It’s that time of year when fall is 100% over, you know you’re not going to get a random warm day, the power’s been out at least once, and you’re due for a snow storm. I’m pretty sure this is usually the time of year when vacations seem especially wonderful and I get the planning bug while my husband rolls his eyes and gets out his suitcase. Last year this time I was planning for our trip to Scotland, which we took in May. I wrote about half of it here, and now that I’m getting antsy but can’t plan much more of our trip this summer, am going to cope by going through photos from the rest of our epic adventure.

If you want the quick summary this is it – we got SUPER cheap tickets to Edinburgh out of Newburgh, New York and had the chance to spend a week with my very good friend Tara who is living in England.  She has seven kids and is there for two years (which are now almost over).  I suggested we come visit her and she said “I want to go to Scotland” so we did.

After we left Loch Lommond and the Trossachs park we headed to Oban, a small town on the west coast of Scotland. The roads were a little bit reminiscent of Ithaca, but much narrower with more cars parked on them, and perhaps a little scarier since we were driving a rental on the wrong side of the road… with a standard transmission.  By we I mean my husband.

It was not really a driveable city, per se, and if you wanted to walk anywhere your quads would thank you for it the next day. I could have spent a week here but we only had a full day or so. We took a one car ferry across a very small sound to a tiny island call Kerrera.

It was breathtaking. We went on a 1.5 mile hike to the tip of the island where there were ruins of an old fort and signs telling a disturbing story I fortunately blocked from my memory.

We’d invested some serious time and energy into rain jackets because who needs rain jackets in New York? We had ridiculously wonderful weather the whole time. This was the only day we were cold and the only day we used our jackets – but not because of the rain.

We didn’t have much time in the actual town of Oban but did manage to enjoy some delicious food and my then 2 year old had some time to pretend he was a dog in the middle of the sidewalk.

My friend Tara whom we’d gone to visit had one request – that we see Loch Ness. It’s basically required on a trip to Scotland but to be honest, it did not disappoint.

The Scots have a sense of humor.

And how often can you say that you got to wade in Loch Ness? (which reminded me SO MUCH of the Fingerlakes and was equally freezing).

We went on a Loch Ness Cruise which wasn’t quite as exciting as it sounds. The more interesting part was actually the Loch Ness Experience where they went through the history of the monster and the extensive searching done to find it.  The conclusion was of course how there couldn’t possible be one. It was surprisingly educational.

After Loch Ness we headed north to Inverness in the Highlands.  It was not quite as awesome as everywhere else. There was a huge castle but you couldn’t go into it because it was a government building. There was a beautiful playground, park and river walk, but not a whole lot else. We never eat at McDonald’s but on that particular morning someone hadn’t eaten breakfast and I’d never been happier to see one in my life. I think there are a total of four in the entire country.

We then headed through the Cairngorms National Park on our way to St. Andrews and stopped at the three recommended things to do – the funicular railway, the reindeer and the beach.

The most educational thing here was the meaning of the word funicular – a train that is counterbalanced so it uses very little energy. In other words, there were two cars that passed each other and counterweighted each other.

The railway took you to the very top of the tallest mountain in the UK, which they said repeatedly, and which (I love you Scotland!) was every so slightly difficult to be impressed by. It was just not very high.

But it was above the cloud line. For environmental reasons you couldn’t leave the building but they did have a place for picture taking. They also had a cafeteria which we expected to be awesome but wasn’t. Tara said it was very English and I was thankful for all the international options we seemed to have elsewhere. I would seriously go back there just to eat. She joked she’d never seen so much quinoa in her life. Also “rocket” (arugula).

The reindeer received top marks on Tripadvisor. Our kids weren’t super impressed. Maybe they’re just not reindeer oriented… this photo is basically the same as the actual experience.  You’re welcome.

Afterward we headed to a nearby beach for some sun and ice cream.

Then we headed to St. Andrews on the east coast.

We stayed at a person’s house who still lived there (but rented it out through Airbnb) in a VERY small village which was a bit of a cultural experience. We went in to a tavern where they refused to serve us. We couldn’t quite wrap our mind around it but Tara said their perspective on customer service is not the same and they probably just didn’t want to deal with serving 8 people.  Interesting.

The next day we headed to St. Andrews, which was one of our favorite stops.

The castle there was our favorite of the trip – it was huge and a blast to explore.  There was even a tunnel underneath that you could climb into.

And of course, it was right on the beach. We had to say good bye to our friends here and it was sad. The trip really did fly by and I would go back in half a second.

An American girl who was living in the village while her mom cared for her dying grandfather said we HAD to go to an ice cream place in St. Andrews.  Daniel was adventurous and got chocolate.

On our way back to Edinburgh we stopped at one more castle.

The Edinburgh airport actually had a grocery store where you could buy things like fresh blueberries. America you have so much to learn!

And that was it. Europe I miss you! Especially on this snowy winter day. On the list now… Lego House in Denmark, Iceland, and France… also Italy. Now when I name a country my husband just laughs. And packs his bag.

A huge shout out to Airbnb and Norwegian Air for making this trip cheaper than going to Devner! Norwegian’s flights out of Newburgh, NY are ridiculously inexpensive, IF you’re willing to travel light and skip the extras, which we definitely were for the chance to go.

I might have actually picked a warmer spot, but my very dear friend Tara is living abroad with her seven kids for two years and suggested we meet up in Scotland.  We love traveling, but love it even more with friends, so it felt like one of those once in a lifetime opportunities.

We brought half the clothes we needed and stayed in places with washing machines. We brought some screens and a few legos and that was basically it. Each person had a backpack and if it didn’t fit it didn’t go. It turned out to save us in baggage fees and also car rental fees when our car ended up being some kind of micro-mini van with no space for luggage.

A friend of a friend had suggested a circular route around Scotland which involved staying in 5 different places over 10 nights and visiting 10 different towns and cities.  It was one of those need a vacation from your vacation kind of vacations, plus five hours of jetlag. Slowly, very slowly our mojo is coming back.

The first two nights we stayed in Edinburgh, which is best known for its gigantic beautifully maintained castle, scary driving and amazing transit system. Roads are smaller in Scotland. For example, what we would call a one lane road here is a two lane road there that people can park on – on both sides. The first day we parked in a garage and it was a huge mistake. Then we realized that the buses run everywhere, all the time and they have an app that makes it fool proof. It was perfect for jet lagged Americans.  Especially ones that manage to somehow lose their car.

Our trip to Edinburgh Castle was followed by a trip to the National Museum of Scotland.

And even though it was a little bit of a touristy thing, we did stop by Camera Obscura on the Royal Mile which is like the Ripley’s Believe It or Not of optical illusions. We needed a place where our kids could run around and not be shushed. Interestingly, it was started in Edinburgh by a Scottish woman in the 1850s.

We didn’t expect the food in Scotland to be amazing… apparently we forgot it was in Europe. Even though the UK isn’t known for its culinary sensibilities, the global culture still meant the selection of restaurants was astounding. Even in the smallest of places where we’d have vending machines they’d have wood fired pizza. Which is all to say that we ended up eating out A LOT more than we thought we would, and it was fabulous.

(Their bagels weren’t amazing. And apparently Mexican food hasn’t really made its way over to Scotland either).

Next we went to Falkirk, which is known for its wheel. When canals went out of vogue some were filled in and houses were built on top. Later as a rejuvination project, they wanted to reinstate the canals but couldn’t go through the previous route. So they built a wheel which is like an elevator for boats.  It uses counterbalancing to be extremely energy efficient. It connects the two canal sections and will lift or lower boats 79 feet.

Falkirk is also known for its HUGE Kelpie Heads.

They weren’t as interesting as we thought they might be for the kids, who were a little done with sight seeing for the day. There was an amazing playground a “wee bit” down the road… if you’re Scottish. If you’re American it was about a mile away. I’m not totally sure we ever adjusted to walking distances.

One of our very favorite spots was the Wallace Monument. They were really good about a balanced history of who he really was and what he did and didn’t accomplish. The actors in costume were also a great touch.

We also stopped by Doune Castle where Monty Python and the Holy Grail was filmed.

After that we went through Loch Lommond and the Trossachs National Park on our way to the Western coastal town of Oban. We went on a difficult but breath taking 3 mile hike that involved a lot of carrying and just about made me pass out, but then we had ice cream so it was okay.

Some of us felt inspired to do hiking of the more hard core variety.

Phew! And that was half of the trip… installment 2 to come!

My initial plan was to take my kids to popular photo locations and blog about it, but my plans got a little derailed by real life.  My husband was offered some (high pressure) work over the summer, plus camps, traveling, and working on the garden have meant less hiking.  But summer isn’t over yet!

In the mean time, we’ll call this the canal because the canal is a super amazing place to be photographed and a little more underutilized than you would think.  You can check out some official sessions on the canal by clicking here and here.

Nathan loves ducks and birds.  There would be more photos but he recently jumped in a lake and had to be rescued so we keep him on a short invisible leash.

Periodically someone from our homeschool group organizes a Sam Patch boat tour and they fill in about five minutes.  But this one was back to back with another so there was a little more elbow room.  I just realized writing this that we got an amazing discount by going with a school group – our tickets were less than $5 a piece so if you have a child in school, it may be worth organizing that way to save a few dollars.  The Sam Patch regular ticket rates are here.

This boat is a replica of an 1800s packet boat which would be used to travel the canal and was named after a man known for stunt jumping.  He was originally from Rhode Island but headed our way to jump off of Niagara Falls, which he did successfully.  One month later he jumped High Falls in Rochester, but because the crowd was small he repeated the stunt again a week later.  Unfortunately this time he didn’t achieve feet first entry and died on impact.  Why the boat is named after him I’m not sure… maybe he was a Rochester icon at the time?  Anyone out there know?

The tour starts at Shoen Place with you trying to keep your children out of the water until they let you on the boat.  Next they give you many announcements, including one about the contraband nature of water bottles which grieves your zero waste soul and which your six year old proceeds to remind you of for the next hour.  Then a kind and knowledgeable tour guide talks about the history of the canal, which you may or may not be able to listen to if your toddler is trying to climb out the window.

You then travel through Lock 32, which your kids will think is the most amazing thing they’ve ever experienced.  You won’t take photos because you’re trying to keep your toddler alive, but you will be impressed with the giant cement walls of the lock and the water which is your elevator.  The staff is very friendly and happy to answer any of your questions, but you may not be able to listen to the answer if said toddler is raiding the bottled water available for purchase.

Then you’ll go to write about your experience and realize you have almost no photos. Oops. I guess you’ll have to do it again some time.

Where do non-photography related posts fit in?  Right here.  Because, well, life.

Over the past two months, too much death has happened.   Our son died.  An incredible woman from the 2015 cast of Listen to Your Mother lost her son when he was hit by a car walking to school.  A wonderful woman named Ellen who I had the pleasure of working with twice was killed in a 5 car accident driving to Buffalo.  These life events make us feel vulnerable and helpless, so when we’re around grieving people, we try to avoid them or the topic of grief.  But that isn’t helpful to a grieving person and here’s why.

Grief needs space to be.

My close friends who have walked this road with me have all said at one point or another that they were afraid to bring up Christian’s death, or the miscarriage I had the week after Christian’s death, because they didn’t want to make me sad.  This is such a sweet sentiment but is not really what I needed.  You’re always carrying this experience around with you, you’re just not acknowledging it all the time – sometimes to make other people comfortable, sometimes to take a break. But it’s always there.

Grief is a major life event, not unlike moving or having a baby or graduating from high school or getting married, and that’s how we should treat it.  Would you ever walk up to a new mom and pretend the baby wasn’t there?  Would you not want to bring it up because you didn’t want her to think about the baby?  Or would you not ask about moving, graduating, getting married or starting a new job because you didn’t want the person to think about it?

I totally understand that we’re trained to think this way, but I think it’s time to unlearn that way of thinking.

So if you’re not sure how to act, pretend like grief is a new baby.

What kind of questions do you ask a mom who just had a baby?

How was your birth?  How are you feeling? How is the baby sleeping?  Is it a boy or a girl?  How is her temperament?  He’s so beautiful.  Can I hold him?  Can I bring you a meal or come keep you company?  What’s been the hardest thing?  What’s been the best thing?

You’re giving the mom space to celebrate her baby, and space to process this change in her life.  In the same way, death is a major life event that deserves just as much space, or maybe even more.

So if you’re wondering what to say, just put it through the new baby filter.

Here are some ideas:

How has your week been?  How are you sleeping?  Tell me about your loved one – what’s a memory that is getting you through?  What was it like to receive the news that he died?  How was the memorial service?  What’s been the hardest thing?  What’s kept you going?

And here’s the best part: all you have to do is listen and reflect back.  If they share an emotion, don’t try to change it.  Don’t offer advice or a quote or a book title.  Just let them have the space to feel what they’re feeling without asking them to read or care for your emotions.  Things like, “I’m so sorry,” or “I can see how you’d feel that way” or “that is so hard” are more than enough.

People say there aren’t words but there are – they’re just very simple.  It’s when people try to get creative that things go downhill.

But what if I make them sad?

If someone asks me about Christian and I start crying, they are good tears. They are because I loved him deeply and I grieve what happened and I am so very touched that anyone would take the time to give me space to hold his memory. If I cry it’s not because I was just happy and am suddenly sad – it’s because I was acting socially appropriate and you just gave me space to be real. If I don’t cry it’s because my grief wasn’t close enough to the surface to erupt at that moment, but it was still there and I am grateful that you thought of me.

But what if they change the subject?

New moms do this too. Maybe the person has already processed all they want to that day, or they’ve told the story 100 times and they’re done processing that particular thing. Maybe they need a break from thinking about it – that’s up to them. The space to process is always a gift even if the person doesn’t take it right then.

Culturally we tend to treat death as something that happens once and the person heals and moves on, but in this way, death is also like a new baby. When someone dies, the immediate shock of it is like giving birth. There are consuming days and sleepless nights. You have to get up and care for your grief and you can’t do anything else – like caring for a newborn.

As the grief grows older, aspects of it become easier to manage, but it’s always there. That person is changed forever, just like each baby changes you. As the grief grows into a toddler or a school aged child the management of it changes, but it’s always there, and that’s okay.  It’s normal and healthy and good, and whether we accept it or not, it is an inevitable part of life.  The grieving person still needs to talk about it – months, years and decades into the future.

But what if they make me uncomfortable?

This is probably the real issue and I’ll just say this – it’s okay to be uncomfortable.  It’s especially okay to be uncomfortable for someone you care about. This is their time to be in labor – to be inwardly focused.  You can hold your discomfort until you are in a different place at a different time with a different person and process with them. But in this place, in this moment with your grieving friend, hold that discomfort close to your chest.  Your friend needs a place to care for their grief until it gets a little older.

Let’s change the culture.

Death happens to everyone at some point. Just as birth and moving and college and life changes are acknowledged and celebrated, death needs a space to be held and witnessed.  It only takes a moment, and it can be the thing that brings a gasping person to the surface for a breath of air.

I became a parent with a phone call and a trek into a sketchy area of the city to pick up two children I’d never met. The day care was the scary kind – with no furniture and things covered in plastic. A beautiful little boy caught my eye and then he ran over to his mother.

One boy had a distended belly, with chia pet style hair and an adult face on a little body. He was running nowhere in particular and I thought, “Any child but him.” The day care provider turned to me and said, “This is Makaio.”* I asked her how to spell it and she said she didn’t know.

Then she went and got Christian, who looked obese but was actually malnourished, laying lethargically in an expired car seat. She strapped it into my car like it was a piece of furniture and was rattled when I told her they wouldn’t be back.

At home, I panicked. I didn’t know what kids ate or wore or what kind of schedule they had or what they did all day. I didn’t have any toys or books or baby proofing anything. When the hospital lets you go home with your baby it may be scary but it’s reasonable. This wasn’t. At least the scary daycare knew how to keep them alive.

Matthew had hearing loss, knew no language, couldn’t walk correctly, had chronic ear infections, enlarged tonsils and enlarged organs. He screamed whenever he didn’t get his way, which was most of the time since I usually didn’t know what he wanted. He wouldn’t eat anything except peanut butter sandwiches and egg noodles and we still have marks on our table where he would bang his spoon.

Christian was quiet. He’d been left in a crib most of his life and had forgotten how to cry, but after regular feedings perked up and remembered.

They were both happy, except when they weren’t, and then it was loud.

There were trips downtown to visit his birth mom, who hated me because I was parenting her children until we learned to be civil like we’d had a peaceful divorce.  I really liked her, minus our exceptionally awkward relationship.  Christian cried when I left him and that made her angry and jealous, but Matthew knew her and ran to her every time, especially when she had McDonald’s.

There were hundreds of appointments and tests and finally a death sentence. Sanfilippo is a one letter error in the genetic code that kills slowly by allowing waste to accumulate in cells, especially in the brain, rendering both the cells and the person non-functional.  It is terminal and untreatable.

I pulled the doctor aside and told her I was going to fight for them and get them the best care possible to keep the disease away until there was a cure.

Her eyes said Sanfilippo will destroy you.

I attacked the disease with a vengeance. I fired therapists when they were negative or not a good fit and my life was filled with appointments that were going to keep them healthy. Matthew attended preschool at one place I fired because they told me he couldn’t be potty trained, then another place that assigned me a social worker instead of giving me his teacher’s email address, then finally a school I was happy with. Christian was able to stay home because he could function there, and all his therapy was home based because I wanted to spend every second I could with him and in my mind, only I had the passion to keep things on track.

We lived what we thought was a normal life chasing them in Toronto and Texas and at SeaBreeze and Strong Museum. We didn’t know typical kids don’t need bed tents when traveling and we suspected they didn’t smear feces on walls, but we weren’t completely sure.

Christian picked up hundreds of words and sang Jesus Loves Me and God Answers Prayer. At the Toronto Zoo the peacock was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen in his life. He loved people, books, water, music, wagon rides and life.  While Matthew was at school, he and Melody spent the day playing together like there was no tomorrow, which was good, because there wasn’t.

The therapists came and told us how wonderfully he was doing, and I beamed with pride.  I believed them until I didn’t anymore.

During one of Christian’s sessions, Melody climbed up to the table and effortlessly assembled a matching game that the OT had been working on with Christian for the past three months. At the age of 18 months she’d outpaced her 3 1/2 year old brother. That was the day I knew I’d lost.

The year Caleb was born Christian could run but couldn’t stay. The playgrounds that had been my safe havens were no longer a place for me and our two year old daughter and newborn son were nails in my coffin of balance. His language disappeared, his smiles faded, his swallowing slowed, and his sense of time was absent.

That year was the year that I had to decide between my children. I could attend to my neurologically compromised children full time, or my healthy ones, but I couldn’t do both.

The thought of putting him on a school bus had been traumatic for me until the summer when I thought I might drive off into the sunset alone. When the yellow bus arrived I was nothing but grateful. I dreaded his response but he ran into the bus like he’d been doing it his whole life. When he came home, he didn’t seem to realize he’d been gone.

And so it went.

Neuron by neuron his brain left him. First it was language, then time, then motor planning, then identifying people. I remember watching him sit on a bed and look at something longingly but he couldn’t figure out how to get around the railing. Then he couldn’t figure out how to stand up. Then he didn’t remember how to walk all together.

His eyes became blank and he’d smile at faces, but he didn’t recognize me. My baby who once said “I love you mama” had dissolved.

I stopped taking pictures. Before KonMari encouraged people to keep only things that brought them joy, I refused to future proof the things that made me sad. These were the days I didn’t want to remember and I largely don’t.

As the years passed we delegated more and more care. It started with home health aids who came and did morning care, then evening care, then we added nursing, then more nursing, then even more nursing.

For six years our house was a revolving door of medical professionals.

Some worked last minute overnights, stayed late with little notice, or ran unpaid errands. Our pediatrician gave us her cell phone number and made at least five hundred house calls. One year we were on the phone for half an hour on Christmas. One nurse became a close personal friend. Some would come in for overnight shifts at the last minute, or pick up multiple 16 hour shifts in a row. Some would figure out complicated scheduling issues for me, or listen on a bad day.

Others judged, no showed and sent me irreverent texts that left me curled in a fetal position.

Our first home health aid, Emily, was about my age. She encouraged me to get on Facebook before it was a thing, and we spent each morning talking like we were college friends. One day she no called no showed and I never saw her again. Another aid was energetic and dedicated, but became so comfortable she’d welcome Jason home and interrupt my phone conversations to ask what I was talking about. Another gave my children religious materials from a cult and washed our dishes every morning.

When we switched to nursing things improved. We had an easier time with retention. Still one nurse called off to an overnight shift because her hands were swollen from cutting yams. Another quit on New Year’s Eve after cataloging for me the reasons I was a horrible mother. Another accosted me because when she arrived at work Christian was sick and she couldn’t imagine why I would expect her to work if he was sick. We frequently ran out of medications and supplies because Medicaid doesn’t allow automatic reordering and he had upwards of 20 different things to keep track of.  Few nurses would speak up if something was running low.

Caring for him this way was a different kind of mothering and I hated it. I hated ordering supplies and ordering them again when they didn’t come. I hated dealing with last minute staffing snafoos or call offs or firing people who didn’t show up. I hated dealing with service professionals who came and asked for invasive personal information that had nothing to do with anything, but was on their form. I hated dealing with Medicaid which seemed to be comprised of people who hated life and wanted me to hate it too. I hated nurses judging me for not connecting with them emotionally – not understanding that there had been so many that sometimes I didn’t even know their names.

I expected the weight of it to lift when he left us but instead I was catapulted back to the beginning – when I first heard that my baby was going to die, and my heart is shattered by the weight of it.

The feelings come in fits and starts. People tell me I’m doing well but they don’t see me when I’m not. They tell me we gave them a good life and that we were awesome people for this act of charity they think we did.

But that’s not our story.

They were our children. The adoption was a formality. Calling it charity almost devalues the relationship, making it somehow an act of service instead of an act of responsibility.

But God knows.  He knows how I failed. He knows that it wasn’t a noble thing or an honorable thing that we did, but that we just put one foot down at a time, often like a toddler who just received water in the wrong color cup.

They weren’t lucky to have us. We told the foster care people we wouldn’t take special needs kids. There were others who would have made better or more passionate choices and could have soaked it all in with gratitude. For us, it felt like a mistake. We wanted the disease free version – we demanded the happy ending.

So today, on a beautiful sunny day as I’m watching my 3 year old running through a sprinkler and my toddler who I’d like to wean crawls up in my lap to nurse and I look out at the pond in my back yard and see my kids in our paddle boat, I feel joy that my 12 year old isn’t laying in bed on oxygen and morphine.

Then I start sobbing because he could have been normal and healthy and running in the sprinkler too but he isn’t.

Then my five year old walks up to me and says, “We got Christian because he was sick and the doctors couldn’t make him better so we adopted him and took care of him until he died. That’s a way of helping others and also a way of worshiping God.” And walks away.

And I’m so humbled by his understanding that for a moment I’m at peace, until I open Christian’s closet and see his clothes and start sobbing again.

• When we adopted him, we changed his name to Matthew.  By then he didn’t know his name, and it gave him anonymity during hospitalizations and such.

We usually reserve our traveling for the summer when I drag my husband to beaches (even if it’s just Lake Ontario) but this trip was his idea.  A very close friend of his lives near DC and just had a baby, so after some planning, cooking, planning, cooking, planning and packing, we had a rather uneventful drive down and landed in Virginia.

The following morning the baby decided to spice things up by vomiting, because nothing speaks life into a vacation like some regurgitated cheese.  Especially a few hours before another friend who now works for the government, has graciously offered to set up a private tour of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and a quick jaunt onto the White House lawn.  For which you needed Secret Service clearance.  So what does a responsible parent do?  Probably not this.

I have vivid memories of my dad, a lifelong lover of all things historical, bringing me to DC (and many other historical locations) in a desperate attempt to evoke a love of history in his offspring. It didn’t take, until maybe five years ago when I started caring a little. So as we’re standing on the White House lawn and I’m wanting to act like some idiot on the Price is Right, my kids were walking in front of the WHITE HOUSE completely non-plussed. Sigh.

I’ve sort of come to grips with the fact that these things are really for us more than them, and whatever they get out of it has to be okay with me or I’ll get an ulcer.

So I took terrible poorly lit snapshots of my kids in front of awesome things they didn’t care about.

Like the White House. From the inside of the compound. Where you could see hundreds of people crowded on the other side of the fence. And there were secret service officers like ants on a picnic with their fingers on the triggers of assault riffles. Which, by the way, made the security around the Hope Diamond seem wilted.

Many historical places in the US, while not terribly historical by European standards, are still old enough to be intriguing. They’re often run down though. What struck me about the EEOB was that it was in such good shape it seemed like it had just been built.

Since I’m a portrait photographer I can’t really make mental peace with taking pictures of things very much… food and garden porn excepted.  If you’re going to take a picture of a landmark by itself you might as well just buy a postcard. So there had to be a human subject, and my kids were low hanging fruit. You can see that they took their role very seriously.

But I did take these person-less pictures of the Indian Treaty Room, where no Indian Treaty has ever been signed.

We also went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History (one of our favorites).

My three year old was allergic to walking and my toddler allergic to sitting.  It was fun times.

We also went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Dulles, which is an overflow location for the one downtown. The parking was fantastic and they had the shuttle Discovery as well as a plane the kids could pretend to fly, some flight simulators, and to Jason’s delight, a McDonald’s.

Personally I got a little excited about the shuttle. If you missed it, I also wrote some tips on better vacation photos using images of the shuttle, which you can see here.

The museum was built to look like a hangar and had planes hanging in various orientations.  There were cat walks to get you close enough to the planes to want to touch them, with strategically placed plastic panels to keep you from actually doing it.  The plaques were written in Greek.  Or maybe I was just trying to read them while keeping my toddler from running under the railing.

We swung by to visit a third long time friend who’s a Brother in the Catholic church on our way out of town.  The drive home was not quite as seamless and required a one hour pit stop at a McDonald’s PlayPlace.  I discovered an amazing app called PlayPlaces which helps you find them while traveling, and is pretty much more important than crackers when traveling with a toddler.

And when we got back, I told my husband that the baby was allowed to break, spill or eat anything he wanted to for three days.  It was good to be home.

It’s been a rough fall
The order was tall
To complete all the tasks we acquired

Jason’s overload meant
That much more time was spent
At the college than we were accustomed

Research at the lab
And two students he had
Meant free time was further encumbered

At the end of month nine
Number seven did find
Himself welcomed with anticipation

But labor, well named,
When it finally came
Left mom mostly out of commission

Baby Nathan was good
And behaved as he should
Delighting all those he encountered

But sleeping positions
Could not be transitioned
So mom had a brand new attachment

Because mom was stressed
Number six thought it best
To be potty trained right then and there

He asked for the potty
At first he was spotty
But then he was skilled and accomplished

Number two had a stye
On top of his eye
And surgery was recommended

Then from his ear
Ran fluids unclear
And best friends we made with the doctor

We expect by age nine
A child should find
That with great ease and skill they can read

Number 3 cannot
So we found ourselves fraught
With many assessments and meetings

Meanwhile number four
With great ease can explore
Every facet of reading with ease

Homeschoolers we are
Committed in part
Because we can make adaptations

But the progress is slow
And all parents know
That it’s easy to feel unaccomplished

Debra was happy
When portraits aplenty
Were scheduled with clients she loves

As their sessions were booked
And their orders she took
She attained a doctorate in skilled multi-tasking

Our son at age four
Cannot pronounce floor
Speech therapy we have requested

Our schedule so empty
And free time a plenty
Means speech is a welcome addition

But we made it through
A staycation is due
For such a substantial achievement

Some may rejoice
With their party of choice
But a date with my pillow I’ve scheduled

As the year slips away
With conviction I’ll say
That sleep is a great celebration

My mom has always hated her hair because she thinks it’s thin and doesn’t do much.  As I was growing up she always dyed and permed it.  She did the same thing to my hair to the amusement of my classmates.  It was the 90s.  Anyway, she’s always hated her hair and then it fell out.  Three times.

Now her feelings toward her hair are a bit different.  She loves her hair and grieves when it betrays her by falling out.

We have this amazing hair stylist named Joey Antinore at Studio A and my mom loves her hair more than she ever has before.  So when she got diagnosed this time, the first thing she said (through tears) was, “I need pictures before my hair falls out.”  So here is a photo essay of my mom’s awesome hair (by Joey) and the grand kids she’s losing it for.

One of the kids’ favorite things is Mia’s pancakes on Saturday mornings.  Here they were having a pretend pancake breakfast.

We also took photos of each child individually.  Our son Christian isn’t included for complicated emotional reasons essentially boiling down to wanting to remember him before he lost his cognition around the age of 4, rather than in his current drooling non-cognizant state.

A few years ago someone called me wanting to buy portraits for a family who had a dad with a terminal cancer diagnosis.  They declined.  As Paul Kalanithi so eloquently put it, “The most obvious might be an impulse to frantic activity: to ‘live life to its fullest,’ to travel, to dine, to achieve a host of neglected ambitions. Part of the cruelty of cancer, though, is not only that it limits your time, it also limits your energy, vastly reducing the amount you can squeeze into a day. It is a tired hare who now races. ”

My mom doesn’t have metastatic lung cancer like Kalanithi, or my step father who passed away 3 years ago, so she’s had both the times of exhaustion and the times of seizing the day.  When she is cancer free she travels and dines and lives life to its fullest hoping the cancer doesn’t come back until it does.  Then she withdrawals a bit from life and focuses on her health and tries to remember what it is that she’s living for.

Hopefully these images will help.

I bought a Go Pro recently, and spent our trip playing with it.  Here’s my first ever video montage: