2011: the year in review

it's 8:30 pm on new year's eve, and, like 100 of our closest friends at our club,  we have already partied and eaten and danced and celebrated and even counted down and rung in the new year.  the balloons all dropped at precisely 7:30 amidst a chorus of thousands dozens of horns being blown by our children, and if we were cautious not to wake up on january 1st with a hangover, we'll now all certainly have one based on the sheer volume that's still echoing in our heads.  think i'm exaggerrating?  check out the footage below, courtesy of a friend of ours:

but with the closure of one year brings some reflection.  on our way home tonight i thought about our highlights.  here are the top three for each of us, in random order. 

susanna

• teeth:  after months and months of rockin' in its socket, susanna finally lost her first tooth.  and a few weeks later, she lost her second.  she corresponded with the tooth fairy herself, and is now sporting an attractive gap on her bottom row .

• the pageant:  surprising all who know her well, she took on the role of mary in the christmas pageant like a broadway star.  no insecurity or uncertainty like we all expected; she just accepted the role with excitement and smiled her sweet little smile the entire time she was in front of an audience of 500.  and it occurred to me that the next time she'll be walking down the aisle of st. michael's in a veil will be on her wedding day.   (and when that happens, let's just hope that there will be no baby involved.)

• kindergarten: she was a teary mess the afternoon i picked her up from her evaluation day (when they meet the new kindergartners in smaller groups), but after she was assigned a teacher and learned that she already knew half of her classmates, she perked right up.  she loves her class, absolutely adores her teachers, and enjoys the bus ride home in the afternoons.  and with a big brother to walk her to her classroom each morning, how could her introduction to elementary school be anything but stellar?

liam

• school: we had a rocky start to the school year with a new principal who tried to dismantle the plan we had in place for liam this year, but after a transition period, i'm happy to say that he's getting what he needs.  he has exceptional teachers who understand him and challenge him and motivate him.  and as long as he's happy and continues to love school, that's all we'll ever ask.(below is his first-ever project, a study on sunrise and sunset times for december.)

• sports: i thank God every day that sports were invented.  for if not, i'm not sure what liam would do with 95% of his time.  this year he's played baseball, winter soccer, spring soccer, fall soccer, tennis, golf, swimming, and basketball.  and if that weren't enough, he received a football and a (street) hockey goal for christmas and has spent the past week out in the cul-de-sac playing those.  if you ask him his favorite, his answer is always whatever sport is in season; he loves them all.  and you want to know what he likes to do just about as much as playing sports?  watch them.  he's been to hockey games, college basketball games, PGA golf tournaments, soccer tournaments, high school basketball tournaments, college baseball games, and professional hockey games (and i'm sure others that i'm forgetting).  and you want to know what he likes to do just about as much as playing and watching sports?  read about them.  the very first thing he does every single morning is run to the end of the driveway to pick up the newspaper so he can devour the sports section over breakfast.  the boy is obsessed.  (because i will never let him play organized football, i decided to indulge him a bit and chose a football picture to include in this post.  the boy can throw a perfect spiral ... too bad it's the most dangerous sport in this country and his overprotective momma won't let him play it for real.)

•  Y guides: raleigh's Y guides program (the Y stands for YMCA) is the largest in the country, bringing together a dozen first grade boys and their fathers in a tribe that meets once a month and plans amazing outings.  different tasks and activities earn them patches that they put on their vests, and each of them have their own Y guides name.  (chris's is The Artful Dodger, in reference to his love for the los angeles baseball team.  liam's is Wee Sports Fan, in reference to his love of Wii Sports.)

sara

• the renovation:  i have a kitchen i can cook in!  and an office i can work in!  and a breakfast room we can eat in!  sure, the renovation process took twice as long as it was supposed to, required way more money than we'd anticipated, and necessitated us moving out for the majority of the summer, but all the pain was worth it.  i still walk into my house and smile at what i see (and marvel at how we survived the house in its previous state for all those years.)
  

• work: i took on an additional online teaching job in august, increasing my hours to an almost-full time schedule.  so i still synchronously teach local seventh graders who have been expelled, but now am  asynchronously teaching special education high schoolers from all over the state as well.  it's been a huge adjustment for me but now that i'm four months into it, i think i'm finally getting the hang of time management.  (i've never been a quick study.)
• an empty nest:  i'm not sure i'll ever get the hang of having the house to myself from 8:00 in the morning to 3:30 in the afternoon.  most of those hours are spent on work, but i also spend a lot of time volunteering at the kids' school, being involved in activities at church, and playing tennis.  i love the flexibility i have now that both kids are in "real" school, but my favorite part of day is at 3:25 every afternoon, when super and i walk to the end of the cul-de-sac to meet the bus.  does seeing your children's smiling faces as they bound down the steps, eager to regale you with stories of their day, ever get old?  i hope not.   

chris

• a new car: my poor husband had been driving around a car with 150,000 miles and a peeling sorority sticker on it for eight years. it was way past time to get a new set of wheels, and he finally did this fall.  
• vestry: chris was elected at st. michael's and will serve a three-year term.  a huge honor, a lot of work, and it couldn't be suited to anyone better.  (in my humble opinion.)
  
• the shed: so i get a new kitchen, and chris gets a new shed.  seems fair.  but this shed is nice!  it has plenty of space to store all the outside crap and tools and toys and miscellaneous items that would otherwise have no place to go since our previous storage room is now our breakfast room.  and to make it even more spectacular, he received a solar panel for christmas that he's attached to the shed's roof and can now generate power.  how cool is that?  (okay.  it's not as cool as the kitchen.  but still.) 

family

• a baby!:  my little brother, ben, and his wife, laura, are expecting!  they shared their happy news with us over the phone the night we came home from the state fair --  already on a sugar high from our funnel cakes, this just propelled us into another realm of joy.  each night as we say our bedtime prayers, we thank God for "the baby in aunt laura's belly".  and to make it even more special, the due date for my first nephew or niece (and the kids' first cousin) is actually may 18 -- susanna's birthday.

since we obviously don't have a picture of the baby, i thought i'd share one of us at the fair less than an hour before we learned the big news

• a ring!:  my little sister, leslie, is engaged!  and the story behind how she shared the news is a good one ... on christmas eve, there were ten of us seated around our dining room table for dinner: the four of us, my parents, chris's parents, and leslie and richard (her longtime boyfriend.)  the conversation was pleasant until liam decided to use his best seven-year old tactics to bring out the awkward.  "so, aunt leslie, why aren't you and richard married yet?"  but instead of an uncomfortable silence, leslie simply smiled and held up her left hand for us all to see.  richard had proposed the day before in minnesota, and she hadn't breathed a word of her big news!  (thank goodness for awkward seven-year olds, right?)  we're now looking forward to flying out to california for the wedding sometime in 2012.

• disneyworld:  and speaking of trips, the highlight for the four of us this year was our venture to disneyworld in february.  it took a lot of planning, a lot of driving, and a lot of $$$, but it will surely go down in the books as one of the best vacations we'll ever have.  (and that's why, kids, we likely won't be going back any time soon.  why mess with success?)

i say this every year as i sign off ... but our true highlights are the health and love and happiness and faith we continue to be blessed with.  we strive each day to show our gratitude for all that we've been given.

and as the kids have been saying to everyone they've seen today ... "see you next year!"

the pageant

thirty-one years ago the story goes that my mom hung up the phone one december afternoon and excitedly told me that i was going to be mary in the st. michael's christmas pageant on christmas eve.

and i promptly told her i had no interest in being mary.  nope, i insisted, after she suggested i think about it.  not gonna do it. so she called back the coordinator and let her know that i had declined the offer.

of course, as early evidence of my severe issue with indecisiveness, i woke up the next morning with a new attitude.  "okay," i said.  "i've decided that i will be mary after all."

and in an early lesson of tough love, my mom barely looked up from the paper.  "too bad," she replied.  "they've already found someone else."

i was devastated, but vowed to be the best pageant angel i could be. and then ... my luck changed.  my mom got another call from the pageant coordinator on the morning of december 23rd, informing us that mary had come down with the chicken pox, and wondering if i'd like to take over.

and a star was born.

ha!  hardly.  for all the hype and hoopla surrounding the casting of mary every year, she really doesn't do much.  gabriel, of course, steals the show, and even gets to hold a microphone to proclaim the good news.  joseph talks about how his wife is going to have a baby and asks about room in the inn.  shoot, even the innkeeper gets a few lines.  but mary?  nada.  she just walks down the aisle looking as serene as possible and later places a baby doll in a wooden trough.  still, i practiced all that day and the next, leading up to my big moment.  and i suppose i did a satisfactory job, because there aren't any family stories of failure or embarrassment; of course, there aren't any pictures either.  (maybe i have made this event into a bigger deal than it actually was at the time.)

but here's where i think the story actually does become a big deal, at least to me.  thirty-one years later to the day, i sat in the front pew of the exact same church, and watched our daughter walk down the same aisle in the same costume.  susanna was also mary -- a serene, sweet mary -- and surprised us all with her confidence.  i felt sure that she'd get to church that morning and balk, since she has a tendency to change her mind at the last minute.  (not quite sure where she gets that.) so i was mentally prepared to resort to bribery to get her to walk down that aisle.  and who could blame her?  it's one thing to agree to do it a few weeks ahead of time; it's quite another to stand at the back of the church and muster up the courage to trek down a 50-yard aisle with 500 pairs of eyes focused solely on you.  but apparently we didn't give our reserved second-born enough credit -- because she never wavered.

and when i looked at her, i could actually see in susanna's eyes the same kind of reaction to gabriel's tidings that mary has in the bible.  i could see her half-smile, her reluctance to bask in the limelight but her willingness to do what was asked of her.  i could imagine susanna quietly accepting gabriel's news, surprised to be chosen, but sure of her abilities.  decades ago, i had initially declined the offer.  i wasn't sure i wanted to take on that responsibility; i didn't know that i was the right choice.  but susanna?  she knew that she could do it.  she never doubted the outcome.  she said yes.

"i am the Lord's servant," mary says in the gospel of luke.  "may it be to me as you have said." with those two sentences, mary became one of the most important people in the bible, and certainly the most important in the story leading up to Jesus's birth.  despite the amount of lines that are uttered in the pageant, we all know that it's not joseph's, or the innkeeper's, or even gabriel's big moment.  it's mary's.  mary really was the star of the show -- thousands of years ago in nazareth and bethlehem, and on christmas eve of 2011, in the form of a quiet and trusting blond-haired, blue-eyed, five-year old little girl.

receiving gabriel's message

mary, the little gray donkey, and joseph

lovingly placing baby Jesus in the manger

wordless wednesday, christmas style

meeting the big man at our club's santa brunch

enjoying the craft table at the museum of history family holiday party

one of the four main christmas food groups: cookie dough

making gingerbread houses at school

gofster's back, making snow angels on the dining room table

gofster vs. barbie in a game of guess who (notice that they've chosen the characters sarah & chris) ... my money's on gofster to win

stuffing build-a-bears at the club for duke children's hospital

they were thrilled to be given matching christmas pajamas ... wonder how many more years that will last?

an instant message

this is a story i first shared on the blog a few years ago.  i revised it and contributed it to our church's annual book of advent devotionals. 

I stared at my computer screen on a December day a few years back, feeling the same emotions that had plagued me for months.  I was frustrated.  Disappointed.  Bewildered.  This was not the career path I had envisioned when I graduated from college with a degree in mathematics.  

Once upon a time, my career path was what I had envisioned.  After dreaming of becoming a teacher for as long as I can remember, I saw my dream realized; I taught middle school math for eight years in three different school systems and loved just about every minute of it.  I challenged and motivated and inspired my students, forging meaningful relationships with them that lasted long after they left my classroom.  Last spring, my own children were even in the wedding party of a young woman I had taught when she was in the sixth grade.  At every point in my life, I just knew that God had called me to teach, and I received daily affirmation that I was indeed answering His call.

But then I became a mother, and I answered God’s call to step away from the classroom, leaving behind a job I loved but eager to begin my new one.  I missed my students but I always knew I’d return.  So when, five years later, I was offered a part-time position teaching high school math online, I jumped at the chance.  What could be better?  I thought.  It’s the best of both worlds: I’ll be teaching, but I’m still at home with my children.

Within weeks, however, I began to question my decision.  This was a far cry from the kind of teaching I was used to, from the profession I so adored.  My new students were all teenagers who had been expelled from school; they had committed an offense so serious that they were not allowed back on campus for the remainder of the year.  All of a sudden, I wasn’t sharing my love of algebra with a room full of gifted and inquisitive children who hung on my every word.  Instead, I was speaking through a webcam to a group of juvenile delinquents who often paid attention only during the commercial breaks of Jerry Springer.

It was on that December day that I had finally had enough.  I had spent hours creating an interactive lesson that required my students to insert their responses on our webpage.  But instead of insightful answers that demonstrated their mastery of the algebra curriculum, I saw my screen begin to fill up with phrases and drawings that were clearly gang-related.  (The Crips all used blue ink; the Bloods used red.  By this point I was already well-versed in gang vernacular.)  Disgusted, I shut down the webpage and just sat there for a few moments in silence.  This was not, I felt, what God was calling me to do.  So why was I doing it?  Why do I teach?

And then an instant message appeared on my screen, from a student who had just recently joined my class.  I stared at the blinking icon for a few seconds before opening it.  “Heyyyy Mz Mann,” it began.  “I’m being induced to have my second baby tomorrow so I might miss class.”  I typed a response immediately, letting her know I would help in any way that I could, but before I hit enter she had logged off.   I wondered if I’d ever see her again.

But the next day, her username appeared in my virtual classroom.  I texted her, asking if her plans had changed.

“I already had my baby,” she replied.  “He’s in the crib right next to me and I’ve got my laptop in the hospital bed.”  And not only was she present, but she participated in the class, answering questions and solving problems and stepping away only once, briefly, to change a diaper.  When our class ended and everyone else had left, I spoke to her through my headset, telling her how much her dedication impressed me.

"Oh Mz Mann," she replied, "I need this.  I need to finish high school.  I got to show my kids that school's important.  I don't want them making the same mistakes I made.  I know I don't do that good in math, but I'm trying hard.  I'm learning.  I'm doing the best I can."  I then realized that this online program was the best chance she had of finishing high school while taking care of two small children.  This program, which I had begun to doubt was even worthwhile, was her lifeline.

I thought a lot about her that month, as we counted down the days to Christmas.  Surrounded by images of Mary holding a baby Jesus, I couldn’t help but think of my student, a teenager herself, bringing a baby into this world in less-than-ideal circumstances.  As we read Luke’s Gospel describing Mary’s total acceptance of the role that God had chosen for her, I began to evaluate my own role and what God had chosen for me.  I wondered if Mary had mentors to guide her, and vowed to serve as a mentor of sorts to my student, who desperately needed role models in her life.  

I knelt in church that Sunday in Advent, pondering God’s wisdom and timing with the birth of our Savior, and humbled by His wisdom and timing in my life, thousands of years later.  I had asked a question, and the answer was so perfect and so complete that I had no doubt it was from Him.   Because this – well, this is why I teach.

wordless wednesday

as i seal my last christmas card (which has been even more of an ordeal than usual, given that i somehow lost my type-A excel spreadsheet with my addresses that i've maintained since the beginning of time), i was inspired to take a trip down memory lane.  seems memory lane is rather short and only goes back to 2005, since i'm missing liam's first christmas card.  still, looking back at these makes me realize how far we've come.

it also reminds me that getting an acceptable photo to use has always been, and i'm afraid will forever be, not for the faint of heart.

2005: a bald liam, and an announcement that another bald baby was on the way

2006: two new family additions: a teeny tiny susanna, and super.  (incidentally, this is the only time super has graced our christmas card.  you think getting a picture of two children is tough?  try two children and a dog)

2007:  matching smocked outfits ... how i long for the days ... this might be my favorite so far

2008: a move to raleigh necessitated a change of address card.  look at those chubby cheeks!

2009: on day six of chris's annual i-don't-shave-at-the-beach week.  next time, we'll take the picture on day one

2010: liam's missing some teeth and a belt (funny what i obsess over)

2011: and we're back on a swing.  seems we've come full circle

farewell, chloe

we said goodbye to a member of our family last month.  actually, she was a member of our family before we were even a family, or before chris and i were even a couple.  her name was chloe and she was the first car i'd ever owned.  (i think back when i was 21, it was cute to give names to cars.  i have since ceased this practice.)

chloe was my college graduation present, and i remember picking her up at a dealership outside of D.C. where i moved to start teaching at an alexandria middle school.  it turned out that i was the salesman's first sale ever, and when he surprised me by taking a picture (with a polaroid camera -- this happened in such ancient history that digital cameras weren't yet mainstream) i think he was doing it as much for me as he was for himself.

even more impressive than my scrunched socks and high-waisted shorts is the fact that i actually located this photo among the thousands of pictures i have from the 1990s.  apparently i used to actually print out pictures and put them into albums

chloe has certainly led an active life.  less than a year after i got her, she was stolen and raced around in a high-speed chase in old town alexandria before the joy ride came to a sudden halt when the driver crashed into a police cruiser.  an interesting tidbit: the thief was a fourteen-year old student at my middle school, who happened to find my keys in the stairwell and decided to grab a few buddies and take her out for a spin.  i had unknowingly dropped my keys while lugging up a few boxes of manipulatives and didn't realize i had lost them until that afternoon, when i prepared to leave.  i caught a ride home with a coworker and had chris drive me back that evening with my spare set.  i'll never forget arriving to a completely empty parking lot ... and asking him to circle around one more time to see if the car might magically appear.  it was all a bit surreal.

poor chloe.  i've often wondered what happened to that kid who stole her.  i'm still awaiting the restitution that was promised me ...

after two months of almost-total reconstruction (why the insurance company did not calculate it as a total loss, i will never understand) and 15+ years of driving around DC, raleigh, asheville, and raleigh again, the 145,000 miles began to catch up with her.  she'd shudder when we braked on hills; in the summer, whenever we turned, cold liquid would seep out near our feet.  this fall, we knew it was time to say goodbye and actually donated her to a local charity, who seemed incredibly grateful to inherit our family member.

chris is thrilled to finally have a new car that doesn't have a tri delta alumnae sticker on the back left window (and probably even more thrilled to have dry feet when the air conditioning is on.)  the kids are excited to ride in the back seat any time they're given the opportunity.  and i'm enjoying the stick shift -- it reminds me of the car i drove in college, when i was younger and carefree and without booster seats and goldfish crumbs all over the floorboard. i calculated that if this replacement car lasts as long as chloe did, we could very well be driving it when we drop off the kids at college.  (shoot -- in 15 years, we could be driving it to liam's college graduation.)

so here's to a fresh odometer and a new set of wheels.  here's to another 145,000 miles and the adventures they'll entail.  and here's to chloe, beginning a new life wherever she may be.