Scrabble Remnants ...

Memories of moments last weekend ...






We've been passing hand held devices around The Bungalow since Christmas playing Words with Friends. The girls are actually quite good, and give their old mom and dad a run for their money. So this weekend we thought we'd pull out the analog version. The real version ... Scrabble.

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Corn Country

There's something about going on a road trip that makes even the familiar feel vaguely exotic. You drive out of your own driveway, down stretches of local roads with purpose. Slowly the path becomes less familiar, and you are truly on your way. (Conversely, when you retrace your step at the end of the journey, there is a sweet sense of intimacy in being reunited with familiar places and your own zip code as you saunter home.)

I've always loved that old adage, "knee high by the forth of July," which was certainly coined before the tough hybrids of today were grown. Even in this wet, wet year the corn nearly surpassed Bei Bei by the end of June.

Besides being wet, it's been cooler than the average Illinois summer. But as July gets underway, it seems the heat and humidity Illinois summers are infamous for is at our door step. Mr Johnson calls that hazy, summer weather - corn-growing weather (and if he's feeling especially nostalgic, he'll drop the 'g' from the gerund!) And then he'll mention how in stickiest part of late July you can almost hear the corn growing.

As we sped off to Michigan last weekend, I asked if the girls would be willing to pose by the corn on the edge of a Kendall county field. Only Bei Bei was game.

Here's our baby in local Corn Country ...

Summer at The Bungalow

We're a fortnight into the summer holidays, and we're finding a relaxed groove.

We've been lazy risers.

Sometimes we eat berries and yogurt beside the bathtub size pond Mr Johnson dug seven years ago that we've spent much of the spring reclaiming. (We ordered 12 yards of mulch to spread around various landscape projects in the yard, which we quickly realized was about six yards too much ... slowly we whittled the pile down.)

Twice we've packed picnic lunches and headed to the Windy City. Other days we've simply gone to the museums, and skipped the parks and beaches.

We come home and eat salad dinners on the front porch and watch rabbits sneak out from the hedge. And talk about our day.

We listen for the birds we can identify (mourning doves and cardinals and the cocky, squawking starlings). We've had a clear vantage point of a momma robin and her trio of sky blue eggs in our living room window. And an equally clear view of the harsh reality of nature. All three chicks hatched... but momma pushed the weakest one out and left another alone and rejected in the nest just as he had begun to fully feather out. (Our morning dove momma under the eaves proved more devoted, and has carefully coaxed two sets of chicks into this world.)

EHJ is studying the Bird's of Illinois handbook. Trying to determine which kind of bird is most likely to live in the cavity high up in the old hack berry tree. She has an app on her iTouch to identify birds and their calls. And one for trees. When we go on what Bei Bei calls 'family walks', our Middle is keen to collect leafy folliage from around our village and come home and try to classify it.

MGJ stays up late reading. Moving quickly through a stack of books from the library, but turning down the opportunity to mail in a weekly math challenge to her jr high teacher. She is learning how to do the laundry and unfurls towels and sheets to air dry on the line. And more begrudgingly unloads a dishwasher perpetually full of plastic picnic ware.

Bei Bei watches the changes in the yard ... loving to go on rides on the green mower and make observations about the perenials. The tulips and magnolias of Spring, now a distant memory, have given way to lilacs, followed by the Korean variety of lilacs, with smaller tighter blossoms that bloom two weeks after the traditional ones. The peonies have nearly all faded, the white ones opening first, followed by the dark pink ones. The rose bushes are both blooming, fighting against heavy down pours to keep their petals. The hydrangea bushes have opened with bright white balls of blooms. The mock orange, beside the porch, where cardinals are keeping a nest, is full of fragrant white petals as well. Our overgrown, untidy, uneven hedge has a small white blossom that is lightly scented, and wafts all the way back to the clothes line.

Earlier Bei Bei had a friend over for a play date and with the seriousness of a 60 year old (not six year old) pointed out projects around the yard ... "We're not quite done with the mulch yet, we still need to put some over there." (She faithfully scooted her own little wheel barrow around the yard in May and June beside my garden cart, and loaded and spread mulch with her pint size rake.) Bei Bei pointed out where the cardinals live and the momma birds on their nests. "I can see it's butt," her friend quipped, but and our resident comedian didn't take the bait. "Those are her tail feathers," she replied solemnly. "She's sitting on her eggs."

The girls have invented their own game of kickball, where the pitcher rolls the ball to all the bases, not just home plate (which happens to be a corner of the playhouse.) When my parents spent a short weekend with us, they quickly versed them in the ever-evolving-rules of "johnson girl's kickball." And a sweaty, multi-generational match ensued. The have finished their soccer season, and still seem compelled to be kicking something around the yard, to each other, or in a disadvantaged scrimmage.

We are drinking in these sweet first moments of the summer ... in our yard and on the porch of The Bungalow ... Creating memories of summers in North America with The Three.

Home {Another Five Minute Friday}

My kind of Home

When I saw this week's prompt I was overwhelmed. It is the one word that hovers in the back of my mind and sometimes sits in the end of my fingertips, waiting to be blogged. And yet, I hold back. For nearly six months I have been wrestling with this word called home. Rolling it around on my tongue, trying to define a concept that seems intangible.

{This post should be five minutes, but it could go on so much longer.}

Defining home has become simple. So simple that it's definition is obvious. Home is wherever the four other immediately members of my family are.

When the five of us are together, we are home.

But home then is not just a place, but can be many places.

I wrestle with this, this idea that we have left where we were, and to returned to where we came from, and that we were home both places. Yes we love the sturdy familiarity of life in The Bungalow. But the structure, the address, the yard alone are no longer the definition of home for me.

When people ask how it feels to be home, I always reply, "We are happy to be back."

Because, in my mind, we've been my kind of home all along.

For other blogger's thoughts on home, visit the Gypsy Momma, where this week's Five Minute Friday Prompt is: Home.
http://thegypsymama.com/2011/06/five-minute-friday-home/

Learning to Live in the Middle ...

Last fall I clicked on a new option available in the blogger template: Monetize. Nothing materialized from it, other than ads in my sidebar and below my most recent entry ... ads that would periodically change and sometimes reflect something of the content of my most recent post. When I wrote about copious choices in the dish soap aisle at the grocery store, a friend reported that an ad, including no less than seven dish soap brands popped up. I'm not sure I'll continue with the monetization... To date, I learned today, I've earned $14 which is yet unclaimed as I need to share my tax info with google to collect my payment.

Presently, and for the last little while, there has been an ad for a storage company. The words 'Pack Rat' blaze across our homepage, and make me cringe. I am in the midst of sorting 'stuff'. I've been in this midst for months. On the China side, we organized 'stuff', on the US side we are now 'processing' the same stuff. All of our major thing are unwrapped, placed and in use. We are left with the untidy and unwanted bits at the bottom of boxes I can hardly stand seeing anymore.

Am I a pack rat? That’s the sense google is getting.

This is part of the weariness of a huge move. There are jokes abounding in the expat community about boxes that never really get unpacked. They sit in store rooms, and basements, garages and attics ... tidily contained in the same moving container, cardboard or box they were packed into several years and moves earlier. I am tempted to take those last bits, those dreaded dregs and stick them away, or better yet dump them!

When we were sitting in our empty near house, waiting for our shipment … When we had five chairs and a dining room table, three mattresses, and still lived out of suitcases (because, despite being in our home, we didn't have dressers) … When we had only a loveseat in the living room and a TV on the floor (and I think we all were thinking the dog’s bed was looking better and better each time we crammed five bums onto the seat and arms of the tired, dingy slip covered Ektorp we had kept in our basement) I came across a quote in a magazine that I tore out and hung on the fridge.

It’s a Finnish proverb.

It reads:

“Happiness is a place between too little, and too much”

With this move, and throughout this repatriation process, we are trying to find that middle place.

Animals that made our trip especially fabulous for our girls...

We're Back!!

After nearly four weeks, a combined 40 hours of air travel (and what feels like at least as many hours in airports) and visiting four states and two countries...

After having Christmas with both sides of our family, catching up with friends, attending appointments @ the eye doctor, the pediatrician, the office...

After traipsing to Target, and Wal-Mart, Oakbook, and more...

After savoring the culinary wonders of Christmastime and Chicago's extremely edible fare...

After enjoying all the winter wonders of the east coast and mid-western United States, and then reveling in the "winter weather" Hawaii has on offer...

After all that... we are back in our two story apartment home in bleak, grey-skied Qingdao, China.

And... what's more, despite the atmospheric conditions, we're happy to be here. Bei disappeared into playroom, enjoying her beloved old toys as if they were new ones. Eliza stayed in her bathrobe all day, and Millie, in the late afternoon, devoured more of her latest book by candle-light, cuddled under a cheneille throw.

Jet-lag when traveling east, is never as bad for us, and of course it was quite tempered by our wonderful five day respite on the Big Island and Oahu. Still at five o'clock this morning our family of five piled into Mom & Dad's bed and recounted our favorite moments of recent weeks:

Spending time with grandparents and great grandparents, playing in the snow, sledding and eating icicles, meeting up with "China friends" in IL and Boston, catching up with old friends, playing with cousins, a trip to the zoo in MN for "noon-year's eve", playing for hours with our dog who lodges @ Bopa & Mema's in our absence, and all the other dogs we met (and loved) along the way (Guinnea, Maxx, Cope, Ruby, Seamus, "Yappy" & Wilma (the dogs were all lovingly recounted by name this morning, so I honor them here!)

Other animal encounters also topped the list: in Boston, Lucy's bird Sunshine, and in Hawaii the macaws and parrots Eliza remembers by name, the lazy sea turtle who glided through the Resort's private lagoon, The humpback whales and spinner dolphins we saw in the warm waters of the Pacific ocean, and the spotted lizards we spotted each morning on our walks....

They will be tired girlies when the get off their bus this afternoon @ 4:00. They will more-than-likely, have another early bedtime (although, hopefully not as early as last night's) and another early morning (hopefully they will slumber just a little later each day.) Their days will be filled with the stuff of daily life: school and homework, chores and playtime; but in their minds and hearts they will always remember the adventures of this last month, even as they continue to live their daily China adventure for another half year.