matthiessen

Having had such a good time at Starved Rock, this morning we decided to try our luck at neighboring Matthiessen State Park. It has similar topography, meaning canyons and waterfalls, so we had high hopes. When we got there, we found a wooden fort situated at the top of a LOT of stairs that led down to the hiking paths, so down we went. We did see a couple of nice-looking waterfalls, but they weren't nearly as accessible as the ones at Starved Rock. We ran into the same flooding problem too, as you can see in the picture where Liam appears to be taking the steps down directly into a river. There is apparently a path there that leads up to another waterfall, but obviously we couldn't get to it. On the plus side, it was another cold and dreary day, so we had the park pretty much to ourselves, just like yesterday.

 

black friday

We thought we would start a new tradition of going somewhere over Thanksgiving weekend, just the five of us, and having a holiday that is just for us. It's not that we don't love spending time with our families. We do! It's that we also feel like this time of year, we are always rushing from one celebration to another, and keeping track of all the details and things to bring and coordinating everything with everyone else tends to leave us with no time to just ... stop ... and take the time to really appreciate how great it is that Mike and I found each other, and that because we did, we made this beautiful family. So we decided that this year, we would find a place and a way to do that. It seems to us that the best times we have aren't necessarily when we do something like go to a museum or schedule an event; our best times have been spent outdoors, on our own schedule, just meandering together in uncrowded places. And with that in mind, we chose Starved Rock for our first shot at this new tradition.

It worked out much better than we would have thought, and for reasons that we wouldn't have anticipated. It was cold and drizzly this morning, which meant that nobody else was around. We wandered around for a few hours, and we saw only two other people out on the trails the whole time! Just the way we like it. We climbed the stairs to the top of Starved Rock and took in the views of the river and locks, then we headed to French Canyon, where the boys got to climb down and see a waterfall up close and personal.

After that, we drove to the other end of the park and headed off to see the Council Overhang and Ottawa Canyon. The overhang was breathtaking; I think the boys liked it the best of everything we saw. Sadly for us, once we continued on we discovered that the trail to Ottawa Canyon was flooded, so we couldn't complete our mission. On the plus side, that gives us an incentive to come back again! I would love to see the ice falls in the winter, so hopefully we can make that happen.
 

happy thanksgiving!

We're taking it on the road this year, but first we had to make a quick stop to drop some things off at my sister's house. Along the way, we saw my dad employing his typical out-of-the-box thinking to take some chairs from his house to Bethany's for the big Jeffirs celebration. GENIUS.

Our next stop was dinner at Barb and Kevin's, where at long last we got to meet baby Jesse. The boys (okay, mostly Max) were very excited to get to hold him and admire his soft skin and abundant head of hair. Liam and Max also had fun playing with Lucy and Richie, and Liam was especially patient with letting them follow him around and climb on him. Sadly, Henry was a different story. He had a VERY bad day, and was really awful to everyone, especially Lucy. He's been having a rough time at school lately too, and we're starting a new rewards thing in cooperation with his teacher, along with a renewed kindness initiative for all of us at home, so hopefully that helps. Despite his bad behavior, though, we had a really good time, and now we're off for the next stage of our little adventure.

 

snow day "fun"

The first snowfall of the year is always so pretty. It really gets old fast, though.

Even though we're not going to be in Indiana for Thanksgiving, I'm still the only noodle maker in my family, so I offered to make the noodles ahead of time so my mom could cook them on Thursday. Meanwhile, my cousin Jimmy was really disappointed that he didn't get to learn to make them while we were in Gatlinburg (he was still out on a long hike at the time), so I invited him over to learn, and he jumped at the chance. Which naturally meant that my boys, who until now had only participated in noodle making sporadically and mostly under duress, decided they just HAD to learn too. As you can imagine, four boys making noodles in one kitchen at the same time got pretty messy.

I'm not sure how we would have gotten through it if they had all stuck with it, but fortunately, Henry and Max soon lost interest. Max went off to play video games, and Henry headed outside to make the world's dirtiest snowman.

Surprisingly, Jimmy and Liam stayed invested until the very end. They brainstormed and tried to use the scientific method to improve efficiency, and they experimented with various process improvements. They took their jobs very seriously, and held solemn discussions in which they reminded each other of the instructions I had given them. For the last few batches, I even left the kitchen and got some work done while they soldiered on. (Of course, they left the cleaning for me, but that's to be expected from a pair of preteen boys.) The best part was that they came and asked me if they could make an extra batch so we could cook some noodles fresh today. I managed to rustle up the ingredients to make us a nice pot of chicken noodle soup -- the perfect afternoon snack on a cold, snowy day.
 

boys meet jack

Avalon came home from the hospital yesterday, so today after work I took the boys to meet their new cousin. It turns out that Max is a natural with babies. He LOVED holding Jack and looking at his little fingers and stroking his little cheek. He would have been happy to just sit there for the whole visit just holding Jack and watching him sleep. As you can see, however, Liam and Max were not quite as enchanted. They each took a turn holding the baby and saying hi to him, but they were much more excited to play with Lilly and run around the house. Guess I know which one of them will be cut out to be a good babysitter in the not-so-distant future!

 

big day yesterday

What a whirlwind! My sister Avalon was scheduled to be induced yesterday, so we figured we would have a nephew by the end of the day. What we didn't know is that my sister-in-law, Erin, would ALSO go into labor on the same day. So now we have double bonus nephew time, and we couldn't be happier!

Erin and Johnny welcomed Jesse Robert around 4 p.m., just as I was getting to the hospital in South Bend to hang out with my family and wait for things to happen with Lon. We were all there: Craig, of course, but also Mom and Dad, Bethany, J, Klaudia, and Lilly. So we waited. And waited. And waited some more. We took some naps. My dad watched some weird TV show. J trolled me about politics. We drank coffee and soda and accepted the meager offerings of the snack machine. And sometime after 9, we got a text from Craig saying that Jack Harrison had arrived. At which time we proceeded to wait and nap and eat and drink and chat for another two hours while Loni and Craig got to bond with the baby and everyone had a chance to clean up. Then we went in, said hi and congratulations, admired the adorable new kid, and headed home.

I'm not gonna lie: It was hard to get up for work this morning! Luckily, I had something to look forward to, and at the end of my workday I headed back up the highway and back to the hospital. And this time I got to hold him! Behold, baby Jack:

Erin was also kind enough to send some pictures of baby Jesse. We probably won't meet him for another week, but we love him already! Also, we know for sure that this family of five is in for some very active and exciting times.

nonverbal communication

You might think that now that Liam is a preteen, he doesn't have much interest in talking to his mom. And you would be right 23.5 hours every day. BUT there is a magic window each morning between 7:00 and 7:20 when he forgets he is supposed to disdain me. I can narrow it down to those 20 minutes because I start work every morning at 7, and he has to leave for the bus at 7:20. And every morning, without fail, he decides that THOSE are the only 20 minutes he can tell me about his plans, hopes and dreams, and what's been happening in his life. This morning, for example, he talked to me about the DARE program at school (I have no idea what that acronym officially stands for, but it's some kind of anti-drug initiative) and how he has to write a two-page paper on what he has learned. "Mom, I can sum it up in one sentence: DON'T DO DRUGS. I don't know why I have to write two whole pages about this! I mean, I KNOW not to do drugs. I have J for an uncle!" (That last part was in reference to my brother being an EMT/paramedic/firefighter, NOT to any personal familiarity he might have with substance use.) So we talked about what he could write to fill up those two pages. And then he tells me that he also had to go to a presentation at school about nonverbal communication. And he re-enacted it for me, which was just about the funniest thing he's ever done. If I hadn't been laughing so hard, I would have taken a video.

According to Liam, this is NOT the face that you make when a friend tells you his dog has died, "because it reads as snarky instead of surprised, and your friend will be pretty ticked off." I encourage you all to take notes.