Jo and I began 2014 on the dance floor at the main lawns of the Secunderabad Club. And now, suddenly and unexpectedly it's coming to an end. Here's what we did between the beginning and the end, in excruciating detail.
Early in the year, Vivian turned seven at a geeky science party. She learned to ski in a one morning and wowed her mother and her class with a presentation about the birth of stars and galaxies the following week. But her teachers complained that she didn't have focus which she apparently saved for the monkey bars and for when she danced at a couple of events towards the end of the school year.
Evan turned four in a light saber-filled Star Wars affair and got himself a big boy bike with no training wheels. He developed a "cool" face - a smoldering look he usually directed at admiring ladies, and he told everyone who cared to listen and then some that someday he was going to be a "cooker". Jo and I, taking an uncalculated risk, had agreed to move him for the next academic year from Grace Garden where he knew and loved everyone, to a school filled with strangers where they only spoke Spanish. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about summer vacation next.
As summer began, Vivian went off to her very first sleepover camp with her cousin Ava. She cried when camp was over and wished that it had "lasted for six weeks more". She loved Slumber Falls and is ready to go back there next year. And I quietly disposed off some of my prejudices about Jesus camps, or at least this particular one.
Evan, in Grandma's pool, learned how to swim, though he specializes in the underwater kind. We had a wonderful 4th of July celebration with friends and family. The night before, after Vivian and Evan went to sleep at Grandma's, Uncle Tom & Co. arrived from Nebraska. Apparently at 4am, Evan woke them up (Uncle Tom and Aunt Anna were sleeping in the room where Jo and I normally sleep at Carol's) and told them that he didn't like his bed. No sooner than Aunt Anna offered, he jumped up and found himself a nice spot between them and went off to sleep, where a worried Jo found him in the morning.
A couple of days later we embarked on a trip that started with a week at Uncle Alu and Aunt Michelle's in Rhode Island. Lazy walks on the beach and Vivian boogie boarding for hours. And treasure hunts, campfires, piano time, English muffins, riding lawn mowers, art shows, and ice creams. Then we went off to Iceland, Amsterdam, Paris, the Faroe Islands and Copenhagen for a month.
Iceland was a blur of waterfalls, rain, icebergs, miles upon miles of emptiness and moss covered lava rocks, volcanoes, horses, fjords, black sand beaches, and midnight trips to the park in daylight. In Amsterdam Vivian and Evan ran past every painting in the van Gogh museum, completing the world's fastest trip through the museum. We rode bikes like locals and the kids swam in the rooftop pool at the Nemo. Paris was hot. Evan and Vivian took turns being sleepy or grumpy as we dragged them to the top of the Sacre Coeur and up 700 steps to the second observation deck of the Eiffel Tower. The Faroe Islands were stunningly beautiful and remote. We took ferry boats to even remoter islands to hike down sheer cliffs, lay on our bellies and stare at puffins who starred back at us with little silver sand eels between their orange puffin beaks.
On our last morning in Torshavn we traded our remaining Faroese currency for chocolate bars. The kids sat in the back of the bus to the airport and devoured the chocolate. I noticed that Evan had messy fingers.
"Evan - lick the chocolate off your fingers"
"Daddy - I can't!"
"Why not?"
"I'm sick of chocolate"
"Why didn't you stop when you had enough?"
"The chocolate was controlling me"
By October Jo's wanderlust kicked in again and we packed up a minivan with Grandma and the kids and drove around the Big Bend, Guadalupe mountains, Carlsbad caverns, Cloudcroft in New Mexico, the amazing dunes at White Sands, and Santa Fe. We stopped in Clovis and Vivian and Evan spent a happy day with their cousins. And then in November, like Willie, we were on the road again. This time for Thanksgiving in Nebraska with Nicolle and her family, Greta, and Grandma. Eight kids, six adults, four dogs, one house. Seven days. Sounds like a nightmare but we made it there and back with all 72 limbs intact and just a tiny dent in Uncle Tom's liquor cabinet. And talk of making it an annual tradition. The kids amazingly entertained themselves with a piece of cardboard, a patch of grass, a rickety park four block down the hill, an under inflated soccer ball, an iPad, and crunch cones.
One morning on the way to school Vivian asked "So what's happening with chemical warfare in Syria?". It's hard to answer that question without saying how we as a species have screwed up. But just as to err, apparently over and over again, is human, so is to hope. Evan is enjoying every minute of being alive and four years old. A couple of weeks ago he described the entire workings of the human GI tract to us in two minutes. He is serious, funny, turdy, cuddly, and still oh so cute, though that won't last long. Four years ago, when school Santa at Grace Garden asked Vivian what she wanted, she replied "A pair of roller skates, a dump truck, a skate board, a big candy cane, and a nice new shovel." I asked her why. "Because that's what Fields is asking Santa". Yesterday Vivian wrote out her list for Santa. Jo and I pried it open carefully this morning. She wanted a "boy doll like my Big Dolly, a head band making kit, and $55 to donate to the World Wildlife Fund to save endangered African elephants". Like her Santa list, in 2014 Vivian continued to grow into her own person. Thoughtful, confident, creative, caring and loving.
And with that we wish you hope, happiness, peace and a very merry Winter Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Hogmanay, New Year, and Guru Govind Singh Jayanti.
December 2014
Austin, Texas
Early in the year, Vivian turned seven at a geeky science party. She learned to ski in a one morning and wowed her mother and her class with a presentation about the birth of stars and galaxies the following week. But her teachers complained that she didn't have focus which she apparently saved for the monkey bars and for when she danced at a couple of events towards the end of the school year.
Evan turned four in a light saber-filled Star Wars affair and got himself a big boy bike with no training wheels. He developed a "cool" face - a smoldering look he usually directed at admiring ladies, and he told everyone who cared to listen and then some that someday he was going to be a "cooker". Jo and I, taking an uncalculated risk, had agreed to move him for the next academic year from Grace Garden where he knew and loved everyone, to a school filled with strangers where they only spoke Spanish. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about summer vacation next.
As summer began, Vivian went off to her very first sleepover camp with her cousin Ava. She cried when camp was over and wished that it had "lasted for six weeks more". She loved Slumber Falls and is ready to go back there next year. And I quietly disposed off some of my prejudices about Jesus camps, or at least this particular one.
Evan, in Grandma's pool, learned how to swim, though he specializes in the underwater kind. We had a wonderful 4th of July celebration with friends and family. The night before, after Vivian and Evan went to sleep at Grandma's, Uncle Tom & Co. arrived from Nebraska. Apparently at 4am, Evan woke them up (Uncle Tom and Aunt Anna were sleeping in the room where Jo and I normally sleep at Carol's) and told them that he didn't like his bed. No sooner than Aunt Anna offered, he jumped up and found himself a nice spot between them and went off to sleep, where a worried Jo found him in the morning.
A couple of days later we embarked on a trip that started with a week at Uncle Alu and Aunt Michelle's in Rhode Island. Lazy walks on the beach and Vivian boogie boarding for hours. And treasure hunts, campfires, piano time, English muffins, riding lawn mowers, art shows, and ice creams. Then we went off to Iceland, Amsterdam, Paris, the Faroe Islands and Copenhagen for a month.
Iceland was a blur of waterfalls, rain, icebergs, miles upon miles of emptiness and moss covered lava rocks, volcanoes, horses, fjords, black sand beaches, and midnight trips to the park in daylight. In Amsterdam Vivian and Evan ran past every painting in the van Gogh museum, completing the world's fastest trip through the museum. We rode bikes like locals and the kids swam in the rooftop pool at the Nemo. Paris was hot. Evan and Vivian took turns being sleepy or grumpy as we dragged them to the top of the Sacre Coeur and up 700 steps to the second observation deck of the Eiffel Tower. The Faroe Islands were stunningly beautiful and remote. We took ferry boats to even remoter islands to hike down sheer cliffs, lay on our bellies and stare at puffins who starred back at us with little silver sand eels between their orange puffin beaks.
On our last morning in Torshavn we traded our remaining Faroese currency for chocolate bars. The kids sat in the back of the bus to the airport and devoured the chocolate. I noticed that Evan had messy fingers.
"Evan - lick the chocolate off your fingers"
"Daddy - I can't!"
"Why not?"
"I'm sick of chocolate"
"Why didn't you stop when you had enough?"
"The chocolate was controlling me"
There were many a precious moment like this one and when you spend 24 hours a day for a month together, you get them all. But you also glimpse the underbelly of too much togetherness. So we were all happy to get back to Austin and to (as Evan calls it) our white wooden house where Vivian and Evan feverishly spent the last few days of the summer holidays with cousins and friends and neighbors in swimming pools and sleepovers.
Vivian started second grade back at Magellan and though she still limps along in Spanish, she's a champ in math. Evan joined Magellan and has embraced learning Spanish with a gusto (at the dinner table if he needs water he politely asks "por favor agua"). He has given up wanting to be a "cooker like my dad" and now wants to be a cientifico (a scientist) like his Uncle Alu. Vivian has begun sparring in Taekwondo and found out that she enjoys kicking and punching boys. Evan is the most serious student in his age group and he lives to be called out to say the pledge at the start or end of Taekwondo class.
By October Jo's wanderlust kicked in again and we packed up a minivan with Grandma and the kids and drove around the Big Bend, Guadalupe mountains, Carlsbad caverns, Cloudcroft in New Mexico, the amazing dunes at White Sands, and Santa Fe. We stopped in Clovis and Vivian and Evan spent a happy day with their cousins. And then in November, like Willie, we were on the road again. This time for Thanksgiving in Nebraska with Nicolle and her family, Greta, and Grandma. Eight kids, six adults, four dogs, one house. Seven days. Sounds like a nightmare but we made it there and back with all 72 limbs intact and just a tiny dent in Uncle Tom's liquor cabinet. And talk of making it an annual tradition. The kids amazingly entertained themselves with a piece of cardboard, a patch of grass, a rickety park four block down the hill, an under inflated soccer ball, an iPad, and crunch cones.
One morning on the way to school Vivian asked "So what's happening with chemical warfare in Syria?". It's hard to answer that question without saying how we as a species have screwed up. But just as to err, apparently over and over again, is human, so is to hope. Evan is enjoying every minute of being alive and four years old. A couple of weeks ago he described the entire workings of the human GI tract to us in two minutes. He is serious, funny, turdy, cuddly, and still oh so cute, though that won't last long. Four years ago, when school Santa at Grace Garden asked Vivian what she wanted, she replied "A pair of roller skates, a dump truck, a skate board, a big candy cane, and a nice new shovel." I asked her why. "Because that's what Fields is asking Santa". Yesterday Vivian wrote out her list for Santa. Jo and I pried it open carefully this morning. She wanted a "boy doll like my Big Dolly, a head band making kit, and $55 to donate to the World Wildlife Fund to save endangered African elephants". Like her Santa list, in 2014 Vivian continued to grow into her own person. Thoughtful, confident, creative, caring and loving.
And with that we wish you hope, happiness, peace and a very merry Winter Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Hogmanay, New Year, and Guru Govind Singh Jayanti.
December 2014
Austin, Texas
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