A Trip Update

Over the break, I actually copied all of our travel posts over to a new blog, which I’ve nicknamed Motherhood on the Move. I wanted to consolidate them for our own family memories, and here on Motherhood and More they get all mixed up with posts about breastfeeding, birth stories, and bettering my motherhood.

We’re into our third month here on Cape Cod, by far the longest we’ve lived any place since April. We’ve become quite accustomed to thinking of “home” was where we hang our hats, but being here this long, we’ve managed to make this lovely house more like our real home—messes and all.

It’s been a strange couple of months here. Aesthetically, it’s amazing. Absolutely beautiful, especially with the fall colors in October and November. History abounds, and we spent almost every weekend those first two months exploring as much as we could. John Adams is an absolutely fascinating person to study. Concord, MA is probably the most historically jam-packed town I’ve ever been to, and gorgeous to boot. The village we’re staying in was incorporated in 1639. Our rental house is darn near perfect.

But we’ve been lonely. Especially the kids. Our neighborhood is near the water, so it’s mainly seasonal rentals that are empty all winter. The Baha’i community here is great, but lacking children. We’ve done a couple of things with some homeschooling families, but most here seem to have very young children—fine for BoyWonder, but not so much for the girls.

We’ve made the most of it, and have taken the down time to relax, work on creative projects, read, etc. As I told The Muse, we’ll eventually be back into a lifestyle with classes and busy-ness and schedules, and we’ll sometimes pine for this kind of free time. You have to find the positives in whatever situation you’re in and enjoy the benefits while you can, because it won’t last forever.

Thankfully, the holiday break brought friends from the Midwest to us, complete with kids. So the last couple of weeks have been filled with fun and play and visiting. We even had our first New England blizzard, which resulted in some awesome snowmen and snowforts.

And now my mom is visiting for a couple of weeks from California, so all is well. We’ll be going up to New Hampshire for a couple of days next week to play in the mountains. I’ve always wanted to go to New Hampshire. One more bucket list item to cross off.

And two weeks after that, we’ll be heading to Florida (Orlando) for a month, which we’ve decided will be the last official stop on our nomadic journey. Havarti’s sister’s family will be visiting from Australia in March, so we’ll be heading back to Chicagoland at the end of February to visit with them. And then the plan is to move in April, most likely to eastern Washington.

It’s weird to think we’ll be done with our big trip in a couple of months. I’m torn between feeling ready to settle someplace and wanting to keep exploring. But the rest of the family says they are ready to settle down (after Disney World, of course), and I think the kids will benefit more from having a community of friends and long-term classes and such than they would from more traveling at this point. My wanderlust will just have to take a backseat for a while.

In the meantime, the adventure continues! Here are some of my favorite photos from the past month. So much beauty to capture, so little time. 🙂

That’s right. Plymouth Rock.

This is the boathouse in Concord where Henry David Thoreau would borrow Ralph Waldo Emerson’s rowboat and take Louisa May Alcott out for nature excursions on the river. Transcendentalist haven, right here.

And just turn your head (literally), and there’s North Bridge, where the Revolutionary War began. We went back here for a second time with Havarti’s parents. I thought this photo looked cool in black and white.

Nobska Lighthouse in Woods Hole, at the southwest tip of the Cape.

We walked the 1.2 mile breakwater wall across Provincetown Harbor, to the very tip of the Cape.

The seagulls gather clams, hover high over the rocks, and drop the clams to open them. Pretty smart. And they almost always use the same rocks, so every 30 rocks or so there would be one covered with shells. Weird, but cool.

Now that I know they’re not stupid, like I always thought they were, they seem prettier somehow.

And our little BoyWonder turned five. FIVE!! Gah!

Like I said…so much beauty, so little time.

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