Jordan's on the mend

Well, either your thoughts, Tamiflu, Elderberry, Zinc, Umcka (?), and/or endless sleeping did the trick. Jordan came back to life this evening and seems to be getting better by the minute. Thank goodness, God, angels, luck, timing, meds, prayers, whatever it was.

Here's what it was like for her before:

























And here she is after:







And while I'm at it, here is what it looks like when you put almost everything you own in one room. You should try it!

The Flu

Jordan has come down with the flu. We took her to the pediatrician to day and got her diagnosed as I've never seen her this sick before in her life. She's taking medication (anti-viral) and the rest of us are taking the same medication preventatively with hopes that we will all be fine to start this adventure in less than 48 hours. I've never asked this before because I'm not sure I completely believe in it but I know others swear by it: if you might put a good thought out there for Jordan to feel better quickly and for Gabe, Mark and I to stay healthy, I'd greatly appreciate it. And I'll be sure to let you know how it turns out.

Back to packing,
Love, Nancy

Finishing Up

Dearest Friends and Family,

Seven days left. Things around here are just bizarre. I cleaned out our junk drawer. Who does that?

We have boxes everywhere--big boxes, little boxes, filled boxes, empty boxes, boxes to ship, to pack, to store, to donate, to unpack, to hide, to wrap, to mail. Boxes are my life.

I keep saying good-bye to people but I'm not crying. I'm a crier when it comes to good-byes but I'm not sad this week. That's bizarre. I'm so excited to leave and I keep picturing reuniting with everyone when we come home and I'm excited about that too. I do, however, have this strong feeling of wanting to push pause on all your lives so I don't miss anything. One friend of mine just brought home her new baby and I won't get to see her baby and her love for her baby grow. Another friend of mine is about to quit a job that I've been waiting for her to quit for a long time and I won't get to be here as she figures out what to do next. Another friend of mine is getting married a week after I leave town and I won't get to celebrate that with her. Another friend of mine who is out-of-state is going to have a baby a month or so after I leave and I won't get to talk with her on the phone to hear all about it. And then there are all the other things that will happen that we don't even know about yet and I'll miss being here for all of that too. Why can't we have it all??? My mother told me once that we can have anything we want we just can't have everything we want and I guess this is an example of that.

Anyway, Jordan is doing much better. Thank you all for your thoughts about her--they were very helpful and reassuring. The other day I asked her to go get her shoes. She said, "Okay, Mama," and started to walk away. Then she turned around, came back to me and said, "Did you hear how I just said that? I said 'Okay Mama' instead of 'Nooooo, I don't waaaaaannnnnaaaaaa'." My heart bulged when she said that. I squatted down next to her and said how exciting that was and asked how that felt for her and she said "good!" with a big smile and I asked if that was easy or hard and she said "easy!" with the same big smile. I was thrilled--not just because she didn't whine but because she noticed that she didn't whine and that it felt good to her not to whine. We've had a much easier go of it since that day though there have still been some setbacks. If she was functioning at about 30%-40% a week ago, she's up to 70% or 80% now. Phew, we're out of that dark place, for now.

Speaking of Jordan, here she is at the Butterfly Pavilion with her Grandparents. She's in heaven with butterflies landing on her nearly hatched from their cocoons.

For those of you who have asked how the kids are doing as we get closer to leaving, I took a survey this morning at breakfast. They both raised their hands for excited, scared and sad and kept their hands down for angry, confused and 'I don't care'. Neither had any feelings to add. Seems right to me!

My parents and brother were here for a week and I thought that if we got all our stuff done by the time they got here, we could just relax and enjoy our time with them. We did get everything done that we planned to get done before they arrived. But I forgot to account for everything that I didn't plan to get done that still needed to get done so we didn't have a very relaxing time. It was a very busy time and it was great to be together and more than anything, we are grateful for their help with things and their company while we got the things done. My car is all set to leave sitting for a year, my and my children's teeth are clean enough to last a year (I wish I could say the same for Mark--though his teeth issues aren't due to a lack of cleanliness but about their lack of staying power), our wills are in their final draft form and waiting to be signed, our tax info is off to the accountant, most of my office furniture has been sold, etc...

So this week is about finishing up. Finishing up with my clients, Mark is finishing up with his students and co-workers, we're finishing up packing, storing, shipping, we're finishing up with all our friends for the last time, and the kids are finishing up school.

Oh, and we think we found the car we are going to buy to drive while we're there. It is a car that another exchange family from Canada used in Australiathis past year and they are selling it before they come back home. The bad news is that it is old and the good news is that it is cheap. We're hoping that we are buying a worthwhile car, sight unseen. We're trusting that this exchange person has enough sympathy for people on exchange that he wouldn't sell us a useless car. He says it is in great condition and that he's fixed all that needs to be fixed. Here's a picture of its outsides. We'll let you know when we get there about its insides.

I think that is it for now...have a wonderful week before Christmas everyone!

Love, Nancy


P.S. These pictures were taken by my mother, the photographer--I'm taking advantage of the fact that she was visiting and we got some great pictures out of the deal as Mark and I will be the photographers from here on out and there are no guarantees with us that you'll even see pictures much less good ones.

Merry Christmas

Good morning and Merry Christmas! I am pleased to announce that Santa Claus did indeed accommodate us this year as he showed up sometime in the middle of the night on December 7th so that we could wake up to bulging stockings and presents under the tree (that we quick got and ornamented on December 6th!) This was a whirlwind of a Christmas for me and though I thought it was working out well for the kids, Jordan's recent behavior makes me wonder if it may have been a bit too whirlwindy for her. (More about Jordan in a minute)

We weren't rushed in our energy but we did go from a normal wintry day on Wednesday to a full-blown Christmasy house on Thursday including the arrival of my parents and brother, to a Christmas Eve celebration on Friday to a full-blown Christmas morning on Saturday. It was lovely, actually, though I'm not sure I'm communicating that well right now! We had fun picking out our tree together on Thursday and then reminiscing over the ornaments as we hung them--every year the ornaments get clustered a little higher up from the bottom of the tree than the year before. On Friday, we enjoyed the Advent Garden which is a celebration of winter at the kids' school. It is a beautiful way to start Christmas eve we discovered. Then we came home to eat our traditional homemade pizza dinner for Christmas Eve, complete with lighting the menorah as it is also Hannukah this week! We hung stockings, wrote notes for Santa to accompany the cookies and carrots and then kids went to bed.

Christmas morning was as magical as always with the excitement level through the roof. Santa really came, he really wrote notes back and he really brought presents and put them under the tree. "I knew it!" Gabe and Jordan announced several times that morning. After we opened presents, we had a great big dinner and had a very relaxing day. Mark asked me several times if I wanted to get up and do this or talk about that or make a plan for this and I kept saying, "Tomorrow. Today is my day to just hang out with my family and not do anything about Australia." It was lovely. I think Mark read more than half of his new book in one day.

Then Sunday we were back at it. Christmas was over and Australia was back in the forefront. We cleaned out another closet and some other nooks and crannies where we apparently stash things and then forget they exist.

And today is the 2-week until we leave mark and it is beginning to freak me out. I can't decide from one minute to the next whether this is feeling more real or more surreal. We got our visas in the mail on Friday, phew. We have our international drivers licenses. We have passports and airline tickets and travel vouchers for New Zealand. All seems to be falling into place very nicely. Now it's all the little stuff. Should we leave out our vitamin-B complex and kids ibuprofen or bring them with us or store them? Is there a right answer to this question? The nice towels for Prue and Kynan are getting washed and we won't use them anymore before we leave--we'll be using the old crappy ones that can just be thrown in a box after our last shower.

And then there's Jordan. She's been struggling for about 2 or 3 days now. You can tell she's struggling by her whining, screaming, arguing and biting of her mother. I'm not completely sure why she is having a hard time but we all suspect it may be a combination of the lack of normalcy in the last few days, the excitment, and the impending move. So we are struggling with her and wishing we could know for sure what is bothering her. Mark and I are a bit concerned that this move is not her idea of a good time. She is so connected to a few of her friends at school and so comfortable in her classroom with her teacher and her peers that moving her out of that can't make much sense to her deep down. She's shown us nothing but excitment when we talk about Australia and she mentions it spontaneously all the time. But we all know that sometimes we feign excitment when our insides are doing flip-flops or we are both excited and nervous at the same time. So we're intending to get to the bottom of this with her to help her figure out what is going on and to find a way to reassure her that we will take very good care of her no matter what that means. It's hard to see my daughter try to repel the two people who are the most dedicated to helping her through this. Why does being human have to be so hard sometimes??? I'll keep you posted on what happens for her.

Happy Hannukah and Merry Christmas to everyone! Please write and tell us about you!
Love, Nancy

less than 3 weeks left

Hello everyone,
Just a quick note before I go get kids ready for school. We are leaving in three weeks from yesterday. We spent this past weekend putting most everything that we'll store into boxes and then stacking them in Gabe's room. There are boxes covering most of his floor stacked 2 and 3 high. We removed his bottom bunk bed and hauled it downstairs into what we've always known as the playroom. He's sleeping on the top bunk now and when I check on him at night, he looks a bit displaced sleeping high above the boxes like a monkey sleeping in the tops of a rainforest tree.

My parents and brother are coming to spend a week with us this Thursday. We'll be celebrating Christmas on Saturday (that is, as long as Santa got our letter and is willing to come early--Jordan says that he will even though we haven't heard back from him. She says we really didn't have to write the letter because he just knows. I suppose the letter was just a formality.) Yesterday Jordan got so excited that Christmas is just a few days away. She said, with a big excited smile, "It feels like Christmas is the end of my life!" As though all she's done so far in her life was the build-up to this Saturday and after that there will be...nothing. I so relate to feeling that way about things. Like this trip to Australia, for example. Though knowing that there will be life after Australia has been important for me to remember so that the leaving part isn't quite so hard. For Jordan, there is no hard part about Christmas, of course, so she can see this as the grand finale of it all and not think about what may or may not be after it passes.

I have been having a wonderful time with all my friends. Someone said to me the other day that this experience of getting ready to go away for a year must bring a great deal of value to what we have in our lives right now. She's right. I've spent much more time with my friends in the last few months than I typically do, especially this time of year (pathetically ironic) because I don't prioritize things that I take for granted. Right now, I'm not only not taking people in my life for granted, I'm paying extra attention to my friendships and it's fabulous! I highly recommend that everyone put people first and the to-do list second. Try a whole month of putting your relationships with the important people in your life ahead of everything else (excpet taking care of yourself, though they are often one and the same.) I hope I can remember to do this when we get home in a year.

Time to go get our day started. Have a good week and I'd love to hear how y'all are doing too!
Love, Nancy

Sadness

Gabe said to me last night, as I was putting him to bed, that he wanted to spend as much time with his friends as possible before we leave because he is going to miss them. Ugh. I had been living safely in my delusion that they would be too young to really miss their friends--that being with us would trump their blessed out of sight out of mind mentality about life in general. But if I really think about that, I'm pretty sure that sort of perspective disappears in toddlerhood. When I heard my son tell me that he is going to miss his friends, I felt an awful sinking feeling.

And I'm beginning the process of saying good-bye to my clients. I feel awful right now about that too as I'm the one leaving them rather than them leaving me which would be a much more natural process. That twinge of guilt is mixed with sadness that I won't get to see what happens next in their lives.

But there's nothing like the sadness that I feel when I think about leaving my friends and family. That sadness I haven't yet been able to look directly in the eye. Every time I glance in its direction, I see such a forbidding emptiness that I quickly look away. We'll be back! I keep saying to myself and those around me, wishing that fact would, poof, make the sadness disappear.

I've learned, over the years, that I can be both sad and thrilled, both missing you and excited at the same time. I know that both are real and both are important and neither one cancels out the other. I was about to write that I hope to be able to teach this to my children but I think what I witnessed last night at bedtime is that Gabe is already modeling this for me. He's not saying he doesn't want to go, he's just clear that what is important right now is what we have in front of us right now. I so get that.

So here are some pictures of the kids at their respective sleep-overs, soaking up the joy they get from their friends.

Time to ship

This is a picture of Mark training for our adventure abroad. Not bad huh?

We are shipping on Thursday. Boxes of bikes, golf clubs, toys, clothes, books and enough bathroom paraphenalia to maintain the hygeine of a girl scout troop for months. We're shipping it all, rather than buying things while we're there for a few reasons. First of all, the US dollar is weak. Just in the last few months, it went from being worth over $1.20 in Australia to being almost 1:1. Secondly, Australia is really expensive. Our exchange partner, Prue, said she shops for clothes at Target where she can find cheap clothes. Like jeans for $60. At Target? Seriously? So we're bringing it all with us with the intention of selling it all and coming home essentially empty-handed. Hopefully we'll remember to save some money for new wardrobes or we'll be mighty cold come next January if we have no clothes left! By the way, I am shipping most of my winter clothes to wear in July in Australia. I have only kept a few things here to wear for the next 6 weeks so if you see me looking shabby, just remember that all my favorite sweaters are on a boat somewhere in the Pacific. I won't embarrass myself or our country wearing ratty clothes while I'm there. I promise.

We mailed a letter to Santa Claus requesting that he visit our house on December 8th rather than wait until Christmas Eve. We're hoping that will lighten his load on December 24th a bit so that it may feel like we're doing him a favor by having an early Christmas. We haven't heard back yet. I did figure out how he does it though--how he delivers presents to so many homes in one night. He goes from west to east. That way, he gains hours as he goes so the guy actually has 48 hours rather than 24. And anyone could do that job in 48 right?

The next six weeks of our calendar is filling up with visits and parties with friends so we can spend as much time together as possible before we will be apart. This is the hardest part--saying good-bye. I'm amazed at how close to the surface my tears are when people mention the fact that we'll be apart for a year. With all the excitement, I'm grateful that I'm still able to show up for my own saddness. It reassures me that I'm staying present. I know that this year is going to fly by for me--as I mentioned to someone the other day, I feel like we'll be home in no time and we haven't even left. And I know that if I want to enjoy this amazing opportunity, I best show up for each and every moment as they unfold--including the sad moments of saying good-bye to the people I love so dearly.

Oh, Mark got his school schedule that describes what he'll be teaching at Cardiff High School next year. Here it is:

"7E and 7R- 2 mid stream classes for 6 periods per fortnight each ( First topic is revision of numeracy skills)

8M1- our top year 8's- nice group of enthusiastic kids. You should have alot of fun with these guys

9M3- #3 out of 5 classes.

10M4- out of 5 classes- These guys are currently my 9M4 an ok group of personalities!

11General3- 4periods per cycle that you will share with a casual teacher. There are 2 other general maths teachers who you will pace yourself with.

Our seniors go Extension2( sometimes called 4 unit, 4 students) extension1( 3 unit, 11 students) Mathematics( sometimes called 2 unit, 15 students) and general maths ( 3 classes, about 55 students).
So this class is not going to be world beaters but will challenge you to keep it simple enough!( no calculus- )

my 9's are looking forward to having you. They already think you're cool!"

Hard to imagine that someday he's going to know what that means!

Here are some more pictures of kiddos to add some color to the news!

Jordan, Josh (their cousin) and Gabe playing this past summer in the backyard.

Hugs...

Have a great week everyone!!