Tour de Midwest

We spent the month of July in the Midwest- 3 weeks in Minnesota, and 10 days in Iowa & Missouri. While we traveled, I worked on an article for a parenting website entitled, “How to travel with kids- don’t”.

Post 3 hour flight to Minneapolis

We have traveled with the girls since they were born- pretty regularly, I might add. And while some trips are magical, most are not. Each time we pack up for another trip, I feel like I am playing a form of Russian Roulette: will this trip be magical or miserable?

Maybe it’s how my brain works- to categorize a memory as great or horrible, when in reality, it falls somewhere in the middle. Traveling with kids can take you to some of the highest highs- experiencing beautiful moments together. And it can also bring you to the lowest of lows- food poisoning induced projectile vomiting at the same time as explosive diarrhea, on the nasty floor of a hotel bathroom. But mostly, travel with kids brings you to a lot of ordinary, meh, moments.

The kind where kids ask how much longer at the beginning of a 10-hour road trip, the monotony of foraging for the apple pie Larabars in foreign grocery stores, the grumpiness that ensues over the course of adjusting to a time change.

How Alice really felt

All this to say, while I could write about our travels out of the magical lens, I can assure you they were not.

We spent a lot of time “traveling” on this trip, despite flying to Minnesota to reduce travel time. I think as a mom, I spend an inordinate amount of time planning and worrying about the transitions- the logistics of moving a months worth of luggage into the car, out of the car, into the airport, getting the family through security, going potty enough times before boarding the plane, getting off the plane, getting to the baggage claim without losing a child, retrieving a large amount of luggage, acquiring a rental car, moving luggage and children to the rental car, driving to VRBO, moving the luggage (AGAIN)….. blah, blah, blah.

AND YET.

We were able to see our families, and the girls got a lot of good quality time with people they otherwise wouldn’t have a chance to see. They camped with the Uppgaard grandparents, visited aunts & uncles, played with cousins, and spent a week at a cabin up in northern Minnesota.

We celebrated my Dad’s retirement at a truly magical surprise party. Fireflies made their appearance as the sky darkened and toasts were made. All the more magical? We got a babysitter for the kids that night.

On our last day in Minnesota, we learned Alice had COVID. And then I tested positive. And then Avery got it. Chad somehow remained immune.

Luckily, my in-laws had an exposure prior to our arrival… so we all holed up at their cabin in Missouri. We tubed, went on boat rides, and fished. I love running the hills in Missouri, but unfortunately, COVID dashed my running dreams.

In Iowa, we went to the county fair, watched the hot air balloons, visited the cows, looked at soybean plants up close (have you ever?), and played in the sprawling yard.

Iowa beauty

Throughout the trip, I read Jane Eyre. And a quote that struck me was, “There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.”

And I think that quote perfectly sums up how I felt about spending a month with family. It was a month of being loved by people we don’t see nearly enough. It was a cram session of memories, a hustle to see all the people we love, it was lying on the couch late at night re-living childhood memories with my siblings, countless times of yelling, “Reel, reel!” as I watched Alice’s bobber slip beneath the surface.

It was a drinking from the fire-hose kind of trip. It was listening to four Nancy Drew audiobooks on car rides, it was Chad vowing he would never listen to another Nancy Drew. By the end of the trip, we were bleary-eyed and so ready to be in our own beds.

5am airport, bleary-eyed, and ready to be home

Or as I told Chad, I was so ready to be home so I could be grumpy, and let down my “on-personality mask.”

We have been home for three weeks. I got my grumpy out (sorry Chad), and have never loved my bed quite so much.

I will leave you with a poem I wrote on a dock in Minnesota:

Attention

The loon calls

As the last rays of sun stretch through the sky

Creating contrast, definition

Anchoring 

.

The trees with their leaves

Now black, against the horizon

Clouds above 

Waves lapping below

.

A bird trills

And a fisher casts his rod

Line, whooshing 

Horseflies dive bomb 

.

I am minute 

in this wild world

.

The sky is pink, 

Clouds purple

Horizon still pierced by rays

.

The colors are pastel,

The air is matte

Ducks swim home through the reeds

.

I am contributing nothing to this moment

But my attention

And for a moment,

All is right

MN Sunset

Holding Space

I’m writing this from a new bedroom, on a new bed, in a new house. Everything smells new; and for the moment, life feels foreign.

We still don’t have hand towels in the bathroom, so each time I wash my hands, I face the predicament of whether to dry them on my shirt, a feral child, or let them air dry. The worst thing is, the hand towels are in the dryer… I just keep forgetting to grab them.

You may have noticed the radio silence on the blog. I superstitiously didn’t want to say anything about the new house until we closed.

That being said, we bought a house. We closed the Friday before Labor Day, and are approximately 70% moved in. We live about 10 minutes from our old condo, still close to where Chad’s parents and grandparents live during the winter.

Our new digs

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For me, house hunting was less about checking off criteria from a list and more about my heart saying, “Yeah, I could see us making this a home”. It was less about a purchase and more about a commitment to the future- I could see us being happy here, I can see the girls growing up in this house, I can envision Christmas and birthdays and family dinners.

Home is the place where you can let your guard down. It’s the place where you stop sucking in your stomach. Pants are optional. (Underwear is however, REQUIRED, in this household.) It is a place where you can truly be yourself and not worry about judgement.

Despite the fact that we were hunting for a home 1725 miles away from “home” for me, I still found myself searching for the familiar. I wanted a home with multiple levels (a lot of FL homes are one level due to the aging population), because that is what I grew up with. And the home we picked is on a golf course.

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“I can’t believe you wanted to live on a golf course,” Chad said with a grin, as if shocked by the fact that I would live on a golf course. But see, he didn’t realize that golf courses are almost as familiar to me as they are to him.

Sure, I don’t spend 4 hours on the course 3 times a week playing actual golf, but golf courses are where I ran cross-country races for 6 years of my life.

Running a race is painful, and in those moments of pain you enter a deeply introspective relationship with yourself.

“I hurt,” your muscles scream. “I know this feels like you are dying, but I promise you aren’t,” your brain tries to reassure your muscles as they drown in lactic acid and your oxygen deprived lungs. Your body slowly tunes out unneeded energy expenditure.

You stop caring what you look like. You’re not worried about anyone else’s opinion. All you are left with is the conversation between your brain and your body. In the pain, there is a silence, an honesty, an acceptance. You can’t fight back or suppress emotions.

It is on golf courses that I witnessed the battle between my body and my brain. There is an intimacy that comes from pushing yourself through discomfort.

So for me, yes, golf courses are very familiar. Just not in the traditional sense.

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This transition is bittersweet.

“Are you going to miss the old place?,” my mom asked on our weekly call, referring to our 3 bedroom condo that we’ve rented for the past year.

The condo was small. A little too small when it came to the whole Chad working from home and needing quiet during his conference calls. The kind of small that kept us shushing the girls, trying to keep the noise levels below ear splitting for our poor downstairs neighbor.

But also, the condo was exactly the right size. The year we spent there was full of growth. We explored the unknown as a family, with the condo being like a familiar, homely nest we could return to at the end of the day.

We tracked buckets of sand into that place. The walls were covered in adorable art projects. We snuggled together out on the lanai, watching afternoon storms roll in, taking in nature’s great show. We gathered around the kitchen table as a full family for 3 meals on most days. I can’t count the number of times I carried a sleeping child up the stairs after an adventure filled day.

Bread baking at the condo

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Awhile back I read a book that talked about the concept of “holding space for hope”. I’ve really tried, but I can’t figure out who wrote it- if I had to guess it was probably by Lori Gottleib, Brene Brown, or Glennon Doyle Melton.

For us, the condo held space for hope. When we moved down to Florida, we had no idea what the future held. We didn’t know if we would love it or hate it. We believed we would be moving to Iowa after a winter spent in FL. I wasn’t sure if I would be horribly homesick, or if this would be a massive failure. And on top of that, I was trialing being a stay at home mom.

The condo offered us space to try something new and be okay if we failed. And that was one of the most freeing feelings in the world; to know that either way, if we failed or were successful, we would be just fine.

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Sunset this past week

My favorite part of Florida is the ocean.

I have never felt God more than when I watch a sunset. There is something so calming, peaceful, awe inspiring about watching a big ball of fire 93 million miles away slip below the horizon.

It is in the moments of sitting on an expansive beach, hearing the powerful waves crash against the shore, and watching the big ball of fire make its journey across the sky that I am reminded of my minuscule size in this vast universe.

The thing we’ve realized about sunsets is that they are a lot more beautiful if there are clouds. Sure, a clear day is gorgeous. But when you add clouds to the equation, it adds a whole new dimension to the view.

The sun provides stunning backlights to big, billowy cumulus clouds. Every inch the sun moves down creates a whole different picture- with light being blocked in different areas and light shining through in new spots.

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Cloudy sunsets are a great reminder that in life, sometimes cloudy moments accentuate the beauty.

This year hasn’t been perfect. We’ve missed our families and the places we grew up. But these clouds have accentuated the light that this year has brought to us.

Wishing you the beauty of a cloud filled sunset,

Laura

PS- We picked this house because it has plenty of space for visitors. So please come visit us. We would love to see you!

Feels Like: Home

I took in the view of the Minneapolis skyline and felt a heaviness in my chest that I didn’t anticipate. Maybe it was my soul reminding me how badly I had wanted to come home to say goodbye to my grandma before she passed.

Maybe it was the huge relief of knowing I would finally get to see “my people”- the ones who raised me, who grew with me, who know me best. Or maybe it was just the fact that I had a massive migraine after a tantrum ridden flight and an hour long wait for our rental car.

Regardless, there we were, driving through Minneapolis. Chad, cheerfully trying to chat me up, and our backseat passengers voicing their displeasure in this long day of travel.

It had been 9 months since we were in Minnesota as a family, 4 months since I had snuck up by myself for a quick 24 hour trip for a friends birthday.

The hotel we were staying at was just 5 minutes from our old house, so it goes without saying that I insisted we must drive past our old house at a creepily slow pace.

The tears started splattering when we turned onto our block and passed the park I spent countless hours at- teaching the girls how to climb up to the slides, pushing them on the swings until their sweet blue eyes got heavy, toddling around as a new family of 4.

I remember going down the slide when I was nine months pregnant with Alice hoping it would put me into labor. I remember taking Avery to the park with Alice snug in the baby carrier when she was just 3 days old.

When we passed our old house, I was basically a nut case, sobbing, while Avery and Alice were confused about why Mommy could be crying. Wasn’t that their job?

When we drove down to Florida last August, I listened to one of my favorite books on Audible, “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.” In the book, the author highlights the relationship of change and loss.

“As a therapist, I know a lot about pain, about the ways in which pain is tied to loss. But I also know something less commonly understood: that change and loss travel together. We can’t have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same.”

Lori Gottlieb

And so, in the front seat of a rental car, stuffed with my mostly favorite people, I grieved the loss produced by a change we purposefully made almost a year ago. A change that, yes, has produced so much good; but a change that, yes, has also produced loss.

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Us Minnesotan’s like to go “Up Nort” (north), to spend time at the lake each summer. My Dad’s side of the family has the tradition of spending a week each July together at a lakeside resort.

Our family vacations in the best possible way: very few organized activities, schedules that run more on how we feel than by what time it is, high quality junk food, a rotation of lounging by the pool and the lake, and late nights playing poker or mafia.

Usually we start a puzzle at some point and in prior years, we would finish it. Lately we’ve given up 1/4th of the way through. This year we stuck to a 25 piece Winnie the Pooh puzzle. Avery and Alice finished it in 15 minutes. We were all relieved.

Showers are not required, nor are outfit changes. If you’re wanting to clean up a bit, you can always turn your shirt inside out. Before guests come, we do try to put deodorant on and brush our 4 front teeth.

This was our first year without G-Dizz (or as normal families may call their elder, Grandma).

Her absence was palpable. Her comfy chair sat empty, and we half expected a snarky comment to come from that direction at any time. We missed her shriek during poker games whenever she was upset by losing. We missed her classy figure, sitting poolside while wearing her zebra print swim suit, sipping a beer. Mostly, we missed her in all the normal moments that we couldn’t share together.

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Have you ever noticed the beauty of familiar things? Like how the first time you listen to a song you might hate it, but by the tenth time you hear it, it might be your favorite song? Or how you can travel the world, but still find home to be your favorite place to be?

For me, it is birch trees, lakes, cool morning weather, and fireplaces. No matter how far I go, or where I end up living, these things will always stick out to me as the most comforting, beautiful things.

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And now, we are back home… at our Florida home. I’m soaking in sleeping in my own bed, with my favorite pillows, wearing my faithful polka dot bathrobe that has been with me for the past 6 years.

I had my weekly visit with Donna, the slightly monotone checkout lady at Target (monotone people unite). I had my weekly wave with deli meat man (name unknown) who’s wife has MS.

The girls are happy to be reunited with their toys, and Chad is happy to be reunited with his golf course.

This year has been full of change and loss. Beauty and pain have coexisted. But Florida is sure beginning to feel like home, in the best possible way.

With that said, I find it fitting to announce that we are beginning to house hunt down here in Florida and plan to stay while.

Wishing you all the courage to make scary changes, the people to love you through it all, and the beauty that comes with the change.

I hope you never forget the people, places, and things that have molded you into who you are today.

Above all, I hope you soak in the “normal moments” with those you love.

Cheers,

Laura