the end of an epic vacation

(Though the picture above wasn't taken on the vacation proper, I think it sums up the emotions pretty nicely... I haven't shaved, Elijah has taken tacos and made himself look like an 'Oompa-Loompa' -- so his auntie says-- and Judah apparently wears no clothes... yeah, that about sums it up)

In saying goodbye to last weekend's over the top vacation trip, I wanted to mention that we are super excited to be invited to tomorrow's Waffle Fest 2011, which involves endless waffles for twelve hours-- though we for the sake of the good people who invited us won't subject them to our mayhem for that long. As my favorite Facebook response of the year so far said in response to being invited to this glorious event, "I don't know if I can eat waffles for twelve hours straight, but I can damn well sure try." Amen to that!

Waffle Fest also reminded me of one of the truly great times in our lives (Anna Jane Martin, make sure and have Mike read this one if he has time), which would be Pan-Bo-Ult-NewbyFest... I know, right?? Anyways, in the days before we had our little restless wanderers, we actually did things like 1) go out to Panera Bread with our entire small group, about 20 wonderful people strong; 2) follow up the Pan- part with the Bo-Ult, which would be the Bourne Ultimatum, Matt Damon's last strong movie-- and one of my all-time personal favorites; and 3) celebrate the birthday of one of our very good friends, Matt -Newby... all on the same grand evening. An incredibly amazing time, and one that brings back fond memories of friends now scattered across the country in Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the like. One final thought on this: I can't even imagine trying to do that with kids... Elijah turned loose in Panera Bread-- truly terrifying.

Which segues perfectly into terrifying things that happened that day. Really, terrifying is a little strong, but after everything that happened to just get us there, a relaxing day wouldn't have been all that bad. So I tried to relax by joining a game of bridge-- the game for the thinking aristocrat. You know what aristocrats have that I don't? Don't say a castle-- we have a very tiny one (and are developing a moat, which the Queen is quite worried about); no, what the old-school bridge players had that I don't were nannies/ governesses, etc. The element of surprise is somewhat taken away when Elijah walks behind you and says, "OOOH! Number seven card!" That or the fact that the game took four hours to play... epic fail. The other true epic fail of the night was that we forgot to take into account that we eat dinner at 5:15, sometimes 5:30 on late nights. Scheduled dinner time for the night: unknown. Actual dinner time for the night: 8:45pm. Both Judah and LJ were in bed long before the dinner was eaten.

Here's the real kicker, though. They were both in bed-- but not simultaneously. You see, we had a bit of a classic puzzle on our hands, and I'll leave it to you to figure out the answer. (Cue cryptic voice)-- "In a room there are three beds; one for a baby, a sleeping bag for a toddler, and a double bed for the parents. The toddler needs to read to himself for two hours to fall asleep. The baby cannot fall asleep while anyone else is in the room-- and needs about an hour after that to be sleeping deeply enough to not wake up with others in the room. The mother wants to go to bed immediately, and the father doesn't want to sleep at all. Solve the riddle." I don't know how to solve the puzzle, but hypothetically speaking (of course) we put Judah down, only to have Elijah wake him up when he went in. So we took the 'baby Judah' out and let LJ fall asleep (he was so exhausted it only took him an hour) and then put Judah back... this worked from 9:00 to 11:30, when the Queen dragged me to bed, at which point Elijah sat bolt upright and said, "Let's play!!" I kid you not-- I think we both wanted to cry.

We spent the next forty-five minutes drifting within inches of sleep only to have Elijah bellow, "I'll show you-- let's play now!!" It got old quicker than I would have thought :) Finally, he woke Judah up, which prompted more outside-the-box thinking... I switched places with Elijah, who kept Rachel up all night by rolling all over the bed and kicking her in his sleep. I didn't know this because I slept like a baby for four solid hours until Judah woke up at 4:45 am. From there on it was all uphill, baby.

Completely serious final thought: For all the (hopefully comic) whining/ sarcasm out forth here, I think that big families are a incredible blessing. There will be a full post on this at some near point, but I am the oldest of five and grew up relatively poor-- I wouldn't trade any of it. Siblings give you great stories like these, grow you and shape you in ways you don't know until adulthood-- oh, and keep you up all night... I guess there's a touch of grey in every silver lining (thanks, Grateful Dead!)

An incredibly grateful (and tired) Knight signing off...