End of Summer, Beginning of School, and Everything Else in Between

Not even six weeks post-partum and I'm posting a blog! Talk about staying on top of things.  Here's a little photo run-down, with a few stories thrown in, too.  Julia and Eli were thrilled to begin 3rd and 1st grades, respectively, at a school only a 4 minute walk from our house.  4 miraculous, blessed minutes!  No more walk to the bus stop; waiting for a bus; walk to Eli's school; up and down stairs with a stroller; fight about whether Eli should use the bathroom or not; change from haus schuhe to regular schuhe; long walk to the U-bahn to avoid the bad pictures and locations; elevator ride down to the bottom floor; whoops, you were supposed to hit the middle floor button; sprint to the U-bahn because it's leaving right now or wait for 9 minutes because we actually just missed it; coax Katharine out of the stroller because this happens to be one of the few stations that still have barriers and my belly is too big to carry her up the stairs in a stroller anymore; walk to Julia's school; look all over kingdom-come because Julia's class seems never to be in their classroom; walk down to the other U-bahn; carry or coax Katharine down the stairs; we're finally back to our stop and--a mere 90 minutes later--we have finished the walk back to our apartment and are safe at home.  So, once again, 4 blessed minutes!!!!!

And here are my four children, who very much enjoy our four blessed minutes.  Don't worry grandparents, Abdiel is normally in the Baby Bjorn, not the bouncy jogging stroller. 

Katharine started school, too--Joy School!  She had great fun cutting the sleeves and collars off men's button up shirts for smocks, and proclaimed that the remnant sleeves made perfect bonnets.  Here she is trying it out.  She goes to Joy School with three little boys and one little girl, all of whom are in the New Haven ward, so we'll have a nice connection to our old friends and old apartment complex.  Last week was our first meeting and we have two this week!

Abdiel turned a month old!  Can you believe it???!!!!  30 days flies by when you spend them in an endless cycle of nursing, burping, changing, nursing, burping, changing....  Our ward was SOOO helpful.  They bring in 2-3 meals a week for 3-4 weeks, so between that and the freezer meals I had prepared before, it was actually a pretty great time!

Here's the little man modeling a onesie my Institute students in Berlin made and signed for him.  He really was smiling in the second one!

Not smiling here, obviously, but Katharine had enough joy for the both of them.

Daddy and Abdiel had some bonding time yesterday watching football on ESPN3--Podunkity Tech vs. Bo dittely High, I think--which plum tuckered both of them out. 

And now for a few stories.  I read in the Economist when my mom was here to help with Abdiel that a white buffalo had been born on a bison farm here in Goshen, CT.  Being part Native American myself (I throw that in for Justin's enjoyment) I knew that this was a momentous occasion for my people and wanted to let my children experience a little bit of their ancestral culture.  Unfortunately, our car wasn't working too well when my mom was here, so we didn't get to go until a few weeks after she left after we had secured some repair work.  Justin picked up a few books on tape for me, I packed a lunch and a picnic blanket, and we headed out for Goshen.  Connecticut is only about an hour's drive from one end to the other, and Goshen is 54 minutes from our place.  That 54 minutes happens to take the unwary traveler through the closest things that can be termed mountains in CT, and I had just happened to pick a day when a huge storm was set to come through.  So our 54 minutes turned into quite a bit longer, when we finally made it to the bison farm we were greeted with a sign that read "No Trespassing: Please Respect Owner's Privacy", and Eli was proclaiming she needed to go potty.  I asked the Oracle, i.e. GPS, for the nearest place to buy food intending to have Eli go potty and buy a muffin for the girls for their trouble.  The 10 minute drive down twisty roads on which GPS guided us landed us precisely nowhere near any sort of retail anything, and Eli was really howling for us to stop, so when I saw a roofing company's building up ahead, I pulled right on over. 

By this time the storm we had driven through in the mountains had caught up with us, so I grabbed an umbrella and hurried Eli over to the woods since these company offices were actually closed for the day.  "Okay, Eli!  Go!" I encouraged when we reached the trees.  And go she did, but without removing certain necessaries first.  So back I went in the rain to grab our water to rinse out her clothes.  By this time Abdiel was crying to be fed and Katharine also needed to go potty.  So back I went to the woods with Katharine, who had selected as outfit that day a beach cover-up that required complete removal before she could accomplish her business.  So there she stood, in the rain, close to completely naked, perhaps making like an Indian.  I guess they got in touch with their heritage after all.

We ended the shenanigans by eating our picnic lunch under the open back hatch to protect us from the rain.  We did get to hear Ramona Forever, at least, even if we didn't get to see a white buffalo.

Despite those hardships, I still had a hunkering to try to have a fun summer before the girls started school.  With the weather feeling a bit chillier than usual the day before school started, I thought I'd take the girls over to a beach half an hour away that we hadn't visited in years just to pick up shells in between looking for school supplies.  I threw a few random food items in a couple brown bags and herded the kids out to the van.  A lingering smell of gasoline followed us on the drive over, but I didn't really pay too much mind to it until we parked in the lot at Silver Sands Beach.  A quick glance under the car revealed gas POURING out onto the road.  "Oh my goodness!  Get back in the car everyone!"  Once again I consulted the oracle for the nearest auto repair place, which, fortunately, was just around the corner but, unfortunately, was an auto body place, not auto repair.  When the owner saw (and smelled) our car, he insisted we all evacuate the vehicle, had his men push the car into the road, and called his buddy at a real repair shop to come pick it up and have a look.  The girls munched on ritz crackers and waved a goodbye to "Silverina" and then we took up the brown-bagged lunch, Abdiel's car seat, and the diaper bag and headed down to the beach.  I'm really, really glad we have cell phones now, because who knew what we would have done otherwise.  As it was, I sat down in the little bit of shade there was--it turned out not to be such a chilly day after all--and went through my meager contact list trying to locate help while the girls picked up shells on the beach.  My one friend with a 12 passenger van not answering, and no one else really having the means to come help us, I finally settled on calling a friend whose minivan Justin could get to relatively easily from work.  Justin secured directions off google maps to Silver Sands Beach and set off to rescue us.  Meanwhile, the girls had tired of collecting shells in the hot sun and had jumped in the ocean--fully clothed--to the great chagrin of their mother.  After a pleasant little wait by the boardwalk we received word that Justin had just pulled into the parking lot.  "Perfect!" I said.  "We're right next to the pay station."  "I'm at the pay station," Justin replied.  "Where are you?"  After a few more moments' confusion and a chat with a man whose tan told me he spent lots of time at this beach, we discovered that Silver Sands Park has many beaches, including Silver Sands beach, which we were not at, and Walnut beach, which we were.  Luckily he knew exactly how to direct Justin--who did not have an oracle by which to be misguided--to us since he was a firefighter in Milford.  And that little bit of confusion ended up buying us just enough time--when we swung by the auto repair place on the way home, they were just pulling our car out of the garage.  Our poor little car whose fuel line had not been properly clamped into place when all that repair work was done and had consequently had a hole rubbed in it from the drive shaft.   I guess with the way the gas was leaking onto the exhaust, it was practically a bomb waiting to explode.  Glad it didn't!

And speaking of the fire department, we had one more run-in with them this week.  Justin had his first sitting in New York Tuesday and Wednesday, so after a very fun gathering at our friends the Harrells' in Wilton, CT for Labor Day, I dropped Justin off at the train station in Norwalk and drove the rest of us home.  I locked and double locked all the doors since we were home alone that night.  In the morning rush of trying to get everyone out the door and to school (bless that 4 minute walk!!!) I grabbed Justin's keys, not mine, and returned in a light drizzle to find I had locked us out.  Luckily our neighbors were out and about and let them into their home and called the fire department for us.  It was pretty scary how easily they broke back into our house, but really glad they did!  We promptly had multiple house keys made.

All this and Abdiel's not even six weeks old!  Having a boy is so much fun!