Even good limbo is hard

So we came home from vacation, and I got all depressed.  It's always hard to come home from a fun road trip, but this time it seemed extra hard because I'm starting to feel a little stuck here in Alabama.  Don't get me wrong - for the most part I am still THRILLED that we get to stay here a little longer. A steady income, a nice home, and a good school are all great things and nothing to be sad about. But there is a part of me that is ready for what ever is next.  And there is an even bigger part of me that is starting to get a little worried about how we don't have a plan for what's next.  

Right now I look at my life where I'm not doing much, and Brandon isn't doing much, and I can't help but wonder if we are wasting our time.  Shouldn't we be doing something big and grand and amazing with all this free time?  Instead it just seems like we are in this weird holding pattern of waiting for Brandon's paperwork to come pack from HRC and looking for a new career.  

So I spent a few days or maybe a week and a half feeling out of sorts.  But yesterday I came to two realizations.  These ideas have been churning around in my head for a while, but they solidified yesterday.  

1.  We are doing important work right now, even if it's just the "boring" daily routine with out kids. 

2. This is a period of rest for us.  It's not a season of harvest or even of planting, but a season of laying fallow and recharging.  

Now I feel a little better about this weird limbo state that we are in for the next who knows how long.  Sure I'd like to be moving on with life, but for now it's time to just enjoy period of rest.

I didn't take many pictures since getting home from our trip, but I did take a few.  

First up is from the big Community Yard Sale.  This is one of those things that made me so happy that we are still living here.  I love yard sales that this one is a HUGE.  It's held on the festival fields on post and has stuff from at least 40 different families.  It's kind of my version of Black Friday.  

This year I decided it would be fun to take Charlotte and Lydia with me.  Then I had second thoughts. I wasn't sure if they could handle seeing so many things but only being able to buy a few things.  But then I thought that we might as well learn that lesson at a place where everything was relatively cheap.  So I brought them and it was really fun.  

We found some birthday presents and some other toys.  We also found a pre-lit Christmas tree for $6 which made everything worth it.  We spent $30 total and probably got over $100 worth of stuff.  It was a good time.  And the girls did really well with the fact that they couldn't buy everything.  (Though one of them was really upset that I wouldn't buy a toddler bed for her.)

When we got back home Veronica showed interest in some of the dolls that Charlotte and Lydia had found.  So I took her to the yard sale to see if there was anything she wanted. She has some birthday money, but I've been at a lose to know what to buy her.  (Honestly she really just likes to hold the cash) I tried showing her some Elsa Dolls that were still in their box but she pushed those away. So then we went to a booth where they were selling Snoopy stuff. Veronica loves Snoopy and she immediately chose a Snoopy doll dressed like Santa.  She also found a DVD of Charlie Brown Christmas.  I asked her if she wanted to look around for anything else and she said no and started heading to the car. 

 Back at home I worked on Lydia's Halloween Costume.  She's wanted to be a bat for several months and has had some pretty specific ideas for how the costume should look.  I'm glad I was able to fulfill her specifications.

 Last week was a surprisingly not-busy week.  Tuesday was pretty busy though. I've joined the Protestant Women of the Chapel (PWOC) group at Wings Chapel and I'm in a bible study group focusing on the book of Romans.  So I went to that on Tuesday.  Then that night my LDS Relief Society group had an activity.  It was a spa night and they had the cultural hall decorated like a fancy spa.  The Relief Society presidency gave foot and hand massages and then we all just ate yummy food and talked.  So much fun!

The kids had the fire department visit them at school.  Derrick came home wearing a fireman hat.  He was so excited about it.  Charlotte was pretty excited too.  She told me that she'd finally decided what she wanted to be for Halloween - a firefighter.  She'd previously wanted to be a mummy, a bat, a spider, a cow girl, a ballerina, a pirate, a queen, and probably a few more things.  I half expected her to change her mind about the Firefighter, but she hasn't yet.

 On Thursday I went to P-31 which is the outreach ministry for PWOC.  They met once a month and do a craft.  This month we made a pumpkin out of wine corks. It was kind of stressful to glue all those corks together, but it turned out really cute.

 Brandon trimmed up our tree in the front yard.  He put the branches in the side yard.  Charlotte found them and made a tepee out of them. She was so proud of herself. She said, "This is what you and Lindsey did in Grandma and Grandpa's back yard."  I couldn't believe that she remembered that from the summer of 2014.

 The kids played in there for a long time.

 We've been spending a lot of time in our back yard this week.  The weather is sooooooo nice right now.  I'm so glad we get to enjoy it.  I was really sad when I thought we'd miss the wonderful southern fall weather.  But instead we are here and we can finally go outside without over heating.  Derrick loves to go outside and play in our little sandy spot.

 He also likes to throw balls onto the roof and watch them roll back down.  He could spend an hour outside doing this.

Brandon  and I decided that one of the problems with this whole being stuck in limbo thing is that it doesn't feel like we are moving soon - even though moving is inevitable.  So we decided to start packing up some of our stuff.  We've been packing up decorations and books.  Brandon got out the dolly to move something heavy and he through it would be funny to give the kids a ride on it.

 The kids' school is really good at encouraging the kids to start learning to write along with reading.  Lydia loves to write and says she wants to be a writer and an artist.  (The apple doesn't fall far from the tree because career goals at the same age were to be an author and an illustrator.)

She wrote about our trip to the Smoky Mountains.  The picture is of her almost throwing up from all the twisty roads.   Her teacher encourages her to just write the letters she can hear so the spelling is a little screwy, but here is the translation.

I went to the smoky mountains. And roasted marshmallows and slept in a tent.  and I missed ms Martin. And I couldn't draw because the was no paper.  And then I could color.

Her teacher was so impressed by what Lydia wrote on her own.  She wanted her to keep it at school and read it to the principal the next day.  Well Lydia misunderstood what the teacher meant.  She thought she was in trouble.  She was so sad that she had to leave the story at school and she was so worried about reading it to the principal.  She was in tears about it when she got off the bus.  After I figured out what she was upset about I told her that she wasn't in trouble - she was actually doing really well.

When Lydia came home the next day she had a sticker that said, "The principal thinks I'm smart" and she was so proud of herself.  I'm pretty proud too.  I'm so glad that my little creative girl is learning new ways to express herself.


On Saturday Brandon and I spent a lot of time packing.  This is what part of our garage looks like now.

 And here is our kind of sad looking living room.  Its a really big deal for me to have packed up the pictures.  But seeing empty walls is helping me realize that we are eventually moving on with our lives.  And that helps me feel better.

We also went to the dollar store and Walmart to buy birthday/halloween stuff.  Brandon was supposed to be on a scout camp and I wasn't looking forward to going to those stores as the sole adult with four kids.  So I was actually relieved when Brandon started feeling sick and decided to skip the campout. (It's good he skipped it because he ended up needing to go to Instacare for reasons that shouldn't be made public.)

Anyway, we went to the dollar store and Veronica found another thing to buy with her birthday money.  It was ANOTHER dog.  (This makes the fourth birthday dog this year.) For being a dollar this dog was actually really high quality.  She named it doggy. 

 Back at home (and after Brandon got back from instacare) I made the hat for Lydia's costume.  She is so happy with her costume.  She pretends to fly everywhere.

 Today we decorated our front yard for Halloween. Lydia made another yarn web in our tree.

 And Charlotte and Brandon helped me with a web around the front door.  We brought the dead branches from the back yard and used them to make a scary entry way.  We have a black light in our porch light and that spider web looks pretty cool.

Tomorrow we kick off the first of the Birth-o-ween events.  Birth-o-ween will last a week this year and involve a Halloween Carnival, a Trunk or treat, possibly a fall carnival, a parade at school, birthday and Halloween treats at school, trick or treating in the neighborhood, a day off of school, and a princess themed birthday party.  Whew, it's going to be a week!  But at least I won't have time to dwell on the fact that we are stuck in limbo.

Fall Vacation 2016 Day 5: Mammoth Cave

Our night at Bailey's Point was just about perfect.  It wasn't too cold, our tent was level, the kids slept well, I slept well, even Brandon slept well.  So yeah, just about perfect.  When we opened the tent door the next morning we were welcomed by a beautiful sunrise that turned the water pink.  Can you say heavenly?

I'd booked us tickets for a cave tour at Mammoth Cave.  The tour started at 10:00, but the ticket info said we should be there at 9:30 to pick up the tickets.  We were supposedly only 30 minutes from the National Park, but I wasn't sure.  Brandon and I decided that to be on the safe side we needed to leave our campsite around 8:30.  That meant we didn't have time for a fire in the morning.  Which was fine since we had cold cereal planned for breakfast.  The kids were all excited to have Lucky Charms.

Derrick and Veronica wanted me to take their picture with this pole.  They called it a Candy Cane. I'm pretty certain I caught Veronica licking it a few times.

After the tent was down I took the kids over to the bathroom and we changed our clothes in there because it was warmer in there.  When we got back I took this kids on a walk down to the water while Brandon finished up with the car and changed his clothes.

The water was really pretty.

Derrick really wanted to throw rocks in so we found a place to do that.

Brandon brought the car down to us.  We got the kids inside and started driving.  It wasn't even 8:15 for us.  That's one of our personal best times for packing up a campsite.  Usually we don't hit the road until around 10:00.

We were pretty close to Mammoth Cave so all we had to do was stay on a country road that would take us right into the park.

It seemed like in no time at all we were driving on the parkway inside the park.

We were at the visitor center at 9:00 and picked up our tickets.  I'd booked us a tour on the Domes and Drip-stones tour.  This would be a 2 hour tour travelling over 3/4th of a mile and up and down over 250 stairs.  It cost us $15 per adult and the kids were all free since they were under six.

We could have paid only $12 an adult and gone on a much shorter but also less strenuous tour.  At first I thought that tour would be better for us since we had so many young kids.  But then I decided that we were travelling all that way to see Mammoth Cave.  I didn't want to wimp out and just see a little bit of the cave.  Plus we've taken the kids in two other caves this year and they did fine.  So I figured this one would go okay too.

When I booked the tickets I'd accidentally scheduled them for Monday. When I realized that we'd really be at the cave on Tuesday I thought it would be a huge hassle to switch the ticket dates. But really all it took was a short phone call to reserve america.  I was super impressed. 

Since we were there so early we had time to do a little bit of exploring.  There was a bridge that connected the Visitor Center to a hotel.  It went over a trail that led to the historic entrance to Mammoth Cave.

I wanted the kids to have lots of energy during our two hour tour so I made sure everyone ate an apple before the tour.

We had fun watching squirrels run around while we ate.

We still had time so Brandon ran the back pack back to the car and I took the kids on what I thought would be a quick exhibit in the Visitor Center.  It ended up being super complex and we could have spent at least an hour in there.

Soon it was time to go meet up with the other people in our tour group.  Most cave tours have about 15 to 30 people in a group.  This one would have over 100. Three large buses arrived to take us to the entrance to our part of the cave tour.

We waited on some benches while everyone gathered.  A ranger talked to us about some general safety things and then told us to get out our tickets and line up for the buses.

All the kids were excited to sit on the bus.  Lydia told me that this was the first time she could see out of a bus window.  Her seat on the school bus is too low for her to see out the window.

Charlotte sat with Brandon and Veronica got the window seat.  Brandon said Veronica was enthralled with riding on the bus.  She always feels really left out that she can't ride on the school bus with her siblings.

Derrick was happy to be on the bus too.  He'd freaked out when the ranger talked over the loud speaker and he wasn't so sure about the bus at first, but he relaxed as we drove.

The buses dropped us off in an area in the woods and the Ranger gave us a few more instructions.  One of the main rules was that we couldn't use flash photography inside the cave.  The reason was that the lighting was dim and any time a camera flashed it made it hard for people to see.  Then we started walking down the trail to a door in the side of a hill.  This was the entrance to the cave.

Veronica was pretty grumpy.  Brandon had carried her off the bus and she was TICKED that she didn't have a chance to walk down the steps herself.  She was sobbing in my arms, but soon she wanted to get down and hold hands with Charlotte.  I'm not sure if we could survive Veronica's outbursts without Charlotte's magical abilities to calm her down and make her happy.   Actually I
 don't know if I've ever mentioned this, but Charlotte has an amazing calming effect on everyone.  We call it her magic touch.  No joke, she can make people feel better just by touching them.

We were near the back of the group so it took a while before we made it to the cave entrance.  When we got inside we started going down skinny little stair cases that descended into deep pits.  The space between the walls was very narrow.

This picture up above was taken when I didn't take the flash off.  It stayed off for all the other pictures though.  I'm not a great photographer so I couldn't get very many good shots in the dim light.  I'm sure I can sweeten them up in photoshop for my travel blog, but I'll just use the raw stuff for this post.

We twisted and turned our way down the hundreds of stairs.  I'd been a little worried about how Derrick would react to everything, but as before I just told him, "we're going in a tunnel." and he was a happy camper.  Veronica on the other hand refused to go down any steps, she refused to let Brandon carry her, and so I got to carry her all the way down.  And she screamed the whole way.  Good times.
She was still crying when we entered a large room where most of the tour group was waiting for her.  The ranger tried some tricks with his hat and flashlight to calm her down, but no luck.  So we moved to the back of the chamber and tried to calm her down while everyone else got to listen to the tour guide talk about the cave.

He was a great guide.  He knew his stuff and he was really funny.  The only problem was that Derrick got upset every time everyone laughed.  Brandon and I must have looked like two crazy parents for bringing our four children - one of them partially freaking out and the other in full on melt down mode down in a cave.  But in reality this has become business as usual for us.

The group kept moving and I got this cool shot of the line of people moving up a passageway.

The tour wound through several passageways, into another large chamber, and into more passageways for over an hour.  We didn't pass any "pretty" features, but the fact that we were in such a large cave was cool enough.

At one point we were shown total cave darkness.  Charlotte and Lydia didn't like that - neither did Derrick and Veronica of course.

I suspected that Veronica was just tired and so I had her rest her head on my shoulder while I carried her.  That seemed to calm her down.  I joked that she just had to go through the 5 stages of grief during our tour.  The bus ride had been denial, screaming on the staircase had been anger, asking to "go to the car" had been bargaining, she was currently in depression, and I was expecting acceptance to happen any time.

Derrick was doing well and was speeding along yelling, "In the TUNNEL!" and "Go see WATERFALL." I wasn't sure if we actually would see a waterfall, but sure enough towards the end of the tour we came to an area where water was streaming out of the ceiling.

Then we came to an area known as the Frozen Niagara area.  This is where there were many beautiful stalactites hanging down from the ceiling and the walls.

Stairs took us right down into the heart of this frozen waterfall.  I've never been that close to so many pretty cave features.  Usually they are just off in the distance and the tour guide shines a light in their general direction. But here we were right in the middle of them.

We climbed back out of the Frozen Niagra area and then continued toward the cave exit. Along the way we passed many pretty features.  Veronica had finally reached the acceptance phase.  She walked on her own and happily point out all the "castles."

Some of them were behind a wire wall.  This is the part of the tour that only costs $12 and isn't very difficult at all.  So thousands of people pass this area every day.  They had to put up the barrier to keep the features safe from overzealous tourists.

Soon we we could see daylight up ahead and they kids ran for the exit.

I was pretty happy to get back on the bus.  I'd carried Veronica for over an hour and a half and my left arm was feeling pretty dead.

I was also happy that I could cross Mammoth Cave off of my ever expanding travel bucket list.  It's funny because 6 months ago I drove by this area of Kentucky on my way to help my Grandma move out of Indianapolis.  I'd seen the signs for Mammoth Cave and I'd wished I had time to stop and take a tour.  I'd made a little promise to myself that if possible I'd come back that way with my family before we left the south.  And now I'd fulfilled that promise.

I would have loved to stay to explore more of the National Park.  I was especially interested in seeing the historic entrance to the cave.  But we were all wiped out from the cave tour.  So we just went to the car, put the kids in their seats, dug out some granola bars, and started driving home. The kids all fell asleep pretty fast.

Kentucky actually isn't that far from Fort Rucker.  It's the equivalent of driving from Logan Utah to Las Vegas.  And actually it's even easier than that because there aren't any canyons to worry about.  Soon we were out of Kentucky and into Tennessee again.

I would have liked to stop somewhere in Nashville, but I'd never found anywhere that seemed like it would hold our interest.  Plus we were all still tired from that cave.  So we drove right through Nashville. 

We stopped for Lunch/Dinner at a Burger King in some small town south of Nashville. Derrick was so cute and made sure we all had crowns to wear. 

Charlotte made sure Honey had a hat too.

Then it was back into the car for more driving.  I'd wanted to stop at the rest stop at the Alabama border so we could see the rocket on display there, but Derrick was asleep by the time we were there so we just kept going.

We did stop at the rest stop north of Birmingham.  This one had a nice little wooded train that people could walk their pets on.  We took our "pets" for a walk on it. Actually Derrick basically insisted that we go on it. It's hard to resist his little voice saying, "Come on Mommy!" or "Follow me guys."

We'd been driving a lot so it was really nice to get our blood moving.

The rest stop also had this little stepping stone walkway that the kids hopped all over.

Even I joined in.

Then it was back in the car for even more driving.  We stopped again around 6:00 in Montgomery to change the kids into pajamas.  They fell asleep after that.  During the last 90 minutes of our drive home Brandon and I had a semi serious conversation about how feasible it would be to just be on vacation all the time and blog/vlog about it for our income.  It's a tempting prospect and if we didn't have kids it's probably what we would do next.

But alas we do have kids and we do need some semblance of stability and reality in our lives.  So being internet star nomads wont be happening in the near future.

We got back home around 9:30 and moved the kids to their beds.  We unloaded the biggest stuff from the car and then went to bed.

The next day the kids were still off of school. I had a vacation hangover, but I couldn't let it get to me because I'd scheduled a bunch of stuff for that day. I had back to back to back to back parent teacher conferences in the morning.  Then I had a meeting with Derrick's behavioral psychologist for his autism reevaluation (he's still on the spectrum, but he's definitely improved a lot this past year), and then I helped facilitate Financial Peace in the evening.  Thank goodness for that Financial Peace class because we get free pizza when we go to that and neither Brandon or I was in the mood to cook.

It wan't until Thursday and Friday that I really had a change to reflect back on our trip.  I realized that this trip was great in all the ways I'd hoped it would be. We saw mountains, we saw fall leaves, Brandon realized why I want to live in Tennessee or Kentucky, we bonded as a family, we saw cool stuff, etc.  But it had also had an unintended consequence.  It made me realize that I'm kind of done with living in Alabama.

I still love Alabama, and I'll treasure our remaining time here, but after this trip I'm anxious to see what's next for my family.  I'm ready to get moving.  And I'm hoping it sooner rather than later.

I wonder where our next adventure will take us.