Quotes I like...and some musings

Before we left for our road trip to Wisconsin, I took the kids to Target to buy a new book each for the ride, and some snack food for the car. I also picked up a book for myself. I couldn't for the life of me remember any of the 30 some books on my to-read list on Good Reads, so I just browsed for awhile. I ended up in the young adult section with a few books that I wanted to get. I bought a book called Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins, and thoroughly enjoyed it even though it was about a bunch of 14 year-olds. I haven't read many books about 30 somethings raising kids. I don't know, I really liked being 14 and I really like coming of age books in general, for light reading, maybe because you discover so much about yourself at that age. Anyway, I even underlined one line in it because it really struck me so I wanted to write about it. It is about a boy who is dragged to a cafe with his older sister, unwittingly to be her social buffer, and hears live guitar music for the first time. "He didn't realize that her was in a sponge state but, having been separated from his moorings--couch, TV, pizza--and led into unfamiliar territory, there was a spongy piece of him left open and receptive to the universe in whatever form it might take, and the form it took was a guitar." I really like that idea of a spongy state. I guess it has to do with being 14 too, because I don't think I am as spongy or open to the universe as I was at that age. One of the things I miss most about being a university student, well I guess that is older than 14, but still, is being enlightened and inspired not only by my subject material and brilliant professors, but by new surroundings and experiences.
This summer has been kind of mind numbing for me, and maybe that is why I have been reading a lot lately, to try to balance it out, but after we got through the swimming season, which was basically just busy, and no time to think, and the traveling, we have been just hanging out at home (to escape the heat and humidity and also because I get worn out a lot and need to rest), and the kids seem to be fine with it, they play so much and do productive stuff too like workbooks, and read and practice piano and they are developing a lot of house cleaning skills through lots of practice. At the beginning of the summer I was worried about keeping them entertained and busy, but now I realize it is me that needs to be entertained and stimulated to stay mentally balanced, but it makes me think, when I let my kids play with each other for hours or get them started on projects that occupy a lot of their time, and go read a book or something, am I really doing the best job I should be raising my kids, am I lazy? Sometimes when I take naps because I am exhausted, I think, "my body needs a nap because it is growing a baby inside" or I have also been experiencing sever headaches frequently, which I never had before, and sometimes the only thing that helps is laying down. Granted, economically, it would not make sense for me to get a job and put the kids in day-care, nor be the best thing for them, but it makes me think, am I working as hard as my husband does at work, or other "working" adults. Which gets me to my next quote.
It is from "The Chosen" by Chaim Potok, about a Jewish boy growing up in Brooklyn during WWII. This is the boy's father speaking to him, "I learned a long time ago Rueven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here. Do you understand what I am saying?"
It makes reminds me of how I felt on my mission when my companion and I would come back to our apartment after a long day of missionary work completely physically exhausted and also excited and anxious for the next day. I do experience physical exhaustion as a mother but I am not always anxious for the work of the next day. As an ESL teacher I would get excited about my lesson plans and the progress my students would make. I felt a direct connection between my efforts and their growth. I don't feel that as much right now as a mother. Maybe because I am not actively planning for their growth, I am in more of an auto-pilot, survival mode. I am planning on home-prechooling Annika this year, and I am wondering if I will have the energy to really put in a good effort and plan enriching activities for her.
Sorry, I ended that on kind of a depressing note, that's what happens in my brain when I start spiraling downward. I should have given myself the pep talk that it is going to be wonderful and it is a great idea to home-prechool Annika and it is just the opportunity I need to throw myself into something and all I need to do is find some kind of pre-school cirriculum that has definate goals laid out so that we can measure her progress, and we are going to have a wonderful time together and learn all kinds of new songs, and do cool new art projects and she is going to become really great at writing her letters and maybe even learn how to read......:)
And this will help add meaning to my life...God-willing.

Trip to the zoo with Grandma in July

Adriana riding a camel.
Annika having the time of her life on a pony.
Ariel with birds landing on the hat the zookeeper put on her head.
Dallin and I in a paddle boat.
The kids posing with Grandma and a dinosaur statue.

Bad luck with beaches

Svetlana and Annika at Brighton Beach

So, I am trying to catch up with all of the pictures of all of the fun things we did in July, and the next pictures were ones we took the day we tried to go to Brighton Beach, which is a part of Brooklyn where Russian immigrants live and there are a lot of Russian stores and restaurants. Our goal was to eat at a place called Cafe Glechik, but it was a pretty unsuccessful trip, so I decided not to blog about it. But after my trip to a beach in New Jersey yesterday, the one to Brighton Beach may not look so bad. So, as I mentioned we were actually planning on going to a restaurant, not the beach, but after driving around looking for a parking spot for a few hours, we decided to call and order take out from said restaurant and just jump out of the car to pick it up. The problem was that we went on a weekend in the middle of July when everyone and their Russian brother are going to the beach to actually lay out on the sand or swim or something, so there were absolutely not parking spaces available. We even tried near-by residential neighborhoods, but they had signs posted that you can't park there from May to September. If there is a warm day in September (maybe next year) we might try going back, because the food was definitely worth it (real shashliki if you know what I'm tlaking about). And I think it would be neat for Nikolay to be in an environment where everyone is speaking Russian. He is not to excited about that aspect of it, but I think after he experiences it he won't regret it. Kind of like when we first moved to Salt Lake, and I felt like he would enjoy going to the Russian branch, and he was really hesitant, but then after four years it was hard to convince him to switch to a local ward.
So the picture above is one we took when we were waiting for our food to be made, Nikolay let his mom and I out with the kids, and we walked down to the water, put our feet in for a few minutes and walked back across the hot sand trying not to step on the sunbathing, Russian speaking, lucky people who had successfully parked their cars somewhere, or maybe they came on the subway, which is what we probably should have done.
The part that I feel really bad about is that we had Jacob and Emily come to meet us there and we had to leave before they even got there. They had to spend an hour on the subway just to get there, but that by that time we had already been looking for a parking spot for two hours, and had lost moral and could not come up with a plan B. It was really very poor planning on my part. I guess I was just optimistic that something would work out. Which leads me to our adventure yesterday.
Maybe being optimistic, and not planning things out well, it a fault of mine....... maybe. For a while now Ariel has been asking if we could go to the beach sometime, and I told her that yes, we will go to the beach sometime this summer. Well, this week has been pretty boring for the kids, compared to the rest of the summer. Swimming is over, we are back from our family vacation, and my biggest accomplishments for Monday and Tuesday were getting our tires rotated and going to my first prenatal appointment (I'll blog more about that later.) Although those activities seemed to fill up my days the kids were a little on the bored side, so with nothing planned yesterday, I woke up thinking, "Today is a good day to take the kids to the beach. My neighbor, who grew up in New York, gave me the address of a nice beach that she has frequented since her childhood. I checked it out on line and checked the weather. It was a little overcast with a high of 80 degrees and it wasn't supposed to rain until 4:oo at which time it was only supposed to be 40% chance of rain, a risk I was willing to take. The only thought I had about the weather was that with the grey skies, the pictures wouldn't be that great. (How did I get away with spelling grey with an e today? Maybe little Miss Spellchecker is cosmically listening to me.)
Ariel and Adriana enjoying the waves in the rain.

Well, to make a long story short, we got to enjoy the beach for about seven minutes before a downpour had us running back to our car. At one point Ariel giggled and said,"This is the worst day of my life!" I thought. "Oh really, worse than being diagonosed with cancer? And you sure were having a lot of fun before I said we had to go back to the car beasue it was raining." She would have stayed out in the waves even if it were hailing. The kids all took all their clothes off in the car, I guess the prospect of driving back home for 2 hours in wet sandy clothes wasn't too appealing to them. Somehow everything we had managed to get wet and covered with sand. So in my quest to get older and wiser I have learned that next time I go to the beach I should pack dry towels and clothes that stay in the car. I couldn't very well drive around naked, so I was stuck in my wet clothes. For some reason we were all starving at this point, and in my condition I can't stand hunger very long without getting a little crazy. So we were driving around looking for a drive through, and I had thoughts like, "I hope we can find an interesting drive through not the typical fast food, like Greek food or "Curry in a Hurry" in Salt Lake. Better yet, I wish they had drive throughs that sold dry clothes, at least t-shirts, and underwear would be nice too." Well, no such luck, there wasn't even a McDonald's. Then I spotted a pizza place in a strip mall. I decided to run in and get some pizza for everyone while the semi-naked kids waited in the car, and hoped I wouldn't get arrested for that. I tried to brush as much sand off of me as possible, but was somewhat embarrassed to enter a restaurant dripping wet. The nice thing about living in the East is that there are real actual Italian people who run pizza places and call deep dish pizza "Sicilian." The nice thing about having an eight year old daughter is that when I got back to the car, she had everyone mostly dressed, having located somewhat dry clothes and shaken off the sand from most of them.
As we drove away from the strip of land that the beach was located on, we spotted a castle on a hill, and decided to drive up the hill to explore. It turns out that the castle was actually a historic site, of two old lighthouses connected by a fortress looking building, now turned into a museum. We got to see a giant bivalve lens, that the girls called a disco ball, becasue it was so shiney. The towers are actually the Twin Lights of Navesink.
The kids really enjoyed the museum there and climbing one of the towers.
Annika ended up wearing Dallin's swimsuit and rash guard because hers was too wet and we lost her skirt at the beach. Climbing up the tower. This is a view from the tower. You can see the new bridge they are building that take you out to the beaches, Sea Bright, the beach we went to is off to the right.

On the way out of town we followed some more little brown signs to find a scenic overlook with a playground called Mitchell Scenic Overlook, where on a clear day you can see all the way to NYC. Too bad it wasn't a clear day, but we had fun anyway getting wet all over again on the playground. Everyone agreed that we had a fun day despite the rain.
Adriana really wanted her picture sitting on this "gun" it was actually a cannon, but I guess that is not in my kids' vocabulary.

Falmingos in New Jersey and Martians in New York

We made a trip to see Jacob and Emily one last time before they moved away from the Big Apple to that place where everything that happens there stays there. Driving to Staten Island, we pass through New Jersey, and as we were crossing a narrow-to-me bridge, the girls shouted out, "Look there are flamingos down there!" I couldn't take my eyes off the road and I am sure that flamingos don't live this far north, so I just assumed they were some other kind of water fowl. We do see gray heron every once in a while. When I was in elementary school, we learned that both grey and gray were acceptable spellings but now little miss Spellchecker, tells me that I can't spell it grey. Why?????
Anyway, it was really great (as usual) to see Emily and Jacob, but what was even better this time was that Jacob was laid back, because he wasn't preoccupied with school.


We ate at a place called Mars 2112. I knew that we would have to eat somewhere, so I wanted to take the kids to a place they would enjoy. You go on a flight in their space craft that takes you to the planet Mars and then you eat typical American food with Martian names. And there are a few Martians walking around to pose for pictures. The kids had fun.


After that we went to a playground with some water squirting things in Central Park and then they escorted us back to the ferry station. It was a really fun day and I am so sad that they don't live as close anymore.

On another note, we have been digging out a plot of our yard to make a vegetable garden. There are tons of worms and Dallin kept saying "Worm mommy, worm!" And when Ariel spotted one she instructed everyone else to "chop them in half." I started explaining that worms are our friends ion the garden and enumerating all the useful tasks they perform for us when she said, "I know, and when you chop them in half it makes more worms, so it is even better for the garden." My fear is that they might not survive too many choppings.

Swim Team

We had a great time on the Alburtis/Shepard Hills swim team this year. I went from being afraid that my kids were going to drown at the first practice to letting them go swim with their friends while I watched Annika and Dallin in the baby pool at the end-of-season party. Ariel and Adriana both have improved their swimming skills so much. They started out swimming freestyle (when I was little they called it crawl stroke, go figure) at the meets but weren't that fast at first becasue the whole breathing thing was complicated. It was more like they were just trying to get to the other side of the pool. Then when they tried backstroke they discovered that they were a lot faster at it and it was easier because you don't have to worry about breathing. Maybe next year they will learn the butterfly and breast stroke.
One of the things that I really like about swimming as a sport if you have a few kids is that they will always be on the same team becasue the team ranges in ages from 4-18, so you take them to the same meet. Practices may be at different times for diffferent ages, but at the same pool, so you can just hang out at the pool all day. I also like that you are basically competing against yourself, trying to get a better time than you did last time. The girls loved collecting the ribbons from each meet, and even if they didn't place they still got one for participation. As with all new experiences, you open yourself up to taking risks and being surprised with the outcomes and in improving your own abilities.

Catchin up

So, I didn't write for the whole month of July. I was busy. We moved, were super involved with swimming, and went on 3 road trips. To catch up, I think I'll try to post a picture a day until I am all caught up. We had just moved when the Fourth of July rolled around, so we had a mini celebration involving lighting sparklers and watching 4 different fireworks displays on the distant horizon from Adriana's bedroom window. Our new house is kind of set up higher than the one's around it, so we have a great view of the valley. We didn't get our family room set up for a few weeks after moving, because it took us a while to get the paint job (red!) just right and find a rug that was just right for the room, and a decent TV stand, so we didn't plug our TV in for a couple weeks and the kids took to watching movies on Netflix on the computer. Adriana's new favorite is the Pink Panther. She just loves that kind of humor. She will do a play by play for me after she sees a really funny one.