Year End, 2013

It seems like, after weeks months of being absent from this space, I'd be bursting with things to report: lessons learned, moments savored, anecdotes recorded, adventures had. Instead, I find myself in the last hours of 2013 with not much to say. Not much to add, really, to a very busy season that went by in a blur.

Since I started working in an actual job at the end of the summer, my weeks have flown by in a new rhythm of life: Mondays are for cleaning, getting groceries, and running errands, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are all about writing, editing, and publishing a weekly issue, Thursdays are largely for meetings and various planning and management issues, and Fridays are a catch-all before the weekend appears. Email, once a fun link to the outside world, has become a whack-a-mole nemesis, something to be checked constantly and responded to multiple times a day. Writing, once a creative outlet for a brain that was subsumed with the details of mothering, has become a paid part of my existence. I'm responsible for a website that thousands of people read. I've met heads of foundations and city government and companies. A staff reports to me. I hired an intern. All these things sound like things someone else would do, and yet they are things I have done in 2013. I mostly love it.

Last week, Jemma lost her second front tooth, turned seven, and got her ears pierced in quick succession. She went from being a snaggle-toothed little one to a Big Kid in the blink of an eye, her new earrings glinting in her lobes, her new quiet confidence obvious in the photos I took on the 27th as she opened her presents. She's ripping into new piano songs daily, eager to practice and quickly catching up to her big sister. She has not lost her love for the Boxcar Children books, but she's branching out, too: Magic Treehouse, Nate the Great, Cam Jansen, and plenty of animal-related non-fiction, too. She had an All About Me week at school during December. I went into her classroom to bake with her, and I sent in photos for the bulletin board. She had to answer some standard questions (favorite book, favorite place, etc.) and under "I am special because . . . " she wrote, "I am special because I have a kind heart." Truer words never written.

Annie is blossoming into a curious, thoughtful, creative person. She notices everything. She has gobbled up fourth grade, and has been learning some good lessons about time management, studying, friendship, and responsibility. Her fall was full of soccer, and she was named captain of her team as much for her work ethic at practice as for her scrappy play during games. She's fast, smart, and tough, and I love to watch her figure life out. She'll spend hours at a time designing Lego houses (not from the books, but from her own brain), playing the piano, creating "training" courses for the kitties, and crafting bracelets and folders and god-knows-what from various materials she hoards in her bedroom. She's reading Harry Potter, singing in the school choir for the first time, and just learned to breathe to the side while swimming freestyle.

Jason and I fall onto the couch (or the porch furniture, or the hot tub) at the end of the day, just barely able to speak clearly about bank balances and car maintenance, holiday plans and vacation reservations. We've loved the last week: plenty of time to sit and watch the fire (truly plenty on the three separate times our power went out!), plenty of guitar and conversations and eating fudge and seafoam and watching Arrested Development. Six months ago, we were just getting back from Paris. I'm so very grateful we got to go there this year, and I actually dream about being there very occasionally and daydream about being there even more often. There is a small part of me that wants to live there, and you never know: it might prevail.

This fall, my annual college girls' weekend trip took us to Charleston, SC, a city I've now decided I'd be happy to retire to, and for some reason, this year was an extra-good dose of togetherness and excellent conversation, perspective, and eating. At a time when things were a little confusing here at home in the social realm, it was a solid reminder of the value of old friends and a lovely little getaway from the weekly responsibilities of being a working mom.

My grandma passed away a few weeks ago. She was 99 years old and had been begging, "Lord, take me now!" for several years, off and on. She was tough and beautiful and had a hilarious sense of humor along with a serious commitment to faith and family, and our Annie is her namesake. She was quite old when I came along since my dad was her youngest, so I never knew her quite the way my oldest cousins on that side did. At her funeral, though, I got a glimpse of a woman who, widowed young, found the courage to find love again; who, at age 65, took up golf; who, after having five kids in eight years, still managed to be a hearty and healthy mother and matriarch. I wished Annie (and Jemma) could have been there to hear some of her wisdom (we didn't take them to the funeral, just the visitation), but luckily my dad and I are still around to pass those traits on, and my grandma left behind a much-written-in Bible and many journals that give glimpses into how to be a strong and wise woman.

This Christmas, we surprised the girls with a little "clubhouse" of their own: an attic space that's been unfinished, now paneled with beadboard and wired with a little sconce and filled with beanbags. They've been holed up there for a few days with their Rainbow Looms and crayons and CD players and Legos, being lazy and cozy on their school vacation. Jason got me a Vitamix, which I've used daily and already wonder how I lived without, and I got him tickets to an upcoming concert in Ann Arbor, where we'll spend two nights sleeping in and eating out and enjoying good music together. There were, of course, other presents, but the clubhouse and the time with family were by far the biggest gifts.

I haven't been in this space much in the last few months, and I'm not going to promise to be here all that much in the future, either. Next week, we'll all dive back in to our crazy schedule and I'll dive into a much-needed detox from alcohol and red meat and sugar, and before I know it we'll be hauling out the porch furniture again and sleeping with the windows open. But I do hope 2014 holds more of the same (professional challenges, family time, travel, music, great food) and a few new opportunities, too. I hope for lots of small-but-wonderful moments. I hope for balance, and more vegetables, and spontaneous adventures, and meaningful service, and deepening friendships, and a better handle on my DSLR, and better posture. I hope we find a church that makes our whole family feel at home. I hope I remember that I only have this one wild and precious life and to seize the day with as much grace and good humor as I can muster.

No resolutions for me. Just pointing my compass in the right direction, fortifying myself with some green smoothies and hot yoga, and jotting down a list every night before I go to bed.

Happy New Year.

August and Everything After

It's the night before school starts, and I'm sitting in my office in the dark. Windows open, crickets chirping, my camera charging next to me. I'm sad to see summer go and fairly befuddled to see it go so soon. Maybe it was the two-weeks-in-Europe or the sort-of-crappy weather, but I never felt like we got into a groove this summer. I don't remember many hot, lazy expanses of time that we could fill any way we pleased. (There were some, I'm sure, and I was probably annoyed by them and tried to fill them when they occurred.)

So all weekend, I've been feeling a little stunned. A little emotional. A little desperate for the girls to leave tomorrow so I can finally think a thought or write a sentence without being interrupted -- "Mom! Mom? Moooooommmm?!?" -- every thirty seconds. A little panicky about how long it will be before they burst back into the house in the late afternoon. Their little outfits are lying on their bedroom floors, their new lunch bags and water bottles are waiting on the counter, their backpacks are hanging on the hooks in the mudroom. They're ready, even if I'm not.

This weekend, though, I've been replaying all the good things that we crammed into this past month. We jumped big waves with my parents at the beach. We spent a long weekend in a tent on the Leelanau Penninsula at a campground with a yoga instructor and got to soak in the sun at our favorite sandy spots. We ate at House of Flavors in Ludington, swung at the lake in Manistee, hiked through the Nordhouse Dunes to water, cozied into a booth at Harmony, ate Pronto Pups with cousins in Grand Haven, biked to Jersey Junction, made peach and blueberry crisp a half-dozen times. We spent a weekend at the cabin, playing cornhole and fishing off the dock and eating Pop Tarts for breakfast and reading in camp chairs. We went to the block party, had lemonade stands, hosted cousin sleepovers. We ate breakfast and drank coffee on the side porch. We played frisbee and baseball in the front yard. We tried to spend every possible minute outside.

This weekend, we stuck close to home: did laundry, mowed the yard, went running at the track a couple times, had friends over to watch Michigan football. We went to the home football game on Thursday night. Jason smoked a brisket and played guitar one afternoon, and we gobbled up the new downtown market two different days (tonight: filet, potatoes, cauliflower, and fresh tomatoes with goat cheese plus Love's ice cream on our crisp - all from the market. Swoon.). We picked peaches at Crane's yesterday, then spent the rest of the day at Pier Cove beach, where Annie made an elaborate castle and Jemma swam and swam until she was completely worn out. It was hard to walk back up the steps to the car and brush the sand off my feet; who knows the next time my toes will be in Lake Michigan?

Tonight we ate outside, and the girls donned sweaters (and Jemma, a hat), and I couldn't help but feel like it was the end of the season, and the end of an era. Tomorrow, when I leave them at school, I have plenty of work to come home to. I have meetings on the calendar and deadlines to meet and content to assign. I have a new computer system to master and a desk full of papers that need to be dealt with. Next summer, most likely, I'll be a "working mom," with some childcare juggling and at least a few days of the girls heading off to something sunny and fun while I edit articles or talk on the phone. I'm excited about my new gig - it's challenging and interesting work that matters in at least some small way to this community - but I feel a little wistful about "the good old days," when the girls were so small and the days unfurled at such a slow pace that I thought kindergarten would never, ever come. Tomorrow: first and fourth grade. Locker decorations. People who want to borrow my earrings and bring purses to school.

Ten years ago, I was starting my last fall as a teacher. I was training for the Chicago marathon and thinking (but only just) about becoming a mother. Tonight, I'm so glad for this strange, not-quite-normal summer (older kids, new job, PARIS), and my photos show a riot of color and joy these past few months. I wish I could slow it down, and I'm sure going to miss it.

Good Things, July 2013

I . . . what . . . where . . . . what happened to this month? I'm just sneaking this edition of "Good Things" in under the wire, and feeling sad that another summer month is over so soon. I'm stiff-arming any mentions of school supplies, soccer practice schedules, or fall clothing and hoping for a solid month of sunshine, adventures, and sleeping in.

I MUST stop making these (I blame Smitten Kitchen, of course).

A festive 4th of July!

Lake Michigan love

Jemma playing "Cuckoo" after a shower

 . . . and burning through The Boxcar Children series.

Green beans from my grandpa's garden (also: bacon).

Memory out on the side porch

The way the play room has become the music room

Silliness

Sunset/moonrise

More (healthier?) Smitten Kitchen: The Wedge Salad

A scorcher of a day, spent at the pool

Catching crickets at nature camp

Late-night sushi

Happy girl at family happy hour

Ditto

Jemma-made peach-blueberry crisp

an afternoon at the park

underwater "talking"

My talented pianist with her fabulous teacher

An incredible concert

Morning faces like these

Funny Steve Martin at Meijer Gardens

For Katie

We had a good weekend: my sister-in-law's 30th birthday, which merited a cozy dinner at The Chop House; my brother and sister-in-law's backyard wedding reception, which involved two big white tents and lots of casual, yummy food with family; blueberry pancakes; a family bike ride and playground stop; hot tub baths last night before the thunderstorm; farmers' market; morning runs; burgers on the grill; a quick visit to Lake Michigan on Sunday afternoon.

And then today was back to normal: dentist appointments, groceries, errands, laundry. (Am I the only one who feels like a hero when I wash all the sheets and re-make the beds? I feel like that implies that I don't do it that often, which I'll neither confirm nor deny.) Tonight, Jason and Annie were taping a segment about the upcoming piano concert at a local TV station (I'll try to say that casually, as though my eight-year-old being on TV is no big deal). Jemma and I decided to bake something (I voted for this; she overruled me with this), so we were in the kitchen together - aprons on, little chair pulled up to the counter by the sink, flour and butter and measuring cups everywhere.

As I was peeling peaches, she stuck her little face close to the bowl to smell them and I could see the sun-freckles on her nose. I fed her a slice of peach and we talked about getting more tomorrow from the market, then putting on old clothes and eating them outside, letting the juice run down our chins and get all over our shirts.

"Did you ever do that?" she asked.

"Yep," I said. "Peaches only taste like this for a few weeks. You have to eat them as much as you can."

I sunk the paring knife into the skin of the last peach and slowly pulled the skin off the flesh in a big chunk. I was thinking about how some moments are extraordinary, like watching the moon rise over the Swiss Alps or under the Eiffel Tower, and some are ordinary, like teaching your daughter how to peel a peach. I showed her how I tugged the skin away slowly, pulling off a wide swath before starting again at the top. I told her how, in a few years, I'd let her practice doing it herself with the knife, and a few years after that, she'd be doing it all by herself.

"And someday, maybe you'll have a little boy or girl, and you'll teach them how to peel peaches in your kitchen," I said, thinking about baking with my mom and feeling all Circle of Life about this cinnamon-scented baking moment. "Who do you think taught me how to peel peaches?" I asked.

"I don't know," said Jemma.

"Guess," I said.

And she said, "Mrs. McIntosh?" Her kindergarten teacher.

And though my friend Katie did not, in fact, teach me how to peel peaches, I love that Jemma thought she might have. Because in Jemma's little almost-first-grade mind, her beloved kindergarten teacher can teach us all anything she wants to. Because in reality, that idea is actually pretty true in its own special way, especially this summer. This summer, Mrs. McIntosh is teaching me to treasure the moments - both extraordinary and ordinary - that make up a life, including a Monday night making peach and blueberry crumbles with my Jemma.

Nightly News

It's the third or fourth ninety-something-degree day in a row this morning, so I quit trying to do anything productive (press releases, piano concert promotion, articles due, email) and declare that we're going to the pool. On the way there, Annie, per usual, is both looking at a library book and chatting up a storm.

" . . . And then in book 22 of Cam Jansen, the teacher gets arrested!"

Me: "Hmmm."

Annie: "But then I bet they find out that someone else is the thief."

Me: "Mmmmm-hmmmmmm."

Annie: "Because a teacher wouldn't ever do anything bad like that, right?"

Me, stalling: "Hmmm?"

Annie: "RIGHT?"

Me, brightly: "Not any teacher that I've ever known!"

*****

When Jason and I were gone last month, I left behind a four-page, single-spaced Microsoft Word document to instruct the grandparents on how to live our life at our house. It included exciting details such as how much to feed the cats, library card pin numbers, pediatrician phone numbers, when to put out the trash, how to get to tennis camp, how to leave the washing machine door ajar so as to avoid mildew on the seal, and where to find spare toilet paper (in the "Costco pantry" in the basement, obviously). It also included a paragraph that went something like:

"The girls may watch cartoons on PBS or Nick Jr. on demand, usually for no more than an hour at a time. They both know how to get to math and typing games on the computer, but no computers in bedrooms. Please don't have the news on while they're awake or around; we don't watch the news around them."

My parents came over for the afternoon a week or so before we were scheduled to leave, so they could look over the instructions and get familiar with the various machines and procedures, and my mom stopped abruptly when she read this section of the document.

"You don't let them see the news?" she asked.

"Nope. Not really," I said.

"Well, why not?" she said.

"Well, we actually don't watch it, anyway - never really have - and there's a lot of stuff on there that we don't especially want to explain to them yet, at ages six and eight," I said.

My mom made a face. "Well, they have to learn about the world eventually," she said, and it was clear that she disagreed with our policy.

The reason I gave her is partially true: Jason and I really don't watch the news, nightly, cable, morning or otherwise. I remember watching CNN in college during the Clinton scandal, and I actually like to catch the occasional "Meet the Press" or newsy roundtable on the treadmill from time to time, but most news these days seems like sensationalistic fear-mongering and incomplete sound-bytes. It raises my anxiety level and makes me feel helpless and depressed, and we don't turn it on. So our television-news-free house would probably be television-news-free even if we were also child-free.

I do, however, consume news. I read it online, and I listen to it on NPR. I like the longer, nuanced, in-depth perspectives that those formats provide, and sometimes I'll even take the time to read the comments on an article (though never, ever on MLive, where the commenters make you lose your faith in humanity), because they can poke holes in or confirm the conclusion of an article. And even when I do those things, I still shield the kids from it. I minimize the website when they come in the room. I turn off NPR when they're in the car on the way to the pool, asking their mostly-innocent questions about teachers and morality.

Why? I suppose I want to tell them the truth ("No teacher I've ever known!") but not the whole truth ("Some teachers would."). I suppose I want them to just BE KIDS for a bit longer, to let them make fairy houses and read mysteries and cannonball into the pool without letting them worry about a Florida teenager shot by a neighborhood watch patrol, without explaining bankruptcy or celebrity drug use or armed robbery or protests in Egypt.

Later, after we returned from our trip, I surveyed a few friends: Did they let their kids watch the news? The answer, resoundingly, was no. They didn't. Why, asked one mom, give them information that they can't do anything about? Why, asked another, fuel an anxiety-prone child by providing video footage of real-life nightmares? I decidedly don't want to shelter my girls from the reality of the world. But I don't want to push them too quickly into it, either, and I don't think I'm alone.

I can't remember, exactly, when I learned about the world and all the events on the nightly news. Based on my mom's reaction, I think I'm correct in remembering that the 6:00 news was always on in our living room after dinner, though I don't have any concrete memories of it beyond being shushed during the weather report. I remember watching The Challenger explode at takeoff in third or fourth grade, and then I remember watching the first Gulf War begin at some point during middle school. Between those two events, it's static, nothing.

Rationally, I know that there's a time, just around the proverbial corner, when Annie - and, later, Jemma - will deserve to know what's happening, and will need my help in interpreting it all. I just can't quite find the conviction that it needs to happen yet. Maybe next year, I think as we pull into the pool parking lot. Or the next.

Instagram Feed: Returned to Normal

One thing about being gone for much of June is that it took forever for me to feel like it was really, truly summer. In Paris, it was cool and cloudy, and the Michigan spring had been so cold and gloomy before we left. Up until last weekend, our family hadn't spent any time at Lake Michigan, hadn't been covered in sunscreen and sand, hadn't eaten inappropriate amounts of ice cream or stayed up to watch the sun set over the water or fallen asleep in the car, exhausted from a day of swimming in a pool with a diving board.

We've remedied that since we've been home, with a family reunion in Grand Haven (pool, lawn games, the same homemade vanilla ice cream we've been having there since I was a little girl), a trip to South Haven and Saugatuck (sandcastles, dinner out at Wally's, frisbee in the sand, and more ice cream), and a Sunday afternoon at the beach in Holland (with a stop for ice cream on the way home). We've caught fireflies, made blueberry pancakes for breakfast, instituted happy hour on the side porch as much as possible, dragged the sprinkler out, and spent at least one night in the hot tub looking at the stars way past our bedtime.

Then, this past weekend, we had two wonderful nights with good friends at their cottage. It meant paddle boarding, sandy hands reaching for snacks on the beach, hikes in the dunes, morning coffee and nighttime guitar on the deck, five very blond little heads at the dinner table (Luke's prayer: "Dear God, please help everyone to get more and more healthier and awesome, Amen") and reading bedtime stories, grown-up mishaps after the kids were in bed, holding other peoples' babies, water balloon launchers, great food, tons of laughter. Summer is here, indeed, and I've never been more glad and grateful for all the normal things.

Dream a Little Dream: Paris and Other Places

Two weeks ago tonight, Jason and I were fresh off a long flight home and mere hours into our abrupt return to normal after two weeks jaunting around Europe together. Both going there and coming home were their own little culture shocks, of course, and these past two weeks at home have been nothing - NOTHING - like the two weeks that preceded them.

Obviously.

They've been so much the opposite of a European vacation that I haven't been able to find the time to write about the European vacation. But I also, crazily, haven't wanted to put our trip into words because, in some sort of magical thinking, I felt as though, if I wrote about it, it'd really be over. (Note to self: it is over.) And I think I was avoiding writing about it for another reason, too: namely, who leaves their kids and takes a two-week trip to Europe for no real reason in their mid-thirties? Isn't that what you do when you're retired empty-nesters who join a bus tour of the Netherlands?

So I'm disoriented and nostalgic and a little sheepish, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. But even though I kept a little journal while we were gone (where we ate, what we saw, what we did, etc.), I want to collect a few memories here, too.

Here's the thing: back in January of 2011, I published a fun Life List on this blog, as a culmination of some of the ideas and goals I'd been toying with as I thought about which direction I wanted my life to take. Maybe this is a normal thing to do in your mid-thirties, maybe not, but somewhere along the line, I had the realization that there was not going to be an infinite amount of time. There might be a lot of years, sure, but there might not, and I became far more aware of how I used my time and far more intentional about going to those places and doing those things that had always been hazy "someday" dreams. (I've since accomplished a bunch of things on that list, some of which I crossed off and some of which I still need to cross off, and I actually hadn't looked at it in quite a while and may want to change it. For example, the six-minute mile is possibly no longer in reach. Which is fine. It's MY list. I can change it.)

One of those dreams( though it's not exactly on the list) was to return to Vienna, Austria with Jason. We'd both gone during a college summer program, though not the same summer, and on one long road trip to Baltimore when I was pregnant with Annie, we talked about how, someday, we'd establish a scholarship fund for the Vienna Summer School program and we'd go back together. A couple years ago, we started the fund, and last summer we started planning this trip. We hoped to go back while the same dear professor was still running the program, and we weren't sure how much longer he'd be doing it. We met him for dinner. We started reading travel blogs. We checked out books from the library. We talked to grandparents about child care. We hoarded credit card points for flights. Jason spent an inordinate amount of time on Google Earth. And I started dreaming about Paris, not because I'd taken French, or had friends tell me I had to go, or seen a specific movie, but just because I have always sort of felt like I'd be sad if I didn't go to Paris with Jason at some point in my life. Seize the day, and all that.

Well, we seized it. My Life List should be proud. There was spontaneous stopping to smell the roses in a beautiful garden in Vienna. There was a run through Luxembourg Gardens in the rain in Paris. There was a picnic in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. There was a hike through cows wearing cowbells and fields of wildflowers up to snow-capped mountain peaks (we snuck in a few days in Switzerland between the two cities). There were absurd meals followed by more absurd meals. There was ice cream and croissants and curried prawns and homemade pasta and fondue and gelato and veal and foie gras and croquettes and wine and lobster and cafe creme and cheese and olives and chocolate mousse and duck and champagne and pate and olive oil and truffle salt and caramels. (What I am saying is that we did not lose weight on this trip, despite the hiking and biking and walking miles every day through the cobblestone streets.)

We had so many wonderful moments, so many unforgettable experiences. We rode bikes along the Danube in the 90-degree heat and sunshine, then finally collapsed at a little Italian cafe and drank all the beverages. We hiked up and down gorgeous mountain paths, then drank Swiss beer on a balcony overlooking a waterfall. We celebrated our fourteenth anniversary with a meal just steps from our hotel, looking out at the garden where the salad lettuce had just been picked and watching the moon rise above the mountains. We spent a night with our old professor and this year's group of Vienna Summer School students, sat in on a fascinating lecture, and toasted the group with schnapps on a picnic table in the Austrian Alps. We got on a train in Vienna, went to sleep, and woke up the next morning in Switzerland. We had dinner at the same outdoor biergarten where Jason loved to go almost twenty years ago. We took the Metro to Montmarte and tried French microbrews at a tiny bar with a bartender named Francois. We saw the Mona Lisa, the Thinker, and so many Van Goghs and Monets and Renoirs and Cezannes that we could hardly keep track. We ate three meals at restaurants where you sat down and ate whatever they brought you (ahem, razor clams, pork rilette . . .), and one meal of incredible Spanish tapas at a standing-room-only zinc bar where the chef stood just a few feet away. We watched the sun set along the Seine.

We had two weeks to get up every morning, get out the map, and wander around a gorgeous city together - eating, drinking, talking, getting a little lost, being in awe of the architecture or the natural beauty, depending. We had two weeks to miss the girls fiercely and talk about how soon we could bring them back with us. We had two weeks to be outsiders, with Jason's poor French and our train schedules and indecipherable menus and streets that change names every few blocks.

We took over a thousand pictures. We took a nap almost every day. We took trains and wore backpacks. We took home striped shirts and baby gifts, chocolates and scarves. We took one last look at Paris as our plane rose high in the sky, and I knew that the planning, saving, worrying, and spending had been worth it. It was a literally a dream come true.

It's like a distant memory now, of course. After two weeks crammed into tiny train compartments and petite hotel rooms, our house felt huge. The girls welcomed us home with cake, hugs, and much smelling of faces and stroking of arms. We piled into our bed together, opened gifts, and read books in a pre-bedtime tangle of arms and legs that night two weeks ago, and it's been non-stop togetherness ever since. The quiet conversations at cafes and the leisurely 9:00 p.m. dinners are a thing of the past, and now it's piano practice and "Mom, look!" and settling arguments and chasing fireflies and bathing suits. Which is good, too, in its own way, but also louder. Less charming. More "real."

Tucked away, though, I'll always have this trip. This absurd, impractical, romantic, magical, dreamy trip. And I'm so very glad.

Good Things, June 2013

The annual school Fun Day tradition: last week of school + whole afternoon of outdoor games + getting sprayed by the fire hose at the end = Pure Joy;

fresh Michigan strawberries, and my favorite strawberry shortcake for dessert;

both girls running with friends and classmates in the LBW race;

sisters, all smiles on the last day of school;

silly hot tub time and dinner with cousins;

lemonade stand and friendship bracelets for sale in the front yard;

lazy mornings, reading on the side porch after breakfast;

a magical, lucky, romantic, adventurous trip with my husband to Austria, Switzerland, and France (more on that later);

a tangle of books and bodies in our bed on the night we got home;

running with Annie during her first 5K (and her running with a smile on her face the whole time).