To the Beach

It seems that getting to wonderful places can quickly become the most un-wonderful part of a journey, but we live under some pretty magical stars that make even long road trips with toddlers and infants a pleasantry.  My Mama and my babies and I began our much-anticipated  trip to the Outer Banks on Thursday night. Have I mentioned that I love road tripping with my Mama? I just love road tripping with my Mama for same-snacking loving, sing alonging, good conversational, cabin feverish reasons.  We stayed overnight at a hotel in Northern Virginia, lazed away the morning, then picked up our flying family in Norfolk later that night. After another, incredibly well-rested night at a hotel, we finally wound our way down to our perpetual place of happiness.  I say finally only because the destination is so perfect that it's hard to wait for, not because the trip was horribly long. As I mentioned earlier, the two and a half day long trip went over remarkably well with my children.  So much so that for the final hour and a half, my babies slept while the beach paradox of both soothing anticipation and overwhelming calm enveloped Jeffrey and I as much as the fresh, salty air that surrounded us.

Does it sound perfect? Because it certainly felt perfect.

My Birthday in the Apple Orchard

  

Jeffrey packed his bag for a work trip to Canada the night before my birthday and amid stuffing shirts and trousers and toothpaste into his suitcase, he expressed concern that he would miss my big day.  He has learned well what a birthday means to me! But he didn't have any need to fret, I had a magnificent day (and presents to abate my loneliness at night).

Autumn gave me a perfect day of sunshine and warmth and we headed out to the apple orchard and farmers market for what has yearly become a replacement of my birthday cake: a birthday doughnut. We ran into Mr. Patterson himself at Patterson fruit farm and he is such a kind and thoughtful man, he gave us all our celebratory doughnuts that were made and baked fresh at the farm. Still licking frosting from our fingers, we plunked the babes into a wagon and strolled out to the orchard for slightly-less-sweet treats. My mama, dad, and I tried to pick apples and store them in our bags, but Sawyer and Elouise had different plans and snatched them back out again to stuff in their waiting mouths. Somehow, they still found room for dinner....

After dinner out and presents and bedtime Jeff skyped me to be sure that he hadn't left me alone (thank goodness for our kids and my family) or forgotten. That seemed gift enough, but the next day my favorite surprise arrived in the mail from him, "posted from Canada." Which, quite coincidentally, made it the birthday that kept on giving, my favorite kind of birthday of all.

  

If You Give a Sawyer an Umbrella...

He'll ask you for a chair.
Then he'll wonder if you have a spare table about, and he'll want that too.

Upon seeing the empty table, he'll ask you for a snack (cookies, if you please).

                  

This will of course make him thirsty, so he'll ask you for a drink.

Finally, once settled down to snack in the shade, he'll ask you to join him.

Naturally, you'll oblige.

(every little bit of this set up was 100% Sawyer led.  Well, I brought out the umbrella, and he took it from there.)

Lakeshore Live Steamers

For Father's day this year I made Jeff go to what I believed would be a mini train yard, with small trains that we could ride on and watch them roll around the tracks billowing steam.  What we actually found was a man, with a massive, hobbyish love for minute-scale trains, who had built an itsy bitsy track in his backyard.  His backyard people! I found it listed on the city's website for parks, and it was in his backyard! Are you getting a picture of awkwardness yes? Wait, please. Let me go on, there's more.

He was sitting in his backyard wearing a train engineer's hat, sipping cold ones with his buddies (all sitting behind their walkers) and told us to just walk around and have a good time while they sat and chatted and watched us.  Jeff tried to engage them in some conversation, hoping to make everything a little less strange, but it left me alone to chase Sawyer who was a post-church, napless madman.  In slow motion, I saw him run at the train, stop dead, stick his arm out, release his pointer finger and with a steady forward push, poke that miniature train right off the track. As it fell it wrenched out a dismal wail from the dying whistle, then all was unbearably quiet.

Thankfully, it could be mended, and as soon as everything was put right, we all but ran out of that backyard and, needless to say, never returned.

  

What I had hoped the dinky little train yard would be was something like the Lakeshore Live Steamers at Penitentiary Glen.  With two miles of tracks and small, but ride-worthy, trains driven by enthusiastic old men, these trains are not Hobby Lobby standard issue. They run on steam, or coal, engines on tracks with switches.  The wind blows your hair, you weave through trees, all the engineers toot their train whistles and literally everyone is smiling like happy fools.

It is perfect. Not at all awkward. Nothing to be broken. And we didn't have to scuttle out of someone's backyard to get home.

28 and Lookin' Great

All Jeff ever wants is a simple birthday celebration with steak, green beans, potatoes, and either chocolate chip cookies or yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  Presents are welcome, but he doesn't really ask for anything.  I'm always looking for ways to jazz it up, like give him a birthday week (that's a must for my birthday!), or make chocolate chip cookie cake three layers thick, and while every effort is appreciated, he remains happy Mr. Simple no matter what.

Despite simple wants, he proves to be anything but plain in nature.  He continually surprises me in the ways that grows and changes for the better,  I used to think I was better half - ha- but he is becoming a remarkable man and husband and I have to work hard so I don't get left behind as the dead-weight in this relationship.

Jeff is astonishingly intelligent. Not in a useless facts, full of blah-blah-blah, you all listen while I talk kind of way, but the more enduring and rare kind of intelligence that not only thinks for itself, but processes quickly and can generate original ideas. He'll be so embarrassed (but secretly pleased) that I'm putting this in writing!

Jeffrey's the best kind of man, we all adore him and were more than happy to simply celebrate his special day.

So...Blogging Regularly Hasn't Been My Strong Point...

{one of Jeff's birthday present, coincidentally one of my only successful journals}

I had very wise friend say once that when she journals, if she takes some time away and then comes back to it, she never tries to cover everything she missed. Instead she starts with the present and moves on from there.  That was the best idea that I had never thought of myself, but it really takes the stress out of this whole journaling attempt I'm making here.

But the thing is, I can't quite move on ahead without getting on some of what has happened already.  We have a pretty amazing life (ha!), so in addition to keeping up with the present, in honor of the end of summer I'll be sprinkling in some of our favorite summer pastimes that kept us happy and busy. And if you know me and if I get my way, then you should know that "sprinkling" will be more like a deluge, so hang in there! Here we go....

Klises Take Cleveland

{chocolate chip cookie coma, poor tired babe}

{watching for Poppi at the airport}

{cleveland skyline}

Rarely is it the case, but sometimes, somethings happen that are so undeniably, precisely perfect, that they are undeniably, precisely presented from heaven.  I know of no other explanation for every last need, concern, desire- even wishes you didn't know you had or would never dare dream of- to be wrapped up and placed before you with a bow.  Our opportunity to move to Ohio was heaven sent.  We have absolutely no doubt that we were given this chance because we live true to our moral standards, exercise gratitude for our blessings, work hard, and at those times when we feel our strength giving out and our purpose losing intensity, we immediately buoy up with faith. 

Not only has it been incredible to see all our needs and goals begun to be met, but also amazing to me is the intricate interweaving of our lives.  Lauren is one of my oldest and dearest friends, and her wedding this summer brought together several of our other oldest and dearest friends. One of these friends, Sarah, has a father who has a job I never understood, but I I did know that he was very smart and liked to take apart radios.  Somewhere along the way, I realized that what he does is what Jeff does, and after noting as much to my friend, she told me that her father was actually looking to hire a new engineer. Right away.  At the reception the next day, Jeff did what he hates to do (networking) and talked to Sarah's dad.  Much to my surprise, he came away positively bursting with excitement.  If you know Jeff, then you know that excitement is a REALLY big deal for such an even keeled fellow. Jeff wanted to talk and talk and talk some more about how perfect the job sounded and how much he liked Sarah's father and how awesome it would be to work with him and to engineer with the company. It was exactly the kind of engineering he had been wanting to do and would do..... in his spare time, at home, for fun.....He could not believe how tailored the job pitch was, and even started to back down the next day because he worried that if he wanted it too much, it wouldn't work out for him and he'd come away extremely disappointed.

With the fear of defeat looming, Jeff sent in his resume to two positions in the company. Then he was contacted and asked when he could fly to Cleveland for interviews.  He did so right away, interviewed for both positions, and within a week, he was offered not one, but both positions and asked to pick which one he wanted.  Someone needed to pinch us.  We could not think of any time, any company has made such an offer, but they were gracious enough to explain that they were very impressed with Jeff and wanted him to work the company at the job that would best suit him. We were in a delirium of disbelief and incredibly grateful and glad that Jeff would be able to immediately start working in the career path that he had thought would take years of gathering career experience and more education to work himself into.  

That, in a nutshell, is how we found ourselves watching movers load up boxes and place them on a truck bound for Ohio, just four weeks after Lauren's wedding. There was a lot we left behind: family, our Minnesota "family" of friends, a great first job with a good company, and a frigid, depressing winter (that last one won't be missed, the others made it hard to leave).  But we could never feel uncertain about what we needed to do, because what was right was impeccably obvious. It was incredible to feel such surety.  

We're so grateful to our family and our friends for helping us and supporting us as we've started this new direction.  We know we could not have had, nor accepted, this opportunity if it wasn't for all of the combined efforts that worked together seamlessly to help us get where we needed to go. And mostly, we thank God for understanding the silent, patient desires of our hearts and seeing fit to move us along toward our dreams.  We're in awe of this amazing, incredible, awesome, heaven-sent happening. 

My Favorite Chopped Salad

 

   

This is my favorite multi-seasonal salad. It makes a great meal on it's own in the summer, with a hunk of bread in the fall, accompanied by soup in the winter, and served up with fruit in spring.  It's quick and easy to make and has something for everyone in our little family to eat (which, honestly, doesn't happen much with salads). The recipe is flexible, and I usually throw it together with whatever I have on hand, but this is the basic, tried-and-true version.

Chopped Salad:

(note: obviously, since this is a chopped salad, everything is diced an chopped into relatively equal sized pieces. that part is really important) 

2 romaine hearts 

1/3 lb good salami

1 pint cherry tomatoes

1 can navy beans, rinsed and drained well

3 green onions

1/2 seedless cucumber

1/2 C shaved parmesan

Italian dressing (homemade, or you can use your favorite store-bought brand to make it really easy)

Toss it all together and crack some fresh pepper on top and you're good to go.

Some swaps I make:

beans: navy, butter beans, or garbanzo 

cheese:  grated mozzarella

sometimes I toss in bits of leftover fresh herbs like basil or parsley, and I think olives would be tasty in there, too.