Cousins are a Blessing

I can't begin to tell you how much fun it is that Jack has cousins who live close by – one of which is his same age.

It is amazing to be to see the difference that 3 months can make. Right now Levi is a bit behind since a 3 months difference between 7 and 10 months is pretty big, but the time is coming when the differences between Jack and Levi will be indiscernible.

It's a good thing that my 3-year-old niece, Izzy, can hold her own because one of these days she is going to have two little boys to contend with.

Right now Levi is great at army crawling and you can tell he wants to be able to do what Jack can do. 

Jack can crawl on hands and knees and is intent on getting to anywhere that he can stand up. He is very curious about what cousin Izzy is up to. 

Izzy, on the other hand, is full of laughter and busyness. 

She is at a stage where she really loves her brother and cousin, but is not always happy about having to share her toys, or worse, having her toys moved by the little guys.

It is amazing to see how different each child is. It is also interesting to see glimpses of similar expressions in these three kiddos. Levi obviously looks like his parents, but every once in awhile he makes a face that looks so much like Jack that it gives me pause.

I am looking forward to seeing the relationships between these three cousin blossom. 

I am so glad that we live close enough to get together somewhat regularly. 

Mahler's Eighth – Symphony of a Thousand

For me a happy life is one well lived. One that is full of rich experiences.

I can't tell you how excited I was for my brother when he told me he had joined a chorus that would be singing Mahler's Eighth with the Nashville Symphony. He had a friend who was singing and there was an open spot so Mark sent an email detailing his singing background and experience and BOOM he was a part of the chorus. Pretty cool.

 

He has been rehearsing with them for 3+ hours every Monday for awhile. Then they had a week of two night rehearsals followed by an intense week of every night practices.

 

Last night was dress rehearsal and thankfully Mark was able to secure tickets for me and Angela. The Friday performance sold out and Sunday would be hard for me to attend, so this worked out best for me. 

 

This was my first evening away from Jack for 4+hours. Daniel dropped me off at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in downtown Nashville where I met up with my sister. It was open seating and we got great seats in the back center. It was nice to spend some time with my siblings and Jack was fine without me for an evening.

This particular symphony was pretty intense, so I was kind of glad not to be right up next to the orchestra pit. There were these moments of intense crescendo of music and voices growing until it was almost deafening. Pretty amazing.

Mark says he probably wouldn't do this again – too time consuming, but he is glad he took the opportunity to have this experience.

Only one glitch at rehearsal – the conductor started yelling and stopped everything at the very end. Evidently some of the chorus started singing too early. From the audience, you couldn't tell there had been a mistake. It was a great performance. I am sure the Friday and Sunday performances will be great. What a wonderful experience for my little brother!

2012 Book 21: Lost in Shangri-la

Lost in Shangri-la by Mitchell Zuckoff is an account of a rescue mission during World War II to save 3 survivors who were stranded in the mountains of New Guinea during a sight seeing trip. At the time, this area was unchartered territory full of war-oriented tribes who had lived untouched by the outside world. It was an area full of dangers like cannibals and enemy Japanese troops. The plane that crashed lost 21 people, one of the survivors, John McCollum, lost his twin brother.

This was an interesting story for me since I have a personal connection to New Guinea: my parents {and much of my extended family} were missionaries there in the 70s and 80s. I lived in the Mount Hagen {which is referenced in the book, but the area the plane crashed was more remote} until I was six. My family returned for a visit when I was 13 and then my husband and I visited again in 2004.

The book was intriguing. The only way to reach the survivors was to parachute in. The rescue team was a group of Filipino Americans who had little experience actually jumping. To get the survivors out, they had to wait until wounds healed and then they used a technique of landing a glider in the mountainous terrain and then the plane that "dropped" the glider off had to come back to "catch" the glider using a rope hung across a sling attached to the glider and a hook attached to the plane in order to pull it out. The alternative would have been to actually march out through a completely unknown area.

Definitely an interesting story. Especially considering that two of the survivors had extensive injuries.

I think I probably read too many true accounts of adventure or maybe it is because I have traveled to and stayed in remote villages in PNG, but I didn't feel like the telling of the story was as interesting as it could have been. Over the years I have heard some pretty crazy stories from various family member's wild experiences in PNG. I even have a couple of my own stories. Odds are if you have visited this country you have a good story to tell... 

This book felt like it was mostly fact telling, which is a shame because in New Guinea, to tell your story is a very important part of the culture and I don't know that this book did justice to the story.

Excerpts from the book:

The island was a gift-box assortment of inhospitable environments... The New Guinea terrain was so forbidding that the most common experience for its inhabitants was isolation. Pockets of humanity carved out small places to survive, fighting with anyone who came near and often among themselves...

"Probably after the war the Dutch government will send an expedition into the valley or missionaries may penetrate it, so until then the natives... will know nothing of the white man except that he flies a big bird that makes lots of noise. Who knows, maybe they are much better off the way they are. At any rate, I am sure if they knew of the turmoil in which we are now engaged (WWII), they would be happier to stay ignorant of the 'civilized' world."  – letter home from William J. Gatling Jr.

New Guinea's jungles were boundless cemeteries of unmarked military graves...The weather and terrain account more more [downed] airplanes than combat flying.

Margaret, McCollum, and Decker had crashed-landed in a world that time didn't forget. Time never knew it existed.

Creative Discovery Museum

There are very few times that I go an entire day without checking my email. Yesterday was one of those days. It was kind of a shock to actually look at my email at 10pm and realize that I have projects that need attending! Oops... It's a good thing nothing was on a tight deadline.

Daniel took an extra day off for the long weekend {he had some comp time he needed to use} and we met up with my sister and her kiddos to go explore the Creative Discovery Museum in Chattanooga.

 

We actually met in South Pittsburg and dropped our car off so that we could have some extra time for visiting on the way there, and we got to ride in the mini van to decide if it is something we would ever want... 

I am in the "NO mini van, NO station wagon, NOT EVER" camp. 

While Daniel is in the "don't let the preferences of your 20-year-old self determine the needs of your 30-year-old self" camp. Either way it is a discussion is for another day.

 

It was a rainy Tuesday, kind of perfect for taking two babies and a 3-year-old to roam around a kid's museum. 

It was good for Izzy to be able to use up some of her abundant energy and it will be great in a year or two when the boys can really get involved in the playing.

 

Mostly they are in the observing and crawling around stage; content with basic toys and books.

 

It was nice that there were not a million kids there. I think that I would have hated it if there had been.

 

Daniel was impressed that there was a working lock in the water section.

I thought the music area was pretty cool. I really liked that it was so interactive.

 

We didn't spend much time in the electricity section but Daniel said it was pretty neat.

 

Digging for dinosaur bones was fun for Izzy. Jack just wanted to eat the sand. 

Since it was raining, we couldn't go out on the roof top, next time we go we will have to make sure we go during the week, on a sunny day, when bigger kids are in school. You can just order up days like that, right?

For lunch, we walked two blocks to The Blue Plate. In the rain. My sister, Angela, is super mom and was prepared with not one, but two umbrellas. She and her kids stayed dry. We, on the other hand, had no rain gear. At least Jack stayed relatively dry in the stroller under the shade. Daniel and I got wet. Thankfully it wasn't a cold wet.

Lunch was good. I had a BLT made with heirloom tomatoes from a farm on Signal Mountain. Daniel had the Cheeseburger with Sweetwater Valley Buttermilk Cheddar. Angela had a veggie plate with Mac N Cheese, Broccoli and Grilled Green Beans. The Grean Beans were on the crunchy side {we like ours soft} but the rest was delicious. Burgers come with chips instead of fries and we had to request slices of tomato and pickles {evidently those don't come with kids burgers}. We also tried the Fried Pickles – they were really good, not greasy at all. Our waiter did a good job of keeping us and our kiddos happy.

We walked back to the museum after lunch {in a downpour}. 

There was a tinker toys exhibit upstairs. It was probably more suitable for older kids, but Izzy enjoyed it. We also took a break in the library and let the kids crawl around.

Levi managed to pass out in the stroller for a short afternoon nap and Jack conked out for a little while in the Moby, so I would say our play date was a success.

Funniest moments of the day: 

We thought it was hilarious that my sister walks so fast that she was an entire block ahead of us on the walk to lunch. 60-pound stroller and all. I don't know how she moves this fast – I had to run to keep up with her on the walk back to the museum in the rain.

Angela took a photo of me and Jack during lunch. Just as Jack picked up a fork and I grabbed it from his hand. At least it wasn't a knife, but my expression was pretty funny.

When we were loading up to leave, I was the last person to get in the van. When I went to shut the hatch door of the trunk, all of the water that had been accumulating while we loaded the van dumped right down the front of my shorts... Good thing we were headed home!

Because One Water Heater Isn't Enough...

One of the benefits to our current house is that since we purchased a fairly new home there really aren't many improvements that we NEED to make. There are things we would like to do, but it wasn't like our first home where we gutted it upon moving in and spent 5 years HAVING to put it back together.

Honestly, after a 5-year renovation we were ready for a break.

But that doesn't mean there aren't things we wouldn't like to do and we do have a few projects in the works. However they aren't necessarily "fun" projects {aka the kind that give you warm fuzzy because of a visible difference – like new paint}.

 

One of the current projects came about like this: earlier this summer Daniel was at Home Depot and he called me to say that there was a smoking deal on a heat pump water heater that he was interested in. 

We already have a water heater. One that works.

Daniel pleaded his case: 

1) He doesn't like to be in a situation where he HAS to make a quick decision because something important quit working.

2) Our current water heater is a little on the small size for our house, and far too small to fill our garden tub.

3) The new water heater was more efficient {it uses less than half as much electricity as the old one}, and would save us money in the long run.

4) He could hook up both water heaters in tandem so that if one failed, he could bypass it and we would still have hot water. The second water heater would be off most of the time, but could be turned on to use the {giant} garden tub, or when we have company.

5) The current water heater has been in the house since it was built... Adding a second water heater and using the old one as a backup would prolong the life of the original one.

6) The heat that the heat pump water heater is being pumped out of the air, which means it is pushing cold air out into the garage {an extra plus}.

So I agreed.

Personally I am more interested in getting our back porch screened in, but if the new water heater saves us money, I can get on board with that.

So he made the purchase and brought it home.

It is huge.

Then he informed me that he wanted to build a platform to put both water heaters on. This would provide him with more storage space for other items {like our miter saw}.

Since Daniel is an engineer and overbuilds everything, I trusted that he would do a good job with this... I just wasn't sure how we were going to lift two water heaters 3 feet off the ground.

That is where the engine hoist comes in. We use ours for all sorts of things: tree stumps, lawn mowers, water heaters, air compressors, oh and let's not forget engines. It actually comes in pretty handy at least a couple of times a year.

First Daniel built a smaller platform to lift the water heaters with the engine hoist.

I was given the task of putting my weight on the other end of the platform to keep the water heater from tipping over during the lift. 

The first {and smaller} water heater almost gave me a heart attack when it started to tip a bit once we lifted it off the ground. Thankfully Daniel was able to get it under control and guide it into place.

The second {bigger} water heater was much easier since we had already gone through the experience and knew what to do. The biggest issue with it was moving it from the garage, through a normal sized door into the utility room. 

Now both water heaters are in place... Daniel is happy that we will save money and I am thankful that we can mark this practical thing off the list and move forward on the more "fun" project of screening in the back porch.

*For reference, far left of the photo is an air compressor (the black tank); in the middle is new heat pump water heater, and to the right of it is the old electric water heater – which is about half the size of the new one.