Vid comments

Posted a couple of videos to YouTube somewhat recently, but never mentioned it here or gave my commentary. Might as well now.

St. Charles evening - This was the night of the first day of the big 07 trip. This video represents one of the two main things I go looking for on a road trip like this. Simple pleasures. Taking your kids to a playground. What could be simpler? And as I've gone down this road of parenthood, it's become something I cherish. I know that it's not long until the innocence of swinging and sliding fades and it takes more and more to entertain my children. Somehow I've always known that I will remember these times on playgrounds so fondly, and I will probably be sadder about not being able to take the kids to playgrounds than any other part of their growing up. Whenever we travel now, I research parks along the way to let the girls go play on a park they'll probably never see again. I remember looking up parks near where we stopped on the way to Jacksonville in 05, and realizing it poignantly then. I feel blessed that it's 3 years later and we still go regularly and it's still fun for them.

The other thing I look for in a road trip this video isn't the best example of, so I'll save that for another time.

Anyway, the point is...this was a really nice memory. Driving all day, the mystery and excitement of the remainder of the trip ahead of us, and taking the time to stop at a playground which was a mile or so from our RV park. The music captures the contemplative mood (despite the grisly title), and there are a few sort of 'iconic' pictures as well. I particularly like the one of all of us walking away from the camera (director's secret - that was actually us walking INTO the playground, but it looked so much better as us leaving, so I stuck it at the end...revisionist history!) and the sort of 'artsy' one looking down at faith and the red stepping-stone things. Steph is a big fan of the ones with Zayde swinging.

In other random info, the restaurant scenes at the beginning were from the on-site restaurant at the RV park. The "Beefeaters" restaurant had apparently been named the best on-site restaurant at an RV park in the nation by some magazine or group or something. Kinda cool. And it was pretty good. And we would have liked to explore the shopping district in St. Charles more than we did. But, oh well. On the next west trip, maybe we'll do it then...

Okay, enough for now. I'll talk about the other vids another time.

Matt

Call of the road

There's been a lot I've wanted to post here but haven't had the mental toughness to sit down and get the thoughts into words. I seem to have a spare minute here, so I am going to try to get a little something done.

First of all, Steph and I both have the travel bug BAD. Several reasons - in a couple weeks, EVERYONE is going to Hilton Head except us...and also because it finally got HOT HOT HOT here in Cinci. Yesterday, walking out of the house totally reminded both of us of being at the beach. Those muggy Hilton Head or Sanibel or Key West mornings when you know it's going to be a scorcher, so you get out early while it still feels more humid than hot. And of course, one of my favorite feelings in the world, and one of the best things about a beach vacation - that feeling of coming back into the crazy-cold A/C after spending too long in the sun.

Sigh...

Yeah, we haven't been to the ocean since 2006 - and that's hard on Steph more than me. I mean, I love going to the beach, but I mainly love travel - as long as I go SOMEwhere, I satisfy the need. Steph in some ways feels like she didn't even have a real summer if she doesn't get to the beach.

But, we both know it's not possible this year. So we are looking forward to our Tennessee trip in August, but even that's a ways away. So I've started idly looking for minor trips that we could take...but it's not practical, logistically or financially. Trying to escape for a couple days with just us and the kids would be a loony enterprise, and even if we found a great deal somewhere, the price of gas is just too sobering.

So we're stuck. Still a chance that there might be an RV shakedown trip sometime in July, but mainly it's just us and the house...and that's the sacrifice you make for the blessing of these kids.

What else...

Faith is doing well. She's gotten really good at fetching the pacifier whenever someone starts crying. The other day she even put her fingers in Hannah's mouth to suck on...and that's okay since she's developed a hand-washing obsession.

Mari is mostly well, but she's starting to have some weird things happen. Twice she's come out of her room telling us that the bed was wet, but it wasn't. She still has moments when you can tell she's gone into "Nasty Took Land" and is about to push Faithy or pull her hair, and when she's just going to laugh when you try to discipline her. But I'm starting to just think that that whole act is on some level a play for attention, since she often gets lost in the mix. So I'm going to talk to Steph about us just casually removing her from those situations and not making a big fuss about them. And of course, we have to keep making an effort to do things with just her whenever possible.

Twins are good, although 2 not-so-good nights in a row. A little early to tell for sure, but I think it's mainly GAS. I also wonder if they're getting fed up with swaddling...oh well, the nice thing about summer for us is that we're free to experiment, and if there IS a bad night, we can deal with it the next day.

There's more I want to say, but Faith is up and talking to me. Gotta run.