I have fallen in love…. again May 28, 2009

I have fallen in love again with my bike – well, to be more specific, I have fallen in love with riding my bike.

I took the kids down to Grandma’s for two nights and I came back to a fixed bike. Brad pulled my bike out of the shed and washed it, fixed my tires and made it like new.

All I want to do now is ride my bike. But first let me tell you what it looks like. It’s red. Not just any red but it’s the best red – coke red meets cherry red. And it has a black basket that you can take off and use it as a shopping basket. It’s just perfect. I have had 4 bikes in my lifetime and 3 of them have been red. It is my favorite color you know.

Riding my bike transports me to my childhood. Almost every memory of my childhood involves bike riding. We lived on a cul-de-sac and all of us kids would ride our bikes up and down our street – we did everything on our bike. I rode my bike to school, to my friend’s house across town, up hills, down hills, everywhere.

Riding my bike makes me feel connected to my childhood, to Austria (the home of my childhood), and it makes me feel like that 10 year old that was just given ultimate freedom to ride everywhere. My parents never drove me places. If I wanted to go somewhere then I needed to either take a bus, train, or my bike. My bike was my ticket to independence.

To feel the wind on my face and to feel it rustle my hair makes me feel like there’s nothing else that’s going on at the moment. Nothing else matters to me at that moment except for me and my bike.

It refreshes my soul. It make me feel hopeful of the world.

What’s up with the Clarks? May 15, 2009

It’s been sort of busy around here. Not really with anything special just everyday stuff. The kids have been quite a handful lately – not sure if it’s cabin fever or spring fever. There have been many days where Brad and I have wished that grandparents lived a little bit closer so we can can call them and say: “Come and get them before we sell them to the highest bidder!”. You parents know what I am talking about.

But……

Tonight everything changed. Well, it changed me tonight.

The kids had been in bed for a while and I hear a Vienna wimper from their bedroom. I open the door and Vienna is crying. I ask her what’s wrong and this is what she said (I am going to try to write it word for word):
“Mommy, I don’t want to leave you. When I grow up I don’t want to move away.”
“Vienna, you don’t have to move away from Mommy if you don’t want to. We will always be together.”
“But I don’t want to grow up and move away like Jenny did. She grew up and moved away from her Mommy and Daddy.”
“Vienna, she moved away because she wanted to. She went to college and then she got married. That’s because she wanted to.”
“Mommy, I don’t want to grow up and be like Jenny. I don’t want to go away to college because I love you and want to be with you forever.”
“I love you Vienna and you are going to be my little girl no matter how much you grow up.”
“Mommy, I don’t want to grow up. I want to be your little girl forever.”

Through this whole conversation I am trying to figure out where this was coming from. My four year old is lying in her bed thinking about her future. I didn’t know if I wanted to cry, smile, laugh or be really sad. And it made me realize that one day she is going to grow up and one day she is going to move away (because she wants to – kids always want to) and she is going to get married someday – yikes!

It’s moments like these that are very helpful to parents, to me, when you are about to run away. I love my kids. There’s nothing that I wouldn’t do for them. When they cry – we cry, when they laugh – we laugh. They are our life and we are theirs. I will never be whole again because there is some of me in them and I will never get that back and my being aches for those parts when they are not here, when they aren’t close by. I see in them all the good things of Brad and I and I also see all of my faults – slowly coming out.

Here are some pictures of my little ones.

Aunt Andrea, this is one of the things Vienna got at Target with her gift card from you. This is her first nightgown and she absolutely loves it.

Maddax took this picture of Vienna.

Vienna took these last two pictures.

The next few pictures were taken at Maddax’s field trip a few weeks ago. They had just finished learning about woods, fields, and streams as habitats. So we got to investigate those habitats and see what wildlife and plants we could discover.

Maddax and his best friend Joel – Joel will be going to a different school next year and Maddax’s is absolutely heartbroken about it.

Looking at a hawk’s nest.

Maddax’s Kindergarten Class 2009 – not that’s not a real deer, it’s target practice.