New Things: Vacation Edition

Last week we went on vacation with my husband's family.  Each summer for the past ten years, we've traveled together for one week each summer to the shore of Delaware, sometimes near Fenwick Island, and this year on the north side of Bethany Beach, toward Dewey and Rehoboth.

For obvious reasons, I love the idea of vacation.  It's a chance, quite literally, to vacate your normal routine.  I stepped away from teaching and campus, and I checked email just enough to be considered borderline responsible.  This was good. 

Even better, vacation is a time to have new experiences, a few of which I'll detail here for you.

1) Car Troubles.  About halfway to the beach -- deep enough to be far away from home, yet not deep enough to be close to our destination -- the transmission of our minivan spontaneously died.  It was ugly.  I never had given much thought how we'd navigate a breakdown on the highway en route to vacation, and I'll spare you the details, except that it involved a long wait and small rental vehicle.

I should add that our rental car was the cleanest vehicle that I have traveled in for the last decade, which (almost, but certainly not quite) made me forget about the accompanying expenses.

2) New Running Trails.  Almost every morning before the heat of the day, my husband and I took a run.  I'd like to report that we ran together, but he's much faster than I, so he'd join me for my first mile (his "warm-up") before I'd continue at my slower pace.

I found new trails that were flat, well-marked, and happily populated with a handful of walkers, bikers, and other runners.  Even though I got turned around one morning and ended up running a mile more than I had intended, I always aim to pick safe and easy routes when I'm in unfamiliar locations.  (One generally unstated life goal is that I refuse to become the subject of a Reader's Digest "Drama in Real Life" article. Safety first, kids.)

 

Plus, one of the trails led me to a scenic outlook where I paused to catch my breath, watch the water on the bay, and take a picture of my feet, because you take pictures of your feet when you're on vacation.

3) Kayaking.  Our rental house had a kayak for our use just a short walk away, and one evening while I was on a solitary kayaking expedition, I saw a bald eagle.  He was so close I could see the yellow of his beak as he flew overhead, and then he landed in a pine tree where I sat and watched him, paddling every so often to keep myself anchored to the spot.

I had no phone with me to capture a picture, but I think I preferred just having the moment to myself.

4) Funland.  There's nothing new about our family visiting Funland at the Rehoboth Boardwalk, given that we've been taking the kids there for years, but this year Funland had a new ride: the SuperFlip 360.  I was born for rides like this.

But the moment I loved the most -- even more than riding with my kids, or the happy nostalgia of the books of green Funland tickets -- was when we met a 100-year-old woman who was in line to ride the tea cups.

That is how you live life.  You ride the tea cups on the boardwalk when you're 100.

5) The Fractured Prune.  Nobody in our family quite understands the name, but we were told a few years ago that we should visit a Fractured Prune doughnut shop.  This year we finally did.  I'm generally not a huge fan of doughnuts, as I have plenty of other dietary vices, but these were good doughnuts. 

6) Yahtzee.  My mother-in-law and I played four rounds of Yahzee during the week.  When we play, we don't just play a single column, either; we play Triple Yahzee, which gives you more places to bury bad rolls.  I was on a hot streak for three games (one game I rolled four Yahzees! Four of them, I tell you! That's a new record!), but I was slaughtered during the final game.  Alas, you can't win them all.

7) Sunscreen.  We've had this one bottle of sunscreen forever.  It never expires, and we frequently use it, yet we can never finish it.  My husband and I both marvel: how does this sunscreen never run out?  It's a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

Well, this vacation, it finally ran out.  I have her to thank.

Now we're returning to the standard nuts and bolts of life back at home, like unpacking, doing laundry, buying groceries, and getting caught up with the mail.  It's good to come back to regular life, but I'm always thankful for that week-long chance to vacate it in the first place.

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2,400 Miles. 3 Kids in Tow. 1 Epic Road Trip.

Our family recently took a Spring Break road trip -- driving over 1,200 miles from Pennsylvania to Florida, and then over 1,200 miles back again, only to get walloped with an epic Pennsylvanian snowfall upon our return.  This juxtaposition seems both ironic and somehow fitting.  I mean, who doesn't want to spend one day vacuuming sand out of your minivan, and the next day shoveling your driveway so you can pull that minivan out of your garage?

It was a glorious trip, even with its small hiccups along the way.  Plus, you have time to reflect when you have that much distance to cover.  For example, once again I was amazed that strategic road trip bribery is effective, even though it's definitely not my typical parenting style.  Here are a few other observations from our travels:

The original adage is wrong.  The journey of a thousand miles actually begins with a child asking, "Are we there yet?" 

When your spouse packs a can of Lysol spray and a container of Lysol wipes and stores them in the cup holders, the exact place where you want to store your bottles of iced tea and water, do not question whether Lysol products are necessary to take on a road trip.  Do not think about hiding them away.  They are essential.

At least, they were for us when one child announced that her stomach hurt a mere 30 seconds before vomiting across the backseat as we were driving 75 miles per hour on a dark and congested stretch of highway.  (Yes, this was as exciting as it sounds.) 

But, we had Lysol handy.  Always pack the Lysol.

You'll take inordinate pleasure when you find a license plate from a new state.  On our drive home alone, we discovered plates from 40 states and 4 Canadian provinces.  (Shout out to Ontario, Qubec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick!  You, my friends to the north, are the true road-tripping heroes.)

During your license plate search, you'll realize that you haven't given this much thought to US geography since elementary school.  Incidentally, you'll also notice that no states begin with the letters B, E, J, Q, X, Y, or Z,  so you'll feel prepared if you ever get asked this question in a trivia game.

You'll eventually get in the driving zone and it will be so surprising, so shocking, that you won't want to do anything -- no talking, no glancing in the rear view mirror, no fumbling with the bag that's crowding your feet -- because you recognize it's a holy moment.  Nobody needs to use the restroom.  Nobody is hungry.  Nobody is cold or hot or complaining that the sun is too bright, or that their sister looked at them funny, or that it's their turn to have some device that will low on batteries and missing its power cord.

The miles pass, and you feel like you could drive forever -- which, you reason to yourself quietly, is good, because you are driving forever -- and it reminds you of the rare times when you've run and felt like you could run forever, which happens so infrequently that it also deserves a moment of silence, because most other times during a run you feel every step and are tempted to check your watch or the treadmill screen every few seconds.

But no, you're driving, and miles are adding up, and all is right with the world, and don't dare to breathe and offset the hushed glory.  You remain silent and awestuck, like you would if you encountered an albino deer or a snow leopard in the wild or witnessed the Northern Lights.

That zone will last roughly 25 minutes.  Then you're back in the fray.

It's worth it.  When you finally arrive at your destination and stretch your legs, you'll forget the 19 hours of minivan confinement.  You'll forget the vomiting episode and the three bathroom breaks in a span of under two hours because one child chugged an entire bottle of Gatorade.  The excitement will counterbalance the road-weariness, and the roadside challenges will turn into good stories, and the trip will finally have begun.  You have arrived.  You made it.

Yes, a road trip is always worth it.

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The Simplest. The Best. The Aqua Bicycle.

When you have kids, a vacation to the beach with extended family is many things.  It's for packing too much, and stopping for bathroom breaks, and bringing an enormous bag entirely devoted to beach towels and fitted sheets, and figuring out the sleeping arrangements, and applying sunscreen -- lots of sunscreen, and letting the kids have juice boxes and candy AND ice cream later at night.

It's for periodic melt downs, and Yahtzee or Checkers games, and crowded beaches where the sand scorches your feet and you stare at the teens who just lay there  -- oblivious to everything but their tan lines and phones -- and you can't remember ever experiencing the stage of life when you were responsible just for yourself.

It's for finding sand in the nooks and crevices of kids' bodies, and tossing beach toys in the back of the minivan, and taking an outing to the water park where you count heads, and making sure everyone stays hydrated, and, of course, reapplying sunscreen -- lots of sunscreen.

It's not for rest.

Still, I often begin a vacation with the idealistic notion that I'll have time for quite seaside reflection, and I'll emerge from a perfectly angled adirondack chair into my non-beach life with significant life epiphanies.  This doesn't happen, but let me tell you about what did happen this past week.

I saw this bike left in the garage of the house where we stayed. 

Maybe it was the soothing aqua color, or the fact that beach terrain, unlike my central Pennsylvania mountains, is always flat, or that a one-speed bicycle with back-pedal brakes reminded me of childhood, but I immediately fell in love with this bike.

We took a few rides throughout the week with our three girls and four nieces and nephews, creating a von-Trapp-like trail that prompted more than one passerbyer to ask, "Are they all yours?" as they nodded to the seven kids between filling the gap between my husband's station in the lead and my position as the rear guard.

But the final night, through some configuration of circumstances that involved the adults jostling rides and taking some kids to mini-golf, I found myself able to steal a solo bike ride.

I don't remember what I thought about that evening, really, or whether I actually thought at all.  I just pedaled, following any route I desired.  I felt the humid air on my skin and beach breeze in my hair.

And when I stopped, it was here on the bay.

Later as I rode back to the beach house while the sky darkened, I took the longest route possible, not quite wanting the ride to be over.  Even with the adirondack chairs, the evening produced no significant life epiphanies, except perhaps that sometimes the best part of a vacation could be as simple as an aqua bicycle.

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The Cure for Anything

Typical to the season, these summer days already are a paradox in how they're passing both slowly and quickly.  Two days after school finished, we drove to the shore for our annual beach week with my husband's family.

There's so much crammed into the week away.  The kids plan epic water balloon fights with their cousins, we paddle board in the bay and boogie board in the ocean, we crab on the pier, we play Yahtzee on the back patio late at night, and we track ungodly amounts of sand into our vehicles and temporary house for the week.

I plow through a gorgeous stack of books, I eat more than necessary, and I enjoy every bite.  We collect clam shells in the surf, we use up multiple bottles of sunscreen, and we spend one night at Funland on the Rehoboth boardwalk where my children play skeeball and win remarkably unattractive stuffed animals that they instantly love and I instantly plot their disappearance.

My children, who pendulum between the extremes of being intensely wired and then overwhelmingly tired from such expenditure of physical and emotional energy, periodically have meltdowns about things they shouldn't have meltdowns about -- like me not capitulating to a request to feed them ice cream both before and after dinner. 

Consequently, I periodically have a meltdown about things that I shouldn't have meltdowns about, like my kids requesting that I feed them ice cream both before and after dinner.

This is all par for the course during a vacation, I remind myself.  A little saltwater -- whether sweat, tears, or the sea -- do manage to cure all the temporary woes.

Now we're back home acclimating to summer.  Joel returned to work, and given that I'm not teaching summer classes, I'm settling into a new (loose) routine where the girls bounce back and forth between our house and the neighbors' each day and piles of kids' flip flops get kicked off at the front door when they take a popsicle break.

And just like that, the days pass both slowly and quickly.

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Spring Break Felt Like Summer

This is an obligatory picture of my sandy feet on a beach to show you that last week, after driving from Pennsylvania to Florida where my parents are snowbirding, my family reached our Spring Break destination.

At four years old, my youngest daughter struggled to grasp how we jumped from winter into summer when we haven't yet experienced spring.  And there's the magic: you can (and we did) experience a 70 degree temperature shift in two days.

We just had to drive south for a mere nineteen hours to achieve it.

Florida is a different world than Pennsylvania.  When my husband and I went out on our morning runs, I was on the lookout for alligators instead of black ice on the running path.  When my children played, they made forts by shoveling sand instead of shoveling snow.

We breathed the scents of salty ocean air and coconut sunscreen.  We saw actual grass.  We tasted fresh mango and remembered what sunshine feels like on exposed skin.

Regardless of the many differences between the two locations, I should note that even while in Florida, my family retains its characteristic inability to capture a picture with everyone looking at the camera, just like when we're in Pennsylvania.

Some things cannot be changed.

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Vacation Is a Time For...

Late Saturday evening we turned onto our familiar street, pressed the garage door opener, and pulled our van -- a van crammed with bags, beach toys, mostly-finished water bottles, crinkled wrappers from snacks, and five tired passengers -- into our garage. 

Another vacation is in the books.

The van has been emptied and vacuumed and all bags are unpacked, but somehow my thoughts still are roving and rambling, making it hard to buckle down into regular home life.

Vacation, it seems, is a time for many things. It's a time to read everything you can get your hands on.  It's when pages blow in the salty air and crinkle at the edges as you prop the book against your swimsuit and recline in a chair. 

I became lost in the pages of Edenbrooke, a romance so gloriously delicious that I wanted to douse it with syrup.  (The love letter alone!  Heavens me!)  I was encouraged from the pages of Mary Demuth's Everything, and creatively inspired by the DIY home magazines that my mother-in-law passed along to me, a colorful page-by-page reminder that I had an end table sitting in my garage waiting to be refinished when I returned home. 

Vacation is a time to eat.  So much eating.  (So, so, so much eating!)  It's a time to eat food that you normally don't eat because it's bad for you, like donut holes, Swedish fish, Pop Tarts, and nightly ice cream.  It's also a time to savor food that you normally don't eat because location doesn't allow, like fresh crab cakes.

Vacation is a time to explore.  To walk on a nature trail with kids, listening to nothing but bird calls and the low hum of dragonflies.  To wait patiently at the water's edge until you spot the faint outline of a jellyfish.  To get so caught up outdoors that you forget that inboxes, blog dashboards, and smart phones exist.

Vacation is a time for crabbing, feet dangling over the edge of the pier, as you wait for the gentle yank that tells you something's nibbling the chicken on your line.  It's a time to rejoice when a crab gets pulled from the water, a time for shouting, "Back up!  Give 'em room!" as the crab scuttles out of the net, dances across the boards, and plunks back down into the water again.

Vacation is a time to ponder how armies mobilize efficiently and strategically, considering that it's nearly impossible to get seven children (our three kids, plus four nieces and nephews) in flip flops, with sunscreen, and out the door.

Vacation is a time to be silent and remember that starkness and broken pieces can be beautiful.  It's a time to consider the might and power of a God who poured the water into the ocean.

Vacation is a time to swim and get flip-flop shaped tan lines on your feet.  It's a time to take a few nighttime jogs when you think you're running much faster than you actually are.  It's a time to play a game of Yahtzee on the screened-in back porch after all the kids finally have gone to sleep. 

It's a time to dig in the sand.

And a time to sit on the pier with your cousins.

Vacation is a time to play a round of mini-golf without keeping score, and to say, "Sure, why not," when your daughter asks for popcorn on the boardwalk even though there's no way she could still be hungry after eating funnel cake and licking powdered sugar off her fingertips.

It's certainly a time to appreciate how your husband's eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles at you. (And to admire how your six-year-old tries to photo-bomb every picture, even if she's pinned down by a metal harness.)

Vacation is a time to point out the colored beach homes each time you drive past them, smiling as your children call out their favorite colors ("I like the aqua." "Pink!" "The one with the orange roof!") 

And, inevitably, at the end of the week, it's a time to wave goodbye to those houses from the passenger seat of your over-packed van, and then to start the drive back home.

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Traveling With Kids? This Tip Saved Our Sanity.

A few months ago, my husband and I surprised our three young daughters by picking them up from school, the minivan packed to the brim, and taking a family trip to Florida.  Of course, any trip involves the actual travel portion -- the getting there and back again. I haven't studied the etymology of the word travel, but on the surface it seems uncannily similar to travail.  Sometimes there's a degree of pain and suffering involved, especially if you're traveling with kids.

At the very least, impatience tends to be involved -- both theirs and yours.  Not to mention a tendency for children to be hungry (a ravenously I've-never-eaten-before-in-my-entire-life type of hungry) for lunch by 9:45 in the morning even if they just ate breakfast at 7:30.

What saved our journey was a tip that a student shared with me when I explained my Spring Break plans to my classes.  "When we used to take long road trips," she said, "my parents would pay my brother and me one dollar for every hour that we behaved.  If we fought or complained, we didn't earn our dollar that hour."

Honestly, I doubted the strategy.  First, it seemed like it was merely bribing kids to do the good behavior that they already ought to be doing.  Second, would it really work?  Would one dollar per hour be enough incentive to motivate a child, equal parts tiredness and eagerness, not to whine or complain while stuck in a car seat for hours?

But we tried it.  And here's the kicker: it worked.

It worked beautifully, magically, miraculously.  It prompted our eight-year-old to gently warn our three-year-old: "Hang in there.  Don't yell or fuss.  Don't lose your dollar.  You can buy yourself a treat or a prize if you earn your dollars!"  It kept our five-year-old coloring and humming to herself.  It saved my husband and me headaches and excessive consumption of Tylenol.

We only did this during the drive from Pennsylvania to Orlando (not back home), which amounted to 16 hours.  The sum payoff was $47 between our three kids.  (For those of you quick with math, you'll calculate that only one kid lost one dollar the entire time.  Impressive.)

Moreover, we would have bought the girls a souvenir during the trip anyway, but this way, the girls "earned" their own spending money for the week and rationed it carefully when considering what to purchase.  It was truly ninja parenting: they earned what we naturally would have given, and we watched them demonstrate self-control both when obtaining and then spending the money.

That's a travel victory, indeed.

Road trip, anyone?
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Every traveling experience is better with a great book! 
Enjoy the humor and encouragement in Then I Became a Mother. 
Available in both Kindle and paperback editions.

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Days Like This In Pennsylvania, In Istanbul, and In Between.

I'm home for just a few minutes after returning from the doctor's office with my youngest who's contracted pink eye when my husband calls. 

I've been waiting to hear from him.  I know that he's going to say he's almost home, that he's ready to receive the parenting baton so I can slip away for a few hours to grade the heaping piles of student projects and portfolios that are standing between me and the official end of the semester.

Instead, he tells me that he's just received a phone call from a former student who's an engineer living in Turkey.  The engineer's friends (a visiting professor, his wife, and their two daughters) would be landing at the JFK airport after traveling twenty grueling hours from Istanbul, and -- here's the kicker -- their escort's car had broken down en route.  Nobody would be there to pick them up.

It was precisely at this point in the conversation when I had two thoughts: 1) this situation has nothing to do with us, and 2) my husband's next words will be that he's making the nine hour round-trip journey to New York to get them from the airport.

Both thoughts were right.  Yes, this situation had nothing to do with us, and yes, Joel was leaving right after he could swap the car for the van and fill up the tank with gas.

The rest of the afternoon and evening hazed by in a manner you'd expect when you're home with a cranky, sick child who fights with every ounce of her 36-pound frame to prevent those antibiotic eye drops -- those drops that you picked up at the pharmacy with children who didn't want to leave their house to pile into the car and then didn't want leave the car to enter the store -- from trickling into her gunky, matted-shut eye.

I survive until the girls' bedtime, shower, and return to the computer to grade for hours, stopping just momentarily when my husband calls to say that he should be home by three in the morning.

At half past midnight, I call it quits.  Shortly after one, I'm woken by my middle daughter, another nighttime victim of the stomach bug, as she heaves in the bathroom.  She's just a few feet shy of the toilet, yet still far enough away to spray the hallway carpeting.

I scrub the floor and start laundry.  I return to bed.  I get up an hour later when she gets sick and misses the toilet again. 

When he finally returns home, pulls off his shirt, and sinks into bed, my husband wearily conveys that he got the family safely to their apartment.  I slur something in return about pink eye and vomit. 

Moments later our youngest wakes up, disoriented and upset, in need of a drink and complaining that her ear hurts.  I stumble into the door frame while trying to make it back to my bed in the dark.

When my head hits the pillow for the final time, my thoughts turn to the Turkish woman who had just ridden in our van.  I don't know her name.

She had traveled for hours, been stranded in a foreign airport, and figured out what to feed and how to entertain her two young children as they waited for a stranger to pick them up and drop them off at their new apartment, sight unseen, where they'd be living for six months in a new country.

She has lived quite a day, too.

In my last moment of wakefulness before sleep finally shuts down the day, I think about how, against all odds and however tenuous, this unknown woman and I shared some connection.  We are two women from across the globe, two mothers who had endured long days, two strangers whose lives randomly have been intertwined in the briefest, oddest of ways.

And, as I'm heartened by this awareness that we're more related to others than we think -- that we're all experiencing this unpredictable and inconvenient and very human life together -- I finally yield to sleep.

Image compliments of Changhua Coast Conservation Action (flickr.com)
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Enjoy the humor, candor, and encouragement of Then I Became a Mother.  Available in both Kindle and paperback editions.

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The Scoop on Spring Break: When Summer Invades Your Winter

When you are immersed in one season, it's hard to acknowledge -- daresay, even to imagine -- the existence of an opposite season.  While dipping my feet in the ocean last week, I couldn't imagine the mounds of snow that had been plowed to the edges of parking lots as mountainous testaments to the bitter northern winter, just like I couldn't accurately reinvent the simple pleasure of watching a swaying palm tree against a crystal clear blue sky as I walked to class this morning with my hands shoved deeply into my jacket pockets.

Oh, Florida in March, I am a fan.

But let me backtrack to the beginning of our trip, when we surprised the kids with news that we'd be taking them to Disney for two days.  Now that was a good moment. 

The kids rode out this euphoria for several hours into our journey, and the trip, which we divided into two days, was as smooth as possible.  (I will not divulge how many videos we let them watch during the ride.  Sometimes you parent for survival.  A sixteen hour road trip is one of those times.)

I could share a myriad of stories about Disney -- how Reese talked about her ride on Space Mountain for over an hour after it finished, or how Brooke professed her undying devotion to Cinderella as her "very favorite" princess, or how Kerrington was momentarily lost in the shuffle as we made our way into one of the rides.  (We found her.  My heartbeat has resumed its normal pace.)

I could share how fun it was to watch the girls' wonderment and to witness how their bond of sisterhood is just as strong -- and, apparently, just as irksome -- in Disney as it is everywhere else.

But what I really want to tell you about is an encounter we had with an employee named Maddy, a sweet college intern who happened to be the person that Joel pulled aside to ask where would be a good place to station ourselves for the evening's parade and fireworks.  Once she advised us, we thanked her and went on our way.

I thought that was the end of that story.

An hour later as we were standing where Maddy had recommended, however, she approached and motioned toward us.  "I'm so glad I found you!  Come with me," she smiled.  "I've got something special for you."

We then followed her to a secluded roped-off section with benches and a perfect view of all the festivities.  "You can sit here tonight.  This is our VIP section."

Let me just say, I hugged that girl.

There's no real rhyme or reason for her actions.  She had been having an especially rough day, she told us, and we were first people who had been kind to her.  This was her "small" token of thanks.

Still happily dazed, I situated the girls, prepared for the parade to begin, and then glanced toward the next bench to see who was sharing our VIP status. 

Here would be a good point to interject that I've always dreamed of hosting my own HGTV show about organizing tight spaces.  (Organize your space; organize your life!  You can envision me delivering this catch phrase, can't you?)  Or, to mention that I've dreamed about having HGTV designers stage my living room and kitchen.  Or to acknowledge that, apparently, I experience high levels of social awkwardness when I encounter a celebrity.

Because the person sitting directly beside me -- or more aptly, the person sitting directly beside my five-year-old whose Starbucks tea was almost knocked over from its perch on the bench's arm as a result of her five-year-old untethered enthusiasm -- was Vern Yip. 

Now, I could have been normal.  I could have gathered my thoughts, leaned over ever-so-slightly, and politely said, "I really admire your work, and I loved the spread of photos showcasing how you designed your kids' rooms.  Enjoy your stay at Disney."

Instead, I texted my mother-in-law ("I'm sitting next to Vern Yip!") and covertly tried to capture his profile in one of the pictures that I took of the parade.

I'm smooth like that.

Yes, there I sat -- on the night of my 36th birthday, nonetheless -- in VIP seats next to Vern Yip watching Disney's Electric Light Parade and the fireworks as they burst over the castle, in awe of God's favor and goodness to our very ordinary family.

I haven't shared this with my children, but I've decided that I can never return to Disney.  You can't top this.

From Orlando, we drove three additional hours south to Naples to visit my parents, where we ate fresh mango from a farmer's market, swam in the Gulf of Mexico, and visited the botanical gardens, where, incidentally, I bumped into a student of mine.  (I hugged her, too.  You show this kind of open emotion when you're in Florida.  People are naturally happy there.)  She and I finished our conversation, astounded, with, "Well, see you on Tuesday morning!"

Friends, I wore flip flops and had sand between my toes as I walked along the pier and dolphin-sighted.  In March!

I swung in a hammock -- albeit briefly and uncoordinatedly, as any swinging in a hammock is bound to be -- under these palm trees.  In March!

I collected shells and lathered on sunscreen and entertained thoughts about tan lines.  In March!

It was a trip for the record books, indeed, even the lengthy, tired drive home.  We were together, and that was the best part.

And Vern, if you'd ever like to visit my house and work your magic, consider this an open invitation.  You'd be more than welcome.  I'll even treat you to a Starbucks, unspilled. 
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Last post I teased you with the announcement that I had pending news -- BIG news!  Seriously, I can't wait to tell you, but I've kept you here long enough already today.  Next post, I promise.  Stay tuned!

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