Merry Christmas!

In lieu of a Christmas card (which I have yet again not written ...) I dug up a few favorite photos from this year to put here. It is bittersweet to get so many cards in the mail, from faithful friends and family who don't get return cards from us - such pleasure at being remembered, and at being able to catch up a bit with growing kids and various adventures, but so! difficult not to compare my actual accomplishments with the endless and ever-more-perfect list in my head of things I should have done.

Things I might have written, had I sent such a card:

Peter is lively and energetic and was, I believe, the inspiration behind the structure of the children's Sunday School program earlier in the month - it involved a reinactment of the Creation narrative, complete with interpretive dance to represent the emergence of various critters onto the earth, and there's really nobody like Peter for wriggling around energetically in church. We feel loved at our church and that makes the rest of the week easier.

Grace is doing a range of things inside and outside school, including dance and violin, and along with Peter has become a veritable encyclopedia of all things Harry Potter-related. Her analysis of Dolores Umbridge, in particular, is quite interesting. (She is, for the uninitiated, scary as hell. Dolores, I mean, as Grace is a lovely young person and not at all scary.) I've become the mother who has to remove the book from the child's hand if she wants teeth brushed or the table set, and I think that's a good sign.

We are otherwise making our way, more or less. I am astonished by how busy we are, and yet we almost always eat a dinner together that someone has made from actual ingredients. I'm planning a marathon next July with my fabulous friend Kara. About 90% of the time, I really love my job. I learned a lot about what kind of music my students listen to this year, and am a more culturally attuned person for it. Mike's working hard and at his job and is now on church council which is, I think, a sign of his life coming full Lutheran circle.

I can hardly bear how big my kids have gotten, but am also so pleased that they're interesting people who make me laugh and make me think.

So thanks for the friendship and patience, sorry about the lack of cards, and phone calls, and timely birthday greetings, and the slightly neglected yard, and the occasional late return of papers, and the other various daily instances of imperfection and finitude. We'll figure it all out eventually.

Long time, no blog...

Oh, dear... December already? Sigh. This mama has had a busy fall!



We had a lovely Sankta Lucia celebration today, or two really - one at church, one at home. Yesterday we baked Lussekatter, and today we ate it.

Peter vetoed the Starboy hat this year, so Grace did Lucia at home as a solo production, but at church Peter was delighted to dress up in Lady Martyr Drag - he wanted a Lucia crown, and a Lucia crown he got. (I made one for each kid in our small Sunday School out of garland and ribbons - while I neglected to take any pictures at all, they were plenty cute.) The kids helped to pass out cookies for the choir's annual post-church cookie fest, and then helped to collect plates, etc. after people were done. It was easy, and fun, and successful, and helpful to the elderly choir ladies hosting, so it felt like a series of wins. It was a holiday lite version of the celebration this year, although I may still come to their respective classrooms to teach a bit about the Lucia tradition, separation of church and state pending. (Yep, I'm serious, but they got jelly donuts for Hanukkah, so I think gingersnaps for St. Lucia shouldn't be too much of a stretch...)

First day of school...

Yep, it's mid-August. And also the first day of school! My lax uploading of vacation pictures will have to resume later on (also a series of dioramas peopled by clothespin dolls of humans and aliens - that's going to be amazing, so stay tuned). It's unbearably hot here, so the day's start was a sweaty one as we all milled around on the blacktop listening to the brass band and sorting ourselves into the appropriate student group or the large herd of parents (some weeping, but not me!) The kids are happy with their new teachers and more or less eager for the start of the new year.

Montana trip, part one...

Mountain sheep! Mountain goats! Mountain children!

Snow in July (at the top of Logan pass) is always fun. We spotted a herd (?) of mountain sheep and a lone mountain goat, and amused ourselves by sliding around in the snow. On the shuttle bus ride down, we saw a family of mountain goats, with shaggy, slightly grimy adults and cute, freshly-issued kids, which made me laugh. The shuttles were really cool - we brought lunch with us and ate before riding to the top of Logan Pass, then had quite a comfortable (and free!) trip to the top and then back when we were ready. Much nicer than driving.

Upcoming: we tie dye! we swim! we fish! we run although there are no pictures of the actual half-marathoning so we will illustrate with post-practice-run photos from the park!

Initial Montana photos....

Somehow we misplaced the cable that attaches the camera to the computer and allows for the magical downloading of pretty vacation pictures. But luckily I took some with my phone... here's a sampling of Fun Summer Stuff.

Grace and Peter at lunch in Bigfork... some flowers in a planter at UM, in Missoula... and most fun of all, a tree sporting a knitted cozy. Like a tea cozy, designed to keep one's tea warm in the pot during a leisurely afternoon of tea sipping. Only for a tree. I think this is fabulous and hope it catches on, that trees everywhere rise up and demand to be cozied.

It might have had something to do with the tree's proximity to a yarn store, but we'll leave things open for interpretation...

Mamas run wild!

We're in Montana for our annual vacation that I'm hoping, over time, gives my kids a powerful sense of place and a deep connection with the outdoor world. But in the meantime, they are learning to appreciate that mamas run fast.

About a year ago, my friend Kara and I tossed around the idea of doing a marathon this summer. We decided in the spring that the half marathon was more our speed (pun alert! pun alert!) and have been training for it for months. It required some logistics (registration, hotel reservations in Missoula, wrangling of three generations of each of our families to meet at the finish) and we left to the end some of the important details, like how fast we might run, and whether we would even run well together.

Happily it only took one four-mile practice run to determine that our paces were compatible (this after I disclosed over the phone a few weeks ago "I can't possibly run faster than ten minute miles!" and Kara responded "Thank goodness!") We met up the morning of the run, and in my coffeeless state I was so glad that Kara was thinking things like "Is this the right bus?" so that we didn't accidentally get dropped at the full marathon finish. The pep talk at the start was typically annoying, but the other runners, especially the ones dancing to the warm up music, had us giggling, and the day was gorgeous - clear and sunny, but not hot.

And the run was amazing! Several miles of rural roads, and then a slow turn into town. As the houses got closer together, more and more people were out playing music (sometimes live, including some great kids on violin and oboe) and showering us with their sprinklers and - amusingly - having cookouts.

Kara's so fun to run with, and she's smart in a way that I am not smart. She planned race strategy in a way that meant we pushed really hard at the end, and - in her words - had a "strong finish." My usual m.o. is to try to keep an even pace throughout, and then inevitably slow down near the end as I tire out. Her way is more fun and more energizing and I don't think I could have done it without someone to show me how. We had a 5 minute lag at the portapotties near mile 5, but otherwise ran faster than our target pace, finishing with a very respectable 2:16:15. If you enter either of our last names in the finish cam engine (link below), you can see us at the end - she's in the sunglasses and brown shirt, I'm in the navy blue tank top, and we split up and zip around a guy in a red shirt right at the end. I've *never* run faster than anyone at the end, but we were passing people from about mile 10, and it felt really, really good.

http://www.runwildmissoula.org/index.php/fuseaction/missoulaMarathon.main.htm

Other things that were new to me: lots of people had temporary tattoos of the race logo (see image above), and lots of people had special tape on various hurting parts of their bodies (mostly knees and feet). It seems like a gamble to tape yourself up for race day, but it seemed to work. There are also a lot of tattoos in general in Missoula, more per capita than in Omaha, and I had fun looking at people's ink as we ran.

Next year we're going to do the full, and Kara's doing a half and I'm doing a half later in the fall. It was a New Year's resolution for me to get back into half marathon shape (after time off running last fall to get some physical therapy on my IT band) and stay there, and I'm really happy about how good my knees are doing and how much fun it has been to run this spring and summer.

Other vacation stories, which will likely come out of chronological order: We visit sheep! We go fishing several times without catching fish! We swim and hike and play in the park! Mama learns to kayak (which turns out to not require much skill if one is on a sunny, placid lake)! We go on a treasure hunt and are delighted with with results!

It has been a nice vacation.

One of these things... is not like the other.

In which we do some delicious cultural/religious anthropology and determine... Swedes and Italian's ain't identical.

First, as avid readers of our blog will remember, we are quite fond of the Swedish Santa Lucia tradition in our household. (It is the inspiration for our Christmas tree topper, several elementary school presentations, a regular December home celebration, and our tattoo.) We noticed last year that local Italians also have a Santa Lucia festival, which happens in June. Naturally, we've been wanting to go, and today was our chance.

The Swedish festival, to recap: usually happens in church; involves a flaming crown; has a great set of traditions like lussekatter (eyes on a bun!) and Starboys (little brothers in choir robes!) and is scheduled for the darkest night of the (Gregorian) year.

The Italian festival, if the local one is any indication, is like this: a carnival! In summer! With awesome Italian food! And beer! And a tiara from the 1950's! And a statue who gets paraded around! And karoke!

I had an Italian sausage and [red] pepper sandwich that was - really, really good. A longtime festival-goer recommended it, and she did not steer me wrong. Grace had fried ravioli, and if that sounds odd, it ... was odd. Still decent. Peter had a hot dog, that being his default Kid Food. And the kids had some ice cream. We also chatted up the reigning Lucia Festival Queen, who was as lovely and polished and friendly a young person as I have met in some time. And y'all will remember that I teach college, so those are words of high praise indeed. She mentioned that as her gift to the festival, she had the tiara professionally restored, which I found just delightful.

So it wasn't totally clear to me what any of this had to do with Lucia, the (possibly fictional) young woman martyred in the third century of the common era. There was an organ transplant advocacy organization sponsering the festival, and Lucia did allegedly have her eyes taken out, so there's that... but it was fun and yummy and the kids enjoyed it, so what else could I ask, really?