Before & After

This weekend I had a couple of goals.  We are getting to the point where the house is fully livable and we are really feeling settled.  So this weekend my goals were to unpack the office and to decorate the kids' bedrooms. It's fun to be at this point. 

WYATT & CARLY'S ROOM:

Before          //          After

Before Above // After Below

Before Above // After Below

The art above Carly's bed is from my sister.  I love it so much. I am still deciding what picture to put on the other small shelf above her crib.  Wyatt is also still deciding what he wants on his square shelves.  One of my other favorites in their room is the shelf with the world "Linger" on it, above Wyatt's dresser.  Josh's sister Julie made it for me last year (it was my word of the year) and it reminds me to sit a little longer in that rocking chair holding my sweet girl.  

THE TWINS' ROOM:

Can you find Carly?

I'm super happy with how Logan & Jack's room turned out, too.  I am excited to see what they put on their shelves, and love that they have their own bit of space after sharing with both their younger siblings.  Let the home decorating continue!

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Around Here: Week 35

Open House at School!

Peek-a-boo!

Cousins Carly & Annie

5 little boys... boundless energy!

Baby legs, unswaddled, and with a lovey

First Day of Third Grade

Snickerdoodles!

After School Snack

Mommy & Wyatt Time

Baby Wyatt

Walking to school

The office/laundry room

The menu

After school trampoline jumping

Relishing... time with my sister's family.  They came late last Friday and left Sunday afternoon, but boy we squeezed a lot of love and laughter into those two days.  She has two boys (4 & 6) and a baby girl (4 mo.), so our kids were made for each other!  The boys have boundless energy, and I think we could all sit and watch the baby girls interact with each other for days. They're so sweet & curious about each other!

Executing... this week's meal plan like a boss! I am so proud of myself (and so excited!) to be putting our sweet little kitchen to work everyday.  We are baking, cooking and eating meals together and it brings me so much happiness.

Feeling... all the feels about the twins heading to school (for the first time ever) and being separated (for the first time ever).  I am happy and sad and excited and terrified.  It's exhausting to be on such a wildly swinging pendulum.  In addition to the twins starting third grade, Wyatt starts kindergarten next week, and there's been a constant lump in my throat about that. Reading Ashley's take on sending her kids to public school after homeschooling made me feel less alone in my feelings and hopeful that with time I'll grow accustomed to spending my days apart from the boys.

Laughing... at the size of the apple one of Josh's students gave him.  It is bigger than his fist.

Grateful... that all three of Carly's big brothers adore her.  They look after her, tend to her, and hate to see her cry.  Their help is so... well, helpful!

Attending... Open House at the boys' elementary school.  We got the chance to check out their classrooms, meet their teachers, and see some of their classmates.

Crying... at Facebook's 'on this date' picture of baby faced Wyatt in the bathtub in Alaska.  How is he starting kindergarten already?!?

Lonely... for friends in my new town.  Luckily I found a MOPS group and they meet next Thursday. I can't wait!!!

Unswaddling... Carly and feeling so relieved that she's fine with it.  I've also introduced (or reintroduced, rather) her little bunny lovey, and she's so sweet with it. I am hoping that this will make napping on the go easier, and leaving her with Josh easier.

Walking... all day, errday it feels like!  We take the twins to school, we walk back home from school.  We walk to school to pick them up, and we walk back home again. We live almost a mile from the school (just inside the walking boundary) so I've been getting 10,000+ steps everyday since school started.  It makes me so happy. (Okay... and sore!)

Wishing... that the office/laundry room was unpacked like the rest of the house.  I am hoping this three day weekend means I will have some time to tackle it.

Enjoying... our new afternoon routine of snack at the table together, talking about our days, followed by jumping on the trampoline.

***

Leaving Rural Alaska

Josh packed for days and days and days on end.

Our Sleep Number bed, all packed up

The boys' room

Our room

Our bathroom

Our living room

Our dining room

Books for days...
from both Josh's classroom,
and our personal collection.

Our kitchen

The boys' playroom

Marshall, Alaska
The old airport & rock quarry to the left;
The village in the mid-upper left;
The road to the new airport running horizontally across the mid-upper right.
(Photo courtesy of Josh's old coworker)

Picking up Josh for the last time at the airport.
What a relief to be done with that!

And then the boxes started showing up in Washington!

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Our time in rural Alaska ended in the spring.  Our house there was left empty, our boxes (24 in total) shipped to us.  Josh beat them home by many weeks.  I have wanted to write this post for a while now, but I can't really put into words what our time in Alaska did for us.  It grew us and changed us in irreversible ways.  It was good and hard and wonderful and horrible.  I suffered debilitating anxiety & depression plus two miscarriages while living on the tundra, but I also rejoiced in being a stay-at-home mom, living in a brand new, beautiful house that I got to turn into a home, and was blessed to homeschool our twins for three years while we were there.  I met and loved and cherished more people than I can count from our time in Marshall, people that will forever be etched on our hearts.  Its confusing to say that some of our family's best times were spent in that village, and then in the same breath to say that it was time for us to leave that place, but that's how life is.

Our boys were ready for more, and our family was too.

We will forever look back on our time there fondly.  Attending Saturday Social every weekend, watching our three blue eyed boys play with a gym full of beautiful brown eyed children whom we had grown to love like our own; cozy Saturday nights spent watching movies with our boys, enjoying pizza Josh made from scratch; Friday night date nights, the boys tucked in their beds, Josh and I together on the couch relishing the quiet... So much family bonding, adventuring and learning.  It feels as if it were all a dream.  Kind of a far away time that has taken on a fuzzy quality.

How did we do it? How did we pack and travel and live like that? How did we manage without a hospital or grocery store? I don't know... but we did.  Somehow that way of life became normal and comfortable.  And I am forever indebted to the way we lived there.  Because now? Now I am grateful for the most trivial things: Consistent internet.  Sour cream.  Fresh fruit.  Walking the aisles of the grocery store.  I am grateful also for our backyard more than ever because of our time spent stuck within the four walls of our home in rural Alaska.  My friend Peter said that the best way to become grateful was to experience periods of deprivation followed by periods of abundance... I find this to be incredibly true. Both in terms of things (mainly food), and in terms of people (ie Josh).  I'm so happy to be living with him again after our year apart.  The small things, like him making the bed so I don't have to, or hugging me after a long day with the kids, bring gigantic bursts of joy, whereas before I don't know if they would have even registered.

When we were making the decision to leave Alaska, it was gut wrenching.  We felt confused and emotional and unsure.  The way I know that we made the right decision is that I am totally okay with being normal, cliche, boring now.  I don't care that we bought a house in a subdivision with a good school and that we plan on putting the boys in baseball and boy scouts.  I don't care that I'm a stereotypical stay-at-home mom who drives a minivan and makes cookies  for an after-school snack.  Settling into this new normal feels right.  I don't miss the adventure, the exoticness of that life.  It was a beautiful chapter for our family, one I will remember fondly, but it's a chapter that has closed.  And this new chapter? It's going to be just as great.

***

My Heart On Ice

Tonight was the boys' open house to meet their teachers.  We went classroom to classroom, turning in supplies and checking out desks.  I am so proud of these boys.  They were all so excited, wearing their new outfits and sporting their new backpacks.

We did well tonight-- the boys were polite and listened well and I enjoyed seeing their new classrooms.  But after I got them to bed, I lost it.  I played this song by Hilary Weeks and cried while I did the dishes, remembering how tiny the twins were when we brought them home, and feeling that it just isn't possible for Wyatt to spend an entire day away from me.

I'm going to miss them.  Plain and simple.  I'm going to miss them at lunch and in the quiet of the afternoon.  I'm going to miss them while I'm running errands and while I'm bustling about the house. 

In addition to knowing I will miss them, I am anxious about all that this next step brings.  Independence for Wyatt, homework for the twins, and above all, the twins' experiences being different.

Tonight as I described the morning drop off for each brother, I thought to myself, "And so begins the separation of the twins."  Their lives to this point, have been linear.  Here is where their stories diverge.  (Cue hysterical sobbing from their mother, and leaps of joy from the twins themselves.)

I am reminded of my absolute favorite first day of school quote, found just days ago on Kelle Hampton's beautiful blog, describing what it feels like to be handing over your littles to their teacher:

 “Oh hey, here’s a cooler with my heart on ice. Keep it beating for the next seven hours and then seven hours again tomorrow and then maybe another 180 days after that.”

Pray for me, maybe?

***

Great Grandma Pansy

"When you love what you have,
you have everything you need."

***

Around Here: Week 34

Meditating... on this gem from Eckhart Tolle:
"Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have."

Visiting... the doctor.  Wyatt had an appointment this week, the twins have an appointment next week.  I think it's smart to have an established relationship with their new doctor before I send them off to the germ pool school. ;)

Organizing... all my new bookshelves. Oh the joy that a stack of books can bring!!! (For me, and for the kids!)

Experimenting... with cloth diapering again as a means to save money. So far, so good!  (I had 24 bumGenius diapers left from my cloth diapering days with Wyatt.)

Reading... Home Field by Hannah Gersen. It took me a while to get into it, but I'm enjoying it now.  Only one more book club book left (What Was Mine by Helen Klein Ross) and I will have worked my way through the whole summer list!

Exploring... our new neighborhood.  The boys hop on bikes or scooters and Carly rides in either her stroller or my Ergo, and we meander, taking in all the sights.  I'm loving it.

Road tripping... to Wenatchee (to the nearest Target) to pick up shelving for linens and other necessary items that we couldn't find at the Walmart in town. Wenatchee's only about an hour away and a lovely drive.

Looking forward... to fall, thanks to a sweet gift from my friend Ashley that arrived in the mail this week.  A beautiful dish cloth & set of autumn chapstick. Yum!

Enjoying... the dirt pit.  It entertains the boys for hours on end and feels like such a wholesome activity for three little boys!

Watching... the boys collect these strange seed/flower bombs from the neighbors tree.  They took off with a step stool, a grabber, and a plastic bag to collect the ones that dangle over the fence.  Now we have piles of them in our garage.  They look like slightly pokey tennis balls.

Feeling... Carly's new (razor sharp) tooth that finally poked through.  Thankfully she's only bit me a handful of times so far.  Yipes.

Working... on our front yard. Josh mowed the grass and we redid the front flower bed.  It's a small start, but it's a start!  Next up, trimming the roses that are blocking our front window!

Excited... for tonight when my sister & her fam arrive! We have a JAM-PACKED day planned tomorrow full of fun for our collective five boys & two baby girls.  I can't wait!

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