Musings of a Meandering Mom

Good vs. Easy. This is something I've fought my entire time as a mom. From the moment I first heard, " Is he a good baby?" And those rude dogs weren't asking if my precious baby was the spawn of Satan. What they really wanted to know was if my baby was easy....ate on a schedule, slept on a schedule, kept quiet. Goo goo'ed and gaga'd, but never really got worked up or had difficulties. It's all well-intentioned, but it also sends the very wrong message.

This may be chaotic to follow, but hang with me on this one.

I love Barenaked Ladies. I'm not ashamed. I'll say it again. I LOVE Barenaked Ladies. Their song, What a Good Boy talks about how we perceive people, from birth, and keep them captive in these perceptions. What if people are perceived as bad, when they're just challenging? When we are challenged as parents, as educators, as neighbors, what is our reaction? Do we sincerely write someone off as bad, simply because they require more of us than we anticipated, or were even willing to give?

Lost at School is one of my favorite books from when my kids were in public school. In it, Dr. Greene discusses challenging kids, disruptive kids, and how schools handle them. His discourse on Positive Behavior Systems (PBS) really made me think about something I had assumed into my thought patterns since I was earning my teaching license. How we reward kids whose natural tendencies are what we deem positive and punish those kids who are naturally disruptive. How we continue to view easy vs. challenging as good vs. bad.

'Tis the Season

....Illness is in the air. And air is in our lungs. And thus, we are ill. Like dominoes, we all fell to whatever hit Bill in Prince William Forest Park. With the two kids we had sick in the Dulles hotel, we were almost halfway through the family. Three down, four to go. Fast forward past Thanksgiving (thankful that no one was ill on that day!), and we had two down Friday morning. And the last two on Saturday night/Sunday morning. And, being the giving people we are, we also took down Bill's brother's family.

Much of the past few days has been spent on house keeping. Cleaning surfaces, doing laundry, scrubbing toilets. You know the drill. It certainly was NOT how we envisioned our holiday, but Bill's brother and sister-in-law have been amazingly wonderful during this whole ordeal, and I'm sure feel they can check off their familial obligations for this lifetime!

The countdown continues.....10 days until trailer day!

Prince William Forest Park

Right off I-95, in the heart of congestion in Northern Virginia, right next to Quantico (FBI and Marines), lies Prince William Forest Park. 15,000 acres of forest as a respite from the hectic world of stressful jobs, wrenching traffic, and hustle and bustle of everyday life. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. Very cold during the mornings, so I took to driving the scenic drive loop every morning. Sometimes with company, sometimes without. The leaves reached their peak while we were there, and the drive was just amazing. Part of that might have been the seat heater, but another part was definitely the leaves.

Farms to Forest Trail

NB's last Webelos adventure in order to earn his badge, was Webelos Walkabout. This one calls for a three mile hike. Ah, Farms to Forest fit the bill. NB wanted to bring cheese, ham, and crackers as our lunch. So we packed up, and four out of the seven of us made the hike. Bill happened to be sick as a dog that day, so NS volunteered to stay and take care of him, and J just decided not to hike. That worked well, with each group being happy with their lot. Except maybe Bill. I don't think he liked his lot in life that day. But the hike was fantastic.

NB Hiking

We had a lot of hills on our journey, so I ran down the first couple. The kids loved that. It made the hike a bit more work, but I'm sure it was good for my complaining old body. There were so many leaves on the ground that I really wanted to try leaf skiing, but it didn't work so well when I tried to slide on them. Fear not, I slid a-plenty, but not when I was actually trying.

Laurel Loop Trail

Bill did manage to feel better, so on our last day there, before we headed back out to a hotel to avoid the below-freezing temps, we walked the Laurel Loop Trail. About a mile and a half long loop, it's a very popular trail. The Quantico Creek winds through the park, and there are many small bridges throughout all the trails. This bridge, though, is the biggest one we came across, and is just cool. We were hiking this on a Saturday, so there were many more people than we'd encountered any other time in the park. Mind you, for most of the week, we were camping there with only one other person in the campground. We tried for some good pictures, but settled for just regular pictures, and then gave up the bridge so others could try for their pictures, too.

J Being Sworn In

The Jr. Ranger badge activities were awesome for this park. A lot of parks have kinda simple activities. The kids learn a lot, but they can get most of the booklets done just in the visitor center. This park had the kids actually taking hikes. It was cool. And when the Ranger swore them in, he took the kids outside, right under the flag, next to a petrified tree (millions of years old), and swore them in there. Totally awesome. I told the Ranger that it may possibly be the best swearing in the kids have ever done. Loved it!!!!!

After leaving Prince William, we headed back over near Dulles Airport for a couple more days at a hotel. The weather got cold a second weekend in a row. I just can't get my head around camping in the freezing weather. It was nice to just be warm. On our last night in the hotel, we hung out with some friends at their house. Their youngest had a rough cough, so they warned us about being sick. We headed out anyway. Bill went for full disclosure and mentioned that he had been sick the week prior. That night we woke up to two kids being violently ill. Hotel walls aren't as easy to clean in the middle of the night as you might expect. Ah, what a fun travel day we had the next day. But it was a fast moving illness, so by the end of the travel day, the kids were back to mostly good. Thank goodness. And now for the Thanksgiving fun!

Daylight Savings and Squanderings

Ah, daylight. My friend. My enemy. I hate the word "frenemy," so I won't use it here. At any rate, when we were in Banff, the sun came up around 5am and set somewhere after 10pm. That's 17 hours of daylight. Glorious daylight. That's time to do things, to see things, to feel the warmth of the sun. Alas, the sun rises now after 7am and sets around 4:30pm. Um, that stinks larger than 'potamus poo. I wake up now around 6am, and the temps are around 40 (sometimes lower, sometimes higher), and the sun doesn't really rise for another hour and a half, with it not really touching the temperatures for two and a half hours after I've gotten up. And now the kids really aren't getting up until 8:30 or later, they don't want to bounce out of bed when it's freezing out. So our day is starting slower, we're taking longer to do things, and the day ends quicker. We've got to get our dinner made, eaten, and cleaned up by about 5:30. The sun sets around 4:30, the darkness hits around 5, and we are again freezing by about 5:30.

I did not fully love the lengthy days in Banff. I wanted to sleep without sunlight. But I prefer those days (at least in Banff). We've been eating out more because of the challenges, we've been sleeping more, and I'm off kilter.

National Park for the Performing Arts

Wolf Trap is a park I've gone to bunches of time to see concerts and other performances, in the Filene Center, the Barns, and even in the Theater in the Woods. So it's been on my list to share with the kids for quite a while, but today was the day it was actually on the schedule! First things first, we went to my old roomie's house that I've never seen since she and her husband bought it after we left the region. What a gorgeous house and property they have!!! And they've been busy with renovations, truly making it reflect them.

MP and J Taking Pictures

Fountain at the Gardens

Our hotel really isn't that far from MP's house, so we stopped off at Trader Joe's en route since we were so early. Got us some tasty treats, and still made it to her house on time. I'm glad we picked up some snacks, because not only did we hit Wolf Trap, but we also made it to Meadowlark Botanical Gardens. What a beautiful day we had!

Taking the Stage

Crossing the Creek

Wolf Trap has so much to offer besides the performances that bring most people to the park. I haven't been to the Theater in the Woods since my days at the day care center, so it was a great trip for me. Tragically, it was not as great for everyone in my party. My NS did not enjoy himself nearly as much. He did teach MP a scout song, which we then performed onstage, so that was a personal highlight, and I think it made it a bit more fun for him.

Revisiting

St. Mary of Sorrows Historic Church

Because I lived in VA for so long, I've got a huge list of things I'd like to do, places I'd like to go. We went to mass at the church Bill and I were married in. It's on the historic registry for Virginia. This building was actually used by Clara Barton during the Civil War. We arrived late, so we had to sit in the sacristy, which was a shame, but we did get to look around after mass. While we were hanging out waiting for the kids to get the camera from the car (why would I have left that in there????), I saw a family friend go by. I have not seen this lady since our wedding, I think. So after running to catch up with her and scaring the bejeepers out of her, I got a really cool chance to catch up with Mrs. Lowther and see how her kids are, introduce her to my kids. What a great meeting. Yeah!!!!

Cemetary

After talking with Mrs. Lowther, we spent some more time on the grounds and looked at the gravestones. There are some very old graves in the cemetary, and the kids were fascinated with looking at the stones and seeing how long ago these people lived. There's even a grave from a confederate soldier. There's no death date, though, so we're not sure if he died in the war or later.

Inside the Church

I just love the inside of this church. It's not a large space, but it is absolutely gorgeous. The pastor was the presider, so we even got to meet him after mass. He asked if our kids were old enough to be servers, and we explained that we were out of town. He threw a lot of snark our way for having left town. He was a fun guy, I'm glad we got to have a little chat.

After mass, I took the kids on a bit of a driving tour of my places. We drove by the main church, did a drive by of my high school, hit my grocery store, took a look at my parents' old house (it's not blue any more!), and then made our way over to Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria where we met up with buddies. I worked as a day care summer camp leader for several years, so there are a lot of places I've visited and explored, but I can't figure out how or why I would have heard of this park. It's amazing, it's a wetland habitat in Fairfax County, but it's not necessarily where I spent a lot of time. At any rate, I've known about this place for more than 20 years, and Cici went to elementary school just down the street from the park, so she was excited to meet us there and have the chance to show her kids her old elementary school and the house she lived in so long ago.

Frogs

G took this picture for me. It was cool to get to see all the frogs. We also got to see tracks in the mud, which the guys at the visitor center were happy to identify for us. The boardwalk is a nice half mile loop that takes you right over the water. We searched for birds, frogs and toads, dragonflies, beavers, otters, and possibly weasels. Bill sat looking for some little beastie for quite a while, but never got a second glimpse of it. When we were at the visitor center, Bill talked to the guys there, and they handed him a field guide. When he told them he thought it was a weasel (originally we wondered whether it was a muskrat), they said they haven't seen one there in a couple decades. Hmmm.... But he definitely saw something of that size, so who knows? It might have been a mink, but those sightings are also rare.

Turtle!

G on the Boardwalk

The boardwalk hike is just a fun little jaunt. We got to see turtles, too. I can't believe I forgot the turtles! They were so cool. We got to see three of them right in a group. It was pretty amazing that we got to see any wildlife, since we had seven kids behaving like lunatics. Which was fun in its own right, but they weren't the best nature observers that day.

As Good as It Gets

This is a fantastic picture for this bunch. I'm so glad they all get along. I remember having to meet my parents' friends when I was a kid, having to play with their friends' kids. It's not always a smooth thing. But all the times we've hung out since January, all the kids have played well without any awkwardness. Cool.

And we've got plans with more people and to see more things while we're in the area. I'm very excited.

Virginia, Again

We've finally made it back into Virginia! When we left in September, we were supposed to be on our way to Shenandoah National Park, but abandoned because of the rain. So this time around we were going to hit Shenandoah and then head over to Prince William National Forest Park. BUT, weather thwarted us again. Things got really cold, so we stayed in Tennessee instead of going to Shenandoah. And this weekend we're staying in a hotel, because I just can't bring myself to wake up in a 24 degree tent.

Visiting with Uncle Dick

On our way to our hotel in Chantilly, we stopped off in Richmond to have lunch with Bill's uncle. Definitely one of our favorite ways to spend a couple hours on a travel day! We had pizza at Cici's Pizza, and chatted for almost two hours. Tragically, when we left, there had been a wreck on I-95, so our travel was extended by an hour and a half. Blech.

But now that we're in the hotel, we're happy and relaxed (ish). We did spend WAY too much time watching Food Network. They had Cake Wars running, and they showed the entire competition in back to back shows, so we watched until midnight to see who won. Not so good.