Organizing ducks

This entry might sound tired. I've been busily writing all week. But I'm tired with the kind of satisfaction that comes from hard work that's behind me now. I'm taking a moment from my toil this semester, now that it's the last day of spring break, to reflect and to feel good about where we are, and to let you all know how we prosper.

The Pylons, lovely in the increasingly bright evenings.

We're multitasking over a lot of simmering projects right now. We're looking to buy a house in Pueblo, did I report that? We finally decided the rental market would just be too much of a gamble, and besides, we weren't seeing a lot of houses for rent that fit our needs anyway. We're borrowing and accepting gifts and putting ourselves very much on the hook for it, but it feels like time. We have plane tickets: we're spending our 10th anniversary this year looking at houses in Pueblo.

I can't believe this is real.


Please pray we are able to navigate this, that we have the resources we need. We have no connections or friends in the area. It feels awfully vulnerable to be doing this alone. The homeowners our age that I've spoken to were able to make use of family and church connections to help them with various aspects, and it's more than a little daunting to know how very much we're on our own.

Sunrise out our office window. Pirate House. 

Jon is preparing for a research trip to DC of 4 weeks duration. He needs to take it, dissertation-wise, before we leave the Eastern Standard Time Zone. However, we have no idea at the moment how we're going to make it work. He didn't get a fellowship he was really hoping to get, that would have funded the trip and then some. He doesn't have anywhere to stay. He's applying for a travel grant from the graduate school, but we're not at all sure he'll see that money.

Meanwhile, I'm going to need to find a babysitter. Jon is our childcare this year, and I can't afford to take time off work. Someone will need to get Adele from preschool and Miles from the bus stop, someone will need to care for them until I get back from work. So far, no luck on any of these fronts.

I've spent the week trying to focus on things I can control. I wrote my research term paper for the semester. By Wednesday of this week. I finished my capstone proposal paper and bibliography for my thesis. I got ahead on my reading journals. This comforts me in the face of all I can't nail down yet.

I still can't face the fact that I'm leaving Blacksburg in three months. This town has nurtured us so well. It feels ungrateful to leave it.

2016

2013

2014

But the little, less momentous things keep us grounded. 

Miles' ant experiments have gone very well! We have a trifold to assemble now, to display his work, and we'll be sitting in a little booth at the elementary school science fair next week with our little ant pals in a jar. I find this delightful. 

The election is at least a distraction from our own drama; it's the country's drama, so there are a lot of sharers in that to fellowship with.

The kids are Bernie fans. Just ask them. 

Miles recently had to dress for his future career:

So glad he isn't aspiring to be anything that would have required more of a costume! I'm short of time lately.

Adele recently attended a birthday party for a girl in her class. Even though it was pretty clearly an all-girl party, and even though the dad was taking brothers of the party guests to the movies, guess which boy elected to stay and party with the girls?

There he is. At least he's trying to be useful here and help his sister with her anti-social streak.

She was so done. 

I'm still involved in our Sister Parish committee, even though everyone knows we're moving, at this point. A couple of our members updated our SP bulletin board at church. I stood and admired it for a really really long time.

Recently, I received a response to the letter the children in Children's Chapel sent to the children of San Andres Itzapa. We sent that letter in February of 2015. But mail travels slowly in Guatemala. Anyway, we received 36 letters! Most were from children, a couple were from the families we stayed with (including one to me personally and one to the entire church), and we also got several hand-made postcards!

I've spent a fair amount of time this week translating letters. I'm preparing a chapel lesson on Saint Paul's epistles, and giving the children one more chance to write letters to their Guatemalan "pen pals' before the responsibility goes to someone else. This feels good. 

It's warming. I'm dreading Daylight Savings Time and the resumption of classes deep down to my bones, but it's warming. That helps. 

We've had a few family campfires again. That helps too.

Surprise: there were still some color crystals still left at the bottom of the pit!

Nothing like an unexpected rainbow.

I'm resuming my duck pond walks and feeling deja vu. I began to have the creepy feeling that change was upon us about this time last year. 

Well, as Otis said, it's been a long time coming. But it's nearly upon us now.

Even real ducks don't like to stand in rows, so it's no wonder I'm having a little trouble organizing these figurative ducks.

Inside voices

I'm just about out of patience with February. 

I do see evidence of its defeat, however. Sunsets are later. 

We've been keeping indoors, as the weather's been really dismal lately. When it's not actually burying us with snow, it's wet, cloudy, rainy, or violently windy. But we're finding plenty to smile about indoors! Like last week's appointment for Adele to read to a therapy dog (she's memorized her favorite library book):

Or parents' week at dance: 

Tumbling's her favorite. #FutureGymnast

at the barre

Miles at the barre during tap

Miles' class' recital number this year will be tap, which suits him just fine!

We can get tired, we can get cabin fever, but we can never get bored!

In case you're curious, my first visit to Pueblo should be during Holy Week. I cannot wait for a few days of sunshine and rocky mountain views! 

Winter Pursuits

The lake-sized puddle at the bus stop, frozen over. 

There is so much beauty and life in the cold.

Sunsets seem more vivid when the landscape is greyscale.


We are so much more inclined to be homebodies living in the Pirate House than we ever were before. It's helpful, if your kid still needs to do this every day:


Still, we venture out when there's something really good (& cheap!) happening in Blacksburg. The first weekend of February was the Chocolate Party. This is our 4th Chocolate Party in a row! (My entry here on our first visit contains some reflections on our limited time in Blacksburg which I now find both humorous and touching) The kids are pretty much experts at the carnival games by now and won all the prizes they could want.

Including a manicure!

Adele's prize is her new best friend. Look out, Spot!

Inside, we're doing a lot of Wii based sports and dance games. Just Dance Disney, while you won't catch me at it (I prefer the pop songs on the regular Just Dance series), is the kids' favorite.

Here, they perform "Under the Sea."

They are each others best friends and most worthy opponents. 

We've had a couple of good-sized snows now. For the second time in one winter (amazingly!), Virginia Tech had to close this past Monday. 

I took a screenshot; it's that rare.

Less rare are the snow days for the public schools. Once again, we're on 3 snow days in a row right now. Here's hoping they let the kids go back to school tomorrow; Jon & the kids are getting a bit wild at home. 

It's melting fast. Even walking is easy now.

At home, Jon explores hair expressions with Miles: 

It's at a very awkward stage of growth at the moment...

The kids and I got in a quick sledding session the other day! I hope for at least one more chance. Sledding is a favorite past-time and I can never get quite enough of it. Especially since my opportunities to sled in Pueblo will likely be very few indeed, I hope for one more snow day.

Even the ice underfoot is beautiful, if treacherous.

May you all stay warm and be soothed by the beauty of winter, while it lasts.

Revelation to Jon

This is a picture of Jon opening his birthday present: 2 tickets to see Robert Randolph and the Family Band play in Blacksburg!

Careful readers of this blog will remember that Jon has reentered the job market about 14 months ago (his last foray was in 2009/2010). It's been a fairly discouraging experience, on the whole. Over a hundred applications, probably 8-10 phone interviews, and 3 on-campus interviews. The first two of these, at UofR and PennState, were such great opportunities; when they didn't come through we were fairly dispirited.

While Jon was at PennState in December, he got a call from Colorado State Pueblo. We were a bit distracted by the drama of the Penn State interview that we couldn't really give CSU much attention. But in mid-January, when Jon boarded a plane for Denver, we already knew PSU was out. I had a superstitious feeling about the third on-campus interview that I tried to ignore. Honestly, I wasn't too keen on the idea of relocating 1500 miles away.

I focused on surviving the 4 days of working and single parenting while Jon was in Colorado, and absentmindedly hoped he'd get another phone interview before January was over, just to keep up morale. Jon got home Wednesday afternoon the 13th and we settled back into our routine. I assumed the pre-semester crouch and game face, as classes were beginning the next week.

And on Friday morning, Colorado State offered Jon the job.


Well, we agonized, as you might imagine. To commit to an offer so early in the semester, with so many applications still out there? To plan a cross-country move, so far from almost everyone we know? Or to turn it down, and lose what might be the best opportunity we see for another year? and have Jon scramble again for funding and have me continue to whittle slowly away at this master's degree for another year? We spent the weekend having mood swings together.

Thanks so much to Melissa and Leah for carrying me through those few days. I owe a great deal of the calm and the clarity I've had this month to your presence and your prayers.

It seemed clear by Monday, however, that taking this opportunity would be the best thing for our family. We were leaning in the direction of accepting even before I got the news that sealed the deal for me: my professors and adviser are going to support me in finishing my degree from Colorado! I should have an completed MA by this time next year, if all goes well! Finishing my degree here at VT was a possibility I had completely discounted. I knew we'd likely move before I could finish, and I only hoped we'd move somewhere with a similar program that would take *some* of my VT credits. This is a dream come true.

So. We're moving in June to Pueblo, Colorado!

















I still cannot make sense of this path we've been set. Hopes up and down for a year, so close to what we thought we were waiting for, only for the next rung of the ladder to appear almost clear on the other side of the country. Within sight of Ithaca, only to have our sails fill and be blown to another continent! My joke is that we're now in the land of the Lotus-Eaters (a reference to Colorado's legalized marijuana situation).

Still, there have been good signs. CSU has been so supportive of Jon's desires to finish his dissertation and to teach (his position will be in the CSU library). Cousins Joel and Bri and their kids live in Denver; Leah and Doug may well visit CO while we're there. Randomly, one of my office-mates (all of whom I adore) will be on a bicycle trip with her boyfriend in Pueblo this very summer!
And look. The town is pretty:

Riverwalk on the Arkansas River, Pueblo

At a park just outside town, Pueblo, CO

If you're curious, Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo form a line, with Pueblo being the southernmost in this chain of cities that line the Rockies: 

Cost of living is very inexpensive there, and the sunshine and dry air is supposed to be very pleasant! We'll see. What's been clear to me is that I have to decide to love Pueblo on its own terms. I've been musing a lot on our move, five years ago, to Blacksburg, a town we knew very little about. We moved there in the conviction that we were going to love it there, so every great thing we found about Blacksburg just tickled our confirmation bias. See? we'd say, every time we discovered something we loved, We knew it! Blacksburg is awesome! 

And I've decided we need to conjure up that same attitude about Pueblo. We will go determined to love the town, and to love the adventure of it as we set off. For our 10th anniversary (coming this April!) we get a cross-country trip! 

Mountain-view suburbs. 

We need to beg your general indulgence this semester. We are going to be very busy, and very emotional. I've been welling up at the thought of moving from Blacksburg almost since we got here. 

We also could use your prayers! Especially please pray that we find just the right rental home out there, in a neighborhood near to the university (as we don't currently have any intention of buying a second car) and near just the right elementary school for Miles! 

Furthermore, please do us a favor and don't spread this around on Facebook or Twitter just yet? We're just... not quite ready for that. Just wait till you see us post on FB about the move before mentioning it social media? Thanks ever so much!

Meanwhile, the kids are thriving. Adele's quick mind gets more capable all the time. She's had big potty-training breakthroughs lately (some of you know the drama this has been!). And her beginning reading has been developing apace. 

She spelled this by herself at dance the other day.

"Mummy, look! I spelled LOVE!"

She calls herself a Preschool Princess. I have to agree.

We are all of us straining for a better look at our new adventure. Climbing Jacob's ladder, stronger (we hope!) with every new rung.