how to boil an egg? who do you ask?

Let's pretend for a second that we really are sitting together at your kitchen table (or mine, whichever) and we're drinking coffee together.  This is topic I really would bring up because I'm totally intense when it comes to conversations (thanks real life people who put up with this all the time:  B, mum, dad, kayla, tasha, gigi, pap, katie, stace). But just go with me here, no cleaned up, pinterest-friendly blog talk here, this is real life tab stuff, so brace yourself.

This past Easter, as in all Easters of my motherhood, without fail I forgot how to boil eggs.  So, as I was bustling around getting things in order to spend the morning corralling the kids and their wobbly hands, I reached for my phone to google 'how to boil an egg.'

I don't know what made me pause, it could have been that the upcoming Screen free week was on my mind (our third consecutive year participating) or that my grandma passed away seven years ago around Easter and I was missing her - but for whatever reason I paused before I opened my internet browser on my phone and thought,
if I didn't look this up right now,
if I didn't have the internet,
who would I ask?

my mum.

So, even though it wasn't as easy or as fast as typing the question in and getting an answer within a nanosecond of 'how to boil an egg' (step by step photos included!), I called my Mum instead and asked her.

I got my answer, let her know that her grandkids were coloring eggs that morning (she'd have seen the instagram in an hour otherwise) and I thanked her for the help.

It's not that I don't think my parents (or anyone else) have the answer, but it's just easier/faster to get it from the internet.  So when push comes to shove, in a world where easier/faster is preferred (sometimes necessary at the expected pace of performance!), I pick the internet as my first choice to find answers.

What does that feel like from their side (Mum?  Dad?  Gigi?  Pap? Mimi?) I'm guessing it feels like they're not needed.  At least not in that way: not in the dispensing of wisdom and experience way?  And that's awful and makes me feel awful.  Or maybe they don't think about it at all, it's just the way things are now?  I doubt it, because thinking about my own kids growing up and not calling to ask us how to boil an egg/change a tire/make pasta salad makes me feel sad.

Children are supposed to grow up and be able to function all by themselves, that's the point of parents after all.  But what does it say about our society's ideas on wisdom or experience, or even respect for elders when we get all of our answers and understanding about the world from the (mostly) anonymous internet?

It was one tiny moment - calling my mum about boiling eggs, but one that I have kept thinking about since then, six months later!  We are also reading The Winter of Our Disconnect by Susan Maushart in The Inspired Readers book club this month, and it has me reflecting on this thought even more.  Furthermore, I recently watched the amazing documentary Alive Inside (about Alzheimer's and nursing homes- it's on Netflix!) which has only further pushed me into reflection on this idea.

Surely my experience is not singular in the world, and so then what are the implications that technology and access to all answers at all times, has on family relationships?  On mothers and daughters?  on sons and fathers?  on grandkids and grandparents?  On how the young in our society views the elderly?

Do we value easier/faster over real life experience and earned wisdom?  I venture to say yes, but then what implications does that have on our society? on each of our families?  on our kids?

This post in no way has any answers or solutions, or even really a hypothesis.  And it's not to proclaim that I make the consistent effort to choose human answers over internet answers, cause I don't. like at all.

I've just been thinking about it and now I hope you'll be thinking about it and maybe just because it's in our brains now, we can maybe figure out how to strengthen our relationships with the people we love.


What if this week, instead of googling the answer to a question you have, I challenge you (and me) to ask a real life human.  Just see what happens, maybe nothing.  Maybe everything.

Exploring the world and scratching off as we go

This post is sponsored by Uncommon Goods.

It's wedding anniversary month over here and I've been feeling really nostalgic lately (more so than usual, hah) thinking about all the years and memories that Brandon and I have shared together.  It's our seventh wedding anniversary this year, but we've been together since December 1999 (shout out to the 90's!), so we're actually working on year sixteen as a pair.  That's a whole lot of life together.

I was recently contacted by Uncommon Goods to take a look at their Gifts for Men ideas(check them out here), and I was delighted to find their scratch off national and world maps.

I knew it would be a fun way to celebrate our anniversary and all the places we have visited together. You see, many, many years ago (were we still in high school?) Brandon and I created a "together bucket list" that included places all over the world we wanted to visit and also included "visit all 50 states."

Well, after sixteen years together: six of which were long distance, seven of which were married, three kids, two rented apartments together, two owned homes together, two dogs, a cat, and a handful of fish (hold the partridge in a pear tree please), we've been slowly (ever so slowly) working our way on exploring the world together.

We started with our national map and felt compelled to set rules for how we would go about scratching the states off because we're big time nerds and serious about intention.  I mean, it seems sort of like cheating to scratch off all of Texas when we've really only been to Austin.  But Brandon reasoned that if we were only going to scratch the states off by how many cities we've visited, could we even scratch off our home state of Pennsylvania?!  So our rules for scratching in USA were as followed:

• We had to have visited together (sorry Arizona, California, Louisiana, Connecticut, and Tennessee!  Not yet!)
• We had to have at least slept over one night for the visit to count (drive-bys and airport lay-overs don't count)
• Even if it was in only one city in the whole state, it counts as a state visit!  We want to get to all fifty after all :)

After laying out the ground scratch rules, we set to uncovering the states below the top scratch layer all the while chatting and reminiscing about the places that we've traveled together.  

Chicago, IL 2008

Oahu, HI 2009

We are both born and raised in PA which naturally lends to scratching a fair amount of the our northeast USA map.  (although we really need to get to the north-northeast:  Maine lobster? yes please).  Also, this is a public apology to Delaware! In that whole mix of visited states and it's the only one not scratched!  I promise, we will visit soon - any readers from Delaware with some suggestions of places to visit that is little-kid friendly!?

Punxsutawney, PA 2007

When we were all finished scratching and talking, we stood back and felt both parts proud and excited for the future.  Somehow seeing it all visually gets us feeling inspired in all the places yet we can plan to go and show each other and our kids.  Northwest, we need you in our lives big time.  It's slow going with three little kids and work and commitments, but our USA scratch map, a 'work in progress' (direct link here) makes us feel excited and inspired to keep branching out farther and discovering new places with each other.

We pressed on to the world map (direct link here), and we were still talking about each of the places we've traveled together.  It was the same rules as for the national map:

• We had to have visited together (sorry Canada, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua!  Not yet!)
• We had to have at least slept over one night for the visit to count (drive-bys and airport lay-overs don't count. Sorry, South Korea!)
• Even if it was in only one city in the whole country, it counts as a country visit! 

Since we also have the national map, we decided that for the integrity of the world map, USA would count even though we are still majorly working on visiting states.  It's also a good visual for our kids who are trying to figure out how we fit in the world as Americans.  So all of our USA was scratched off on our world map, but what I liked about the Uncommon Goods world scratch off map  was that the state lines were visible, and if you only choose the world map alone, you would still be able to track your USA state visits within the whole world map view!

The memories went on as we scratched off the different countries we've visited together.

Ayutthaya, Thailand 2011

Negril, Jamaica 2008

Our world map is hardly what someone would consider well-traveled, but we look at as inspiration for all the places we can explore together in the future.  Maybe with our babies as they grow older, or maybe in some distant far off time when our babies are grown and it's just the two of us again (can you imagine?!)

Documenting our travels together has been on our married to do list for the past seven years!  I am so glad that I took a look at the Uncommon Goods Gifts for Men page (check it out here yourself) to finally check this one off of our list, and just in time for our anniversary.  As we worked on our map, I kept thinking of so many of you readers that I know travel as much or more than us.  I'd love to see and be inspired by your maps!

Besides the scratch off maps, Uncommon Goods truly has unique and inspiring gifts that I've been writing down to remember for upcoming birthdays and the holiday season.  and they are not only a great place to look for gifts, but also they're a company that you can feel good about supporting.  A privately-owned retailer based out of Brooklyn, NY that feature hand-crafted products that are created with the environment, people, and animals in mind.  Most of their products are created here in the USA and about a third incorporate recycled or upcycled materials.  They are also a B Corp business meaning that they meet the rigorous standards meant to solve social and environmental issues including wage levels, giving back to the community, and environmental impacts.  You can check out their Gift Ideas for Men page here and their Gifts Ideas for Women page here and their Personalized Gifts page here.

As for us and our travels plans for the near future?  We are keeping it stateside in the next few years because of financial limitations and also #bigfamilylittlekidsprobs But we're thinking of doing another family road trip adventure soon and going Northeast (I wasn't kidding Maine Lobster) to spread our state wings a little more.  I also have a inexplicable jonesing for New York/Adirondack exploring.  We've also set a goal to visit DisneyWorld in the next two years (!) and Alaska in 2019 (!!!)

Here's to continuing to explore and discover with my favorite guy in the whole world.
Where you go I will follow.
Where you are, I am home.

Quemahoming Dam, our local 'beach'

The Quemahoming Dam is about a stones throw away from our house (technically about 8 minutes driving) and one of our absolute favorite little pieces of heaven.  We 'discovered' it last summer, but it wasn't until this summer that our real love affair with this place blossomed.

There are so many wonderful things about the Que that I can appreciate as a Mum to three little kids.  First, it's so close by and inexpensive to visit ($5 to park).  It's almost never super crowded and I can usually grab a picnic table with no trouble.  The water is clean and clear and the depth of water is so gradual that our little crawling Violet can happily splash about freely with no waves or drop off into the water.  The kids love it because 'the rule' is that they are allowed to walk in (with no floaties) up to their chests!  There's sand for building castles and a playground for when/if they get board of swimming and digging. The kids call it 'the beach' Did I mention it's a little piece of heaven yet?

We met our friends the Stifflers there and spend a whole day with six kids, none of whom whined in the least bit while they played and swam the sunny day away.  It was such a perfect day to spend chatting and giggling with Ang (my friends since elementary school!) while played happily for all of nearly four hours!!

When Caleb was spending a playday with us and Violet was cranky from cutting teeth, I packed the lot of them into the truck and we went to the Que to spend the afternoon because sometimes they just need space to run!  That little trip for a picnic lunch and wide open spaces (with water!) totally changed all of our moods around and burned some serious kid energy.

We had our last day of summer party there on the Sunday before the school year started.  We spend the afternoon playing, swimming, and picnicking with our friends and family as we squeezed the last juice out of the season of bathing suits and suntans.

We thought the Last Day of Summer picnic was our farewell to the Quemahoming, but then after a hot Labor Day working around the house outside at home, Brandon and I decided we could all use a little holiday joy and we headed out to the Que for some early evening sand digging and swimming. It was a little chilly (we still got in) and there were a few fallen leaves floating on the water (that made for fun pretend fish to catch), and the water was a little lower (they released some recently) but our Labor Day evening at the Que was a perfect farewell to our local 'beach.' 

In early September, my sisters requested that we all sign up for a 5K together and guess where it was being held, yep, at the Que!  So I got signed up and signed the two big kids up for the kiddie race and we met our Adams family there on the last Saturday of September to run in the Que Classic.  On the drive over, Gemma shouted at us from the backseat, "I thought we were going to the race!  Why are you driving to the beach!?" 

The kiddie race was first and our kids were overjoyed to see their cousins and a few of Grey's 'school friends' there.  Gemma was excited until it was time to line up and she got really nervous about all the kids running at the same time.  I asked Grey to stay beside her this race even if it meant he had to run slower than the other kids.  He agreed because I told him he could run his fastest in the 6-8 year old race next.  I'm pretty sure Gemma just cried and wailed the entire lap, but the girl finished despite being afraid!  Grey ran with the 6-8 year olds (technically he's almost five and a half) and the look on all their faces when they found out it was two laps around this time was so exasperated, poor little things.  But Grey pushed through it and came in SECOND PLACE!  I know, I was near tears of pride and surprise.

photo cred: Ken Fochtman

Grey headed out to a hockey clinic with Heather and Caleb (thank you again!!) and Brandon had the girls in the stroller while I ran the 5K with my parents and two sisters.  I was so happy to see my dear friend Stacy there (! finally.  I MISS YOU. #busymomsprobs) and our cousins the Garretsons and Albert (Caleb's Dad) too.  There were tons of racers which was awesome and the music and pep talks got everyone excited and warmed up since it was a pretty chilly morning, especially being so close to the dam. 

photo credit:  Ken Fochtman

Our family all stuck together through the duration of the race and my sisters and I had fun cheering for the 10k racers that were passing us on their way back in to their finish line.  It is so inspiring to see the different kinds of people that push themselves to do their own personal bests.  All kinds of runners, speed walkers,walkers, and stroller pushers from all different ages, sizes, personalities, and places in their life.  Something about a race really gets me in the guts.

We made it to the finish line as a family (holding hands because my sisters and I love being weirdos) and relished in the fact that we can all do this together as a family; all healthy and together.  #luckiest

photo cred:  Ken Fochtman

So, basically this entire post is a love letter to the Quemahoming Dam, our local 'beach.'
Until next season, Que.  We will be thinking about you fondly until warmer weather comes back to us.
xoxxo,
Team Studer
(especially the Mumma)