Travel report

We saw in the new month on 81 South as we neared home from our Thanksgiving travels.  Due to our neighbor generously off-loading not one but two deer on us, we decided to return home at bedtime last night so Jason would have two days to process the meat before he and Kali take part in the Virginia Farm to Table conference Thursday and Friday of this week.  It was so good to arrive home shortly after 1 a.m. this morning and crawl under our chilly covers.  My folks had not only taken great care of our all our "livestock," Mom also left her mark on every room (never have I returned home from a 5 day trip to find our home cleaner and more organized than when I left!). Additionally when Terah woke up at 4 a.m. and wanted to get reacquainted with her clowns, I decided to make a fire. The rain was pouring down and I remembered that we hadn't loaded the wood boxes before we left. I took a peak with the hope that there might be enough for one little fire to find that Dad had loaded the box for us.  I felt very grateful as Terah and I sat and watched the flames and felt the warmth.

Gratefulness should obviously be part of the Thanksgiving holiday season, but I found it very easy to come by the last number of days.  I can hardly count the number of little things I felt thankful for and amazed by over the last week (and some of them felt big to us).

Our safe travels to and from PA are near the top of the list. We never had to stop more than one time on any stint of our trip - even the five hour stint.  Terah surprised us at every turn.  She slept great in the car and the one day of travel where she was not as fond of the car seat, she not only took a bottle of expressed milk from me with no problem but she also fell asleep sucking a pacifier and was soothed by that when she roused 45 minutes from home early this morning.  She was amazing and I felt not even a smidgen of annoyance when she woke me after less than 3 hours of sleep this morning. Instead I just watched her see her clown mobile for the first time and stare at it for a long time before excitedly starting to kick her little legs.  It was really sweet to see her recognize them and seem happy to be home.

As much as all of us were glad to be home, I know for Jason and I this was the best trip we've taken to PA in a long time. We commented that we should always have a 7 week old with us. :) We so thoroughly enjoyed our time in Pennsburg and in Lancaster with family and friends.  Not knowing what the car travel would be like and also wanting family that hadn't met Terah to have time to get to know each other a bit, we decided to make the trip worth it by extending our time in PA by a few days.  We spent the better part of four days with Jason's family and filled it with eating, visiting, going for walks, playing Apples to Apples and many other games, participating in the now annual Sing for your Supper event at his aunt's home, enjoying watching cousins enjoy each other and marveling at how fast our little people are growing up, etc...  We are often one of the first family's to take off for home so it was a different experience to watch all the other out-of-towners leave and for us to linger and get to interact with a smaller and smaller group.  The crazy large family hubbub is fun in its own way but I also enjoyed the more intimate interactions made possible by the smaller numbers. It's nice to get to look forward to welcoming the family to Keezletown in just a few weeks.

We got to introduce Terah to some of my family by attending a pottery open house at my aunts and then going via Lancaster on our way home. After a delightful brunch with friends yesterday, we spent the rest of the day with my sister and family.  More games and visiting and adoring the littlest gal.  She slept through much of it so then didn't settle right away in the car. Alida, on the other hand, didn't sleep through much of any of the day time excitement and crashed easily every night, proclaiming her deeply felt exhaustion!  She didn't snag naps like some of the rest of us, and was a ball of pure silly ramminess each evening.  She's not much less dramatic then when she was as a wee one and one of her most common responses to our request for her to do anything right now, but especially when tired is "it's too heavy" (whether that makes sense in the situation or not).  What a kid!  When we headed for home last evening, she was asleep in a matter of seconds (maybe a full minute) when we got on the road and didn't wake at all until this morning. Tuckered out by so much fun!

It's been a rainy day of readjusting to home - mostly unpacking and getting settled back in.  The girls made a Christmas chain together, so the anticipation for the upcoming holiday season is in the air. Time to scout out a Christmas tree (once the rain clears).

My feelings of gratitude for the many beautiful things in this period of my life do not come without acknowledging the vastly different experiences of others around the globe (and even right around me here). I know that holidays are not always an easy time and that there is much to also grieve and feel angry about and much work to be done to keep making our world a better place for all.  I hope to be open to embracing that complexity. I'm also learning that not celebrating the goodness around me and focusing only on the negative things happening in our world normally more or less overwhelms me and raises my anxiety enough that I'm not much good for anyone.  So I'm trying to live fully, being present to joy and to suffering, and attempting to live in such a way as to make at least this little corner of the planet a more beautiful place.