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2013 was kinda the biggest year of our marriage. I’m going to give a highlights and lowlights reel so we don’t forget. And just for kicks I’m going to make the empty promise to write here more often. You know, as a resolution.

_January_

Olivia was in 2nd Grade, Elise in Kindergarten, and Cressida in Pre-school at Redeemer. The girls were doing gymnastics, swimming, soccer and Tae-Kwon-Do.

We brought home Rob’s grandfather’s piano. He wanted us to have it after he passed away after a hard fight with Alzheimer’s. We said our final goodbyes in a hospital room surrounded by his whole beloved family.

I attended my third birth as a doula, and began advertising my Lamaze Classes.

Rob made the fateful proclamation, “If I don’t find a new job by the end of the summer we will probably just stay here and keep doing this because it’s working.”

_February_

(At this point our webhost crapped out on me and my whole post was lost, but I persevered because this is important)

Elise won second place in the Girl Scout Bake Off.

I guess-blogged on the Lamaze blog Giving Birth With Confidence.

The girls got their first library cards.

_March_

I serendipitously became infatuated with the Foxygen song “San Francisco.”

Olivia and Elise performed in the school talent show. Elise on piano, and Olivia did Tae Kwon Do.

I started trail running and kickboxing.

_April_

Our family was able to meet and snuggle our dear friends Eliza and John’s new baby, Eliana, before they returned to Guatemala.

We visited Washington DC with the kids and stayed with Rob’s Nana. We also got to drive through rural Virginia and show the kids the houses that Rob’s family owned. It was probably the best family vacation we have taken,

Olivia and I took the girl scout troop to an overnight at COSI, just like I did when I was her age.

I taught my first baby wearing class.

Cressida dropped a huge rock on her toe and we had to rush her to the emergency room. She had 7 stitches to re-attach her toe-nails and we called her hamburger toe for the rest of the summer.

I was published in a book for the first time when my story was included in the book, Virtual Breastfeeding Culture.

Rob had his first inkling that we might have the chance to move our family to the west coast.

_May_

We began building a chicken coop for the chickens we planned to bring home in June.

I attended my first non-transfering home birth.

Our family went to the symphony with Rob’s family for Mother’s Day.

The girls and I went and Marched against Monsanto.

_June_

Elise graduated from Kindergarten.

Rob went on a business trip and GOT HIT BY A CAR in Vienna.

The girls and I were on our annual Mom/Kid only camping trip with our friends the Penns when he got hit so we didn’t learn of the accident for three days.

Then Rob went to interview with Twilio and we had to try to keep it silent for the rest of the school year since we didn’t know if we were going to move or not.

Finished the chicken coop, even though I suspected that we wouldn’t be able to have the chickens since we’d be moving to California if Rob got offered the new job.

_July_

Rob took the job, we spent the month getting ready to put our house on the market, we gave almost every extra thing away so we wouldn’t have to move it, and we put our house on the market.

The girls went to fairy enchantment camp at Camp Ledgewood, and I knew it was probably the last time we’d set foot on my beloved girl scout camp I spent my summers on when I was a kid.

Olivia played softball for the first time and she loved it.

_August_

Rob and I went to SF to look for a house. In spite of agreeing to move here, this was my first time ever visiting the city. I’m lucky it agreed with me.

Rob took up home roasting coffee beans.

Rob and I came home, packed our house up, and he left for SF. The last 3 weeks in Akron I tried my best to squeeze every last drop of life from the city. It was actually the hardest month of my life.

The kids spent a TON of time with Rob’s parents while I finished getting the house ready to leave.

The girls went to their last VBS at Redeemer. It was so hard to leave such a wonderful school.

I began homeschooling the kids two weeks before we moved.

_September_

Rob moved from his temporary house in the city to the home we rented in Pleasanton. We rented it without ever having set foot in it. It was a really great find and I’m surprised we found such a comfortable home.

The girls and my mom and I set off our cross country road trip. (I still have to finish  writing this story!) Before we left we spent three nights in an empty house living with our camping gear. It was one of the strangest experiences of my life.

A week after we arrived in California Elise turned 7. The following week Cressida turned 4. We had our first nuclear-family-only birthday parties. It was strange.

We spent the month settling in. Found the grocery store, found the homeschool groups, found the close hiking trails.

My dear dear Nina passed away suddenly after a long battle with cancer and I flew to Florida to say my goodbyes.

_October_

We continued schooling and trying to live as normally as possible.

I took the kids on my first solo BART trip into the city with a new friend, Anjali and her kids to go to the Exploratorium.

We were invited to our first California party and went trick or treating with our friend Tricia’s family out in Tracy.

Olivia turned 9 year old (I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS!)

_November_

I had my first doula interview in California. I was not hired but it felt good to get back in the game.

Aunt Ginny came to visit for Thanksgiving. We had the first ever remote participation in the Brazier No-training-allowed Half Marathon.

We celebrated with our new friends the Delgados for our thanksgiving feast. It was good to have more than just 6 people at our holiday table.

_December_

The month sped by. My sister came to visit and we had a little local mini-vacation.

We went to John Muir Woods and the beach, and down to Monterey Bay, where we found a seal carcass on the shore.

Then Christmas came and we had our first nuclear-family-only Christmas Day. It was so bitter-sweet. Olivia was the saddest.

Now the New Year celebration has come and gone. We spent the night with new friends. I spoke with old friends on the phone. We played with Legos and enjoyed the promise of a new year. It can’t possibly hold as much change as 2013. But 2014 promises to bring us through more growth as a family and as individuals. I just hope the pace slows down a little. I still feel like I’m catching my breath.

 

So, it’s been weeks since I started this story. I should have known it was going to be hard to jump into life, but the Optimist in me had the Realist on mute. But here I am again, trying to remember what happened just a few short weeks ago, back when we left Ohio to travel west like pioneers.

The plan was to get started at 8 am on Monday morning, drive like wild-women through to Wisconsin, and camp with tents and camp fires and marshmellows.

Chicago was our major stumbling block. We tried to go straight through on the skyway route.

Never again. It was at a standstill at some points so that it was actually not insane for me to take this picture from the driver’s seat:

Once we got going again, we were two hours behind schedule and putting up a tent would have been a really poor plan. The sun was going down, the mosquitos were thick, and the food was not yet eaten. So my mom and I decided to grab some coffee, some Subway, and drive as far into the night as we could. We’d made it to highway 90, so it was a straight shot. All we had to monitor was the gas tank and not falling asleep.

I drove the first shift, going from 7:30 to midnight into Minnesota. There was nothing to see there but stars and a few semi-trucks. Mom dozed in the passenger seat and the kids and dog all snoozed in the back. Around 11 or so there was an electrical storm in distance and I struggled to keep my eyes on the road, squelching the temptation to watch the lightning dance from the sky to Earth, over and over like a blue devil. I wish I could have taken a photo. I want to remember that forever.

We grabbed a few ZZZs at a rest stop with the doors locked and the seats laid back. Then we woke, switched seats and Mom drove the next three hour shift until the sun began to rise but we were too tired to keep going. We pulled into another rest area, right near the border of South Dakota, and really zonked out. Olivia was awake in the back, reading to herself while the rest of us slept. When we finally awoke at 7am or 8, we made coffee in my electric kettle in the rest area and brushed teeth and changed clothes. It was not the cleanliest day of my life…

 

That first marathon burst of driving was exhausting, but was a blessing in disguise, because it afforded us the time to stop a little bit out of the way (read: 3 hours) at the home of Laura Ingalls in De Smet, South Dakota. I’ll stop here for tonight, but look for some awesome photos and a great story about the Dakota stretch in the next couple of days!