with is the pretending and the voices and the imagination part.  Sorting them according to colors or type, or episodes, as Juliet was doing, makes sense to me.  She was so proud and happy with her pony groups, I had to take her photo. 

Then I let her take some photos herself.  Not bad!!!

When she ran into our kitchen island this week and hit her eye on the corner she came to me crying.  Through her tears: "I gotta stop getting these owies!  I gotta get taller!"  That is so Juliet.  Putting it together immediately that if she were taller, she wouldn't have been able to injure herself in that way.

And tonight, while she helped me give Violet a bath, something happened (I missed it) and she turned to me and said, "Are you thinkin' what I'm thinkin' sistah?"  And I just laughed, and never even figured out what she was thinking or what I was supposed to be thinking.  I just love this kid.

Juliet is brave, independent, and smart.  She is the fifth of six children.  She is the baby sister, but a big sister all at the same time.  She has never seemed jealous or impatient of Violet.  She understands dirty diapers and nap times and "I have to help your brothers and sisters with school" on a level way older than her years.  I am so happy to be her mom and see who and what she becomes.  I know it will be wonderful.

Hiding in the Dryer

This past weekend, beginning when we got home from winter vacation on New Year's Eve, we enjoyed hanging out with our friends the Bennages who were visiting from out of town, along with all their entourage.  Meaning, a fun reunion of all our friends from college whom we see, but not very often all in one room, unless an occasion like this occurs.

They even got to be here for the birth of a baby- our friends the Stricklands had their baby while they were here.  Sandra even had to step in and cut the cord for dad Michael, as he was out of town!

Sunday was their last day here. (They had moved over to our house to give the Stricklands some room with their new baby!) We had a bunch of folks over and people brought their own food and ate lunch after church.  We lit a fire in the backyard, let kids play, mommies talked, the men played games, folks got sticky roasting marshmallows, and we just generally enjoyed each other.  The afternoon went on, and no one left.  We all got hungry again and some of us moms went to the store and got more food, and we continued to hang out and just be there together.

As I was thinking about how cool it was that we got to host an 8 hour play date with some of our best friends, I remembered my friend Eric from kindergarten.  I used to stay at his house after school for a couple hours.  I'd go home with him when us kindergarteners got out at 1:00 and my mom would come get me after she finished her full school day at 3:30.

When it was time for my mom to come, when we heard her knock on the door, we would always try to find someplace to hide so that I could stay a little bit longer.  Once Eric shut me in the dryer.  They'd never find me there!  I could stay all night!  (Five year old logic not understanding the flaws here on many levels.)  Of course when I was found, there was a scolding of how dangerous it can be to be shut up in a dryer.  And I had to go home.  All good things must come to an end.

Our day long play date with multiple families was wrapped in just a little bit of five year old logic.  Let's all just hide in the dryer, so we can keep this fun alive as long as possible.  I'm sure everyone had stuff they were going to try and get done that day- chores, errands, etc.  But you know what?  Letting ourselves hide in the dryer for an afternoon was really a very, very, good idea.  Having a group of people that love you and your kids, no matter how crazy or quirky you might be-- that's how I want to do life.