IrishOboe

Saturday, July 23rd

Stephan wanted to start packing the week before we left.  It seemed to early for me.  I wasn’t ready.  I had some projects I wanted to finish first and was still compiling lists of what to bring, but we used all Saturday to pack and it was a brilliant idea.  It took longer to pack than expected, as usual, but then we had a week to finish up.  In the end, the night before we left the house was spotless and the neatest it’s been since moving (even the fridge was wiped down!), we were all packed and ready and it was early enough to enjoy a little time together before going to bed.  It was such a wonderful feeling!

Flights with a one-year-old were not easy, but Joseph was as good as anyone could have hoped for.  It took forever for him to fall asleep on the long-haul flight and I ended up sleeping at the foot of my seat because he was sleeping in my seat.  Needless to say, it wasn’t a resful trip, but we arrived savely and on time in Orlando Saturday night and enjoyed an Outback meal with Grandma and Dad-o before unloading our stuff and crashing to bed.

Sunday, July 24^th

We had a full day planned with church, croissants, shopping at Penzey’s, grocery shopping (yippy!) and friends over for dinner.  It was a lovely first day!

Monday and Tuesday, July 25^th+26^th

I buckled down to work tearing through all the stuff in my room in hopes of eliminating a lot of the junk that Mom and Dad have been holding onto for me.  We also managed to fit a few hours of errands in each day as well, plus I got a haircut (US rates!).  Stephan and Grandma entertained Joseph freeing me to work, and though it was tiring, we were all impressed with what I was able to get done.  I went through all of my stuff and marked 1/3 to ½ of it for disposal/donation.  Later Mom reminded me that they hadn’t gotten down the stuff in the attic . . .  We’ll have to go again, but this was a major hurdle accomplished.

Wednesday – Friday , July 27^th-29^th

Still a bit worn out from travel, we got in the car with Mom and Dad for the three day drive to the Maggie P. where we’d have our main vacation.  Joseph did incredibly well in the car considering how much he used to hate car seats and how unused to car travel that he is.  It was work for me and Grandma, but we made good time each day.  The first night we were in a hotel, the second we spent with NMKB, making sure to play double sol and eat great food (the eat good food part lasted all trip – yum!).  On Joseph’s 13-month birthday he decided to walk with a purpose!  Before then he’d only done a few steps and didn’t seem so interested, but this time he purposefully walked from person to person – still only a few steps or more, but it was purposeful!

Friday, July 29- Monday, August 8^th

We spent a lovely week and a bit at the Maggie P. enjoying beautiful weather for the most part and plenty of great company.  Joseph adores his cousins, especially the closer in age they are to him.  One day they took a day trip and he was depressed all morning, sitting in the sand but not moving – he was so sad his playmates had suddenly disappeared!  He didn’t seem to have stranger anxiety at all and took only a little time to warm up to people.  Joseph went for a first sail with Uncle Jon and Stephan.  We played games and ate good food and had such a wonderful time I didn’t make notes in my planner.  Pictures are up in the usual place.  It was so wonderful to be back at home with family.  The move to Emmen has been harder on me than I had expected, and I’ve really been feeling like a foreigner and a stranger, misunderstood and insignificant.  How wonderful it was to be around people who know me and love me, focusing on my strengths and being gracious with my weaknesses.  I miss you all so much!

Monday-Friday, August 8^th-12^th

The long trip back to Orlando.  Mom and Dad flew home and generously left us their car so we could make a longer trip back down the coast visiting with more friends and relatives.  We had another nice time with NMKB and got to visit with the T’s.  We spent the 9^th in DC visiting with a number of friends from various stages of life for both of us.  We spent the night with friend’s I’d known since birth!  It’s funny how many of them ended up in DC!  Most of the folks we’d seen the last visit, but this time I met up with a friend from middle school, KT.  Our children are of similar age and it was great to see her again!

The next day we had a long drive to Summerville, where Stephan’s relatives are.  We made it in time to enjoy Great Grandma W’s pool before dinner.  Joseph loved it!  It was the perfect temperature for him and he had a blast practicing everything he learned at the Maggie P., mainly swimming underwater between Mom and Dad which he asked to do over and over again.  He also started jumping off the pool edge from a seated position while holding onto my thumbs and getting submerged before I pulled him up.  It was very exciting for me that he reached this step.  Though we’ve been going to the pool regularly I haven’t seen much progress, so I was thrilled that he did so much at the Maggie P.!

We spent the whole next day in Summerville and visited Great-Grandpa W’s grave with Great-Grandma.  We had dinner at Sticky Fingers with the whole crew and very much enjoyed our time there.

Friday we drove to Orlando and were very grateful that we had no major car trouble the whole trip.  We got back in the afternoon so there was time for more cleaning-up, packing, swimming in the pool, and a good dinner before trying to get some rest before more long hours of traveling.  We left the house at 5:30am the next morning and didn’t get back to Emmen until the following day in the afternoon.  We were very grateful to have Grossvater and Grossmutti waiting with their car for us at the Zurich airport.  By some miracle we fit all five of us plus five bags and carry-ons into their 5-seater car.  I very much enjoyed coming home to a clean house, though it was soon a mess again of stuff, but imagine what it would have been like if it was already a mess from before!

Thanks to everyone for making it a great trip!  We love and miss you all!

Some days everything seems to go wrong and other days everything seems to line up.  Most days are a bit in between, but here is an account of one day to give you (and my future self) a glimpse into daily life here in our new home in Emmen.

6am Stephan’s alarm goes off. I’m already awake because Joseph needed a snack.  He just want back to sleep so I do too.

6:15am get up and follow my morning routine:

Get dressed. Do a quick sweep of the floors. Process my physical inbox for five minutes. Water the plants.  See the chives, marjoram and tomato grow!!!

10 minutes of “nesting” or making the house a bit nicer than it was the day before, today I wiped the coffee table, de-cluttered the window sill and arranged the candles there, found a home for some oversized sheet music that had been sitting around since the move, etc.

6:45am Joseph wakes up.  I drop what I’m doing (nesting) and greet him.  He pees on the potty.  We dump it in the toilet together and play a little.  I get us breakfast.  Today he ate two little slices of bread and three scoops of yogurt.  I had toast.  I wipe up the high chair and table and notice Joseph grunting so I put him on the pot.  Success!  For some reason he also grunts before having to pee.  We take care of the pee, say goodbye to Daddy as he goes off to work, I do the dishes and we play a little together and nurse (I don’t remember how often we play and nurse but it’s here and there and whenever).  I finish my morning routine:

Open all windows to air out apartment (so humidity doesn’t get high enough for mold to continue to grow)

“Swish and Swipe” bathroom (wipe surfaces and toilet, brush toilet bowl) – 4min

8:30ish I start to work on my “important daily cards” where I alternate 10 or so minutes on a task with 10 or so minutes of focused play with Joseph.  This morning practice was first up so I got out my harp and worked on adjusting the bray pins until Joseph crawled over to me and I gave him a little harp lesson.  He loves the harp.  I’m trying to teach him to be gentle.  He actually seems to have learned a bit how to be gentle and has a better plucking technique than he did before.  It used to be the “grab five strings and pull with all your might never releasing the fingers” and now it’s “grab one to three strings and pull sometimes releasing the fingers and making a nice sound.”  I call the improvement, especially since he’s only had three lessons.  What a smart kid!  I tell him he can’t bother me while I’m practicing (it’s only 10 minutes!) and he listens until I’m almost done then when he comes to grab the strings while I’m doing a run-through of a piece I tell him “no” while I’m playing (that takes brain power!) and he starts crying.  Fortunately I’m at the end of my practice session and we can make up.  Total time the harp is out: 15 minutes.  Not up to conservatory standards but I’ve learned how to make the most of the minutes I have.

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We leave in half an hour for the airport.  I don't know when I can be in touch again.  Thanks for your prayers.  I'll write as soon as I can!  (Andy, thanks for the good response on my last post, I look forward to responding)  My how time flies!  I'm excited because my hostess is excited to see me!  I should arrive in Basel by noon on Wed. (Swiss time).

Much Love,

Janet 

I want to cry.  I want to sing.  I want to dance.  I want to hold on.  I want to fly.  I’m in my room with computer stuff everywhere trying to get organized before I leave.  Praise God that little by little most stuff has gotten done and I’m not panicking.  After crying to some Les Miserables (I’m good enough at piano now to accompany myself now) I danced to some Irish music, which never fails to lift the spirits.  Mom and Dad are off at a symphony concert and I’m supposed to be finished backing when they get back – ha!  I’m close, I think (it’s not the packing, but the leaving everything behind in order and knowing what I need to take).  The inspiration for this post is a back walkover.

As we pass the one week mark I’m finally going through papers I should have gone through long ago and what should I happen to come across but a paper entitled “Italy” and on it a list of about eight points briefly reminding me of some of my adventures there.  Sharing this with my mom, she pointed out that she did a website for me while I was in Italy, but had completely forgotten if I ever realized it because I wasn’t much into computers and certainly hadn’t heard of a blog.  The link is still on Mom’s homepage and the password is the same.  It has all my pictures labeled and everything!  There is a separate section entitled “Men” that has no content because apparently I promised all the juicy stories and never got around to writing about them.

Saturday Daddy took us to see La Nouba by Cirque du Soleil in Downtown Disney.  It was so amazing but I can't write about it or post pictures because I haven't been able to recover from the relapse with my arms.  Keep up those prayers, please!  Namely, that I would have patience not to do work on the computer, play piano, or basically get any work done even though I leave for Switzerland in a week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had my vielle (medieval fiddle) debut at church yesterday.  I played prelude and postlude and hymns for two services.  I did a mostly prepared improvisation on Be Thou My Vision and a different improvisation on the Spanish 13 c. song I did on my audition.  It went pretty well considering, and it helped humble me and give me confidence.  

Friday Jimmy took the day off so he could drive down and visit me for the weekend.  He got me out of the house for something besides church, choir practice, and grocery shopping.  Wasn’t that nice of him?  It was quite nice, actually.  I don’t have many connections left here in Orlando so it was nice to spend time with a friend.  This is not to diminish the value of being with Mom and Dad nor to denigrate the friendship of people still in Orlando, but mostly my friends are not where I am, which is proving to be more difficult than I’d supposed.  Here’s a big hug from me to everyone (and there’s a good number of you!) who has kept the emails and the love rolling.  It is very much appreciated. :)

I hope everyone has a lovely day.  We’re having long time friends over and eating hamburgers from a friend’s ranch.

Since my poor mother is having computer problems, I’ll fill you in with the family news.  On Saturday Daddy too Mom and I out to the Mad Cow Theater production of Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre.

The good news is I’m feeling better.  The bad news is I’ve never properly shaken the music-related problems that I’ve had since the summer of 1998.  Hey, that’s less than ten years of my life so there’s plenty of time to get back to normal!

I’ve been ‘scolded’ for not updating my blog as much.  That’s good to hear because it means people miss it.  It’s usually just my mom who bugs me to write.

I’m very happy to report that the traffic on the way home was much improved over the traffic on the way up.  Mom, Dad, and I drove to DSTB and while the dads had to go off to work the next morning the rest of us spent a lovely few days playing with the boys and discussing homeschooling curriculum.  Both Mom and I want to be children in the DSTB household.  Aunt S has so many wonderful and exciting things planned for their first year of homeschooling.  Goodbyes were hard because we don’t know when the next time will be.

Our time at the Maggie P. has once again come to a close.  Once again I think picture are better than words.  Thanks to everyone for everything that made it a wonderful visit!

The big weekend with all of my sisters and my cousins and my aunts is over.  We had a marvelous time and the weather mostly cooperated.  Here is a smattering of the activities people indulged in over the course of the weekend: swimming; playing on and around the Aquillo (sailboat); water tag; water wresting; playing fox and geese, Frisbee, and paddle ball on the sand bar at low tide; walking the beach; sailing; building sand castles; building dams; mucking the little creek; kayaking; rowing; crabbing; walking on the breakwater to the outer light; running over the causeway between the Flounder and the Maggie P.; golfing; catching and skinning eel; eating ice cream and cookies and cake and crab and eel and Chinese and pizza and chips and soda and cold cuts and pumpkin bread and Omaha Steaks and laeckerli and oreos and dark chocolate M&M’s and and and; playing games (Quiddler, Blokus, Mille Bornes, Perspective, quadruple solitaire, Set, My Word, Apples to Apples, In a Pickle, Texas Hold ‘em, Rummikub, Settlers of Catan, Ringgz, but sadly not krypto or Boggle); lounging on the deck of the Maggie P. and under the cabana, reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; sleeping; playing with nephews/grand kids; playing with dry ice in the creek; and more I’m sure I’m missing.  Here are some of the highlights in pictures.

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There’s not too much to report here other than the usual great food, fun in the sun and all the normal Maggie P. activities.  I helped to muck the creek, which was tiring but interesting for the first time work.  After swimming and rinsing off I still had a muck tan stain on my legs.  I wish I had Clark’s Tin Whistle book and I could look up the tune Muckin’ O’Grady’s Barn, which I remember from when I first started tin whistle oh so long ago.