It was very fun and very relaxing, and I may have even learned a few things . . .
I didn’t cook a thing all weekend, from dinner Friday night through dinner Sunday, and it’s amazing how much time that frees up. With seven people for lunch and eight for dinner everyday, plus breakfast to make sure everyone had and to clean up after, I really do spend a lot of mental and physical energy on food each day.
I don’t do much in the way of written meal planning, I mostly try to keep track of upcoming feast days and sporting events and how they’ll affect dinners in my head. I keep mental notes on what leftovers we have and if it’s enough for a whole dinner or if we’ll have to do a leftovers night. My main meal planning is just to know what we’re having for dinner by 10am, so I can defrost or crockpot or dough-rise as necessary.
Lunch is usually simple: sandwiches or quesadillas or leftovers, but I need to know if we have a whole loaf of bread or an entire package of tortillas available, because that’s about what it takes. And then my kid-helper and I start the big lunch assembly line and make it all and serve it up with fruit or veggies on the side. It’s not hard, it just takes planning.
But the whole weekend I didn’t have to think about any of that. I didn’t have to think about what we’d have and if I had the ingredients and when I needed to start it. I didn’t need to know if it had to be eaten at the park during soccer games or at home. I just had to show up and pick something and eat it. And then not even clean up afterwards. Crazy.
I really don’t mind the cooking or the planning. I was just surprised to realize how much of my day is usually devoted to it!
Honestly, I can’t imagine that most celebrities have much on me when it comes to drawing attention when out in public. I’m not dealing with paparazzi (only Anita has that issue), but I cannot go out with six kids in tow (and a visibly pregnant belly!) without being pointed at and counted and whispered about.
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| St. Francis and the Gubbio wolf on the ceiling of a building in Old Santa Barbara |
I can’t think of the last time we were in a store or at church without someone coming up to us to talk. It’s almost always positive. (Even when I at first think it’s not. After all — we DO in fact have our hands full, do we not?) But still, there’s no such thing as a quick errand. People want to talk to us. And forget about getting out of Mass in a hurry. There is often literally a line up of 3 or 4 people waiting to talk to us after Mass.
So imagine my surprise as I walked unnoticed and uncommented-upon through Santa Barbara for a whole weekend.
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| St. Barbara medallion over the entrance to a building downtown |
After Mass, we just walked out of the church, and NO ONE told us how good we had been in Mass. And I happen to think we had been pretty good.
It was lovely to relax and let go of all my regular daily tasks and responsibilities, but I really do miss having my kids around. They are sweet and loving and fun and hilarious. They are pretty squared-away and I genuinely enjoy their company.
The husband and I kept noticing things that they would have liked, and wishing we could share it with them.
While touring the Santa Barbara Mission I spotted the disembodied wing of a pigeon who had clearly been otherwise eaten by something. All I could think was how Bobby would have really liked it.
And there was not-gross stuff they would have liked too.
I even kind of missed all the busy-work that they require. I like to be busy. I like to feel useful. I like solving problems and accomplishing accomplishments. When I make a whole counter’s worth of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, it really feels like an accomplishment. I don’t get that same feeling from ordering lunch for myself at a restaurant.
The flip side of that though, is that I can get caught up in all the busy-ness and accomplishing-of-things to the detriment of my relationship with my husband.
After all, all of these kids are passive mortifications as it were. I didn’t choose them, God just keeps sending them my way. But I did choose my husband. And, God willing, I’ll have him long after all my children are grown up and out of the house and don’t require looking after.
That’s why it’s such a blessing for us to get away together, even if we miss the kids. We became parents ten months after our wedding, so we haven’t had much time to ourselves for the whole of our married lives. Experts talk about toddlers engaging in “parallel play” when they are each doing their own thing side by side but not really interacting. I think that can be a default way of life for busy parents. Even though I am fortunate enough to have a husband who is almost always able to be home with us in the evenings, we are often busy parallel parenting: one getting kids ready for bed, one working on schoolwork or dishes or directing clean-up. Working together, but not necessarily able to really focus on each other.
Date nights and babymoons give us that chance to really engage with each other. And even if we miss our kids, it’s important to occasionally get away from the distraction that they are. As it turns out, we have yet to run out of things to talk about. (whew!)
And now, what I learned from this particular location . . .
Due to a quirk in the local mountain range, the coastline in Santa Barbara goes east-west instead of north-south. So, when we went for a walk down Santa Barbara’s long long wharf on Saturday evening, we knew that the sun would be setting over the mountains behind us, rather than into the ocean in front of us. And it did.
I can’t imagine that this will make sense to anyone who doesn’t or hasn’t lived on the west coast, but I found it very disconcerting. The sun is supposed to set into the water. That’s what always happens. To have it set behind me as I looked out over the ocean just felt wrong. No profound insights here. It was just odd.
I guess they must be somewhere. But I didn’t see them. Santa Barbara appeared to me to be completely populated by old people who used to live in LA and really want to tell you about how terrible it was and teenager/twenty-somethings with ironic hats and no shoes on.
Again, no insights. Also just odd.
Unlimited access to Halloween candy is a very bad idea. It turns mostly well-behaved children into little monsters. Take note of it people.
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| Victory Dance St. Michael (what, what) |
Thanks so much to Nana and Grandad whose willingness to wrangle six kids and four Saturday sports schedules allowed me to have a lovely time learning all of these silly things. And to my husband for marrying me and co-creating all these terrific little lives and planning such a wonderful trip for us to share.
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Voting is still open through November 18th at The Homeschool Post’s Annual Awards, where Catholic All Year has been nominated in two categories!
If you are so inclined you can click on the links to vote once per day, per device for Catholic All Year as the Best NEW Homeschool Blog 2013, and/or the Best Current Events, Opinion, and/or Politics Blog 2013.
Chris from Campfires and Cleats has compiled a list of all the Catholic Blogs that have been nominated (including our 7 Quick Takes hostess!), so head on over here for other great blogs to support.
And if you’re visiting for the first time from The Homeschool Post, here are a couple of links to prove that I do sometimes write about homeschooling:
Homeschooling: One Room Schoolhouse Meets Three Ring Circus
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And now I’m off to throw a Zombie Apocalypse double birthday party for Bobby and Gus before this baby arrives (hopefully). Come back on Sunday to see how it went . . .
Happy weekend everyone!
Kendra…love this….beautiful post! SO many great points about time spent with hubby. Thanks for the awakening. Great pictures…all of them! I can't imagine living so close to the beauty of the West Coast. It's just gorgeous…
Just voted! Thank you for the link to my blog as well AND I did not realize that Jen was nominated. I'll check it out and add her to my post.
Enjoy the big party…can't wait to see how it all went!.Good luck and enjoy!
the middle aged thing–my years in CA, I never saw any middle aged people. You are right, its mostly very young and some very old.
What a great post! I hope that my husband and I will take more weekends away in the future, but for now, date nights are our main thing. But we do them frequently.
We called my grandparents Nana and Grandad. My dad is Grandad to my kids, but they don't have a "nana" as my Nana just passed away a couple of years ago so everyone still thinks of her as Nana. I hope my grandchildren call me Nana though. 🙂
The parallel play example is perfect! Just the other night I said to my husband, "I feel like we're just partners in household management rather than husband and wife!" A getaway isn't possible for us, but I need to make a date night happen SOON!
Wonderful! I agree with you so much on all of these (even six going on seven, but I'm at the front end of the process;) ) And I love your reference to parallel play– it is so true!
So this is the first time I've ever heard the term babymoon used to refer to BEFORE the baby is born! Anytime I've come across it or used it it's been in reference to the sweet two or three weeks after baby is born and you're falling in love with the new member of the family and are all pumped full of oxytocin and sweet feelings. I didn't realize it could be either! Glad you had a good time!
That statue of St. Michael is hilarious!
So I totally get you on the "people not noticing you" thing. I remember the first time I went to the grocery store without a baby in tow, and I realized I was smiling stupidly at everyone and was confused because no one seemed to notice me…
It's kind of lovely how little people draw strangers to you.
I just found your blog and am loving it. Our oldest son and his family have lived in Santa Barbara for 20 years (they went to college there) and they have lots of friends their age with kids the size of yours (as are theirs). Of course, they don't hang out downtown or at the tourist spots – that's for visiting grandparents like us! But there are several colleges plus UCSB in the area, so demographically there are lots of young adults. Isn't the mission lovely? And the rose garden in front! Did you go to mass there? When we're in town we generally go to the spanish language mass at Our Lady of Sorrows downtown.
That's a good point! (And thanks 🙂
We went to two Masses at the Mission, one in the crypt on All Souls and one in the church on Sunday. It is lovely! It's fun for us because we normally attend Mass at the San Fernando Mission. We've been to 7 of the 21 now!
Haha. We took our babymoon in Santa Barbara too, and I loved trying out all the amazing restaurants there. My husband and I called it our foodie weekend. Glad you got to enjoy a nice weekend away.
I mentioned your post here – thanks for the inspiration!
http://ourordinarylifeextraordinary.blogspot.com/2013/11/there-needs-to-be-quick-takes-on-monday.html
I love your post and all of your very accurate observations about Santa Barbara. I lived there for a few years after college. I hope you and your hubby got to visit the Reagan Ranch Center on State Street – that's where I worked! It was very odd living there as a recent college grad with mostly very old people or college-aged and slightly younger people. Probably why I didn't last long there – my husband was waiting for me in San Diego. 🙂 God bless you and your new baby on the way!