Our Year in Ornaments: 2015

It’s that time again! That time between Thanksgiving and Christmas (or between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, sometimes), when I write about the annual Ornie Competition in which we participate. For those new to the blog: Years ago, Jeff’s stepfather began a tradition with his family. Each person picked or made an ornament to represent his or her year. On Thanksgiving Day, all the ornaments were presented, and a winner was chosen. The tradition has continued for decades, since Jeff’s stepsiblings were children. We began participating in 2006, the year we married. This year was no different: Jeff, Alexa, and I each picked an ornament to represent our years, and we presented them to the family via video chat on Thanksgiving Day.

So what were the themes of our years? And what ornaments best represented those themes?

Alexa's 2015 Ornament: The Glove Balloon

Alexa’s social development took off this year. She’s always been shy and anxious, with no apparent desire to spend time with other children. Even when she did want to play with other kids, she wanted more to stay safely by my side. That’s how she was at the beginning of this year: she stayed with me rather than going off to play with other kids, even other kids with whom she’d interacted regularly for almost two years, even other kids that she called her friends.

Then out of nowhere, she changed. Suddenly she could not get enough playing with other kids. She didn’t need me to be there with her anymore. She happily stayed in Sunday school classes with complete strangers while we were in the States over the summer. She barely said goodbye to us before she was off and engaged in whatever activity was ongoing. She cried, not when we left her, but when we returned to take her with us. The one thing she wanted from our new home in Greece: the opportunity to play with other kids. No parents required or wanted, just kids.

And through it all, her obsession with all things Disney remained.

Of course the perfect ornament for her was from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse—how could her perfect ornament not be Disney? This year’s version was the glove balloon, floating off with a basket full of friends. It represents Alexa’s newfound desire to go off with friends, her interest in adventures, her need for similarly aged friends. It represents that our little girl is ready to fly off with her friends and leave us behind, at least as much as a 5-year-old can be.

Jeff's 2015 Ornament: The TARDIS

Jeff’s ornament also is from a TV series, though not one owned by Disney. Over the past few years, he and I have become a bit obsessed with the BBC show Dr. Who. Although it’s growing in popularity in the States, many Americans aren’t familiar with it yet, so here’s the basic rundown: The Doctor is a Time Lord, a master of time and space. He travels wherever—and whenever—he wants to go in his TARDIS, which appears in the form of a blue police box. (It’s actually bigger on the inside, though.) The Doctor is the last of the Time Lords, but it’s very bad for him to be alone. Because of his abilities and his intellect, he tends to divorce himself from normal emotional experiences, which can result in rather psychopathic tendencies. In order to keep himself grounded, to remind himself of what real life is all about, he tends to travel with a companion, a human woman whose innocent delight and adventurous spirit reminds him to take joy in life, to be more human himself than he otherwise would be.

Jeff does not travel through time, and his travels through space are much more limited than The Doctor’s. However, like The Doctor, he travels from place to place doing work that is important enough that it sometimes threatens to consume him. He said that his ornament this year is in recognition that, like The Doctor, he needs companions to remind him of why he does what he does and to inspire him to enjoy his life rather than allow his work to consume him. He has found his companions in Lexa and me.

His ornament this year is a replica of the TARDIS.

Deborah's 2015 Ornament: Inside Out

 For my own ornament, I’ll tell the story much like I planned to tell it during the competition. (It didn’t come out exactly like this, because things never do when speaking without notes!)

I am a member of three online communities. One is a diverse homeschool community, where most members are homeschoolers, and most members live in their home countries—for most of them, it’s the United States. The other two communities are expat groups—one mostly Christian missionaries, the other Foreign Service personnel and their families. I first heard about the Disney movie Inside Out from these three online groups.

At first, I heard only wonderful things about the movie. Members of both expat groups raved about how amazing the movie was. It captures the experience of moving, it provides a vocabulary for discussing the emotional realities of expat life with our kids, it explores the purpose of those troubling emotions like sadness. It’s a must-see movie, a deeply emotional experience that had moms crying in the theater and kids making connections between their experiences and their emotions like never before. And in addition to all that relevance, it’s a fun movie too!

Then someone on the homeschool group mentioned the movie. The reaction was almost completely uniform: Disney missed the mark on this one. This movie is boring. They tried to make it relevant instead of fun, and made it neither. Don’t even waste your time on this movie.

Of course I was eager to see the movie myself, to see which camp I would fall in. I finally had the opportunity this summer, while we were on our Disney cruise. And I was blown away. I am not ashamed to admit that I sat in the Walt Disney Theatre, aboard the Disney Dream, with tears running down my face as I watched a young girl go through the emotional upheaval of a cross-country move. The analogies weren’t perfect, but I recognized my experiences in this movie—and just as importantly, I felt like my experiences were recognized by the movie.

I’m not certain if I would have loved this movie as much as I do if it had been released last year, or next year. All of the emotions associated with a move are close to the surface for me right now; they have been all year. The sadness of saying goodbye. The optimism that the next place will be good, too. The difficulty of holding on to that optimism when faced with difficulty after difficulty, both expected and unexpected. The desire to give up and run back to where you were … and the recognition that where you were doesn’t really exist anymore, at least not in the way it did when you were there. And eventually, the contentment that comes when you’ve made the new place your home. (I’m not there yet, but I’ve done this enough to know I’ll get there.)

Inside Out is definitely the theme of my year. But more than that, it’s the theme of my last 7 years. It’s the theme of my life as a global nomad.

Previous Posts About The Ornie Competition:

A Family Tradition  (2008)

Our Year In Ornaments (2011)

Our Lives in Ornaments: 2012 Edition

Ornie Competition: Extended Family 2013

Our Lives in Ornaments: 2013 Edition

Our Lives in Ornaments: 2014 Edition

 

Settling In

We’ve been in Greece now for around 3 weeks, and I think we’re settling in nicely. Jeff has been busy at work. He’s grateful that he has some overlap with the person he's replacing so that he can get up to speed without quite so much pressure.

Alexa and I are doing well. I like our housing, though it has its challenges as always. We estimate that it’s about the same size as our house in Kosovo, but it has a larger number of smaller rooms, and some of the design features make it not quite ideal. For example, there’s no good place in the living room for the TV because of the placement of doors, windows, and a fireplace, so we think we’re going to need to angle it into a corner that will still be a little tight. We’re also lacking wall space that would be suitable for hanging our art pieces, due to windows, doors, tall furniture, and a “special finish” that we aren’t allowed to disturb on the wall above the fireplace. It’s an interesting challenge to say the least, but we’ll figure it out. I’m planning to do a blog post about the house hopefully before too long, but unlike at previous posts, I want to wait until our things are here and set up so that the pictures will show the house as we’ll be living in it rather than as it is before we make it ours.

Our two furry family members have rejoined us. One week ago, Jeff flew back up to Prishtina, where Cleo and Isis had spent the summer with friends and our car had spent the summer in a friend’s driveway. Jeff left Athens on Friday night, overnighted in Istanbul, arrived in Prishtina Saturday morning, and was on the road with the car, the cats, and their stuff by noon. He arrived here around 9 o’clock that night. The cats seem to have adjusted pretty well to being back with us, and we’re happy to have our little family all together again.

Alexa and I each have found a friend. Our next door neighbor grew up in the same state as me, and she has a 4-year-old daughter. The mom has been an invaluable resource for me, taking me to a huge laikey (farmer’s market) and to the supermarket, in addition just to being a fun person to be around. Alexa bonded with the daughter the first time they met—even though Alexa called her simply “the little girl” for the first couple of days until her name stuck—and they enjoy playing together as often as they get the chance. Best of all: they’ve only been here for a couple of months longer than us, so unless something unexpected happens, they’ll be here until just a couple of months before we leave.

I’m slowly figuring out how to cook in Greece. The laikeys are wonderful, with fresh fruits and vegetables. It looks like I’ll finally learn what’s in season when, as options appear and disappear over the year. My neighbor took me to an awesome butcher shop where I was able to stock up on all the beef, chicken, and pork we’ll need for perhaps the next month (we have a good freezer). I still need to explore the supermarkets a bit more—I’ve only been to two, and in neither case did I really have time to go slowly and look at exactly what’s available; I was on a mission each time to get what I needed and get back by a certain time. It does seem, however, that there should be plenty of options here. Once all my kitchen stuff arrives, I should be able to put together good, healthy, familiar meals. Until then, I’m able to feed the family basic meals involving meat, vegetables, and minimal seasonings … and there is a wonderful Android app called “ClickDelivery” that enables us to see English menus and order a huge variety of delicious food to be delivered to our door. Our wallet and waistlines will appreciate the arrival of my slow cooker, though.

Speaking of, we’re hopeful that our stuff will arrive within the next couple of weeks. There were some snafus on the part of the shipping company in Kosovo that delayed our shipment, but those seem to have been worked out now. It has been reaffirmed that they cannot simply put the uncrated boxes in the truck, drive it down, and contract on their own with a company here to deliver those boxes—the boxes accordingly have been placed in lift vans, which will be put on the truck, driven down, and then delivered by a company that’s actually been approved by our security people. Yeah, we're silly like that ... we like to vet the people who have access to our stuff ...

We were able to start school at approximately the same time the international schools here started, though we didn’t get to start all subjects the same week. We had to wait for most of our curriculum to arrive—we have the history curriculum in digital format on the laptop, and we’d ordered history, geography, and literature books to arrive around the same time we did, so we’re on week 3 of our 36-week planned year for History, Geography, Literature, and Bible. We’re on week 2 of Art and Music, and we’re just starting Health, Science, Math, and Language Arts this week. The art and music curricula arrived at the same time as the other books we’d ordered, but I needed to review them a little, and I also didn’t want to add too much at once. Our remaining materials just arrived a few days ago, as we’d purchased them in the States but left them with friends to mail to us here—they wouldn’t fit in our suitcases.

School is going fairly well so far. Alexa is enjoying my literature selections—instead of following any particular curriculum for that, I’m pulling books from multiple reading lists. So far, she has not wanted to read any history books until we got started, and then she was interested. The science books, on the other hand, are a source of great fascination for her, especially the ones about animals. We haven’t officially started our curriculum yet, but that hasn’t stopped us from reading about 10 of our science books already. In addition to science, Alexa has been excited about music and art. She seems to like the math and language arts curricula we’re using, too, although that may be because they’re beginning at a level that’s very basic review for her. I’m hopeful that she’ll keep enjoying them once we hit the new material. I’ll try, in a few more weeks, to do a more comprehensive post about our curriculum choices for this year and how they’re going. I realize that I never did get around to finishing my series about kindergarten curriculum last year.

We're enjoying life in Greece so far. If I can find a way to take language classes (childcare is an issue), I'll enjoy it even more. We're looking forward to connecting with another homeschooling family once they return from vacation later this month. We also have plans to start visiting churches soon. We're settling in, figuring things out, and making connections. We're going to have a good three years here.

Catching Up

We are almost 5 months into 2015 now … and I haven’t written a single blog post this year. Pathetic, I know. Rather than explaining and justifying and apologizing, let’s just catch up, shall we?

January started off with a bang—we’re in Kosovo: the New Year is celebrated with countless not-so-mini family fireworks displays. I continued enjoying our last true winter for the next few years, while Jeff continued looking forward to its end. (I can’t blame him; he has to drive in the snow and ice, whereas I stay home and enjoy the winter wonderland.)

Toward the end of January, we finally made it out to Gadime Cave, not too far from Prishtina. The Community Liaison Office organized a trip. We decided not to go with the large group—caves plus large groups equals lots of echoing noise, which would not be a great introduction to caves for our sensitive girl—but we did take advantage of the reservation to go a little early with a smaller group. It can be difficult at times to know when the cave will be open, so this opportunity was not to be missed. It was a great morning! The caves were much larger than we anticipated, and Alexa loved exploring them. She didn’t even notice that she also was learning, as she asked question after question about the cave, its features, and the life it contains. I found myself wishing I had an age-appropriate book about caves that we could have read before or after the trip. I’m hoping to correct that oversight and then find another fun cave to explore with her within the next few months.

We spent most of February in the United States. We traveled to Washington, DC, for some appointments and to see some friends. Unfortunately, we only saw about half of the friends we wanted to see—as we landed, my ears grew pillows where my ear drums should be; the next morning, my ears were better but my sinuses were awful, and it only got worse from there. I became so congested that my entire face hurt, even my teeth! After a week, I gave in and went to an urgent care doctor, because I was afraid of what would happen if I flew again 10 days later without treatment. I was diagnosed with a sinus infection and a double ear infection. The antibiotics started helping immediately, so I felt much better for the rest of the trip, but we’d already missed out on visits with a few friends. We hope to see those friends this summer instead.

We arrived back in Kosovo on schedule in late February, but a week later, Alexa and I were back on a plane. There was a medical situation back home with a close family member, and my help was needed. Jeff was needed at work, especially since he’d just returned, so he remained in Kosovo. I am thankful that the medical situation was not as bad as it easily could have been, and my family member seems to have made almost a full recovery. Alexa and I spent our time in the United States helping with everyday tasks and transportation, but we also were able to do fun “America” things like celebrate my sister-in-law’s RN pinning, go to my niece’s football soccer games, and entertain random passersby with Alexa’s TCK questions and comments (for example, “Does everybody in America know the name of that store is Wal-Mart?” and “Why is there more than one McDonald’s?”). We returned to Kosovo just after Jeff’s birthday, at the end of March.

After our second return to Kosovo this year, I realized just how close we are to the end of our time here. I spent a few days getting over jet lag, then dove in and finally started preparing for packout. So far, we’ve rid ourselves of almost all of Alexa’s baby clothes, most of our “we severely overestimated how much Kleenex we’d use” consumables, and several bags of my ill-fitting or unflattering clothes. We’ve sold the elliptical machine for which we expect to have no room in Greece, and we’ve made arrangements to sell our second vehicle once we can get the paperwork in order. I’ve organized several full drawers of small items into labelled gallon-sized Ziploc bags. Now I need to start focusing heavily on my list-making, which has been sadly neglected due to all the travel earlier this year. We’re leaving in less than a month, and I’ve never been so far behind on my preparations.

At some point during and between all these other activities, we completed the Sonlight P4/5 preK curriculum. We ended up dropping a couple of workbooks that were too advanced for Alexa at the time, and there’s still one book in which she has shown no interest whatsoever. I left that book in South Carolina back in March, assuming we could try it again this summer and see if she’s interested then. She’s still working through her Mathematical Reasoning workbook, which she does not do every day—but when she does do it, she wants to keep going and often does 10 or more pages! That is quite the change from when I required her to do it daily, when she resisted and often did no more than 2 pages. We intend to continue working through this book over the summer until it’s done, as well as continuing to “play” Reading Eggs and Math Seeds. I’ll have to do another post about our plans for homeschool next year, as I never finished that series, and we’ve changed our plans for language arts. 

That’s for another time, though.

Right now I have some lists to make.

Our Year in Ornaments: 2014 Edition

It’s that time again—the week after Christmas Day but before New Year’s. The time when we reflect on the year that is about to end. The time when we make plans and goals and resolutions for the year that is about to begin. The time when, as longtime readers know, I write about our little family’s participation in a tradition begun many years ago: The Ornie Competition.

Jeff and I have participated in this competition every year since our marriage in 2006 (though I didn’t begin the blog until 2008, and even since then there has been one year in which I did not blog about our ornaments). We have included Alexa every year since her birth in 2010.

This year was no different—we participated. Yet, this year was different—two of the three of us had a very hard time deciding what ornament best represented our year, or indeed, what theme the ornament should represent at all.

Let’s start with the easy one, shall we? Alexa’s ornament was so easy to pick out this year that she picked it without ever thinking about the competition or her year or anything other than her love for and excitement over it.

Alexa's 2014 Ornament: Disney Cruise Ship

It was September, and we were on our R&R: a 14-night transatlantic Disney cruise, aboard the Disney Magic. We planned this R&R almost a year in advance, and Jeff started talking it up to our timid girl right about the time the flowers started to grow in the spring. She was excited from the first time he mentioned it. She spent the spring and summer talking about meeting Mickey Mouse and his friends, looking at pictures of the Magic’s Oceaneer Club online, and convincing herself that she wanted to experience all the ship has to offer—including the parts that were offered to her alone, in the kids-only zone, without the security of Mama or Daddy’s presence.

On the very first night of the cruise, we visited one of the onboard stores. We’d heard from veteran cruisers that the good stuff sells out quickly and that it was wise to hit the stores on day one, as soon as they opened. As we looked around, I saw a small display of Christmas ornaments. My mind immediately went to the Ornie Competition, so I called Alexa over “just” to show her—and she immediately exclaimed that she wanted one. She picked out a relatively realistic depiction of the Disney Wonder, the Magic’s sister ship. As there was no Magic ornament, I was thrilled with her choice. We bought two—one for our Christmas tree, and one to leave with my mother-in-law as Alexa’s ornament for 2014.

The rest of the cruise did not disappoint. I have intended to write a blog post gushing about how amazing the cruise was, about the friendliness and dedication of the cast and crew, the beauty of the ship, the comfort of the cabin, the extreme deliciousness of the food, the stellar performances that were the shows, the fun and interesting people we met, the relaxation of temporarily forgetting the world outside the ship … but life has happened, and I never wrote that post. Rest assured, however, that Alexa has not forgotten the cruise: it inspired many of her requests for Christmas gifts, it provided the “happy thoughts” upon which she relies as she falls asleep to avoid nightmares, and it has spurred countless askings of the question “When will we go on our next cruise?”

It is safe to say that although Alexa’s (and Jeff’s and my) first Disney cruise lasted only 14 nights, it has been the theme for her entire year: excitedly anticipating it, thoroughly enjoying it, and longing for a repeat of it. She picked the perfect ornament to represent her year, and she did it without even trying.

Jeff's 2014 Ornament: Chewbacca

Jeff’s ornament was a bit more difficult to pick out this year. It was not because he couldn’t decide what theme he wanted to represent—it was because he wasn’t allowed to steal Alexa’s ornament. As he conscientiously prepared Alexa for the cruise, as he showed her pictures of the kids club, as he talked up the opportunity to meet the characters, as he introduced her to the idea of playing in the pools and going down the water slides (well, the one slide for which she was tall enough), he built the anticipation for himself as well as for her. When the time came to leave for the airport, to leave the hotel for the port in Barcelona, and finally to board the ship for the first time, he was as excited as she was. After a day or two onboard, he told me that he hadn’t realized just how much he needed that vacation, that time away from work, that ability to relax and have fun for an extended time, without being on call, without knowing that he had to be back in the office in a day or two. He anticipates our next Disney cruise as eagerly as Alexa does. Unfortunately, however, he could not simply point at Alexa’s  ornament and say “That one. Me, too.” He had to pick a different one.

He settled on Chewbacca. Chewie, as Jeff affectionately calls him, is a more subtle representation of the cruise than the ship would have been, but in my opinion, he represents Jeff’s year more fully. Disney recently purchased the Star Wars franchise, so despite Chewie’s absence from the ship, he now is a representative of Disney … as Alexa puts it, “Chewbacca works for Mickey now.” In addition to the Disney tie-in, though, Chewbacca represents hard work, and strength, and the provision of protection, things that represent my husband’s personality in general and this year in particular.

Deborah's 2014 Ornament: School Time

I am the loner in the family this year—the only one who did not even consider the cruise as a theme for my year. Although I thoroughly enjoyed it, heartily recommend Disney cruises to anyone and everyone, and am excitedly anticipating our next Disney cruise, I refrained from getting excited about it until just before we left. I allowed Jeff to do the preparatory work with Alexa, and he did all the planning for the trip in general—the flight and hotel reservations, the car rental arrangements for the week we spent in the United States afterward, finding and joining the Facebook group dedicated to the cruise. He did all that. I did not become emotionally invested in the cruise until a week or two before we left. I was too overwhelmed with what really defined my year: school.

We finished up Alexa’s preschool year in the spring, then began almost immediately working through the curriculum for pre-kindergarten. We schooled year-round because I knew we’d be taking a long break for R&R and a shorter one for Christmas, and I also knew that we need to be done with her preK year by mid-April 2015, before our lives get hectic with next year’s move. While working through her current curriculum, I also busied myself researching and making plans for her next curriculum—the one we’ll begin for kindergarten in fall 2015. I knew that I did not want to continue with Sonlight; I knew that I did want to purchase or create a classical curriculum; and I knew that I will have no time for researching curriculum during the most typical planning time—the spring and summer before the curriculum is used. So my attention was divided among teaching Alexa for preK, planning for Alexa’s kindergarten year, and fitting in my regular household tasks as I could.

Luckily, preK was mostly about reading quality books aloud, but there also have been some workbooks: math and handwriting (both of which Alexa loves), the preK Explode the Code phonics series (which she does not love), critical thinking (which Alexa loved until we finished the age-appropriate book and the next one was too advanced for her), and the Developing the EarlyLearner series (a mixed bag of activities—some loved, some hated, and all put aside for now since they’ve progressed to the point of being too difficult for her). I also began teaching Alexa to read, using The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading, which has been shelved temporarily in favor of a subscription to the online Reading Eggs program.

Throughout the year, there have been times when I was excited to “do school” and teach Alexa new and wonderful things, times when she was excited to do school and learn new and wonderful things, a few blessed times when we both were excited, and too many times when neither of us was excited. Thus, this ornament with an excited-for-school Chip and a less than enthusiastic Dale seemed like a good fit … and the nod to Disney does help my ornament fit in with Jeff’s and Alexa’s, as well. And I did really enjoy the cruise.

In our family, it was a Disney kind of year, though there also was plenty of hard work. Next year promises to hold new adventures, with all the stresses, joys, and uncertainties that tag along with any new endeavor. One thing is for certain, though: next year, we will NOT be schooling year round!