Super Glue Gestures and Momzilla

{I'm still working on the second half of our Israel trip posts because once we got into Jerusalem, we have some fun stories to share! But back to real life now and there's been plenty of that!}

It feels like I've been running nonstop for months now, even before Jake's birth. I'm more emotional since his birth - like I'll get real teary more often than I've known myself to. This phase of our life is just so darn busy and downright demanding hard during certain times of the day. Sadly, it's the hardest when everyone is home and I have to try to bring my A game when all has already been spent, running on fumes you might say since Jake's still not sleeping through the night.

I've had to give myself a some little mantras to repeat to myself so I can muster through. In those "moments", even while losing it, I have to take a deep breath and tell myself (and sometimes Ryan when he raises those eyebrows at me) -- that Life is sometimes real hard and busy with these little people but that's okay. It doesn't mean something's necessarily wrong or needs fixing. It's a season of our lives and there are lots of moments of real joy to savor. Joy doesn't mean easy. Those knowing laughs and smiles between me and Ryan, the great baby smiles and sweet laughter and snuggles of our kids are those moments to savor.

But hard is hard. Young kids are physically and emotionally demanding! Keeping house is relentless and I am not good at it. But hard doesn't mean living in a place of despair. I recently heard a phrase about grieving and healing which I've added to my moments of self-therapy. Despair and frustration are places I'll visit sometimes often in the course of my day, but I don't have to live there.

And you know why? Because I have Ryan. I love my husband! I need him because he gets me, puts up with me, and still loves me! (Yes, I also have prayer and that's a big part of my survival too, but that's another post.) I have three scenarios to share and then I'll come back to this bit about why I love Ryan.

SCENARIO: I've probably bitten off more than I can chew for our coming week - as evidenced by a couple new haircuts two kids gave each other tonight when they were supposed to be, and I fully thought, were sleeping. Ugh! Or perhaps better evidenced by the outpouring of friends offering to come to my rescue at church when I took this show on the road today! Ages of kids being watched - an almost 1 yr old and almost 4 year old. (Sisters in my ward are just that - Sisters! Relief Society Sisters!)

SCENARIO: So after our trip to Israel, we'd had the kids home for only one full day and during the frenzied dinner bewitching hour I was falling apart (rather an all too common sight, I'm afraid but I hear I'm in good company with other moms). The kids already had fallen apart and it simply wasn't pretty - hungry, tired, emotional, needy. Enter Ryan getting home from work.

We were both in the kitchen meeting different immediate needs and he told me today he'd just had to pay some speeding tickets I'd recently accrued. (Soooo aggravating, those darn speed trap cameras!) I don't recall what happened next, but I must have snapped in some way at something and he chuckled and said how different, how quickly I've changed. I thought he was referring to my speeding tickets and then he clarified that no, he meant the girl he was with in Israel vs. this . . . Momzilla (totally my term, he never said it but I've decided it fits just now). I had to smile through gritted teeth - it was funny in the moment but there was more than one child or task needing our immediate attention so on we went. It's sad, I totally agree with him.

SCENARIO: Some time in the last few weeks, McKay was playing with our Advent calendar on the piano that was waiting to be packed away. He accidentally knocked over the Willowtree statue I'd given to Ryan for Christmas last year announcing we were pregnant with Jake. And if you'll remember, that announcement trumpeted and voided Ryan's long and meticulously planned, highly anticipated gifts he was giving to me and the kids - cruises. The statue is totally replaceable but in that moment and since it just seemed to highlight to me what I deem one of my greater weaknesses. See what happened? Who took the brunt of the fall?

Poor guy lost his head and his right foot protecting his wife and baby! Notice Mom and baby are still intact, looking serene together despite their protector's seriously disturbing demise. I'm sure she's really torn up about him, but maybe this moment captures her finally getting the baby to stop crying?

Point is . . . Ryan regularly gets lost in the shuffle of me in motherhood. Heck, I get lost in the shuffle too, but I've already talked about that. Old news. We love our babies, we do! We haven't been able to say we're done having them yet because we love them all so much. But as all couples can attest - having kids changes your relationship - in so many ways you can't even fathom them as cute 20-somethings falling in love.

Last fall Ryan and I were having a stifled conversation where Ryan was trying to kindly show me my weakness. He used these terms, "I feel like I'm not on your list." Ouch. I am a list maker. And you know what, he was totally right! I was so busy trying to keep up with the kids and the house that I hadn't made room for him! And in that moment I wasn't humble. I wanted to say, "You're right, you're not." But I think I gave him a heavy, defeated martyr's sigh. It's all I got most of the time and it's overused.

So back to this week. I love you, Ryan! He came from work with this:

So even though it took me a couple days, I got to do this and think about all the kind super glue gestures my sweet husband makes all the time and how little he really asks of me in return.

Like filling the van up with gas yesterday. I have NO idea when I would have fit that in this week and it meant a lot to me that he noticed and seriously eased my burden. So while my kind gesture of making our life real crazy busy this week by offering to watch two young kids may have seemed like kindness to a friend going overboard, it was about Ryan. He loves to travel and to give me a break from being Momzilla so I can remember and be that girl he married. This kid watching craziness is a swap so we can go travel. And in the 36 hours so far that we've survived having 5-6 kids 8 and under, I've repeated that to myself over and over. But better yet, I guess you could say that not only do I need to perhaps simplify my gestures and better communicate my intentions to the one I'm doing it for, but I also just need to do more of them! Thanks for inspiring, supporting, and enduring me, Cute Boy!

Side note: These kids I'm watching are real easy tempered, good kids. For instance, they're good eaters and sleep 12-14 hours per night. Hello!

On the way to Jerusalem

One of the highlights of the trip for us was the opportunities we took to talk with locals. We spent an hour talking with Yuval who runs the Bar Bakfar moshav. So fascinating! We wished we'd planned more time for that into our stay there. I've started writing up our conversation and may get to posting it later.

But for now, I'll stick to reporting on the sights and sites of the day. We drove south from the Galilee to Ein Gedi on the Dead Sea. What an interesting drive! We began in the lush Galilee valleys surrounded by banana trees, greenhouses of every size, and flowers. Green, very very green. When we'd arrived a few days earlier we'd been in a downpour and the land just soaks it up. I kept telling Ryan how he was getting a special visit with all this flora.

But within an hour driving south, the green was gone! Here’s some of the sights we enjoyed on our way.

A shepherd with his herd of goats and sheep.

The border fence looking toward Jordan. We passed many bus stops that seemed like they were in the middle of nowhere but there was often a few IDF soldiers waiting for a bus. In the middle of nowhere! It was just odd.

We had to turn around and snap some pics when we came upon a camel herder on his white pony leading at least two dozen camels!

This one was waiting for a tourist to go for a ride at a gas station. We saw this sort of thing at quite a few gas stations along the road skirting the Dead Sea. After driving about two hours, we arrived at Qumran National Park. Can ya see the caves in the mountain side?

The Dead Sea and the Qumran Visitor's Center. No more green down here!

In 1947 a young Bedouin boy was searching up here for a stray goat. He threw a rock into one of the cliffside caves thinking the goat may have climbed inside but instead of bleating, he heard jars shattering. He climbed up to the cave and was disappointed to find old parchment, not hidden treasure. Bedouin family members took some of the parchment to a shop in Bethlehem to see if it could sell and a Hebrew University antiquities professor happened to be looking around in the shop. He hit the jackpot and bought as much as he could. Long story short, these bits of parchment have come to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls and are the oldest original portions of the Bible, Apocrypha, and some Talmudic writings from the meridian of time.

Next we headed down to Ein Gedi Beach to let Ryan float on the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth. The Dead Sea is so salty you are super buoyant. It was so fun to see Ryan giddy happy! It's wild being that buoyant! I had no desire to do it again after my BYU experience because of how gritty it makes you feel and I would have taken too long washing up afterward for what we wanted to do that day still.

Getting in and out of that water was another story! Big waves and a current slams you into jagged evaporated salt encrusted rocks along the shore. It was a serious challenge. Ryan cut his hands and got a gash on the side of his foot. Talk about pouring salt in your wounds! OUCH!

By now it was 2:30 and we didn’t have time to make it to Masada that day so we headed to our hotel in East Jerusalem, just off Salah Din Street and 10 minutes walk to the Old City. Stepping out of the car the smell of the city washed over me. It’s so exciting to be back here! While settling in to our hotel, Ryan and Jake got some cute face time. Jake loves to squeal in response to Ryan talking to him – it’s adorable!

We headed in to the Old City through Damascus Gate and on through to the Western Wall. It was fun to walk that maze of streets again and hope it spit us out where we wanted to be! There was an IDF graduation ceremony going on and a good number of tourists and observant Jews praying at the wall. Boy did it take me back in time!

We wandered the Old City a bit but needed to find real food. Near Jaffa Gate, we spotted Rossini's and sat down for some dinner. Rossini's was actually listed in my Frommer's guidebook as a fave and now we know why! It was delicious!!! Warm fresh bread with three different spicy spreads followed by an appetizer small portion of a creamy mushroom chicken alfredo. We'd had a hard time deciding what we wanted to eat and the chef and waiter said they'd let us try a bit of what looked good. We would have licked our alfredo bowls if it were considered decent! Yum! But we were brave and tried a traditional Middle Eastern/Mediterranean meal which we can’t remember the name of. But it was good!

This is a small little restaurant and the chef likes to come out and talk with the patrons. We didn't really know he was the chef until I read up on him later. Apparently he's famous and has catered for two Popes' visits to Jerusalem! We had fun chatting with him, he's a Christian Palestinian who was born in the Old City - meaning within the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. His parents were from Jaffa, moved back to the Old City before Israel was created in 1948, had to evacuate during the 1967 war when Israel took over the Old City, and then their home was turned into a Jewish hostel for pilgrims in the Jewish Quarter and is still one today. Oh there's so much more to that conversation! It was so interesting! At one point, we asked him about how to buy a kefiyah - the Arab headscarf men wear - and how much they cost so we could do some fun bargaining in the suqs. He insisted on getting them for us and we took him up on it! We knew we wanted to come back to eat there anyways.

Afterward, we waddled fat and happy back to the hotel through the Damascus Gate and called it a night! I love this city!

Lower Galilee, Israel

Day 2 in Israel is complete and we still enjoy each other! Hurrah! Although we're not loving the seats of our rental Mazda 2 car! Ugh. Having to fit a rear-facing baby seat behind me leaves me no leg room or ability to recline and Ryan's just too long for economy-sized cars! Ryan did find a great deal though - I think is was just $200 for the entire week and that included full insurance coverage! Just one more day of driving though until we'll be walking our legs off in Jerusalem!

You might be curious to know our daily routine on this trip. It's really not as intimidating as you might think it would be to travel here. Breakfast here at the moshav is at 8:30 so I get up and get moving as Jake or the need to shower dictates. Today I was up at 7:20, yesterday it was 8. We get on the road at 10 after eating, chatting with the staff, topping off Jake's tank so he'll be a happy camper, and packing up necessities for the day.

I try to narrow our itinerary down to three or four sites for us to see per day and let Ryan give me his opinions. Sites here in the winter close at 4 or 5pm but most require you inside the gate by 3pm. It's a little aggravating, but it's going alright. I just have to keep telling myself that Ryan just wants to see as much of the lay of the land as possible and he'll be happy. With the great, filling breakfasts at the moshav, we haven't needed to stop for lunch but have stopped for snacks. If Ryan's doing the shopping, it's bags of chips and candy bars to see us through to dinner. And every gas station or convenience store clerk needs to tell you about every relative they have in the States or that have visited the States! But let's get on the road, eh?

We started the day in Nazareth at a new living history museum - Nazareth Village. Most people come to Nazareth to visit the shrines and churches, but we opted for this instead because I'd read good reviews and we generally like living history places everywhere we go. When we tried to visit the Basilica of the Annunciation, our GPS couldn't see us through the maze of streets so we gave up. We were happy with the Village and really appreciate what they are trying to provide here in the Holy Land. They've done a thoughtful, good job. Here's some of what we saw and talked about:

A shepherd with his flock of goats and sheep.

A replica of a rich man's tomb.

An olive press - this part hooks up to a donkey to walk around in circles as the stone crushes the olives for the first press. Then the olives are put in woven bags to be pressed using a system of weights as shown below.

A carpenter and his workshop.

A living area spread for a meal. The network of houses they've made here was really cool. They're really trying to do everything authentic to the time.

Women washing, dying, spinning, and weaving with wool.

A synagogue true to the time of Christ.

As Ryan was settling himself for bed tonight and I sat here trying to sort and upload photos with a recap of our day, I asked him what he'd liked about today.

"I'm glad we didn't stay in Nazareth!" A reference to the insane web of roads and snaking stalled traffic.

"Zippori's mosaics were cool." Sephoris/Zippori was a vibrant, thriving city being built up during the time of Christ. Just an hour's donkey ride west from the sleepy little village of Nazareth back then, its likely craftsmen like Joseph the carpenter would have found work here. A relatively newer excavation site, we saw some great mosaics - this is the most famous - its "Mona Lisa" uncovered in a mansion near the citadel at the top of the hill.

The synogogue's mosaics were also pretty cool and gave me a good spot to stop and feed Jake.

"Megiddo (Armageddon), I liked the ruins. And seeing the valley and military installations." We got here an hour before closing but Ryan still got to enjoy walking all over up there.

It's interesting to see how archeological methods have evolved. Archeologists used to approach a big mound site (a "tel") like this by taking a slice of the pie -- cutting down through multiple layers of civilization at once. Now they systematically work in squares so the ground begins to look like a giant waffle where they focus on one layer of civilization at a time. Both approaches can be seen at Megiddo. But Megiddo is also fascinating because as you look out across this beautiful massive flat valley, you can picture centuries of armies and peoples moving up and down it. It's amazing!

Two shots of the valley as seen from the top of the tel.

And yes, Ryan was on the lookout for military installations. We saw many as we drove across the valley back toward Mt. Tabor near where we are staying.

The setting sun and a look down the steep side of Mt Tabor as we drove the hairpin turn, switchback road up to the top.

"I liked the church," Ryan said. I remember this site from my time here before. It's a very peaceful, simple beautiful church and grounds with a nearby monastery on the top of this huge hill. It really is bigger than your average "hill" but I don't know what else to call it. As I reread the accounts of the Transfiguration, I've got to question how plausible it was for Christ, Peter and James to walk all the way from Banias near the border with Syria where we were yesterday to here at Mt Tabor in 6-8 days. My bet is on Mt Hermon up north, but regardless - this is a very nice spot and vantage point of the northern side of the Jezreel Valley.

Around the side of this church to the left here is a balcony to look down into the valley. It was almost 5pm and we could hear the Muslim muezzin singing the call to prayer down below us. I really love that! Too bad my watch can't be programmed to sing a beautiful call to prayer like that many times a day. I could use more reminders and I really appreciate this aspect of the Muslim faith.

And last but not least, a flock of adoring Asians work for Jake's smiles. Will this be the closing theme for each day? We end with Masada tomorrow, a major tourist site, so I'll let you know!

For dinner tonight we grabbed a pizza from the Pizza Honey, recommended by our moshav staff in the nearby Circassian village of Kefar Kama. We also had to stop and grab some pita and hummus from their favorite Arab restaurant. Oh how I've missed the pita bread! We watched "Moneyball" while stuffing our faces and reminiscing about a great day in the Holy Land. Love this sunshine!!!

Shalom!

We're in Israel! Did ya know my life online began when I did my study abroad with BYU Jerusalem back in 1997? It’s true! I regularly sent my family these horribly long emails so they could share in my adventures and so I’d have a record of it all.

This time it's Ryan, me and Jake (almost 5 months old now). And I'm our tour guide! Talk about overwhelming after the month we’ve had! Luckily, I know my man. Ryan's a wanderer, he loves to drive the countryside and get a feel for the land -- not visit every archeological site and museum with a scholar. Phew! Navigate, I can do that . . . or not so much.

We arrived January 1st around 2pm and made our way north to Haifa. First of all, the airport was an unrecognizable upgrade to the podunk digs I flew into in 1997! Our plan was to do some quick overview stops to vantage points on Mt. Carmel (Elijah's face-off with the priests of Baal), Megiddo (Armageddon), and Mt. Tabor (Mt of Transfiguration). This plan would have worked a lot better had the map download we did to our GPS worked! We quickly learned that we do not speak or recognize Hebrew writing! And by 5pm we were also in a downpour as darkness descended. So we were driving blind. We stopped and got our bearings at one point and miraculously made it to our accommodations.

We're staying at a small family moshav (a cooperative agricultural community) called Bar Bakfar near Nazareth. It's small and simple, but very friendly and they spoiled us with a great breakfast featuring different local cheeses, spreads, fresh baked breads, omelets, and the best fresh lemonade we've ever had!

Because of a day full of rain, we decided to do the Golan Heights above the Galilee. We made a full loop around the Sea of Galilee in one day as we hit all these sites.

We hiked around Banias, or Caesarea Philippi, to see the waterfall - one of three headwaters for the Jordan River. It was here that the record of Mark in the Gospels says Jesus asked Peter to tell him who he thought He was. Most Christians venerate this spot because they believe Christ told Peter that Peter was the "Rock" the church would be built upon. However, us Latter-day Saints believe the Savior was teaching them about how He was the rock and a belief in him is the foundation of our faith. I hope I stated that right. It was also near Banias that a woman was healed from some sort of blood issue by touching the Savior in a crowd.

Next we made our way to Nimrod's Fortress. It was built by locals in the 12th century to defend against incoming Crusaders. I sat in the car and fed Jake while people watching and Ryan climbed to his heart's content. The rain was coming down hard and most of the time I couldn't see the fortress right in front of me. Once the clouds passed, the fortress provides beautiful sweeping views of the valleys below. Next we made our way toward Gamla but got there after last admissions. These site hours are tricky during the winter. Along the way we stopped in Qasrin for some snacks and also saw a lot of Israeli military training bases and exercise grounds. Ryan was pretty pleased with himself for spotting the wall built along the Israel-Syria border.

We circled around the Sea of Galilee and found ourselves at Yardenit as the last visiting busload groups finished up their baptisms. I was curious to see what Ryan thought of it but he enjoyed it for what it was. One group was from the States and the other from Indonesia. Ryan stationed himself and Jake near the Indonesians because they brought their own musicians.

Asians love babies and young kids! This might be a theme of the week . . .

Ryan got a kick out of this jar of honey in the souvenir shop.

The restaurant we wanted to eat at in Tiberias didn't open until 7pm so we had to go with plan B. We headed up to Korazim to the Vered HaGalil restaurant that was recommended in our guidebook.

Jake was happy to be out of his carseat although he's been a fabulous traveller! Gotta love a baby who takes a pacifier or is just as happy sucking on his fingers and has newly discovered he can bat at a toy with those appendages!

Once we got back to our place and sorted through all our fun pictures, we got a kick out of a conversation reminiscing over where we were 20, 15, 10, and 5 years ago. Such a blast!

20 years ago . . .

Ryan - junior in high school (that's about all he disclosed)

Tracie - freshman in high school, crushes on boys, athletic trainer for basketball/wrestling/gymnastics

15 years ago . . .

Ryan - post-mission working/schooling in New Hampshire, six months from moving to BYU

Tracie - arriving in Israel with BYU Study Abroad!

10 years ago . . .

Ryan - decided to stay in DC post-internship and find job, apply for Masters programs

Tracie - living, working in DC, single and tired of it but a couple months shy of meeting Ryan

5 years ago . . .

Ryan - waiting for new job to begin at EDS, end of job hunt after a surprise lay-off when company was bought out

Tracie - working in DC and not balancing being a wife, mother of 2, and full-time working gal very well

And now, we're always pinching ourselves! Four kids, a job abroad Ryan is really enjoying, and lots of opportunities to travel. Don't worry, it's still real life - we have household plumbing and car issues to drain the bank.