In General

Last weekend we returned to the W&L Geology alumni reunion in Lexington. It's the first one that we have been too (the first one was canceled after 9/11 due to flight problems) and the second one was right after Elena was born. But third times the charm and we had a charming weekend - surprisingly sparse on photos given how many good friends we saw. We arrived in time for the Friday night cocktail party at the Harbor's house. (a minor miracle given the amount of stuff we had to do before leaving b'burg). Elena eventually warmed up and promptly fell in love with all three of the Harbor kids, especially Erin, the oldest, and Thomas, the youngest.

We stayed the night in Lexington so we wouldn't have to make the two hour drive each way and got up to hit the old stomping grounds. Elena enjoyed back campus.

We didn't even have time to check out the colonade! If you can believe that!

Then Jake and Elena practiced their dinosaur faces in the Great Hall of the Science Center

while Jake and I saw ghosts of our past float by. Elena promply demanded to be returned to the care of Erin Harbor at the Harbor's house. And Jake and I spent the day hearing some really great science and catching up with some good, old friends. We are really proud to be from that department.

It's hard to believe that Dave Harbor taught me my first college course-I was 18. He's certainly not held that against me as we now can talk like colleagues. I used to baby sit Erin, Kia, and Thomas Harbor.

See:



Now Erin is baby sitting Elena.

Upon seeing the beautiful and poise Erin Harbor, Jake has decided to join the NRA in anticipation of our own teenager. Who, at time, seems closer than we would like.

The weekends report

We are behind a bit on the weekend reports. Two weekends ago we took advantage of our new location in college town USA and hit our first VT sporting event - not football (unfortunately not and don't ask about the two tickets on the 50 yard line we had to pass up because there are three of us....) but cross country! We checked out the local meet, scouted some running trails and cheered the women on to victory.




Last weekend we went to the Taste of Floyd. Yes, we should have guessed from the name it would be LAME, but we were willing to give it a chance. It wasn't worth it. Luckily the country 4-H fair was also going on, so the big hits of the day were Elena's first ride on a school bus (complete with extremly chipper woman singing 'the wheels on the bus'), glueing sunflower seeds onto a paper plate at the kids table, and watching an old engine grind fresh corn meal (which we made tasty corn cakes with the next morning). Next time we won't risk Taste of Floyd. I mean, Floyd is obviously no Roanoke...need I say more....can you believe we used to post about pasteries in Vienna?

The return of Spunky

Last week Elena's starting being 'spunky' again. First her teachers comment that she was interacting more at school - not waiting to participate in activities, doing less observing and more action, being more of a 'friend.' At home the clue was the return of imaginative play. Right now playing 'school' is popular and Elena is 'Miss Alexa' and Jake or I are often 'Miss Rachel' (the cook). She puts on her fancy shoes and clomps around the house reading for story time, putting on sun screen, and leading the children in birthday celebrations. She has also taken to attending parties (which require the silver spangly shoes) and mean that she will 'miss dinner, you and poppa stay home.' She's started picking out her own clothes again, hello creative dressing. Dinner time is one story after another. It's nice to have her back. It's taken about 2 and half months since we left Utrecht.

Here is Elena tucking Jake in for 'nap time on his cot and patting his back.'


All dressed and ready to go to school

E is for Elena

Elena likes to 'pretend write.' Some of you may have recieved a letter of her intent scribblings. She will say things as she 'writes' like 'Dear Aunt Marfa, I miss you, please come visit now. Love Elena.' Or 'Dear Gram, I'm not full of baloney. Love Elena.' So a few weeks ago when she told me she was writing I was not surprised. She was writing on the floor, I was making breakfast. She said, 'momma, I'm writing E's for Elena.' 'Hummm, ok, that's nice.' 'See momma, E for Elena.' 'That's nice, do you want milk or juice with breakfast.' She shows me the paper, and I'll be darned if she isn't actually writing the letter E! I saved that little scrap of paper (somewhere....it's somewhere in the house....). But here is some of her most recent E's.



It turns out that she learned this in school (duh, because it wouldn't have occurred to me that she could do it, or to try and teach it to her...we are pretty low key about such things). They let the kids 'sign in' and taught her to look for her name with an E. Then she learned to write the E. At first we thought she was very advanced (what parent doesn't) then it turns out that Samuel can write his whole name, so we dropped it down a notch. We are proud of her, but we are maintaining our 'no forced learning' at a young age and recoil from any 'official alphabet studies' or 'must learn to read before kindergarden' bunko that is so prevalent now.



Elena has also started moved up a notch in drawing pictures that resemble what she is trying to draw. The first was a fish, in Utrecht. But here is a sample of her drawing of a 'her.' 'she has feet'

Two weeks in

We are two weeks into the semester and we've survived our first faculty meeting, teaching (for Jake), graduate student meetings, getting to daycare, remember to get elena from daycare, navigating parking during football game pre tailgating (who knew they started on Friday night!), unpacking (sort of), and getting back into a running schedule.

First of all, the Elena update, because who really cares about us anyway? Elena is doing really well at school. We are really pleased with all of the activities, projects, and engagement that she is recieving. They are in the 'appropriate' zone of exploration, not forced learning. They bake pretend cakes (tomorrow they are making a real one!), have water days, play with bubbles, face paint, make space suits (which kind of scares Elena as she is afraid of the moon and astronauts right now). We are still struggling with the routine aspect and naps at daycare have been short, resulting in a cranky monkey in the evening, resulting in more sleep loss, resulting in crankier monkey....hummmmm. And everything just seems to 'take a little longer' as we are still figuring out exactly how things will work here. It's been fun to see Elena's friends around town and she gets a real kick out of running into her friends at the Farmer's Market or Kroger. My bike is up and running (or gearing?). Jake and I alternate taking it in. Usually we use it to pick elena up, as traffic on campus is pretty bad and it's much faster on the bike.

Jake is teaching meterology this quarter (that's right, he HAS become a weather man!). It's going 'well' - this is how you define success while teaching your first college level course, no one, including Jake has died so far, and that's how we hope to keep it. He's doing an admirable job of saving Mondays and Fridays only for research. Good job Jake. His evenings are filled with mowing the lawn with the push mower and swearing at the grass growing gods. Or doing little project with Elena as he enjoys the Return of the Power Tools. When the circular saw came out of the moving box I expected to find him in the garage with it reving over his head while yelling 'I HAVE THE POWER' and going after the garage door.

I'm doing well - grants, reviewer comments on papers, meeting to get my grad student started, and the like. Preparing for a heavy round of travel in late October (GSA in Denver), November (Utrecht), December (AGU). But with no teaching, I've got that flexibility right now, so I'll take advantage.

We are getting back into the groove of a 'college town.' I find it oddly calming to navigate the extra traffic (on the roads and in the pizza/beer isles of the grocery store - the Kroger down the road sells the most frozen pizza and beer of any Kroger). I guess it isn't surprising, since I've lived directly on a college campus for over half my life. Here we are only a mile away in a small town where the pulse of the town is the football game and changes of classes. I even got choked up during freshmen moving when a father and daughter stopped in the hall for help to find her biology classroom (sorry, I'm new here too). The dad was holding a printed of schedule. I directed as best I could, and as they walked off I heard him say to his daughter, 'I'm sure it's around here somewhere, we'll find it now so you won't have to worry.' And for the first time I could see myself not only as the daughter, remembering dad dropping me off at college, but as the parent, thinking that I might feel just a tiny bit better if I know that Elena knows where to go her first week of classes. Good lord, she'll never be that old, will she?

Hip Hiep Hoera! Jake 31 jaar!

After we baked that cake, I guess we had to celebrate his birthday. It was a day late and hard to top the 2.5 hour faculty meeting and new graduate student reception that was Jake's REAL birthday celebration. But Elena and I tried our best.

The cake was a hit.

Elena selected the number and placement of candles.

So were the presents. New watch, new tools, new clothes, and enough ties to escape out of his third story office window!


Like good expat Dutchies, we sang the 'gloria' birthday song and made music in a circle just like at Ukkie.

Spot bakes a cake

In honor of Jake's birthday, Elena bakes a cake! And just like Spot's poppa, 'Dad LOVES chocolate cake!' We fired up Martha (the mixer, not the aunt) and baked up the family favorite of nursery school chocolate cake with blackberry chocolate frosting. Lekker!






It only involved changing clothes three times.