A Vignette of Our Lives

Avram has been on his summer vacation for 2 1/2 weeks now. This would help explain the lack of blogging lately - I find that when he's here to talk to about all of my thoughts, I feel less of a need to record them in written form. Also, he gets computer time as a priority, as he is writing his paper for October 2010's Sperry Symposium at BYU. Somehow him being scholarly trumps Mama and the Internet, much to my eternal chagrin. Our life is still sufficiently exciting, though. Here is a sample day:

Evening before:

Thora: Avram, we need to have a schedule, so we don't waste time. So we're ultimately more productive. I'll just write it down in my trusty day planner. We'll start out by both getting up at 7:00 am sharp.

Avram: And I'll do my thirty minutes of Biblical Hebrew, then write on my paper for an hour or two, and also do scholarly readings, plus each day of the week review a different language - Greek, Arabic, German, French, and Hieroglyphic Egyptian.

Thora: And I'll deep clean each room of the house one day at a time, plus take care of the girls so you can study. Plus make yummy breakfasts.

Next Morning 7:00 am. Avram and Thora lie sleeping. No alarm clock goes off, because they haven't used an Alarm Clock in two or three years - they just wake up to internal clocks. Too bad the internal clocks are on holiday.

7:30 am, Avram comes awake, and reads Biblical Hebrew for Half an hour. Thora still lies in bed, having important dreams about visiting Antique stores and buying donuts. Or going on a group date with the King's Singers in the group (all of whom are decades younger than the real versions).

8:00 am, Elisheva's caterwauling from the other bedroom drags Thora from her dreams. Avram continues typing on his paper, except when he's stuck for ideas, in which case he visits the RPG.net forum.

Thora changes diapers, takes Lydia potty, and generally parents. The girls run in and out of the bedroom, where Avram types on the computer. Avram turns on Pandora for his classic folksy rock station, and attempts to ignore children climbing on his person.

by 9:00 am the family cobbles together some sort of breakfast. Then Thora washes dishes, completing her "deep cleaning" of the day. Avram goes upstairs to escape his crazy family, and checks out the new trailers coming out. Lydia and Elisheva climb the furniture and entertain themselves by fighting over the exact same item, regardless whether it's a crust of bread or a toy stroller, at five minute intervals. Thora reads some book.

At 10:00 or 11:00 Thora kicks Avram off of the computer, since he is distracted anyway, and tells him to go and study a language. He watches the kids, while attempting to read some dead language.

By Noon the whole family has cabin fever, and the afternoon is spent in trying to forget the morning ever happened, whether from visiting the Library, runing errands, grocery shopping, reading or watching Star Trek. Dinner happens in a normal manner. Then we all go to bed, to repeat ad infinitem.

Yesterday we broke out of our life, and went to the Zoo in the afternoon. The beautiful fall air, with its crisp undertones complemented the frisky animals. We have never seen so many of the animals awake and moving! We wanted to do some of the extra activities, like the Carousel or the Boat ride, but we weren't sure where to buy the tickets. I asked the Boat man, and he just let us on for free. Then, in a fit of spontenaity, I suggested going to the movies, to see Up. So we progressed to the Movies (which are in the same section of the city as the Zoo). Elisheva slept through the first third, and the manager didn't make us pay for her ticket. Then we went out to eat for subs, buying one 20 inch sub to feed the whole family. Finally we completed our escape from our normal lives by visiting Walmart, and getting ice cream.

The whole day only cost us $20. (Not counting necessary items at Walmart unrelated to the vacation). That's my kind of fun vacation day. And in the morning we still managed to fulfill our required vacation vignette already outlined.

Luckily there are only three more weeks of this. I'm not sure I can handle much more of the constructive at home vacationing. I love seeing Avram all the time, it just continuously amazes me how both of us can be full time stay at home parents, and not feel that life is twice as easy, but rather that watching two children and taking care of a five room house takes all of our time. Mostly it just takes all of our time, because we're both in vacation mode, so we both want to curl up with books, or watch movies, or be unresponsible.