Summertime--first day in Utah

Now that summer is over and we are done with our first week of school, I'm ready to do a few posts about our summer fun. 

My sisters Kami and Kendra overlapped their summer visits to Utah with ours so we could all be together. It was so fun to see them and their kids.

Back in early June, after four long airplane rides (longest was twelve hours) that went incredibly smoothly, we met my parents at the airport. Then, of course, our first stop was at the Red Iguana to get some long-awaited Mexican food. (No offense to the Middle East, but the Mexican food there is quite lacking.)

Reunion between Libbie and Grandpa at the airport
(I think it's funny that the lady in the back ducked to avoid being in the picture even though she is behind the subjects)

Meeting Little "Pea" (Penelope, Kami's baby, who was born while we were in Jerusalem)

My sister Kendra with our nieces Evie and Addie (Krista's girls)

So much delicious food

Aunt Bonis with her baby Pea and Aaron and Gabe

                              

First Day of School

The boys woke up at 6:30, rearing to go. It was early enough that we got to sit on the couch and watch the sun rise over their school. It was a nice way to start the new school year. Hopefully the obvious metaphor will match the beauty of the actual occurrence.

Here they are in all their uniformed glory. I think their uniforms are great. Aaron put his on this morning and said, "I love it!" It's great to know that your kids will look nice and not have to worry about what they are wearing. It does make it difficult to locate them on the playground though.

Aaron and Elliot ready for their first day of school

Libbie getting in on the action

Elliot getting to work in his Kindergarten class

They both refused to say whether they liked their first day of school or not (as is typical for some reason). Aaron said it was frustrating because they didn't get to do fun stuff like reading and art because it was so chaotic. He was also really disappointed that his friend from church who is in third grade at the same school didn't meet him at the entrance to the school at 3:00 like they had planned.

Elliot told us some of the rules and recited Humpty Dumpty, so I guess he was paying attention.

First Day of School Jitters

Tomorrow our boys start school. Aaron will start second grade and Elliot will start kindergarten. (Elliot's grade is on a semi-experimental basis... his age group here is Pre-K but because of the fact that he did kindergarten last year in Jerusalem, there was no space in Pre-K here, and he is reading well, we were given permission to start him in kindergarten early. We'll see how it goes.)

Aaron explained to me the other night that he is excited about school but a little nervous too. I said that was understandable and asked him what he was the most nervous about. He explained, "I am worried that my teacher will make me read things I don't want to and that it will make me not like reading. What if she says things like, 'Read that right now or else I will call your mom!' and then I would not like reading as much and..." he broke down in tears and then continued, "and I can't lose reading. I just can't." I hugged him tight and told him that I bet his teacher will love reading too, and will try hard to encourage him in his love of reading and try not to do anything that would harm that. I told him that I imagine she might even be able to recommend new books to him that he's never read and will love. (This suddenly perked him up as he exclaimed, "Like what?!") I told him that if his teacher ever says threatening things to him that lead him toward not liking reading as much, we would talk about it together and work it out so she didn't hurt his love for reading. He seemed convinced and fell asleep shortly after. What a kid.

Elliot says he thinks he is excited for school. He has never been to an English-speaking school before so I think he will be pleasantly surprised. He has really taken off with reading these last two weeks. He loves to sit and read to Libbie, and she loves to listen and repeat after him. "What that say?" she usually says about every page, and Elliot patiently reads the lines to her word by word, so she can repeat after and "read" too. I think he is ready for kindergarten, but I am nervous to have him "leaving the nest" so soon. I was really looking forward to special time with him during the day; these last couple of weeks have been heavenly for all of us as we have time and space to hang out as well as easily get out and explore new things. We'll see how he does these first couple of weeks in kindergarten. If he doesn't love it, we'll explore other options. He needs something structured and consistent that provides friends and makes him happy; we'll see if kindergarten provides that. It is supposedly a wonderful school so  hopefully it will live up to its reputation and test scores. We'll see how it goes.

Settling In

I am sitting on a large, cozy, fully reclining couch chair looking out floor-to-ceiling windows into our backyard. Yes, that’s right—our backyard, in our house, on our furniture. It’s hard to believe. Ben and I have spent the last week moving into the home we bought last week. We have been insanely busy getting things done, but have still found plenty of time to pause, smooch, raise our eyebrows, smile, and comment about how amazing this all is. We have had countless moments of “Wow, this is so cool… I can’t believe it…” Even as I type, Ben is setting up surround sound in our main living area (“the library”) with speakers he has had in storage for over twelve years. He is smiling from ear to ear right now, giggling as KMFDM streams through the speakers, saying, “Tell me that doesn’t sound good!” So cute.

When Aaron was one year old, we moved our family to a small town in western Ukraine called Lvov to study Ukrainian for a summer. Aaron learned to understand Russian and Ukrainian at a one-year-old level. We became comfortable with the language and culture. That was pretty amazing. One summer we lived in Berlin, Germany for several weeks then traveled through western Europe, one time taking an overnight train where we had only two skinny beds, one on top of another. Ben had to lie on the top bunk the whole night holding Aaron in one arm and, with the other arm, holding onto the upper rail for dear life. That was definitely one of those moments in life where you think, “This is a pretty unique experience.” We lived in Manhattan for five years, with family outings to see the Statue of Liberty or walk the Brooklyn Bridge. That was quite an incredible experience. Last year we moved our family to Jerusalem to live for an academic year. We studied Hebrew, shopped in the outdoor markets, traveled throughout Israel and Palestine, and became resident experts on how to thrive in Jerusalem as non-Jewish Americans with little money and no car. That was pretty fantastic. Yet, somehow, sitting here in our reclined second-hand sofa looking out our windows into the darkness is the most unexpectedly amazing experience of them all. We did not realize this would be part of our lives, yet here it is.

Each moment of putting our home together has been so fun. The first piece of furniture we bought at a consignment shop and brought in. The first box of books we opened. The first bookshelf we put together and filled up with dusty old books that have spent most of their lives in boxes. The first stream of music to flow through the home. Today Ben unpacked the kids’ books and put them on a huge bookshelf in their room. All five of us sat there smiling for at least ten minutes, pointing out books we were excited to see again. It’s so beautiful to see our things together and accessible. Pretty incredible.

Ben and I feel like we just won the grand prize on a game show—new appliances, furniture, minivan, and a house(/loan) to go along with it all. We just can’t believe it. We laughed at ourselves last night when we realized our pillowtalk had morphed into swapping stories about amazing feats of fitting things into the minivan. We put a whole couch in there, with room for groceries on the side!

Today I realized we have a closet I forgot about. A whole closet! These are the moments where I just shake my head and wonder how we got so lucky. Today Libbie said, “Me have a ‘play outside’ in my home!” In other words, “We have a playground in our backyard!” Technically it’s not really in our backyard but in the schoolyard behind us but we can use it whenever we want and it is accessible from the backyard, so it’s basically the same thing. Less maintenance.

Ben is now reading Borges next to me. We have been waiting for this moment for many years, mostly not even realizing that we were looking forward to it. We could have been happy to stay in Manhattan forever in a small apartment, wheeling groceries home in a broken down granny cart. But instead we have a house and a minivan in the southern Midwest city of Tulsa, Oklahoma. And it’s pretty awesome.

In front of our (currently pink) house