Brightwood Lights

BIG GIRL!
Simona turned five this week!

We cannot believe that she is so big (and that we have been parents for so long)! Of course, as her parents, we cannot help but take every opportunity we can to brag, so here goes:

Simona is funny. Just ask Maria! No one can make Maria belly laugh the way Simona can with her silly dances and faces. Simona is also amazingly good at math. She can figure out basic multiplication problems (four times three, etc.) on her own, and she recently was able to tell us that half of sixty is thirty. She is learning some basic reading but is much better at it in German than in English. This not surprising, since we speak German here at home and since it is a much, much more phonetic language than English. Simona also has a kind heart and overall is quite empathetic. She is creative, artistic, and far more graceful and girly than I’ve ever been. She balances this with a love for swimming, bike riding, digging, and climbing. We delight in watching her grow into her own person.

(Just so you don’t think that all of the preceding praise is made up, I will throw in the honest truth: she can be harsh with her little brother, sometimes lies to avoid getting in trouble (bad move!), and doesn’t quite yet get the nuance between being proud and excited vs. being proud and boastful. But she tries so hard to please us and to be a “good person.”)

We celebrated her fifth birthday twice. The first event was a pool party on Saturday at our apartment pool.

Simona had three friends from the neighborhood and four from her preschool, all of whom had a blast splashing and swimming. Opa, Papa, and Mama were on lifeguard duty outside while Oma was inside with Maria (and on potty duty). Between swimming, lunch, and cake, the party was over before we knew it!

Her second party took place on Sunday, her actual birthday, in “Berbree City,” as Andreas calls Oma and Opas house. Opa took the kids swimming and kayaking in their pool (yes, he put the kayak in the pool. . .) and then went on a bike ride to the elementary school playground. Simona got her requested meal of “hamburgers and mac-n-cheese,” supplemented by some tolerable green beans, followed by presents and ice cream cake. Sounds like a successful day by any 5-year-old’s standards, I’d say!

BIG NEWS
Our big news is that . . . we finally know where we’ll be moving! We had planned on “knowing” by graduation, but graduation came and went back in May. Lest you think Caleb was dragging his feet in the job search process, let me assure you: He was not. He spent many, many hours over the past year drinking gallons of coffee at various “meet for coffee” networking meetings throughout the Atlanta area. I think he knows every individual who has ever been even tangentially involved in the real estate industry in this city.

Along the way, we learned that a job search like this can be a bit of a geography bee. There were MANY places we considered moving during this job hunt process. Some of these were serious considerations, complete with actual interviews or job offers, Google map geography lessons, elementary school research, etc. Others ended up being long-shot scenarios– job postings to which Caleb deliberated applying, job leads that quickly dried up or ended up not being the right fit for us, etc.

A few of the cities we considered:
- Piscataway, New Jersey
- New Delhi, India (yes, the country!)
- San Antonio, Texas
- San Francisco, California
- Chicago, Illinois
- Birmingham, Alabama
- Charleston, South Carolina
- Charlotte, North Carolina
- Boston, Massachusetts
- Hanover, New Hampshire
- McLean, Virginia (near Dulles Airport)
- Baltimore, Maryland
- Atlanta, Georgia

But in the end, we are moving right back where we started: Washington, DC! Caleb has accepted a job in Baltimore, Maryland. We have been deliberating whether to move to Baltimore or DC, but for a variety of reasons, we have decided that at this point, DC makes more sense for us. We are very open to the possibility that the commute will be too much, so we plan to reconsider our situation after 6-12 months. In the meantime, however, we are excited to return to the District!!

We will be moving out of our apartment here in about 1 week and will spend time in Germany before beginning our next adventure: Round 2 in the Nation’s Capitol!

When Simona was first born, we had the idea to try to get a picture of her (and of all subsequent children) at the state border sign at each new state she (they) visited.

At times, getting these pictures has meant going to great lengths, braving seedy industrial areas or making a 20-minute detour just to get the photo taken. And sadly, we’ve missed a few state pictures along the way, which just means we’ll have to re-visit those at some point.

However, it’s been a fun way to document our kids’ travels. So without further ado, I present the states our kids have visited (or in which they’ve lived), in alphabetical order:

1. Alabama

2. Arkansas

3. Connecticut

*Simona had been to Connecticut once before this, but I was not able to get her picture on that trip*

4. Delaware

*Andreas has also been to Delaware, but we have not gotten his picture at a state sign yet.*

5. Georgia

*Obviously, Maria has been to Georgia, despite the lack of a picture. . . *

6. Illinois

7. Indiana

8. Iowa

9. Kansas

10. Kentucky

11. Maine

12. Maryland

*I’m going to have to search our photo archives a little more for Andreas’s Maryland picture. . . for now, please take my word that he has spent A LOT of time in Maryland.*

13. Massachusetts

14. Minnesota
*We flew in and out of Minneapolis and didn’t see a state sign on our drive up to Longville, so these had to suffice for Simona:

15. Mississippi

16. Missouri

17. New Hampshire

*Yet another state which Andreas has visited but for which a picture is lacking. . . *

18. New Jersey

*The first picture is of Simona pointing to the NJ Turnpike on the map at a rest center. . . getting the “Welcome To” picture is nearly impossible on that turnpike, so Andreas’s picture is of lesser quality here, too. Believe me, I have had a flat tire with him in a pack-n-play on the side of the highway in NJ. I’d say that counts as having been there!*

19. New York

*Yet again, Andreas does not have photographic evidence of being welcomed to the Empire State, but his attendance at Tante KK and Onkel Mike’s wedding and graduation affirm that he’s been. . .*

20. North Carolina

21. Ohio

22. Oklahoma

23. Oregon
*Sadly, we had to choose between catching our return flight or getting our picture at the “Welcome to Oregon” sign at the airport. Andreas and Simona definitely attended Tante Janice & Onkel Gus’s wedding, and we’ll definitely all need to return to get that photo (not to mention visit Tante J & Onkel Gus!).*

24. Pennsylvania

25. Rhode Island

26. South Carolina

27. Tennessee

28. Virginia

29. Washington, D.C.

30. West Virginia

31. Wisconsin
*The last shall be first! Maria beat both of her older siblings to this one!*

TOTALS, in case you are keeping score:
Simona- 30
Andreas- 28
Maria- 5
(and for good measure, Nancy- 45, Caleb- 41).

**PLEASE NOTE** that this is out of 51. . . we can’t omit DC, the land of two of our children’s births. . .

Caleb graduated from Goizueta Business School at Emory University this week! He completed the One-Year Accelerated Masters in Business Administration, with a concentration in Real Estate and Finance.

He’s not the type to brag, so I will do so for him. Caleb has won award upon award during his one year at Emory, including being named to the Dean’s List, being named a Dean’s Scholar, being inducted into the Beta Gamma Sigma business honors society, and being voted as the one-year student who best exemplifies integrity by his peers. I’m proud of him for all that he has achieved, but the peer “integrity” award is especially sweet. I know that I am married to a man who embodies hard work, honesty, and humility, but it’s flattering to know that his friends and classmates see those same traits in him, too.

He also entered two Real Estate “case competitions” (yes, nerdy- don’t worry– I’ve teased him plenty). One was a competition among Emory students, and Caleb’s team won. The second was a state-wide competition, with teams from Georgia Tech, UGA, Georgia State, and Emory. Again, Caleb’s team won.

Besides accumulating these academic accolades, Caleb has managed to spend plenty of quality time with his kids, build lifelong friendships with his classmates, be a devoted husband, exercise (relatively) consistently, and network with just about every living GBS alum in the entire world.

The future for us is still up in the air. We are in the process of making some tough decisions, trying to balance career and family considerations as we try to discern what next steps will be most honoring to God. We’ll be sure to report back once those decisions are made!

Somehow, I seem to have a knack for getting myself us into these situations in which we are baking random items late into the night.

Take Good Friday, for example. At about 10:15 PM, we had gotten the kids to bed, had run a last minute errand, and were close to getting to bed. I had a running date with a friend scheduled for 7:30 AM, and our family was planning on going to the church Easter egg hunt at 11:00 AM. Before finishing cleaning up the kitchen and living room, I decided to look up directions to the egg hunt. While verifying the address of the hunt on the church website, I noticed that we were supposed to “bring a picnic dish to share.” Shoot. We had NOT, in fact, prepared a dish.

Thinking quickly, I assessed our kitchen inventory and decided to get rid of a few of the bananas sitting in our fruit bowl. So, at about 10:35 PM, I asked Caleb if he’d like to make some banana bread with me. Of course he didn’t, but being the kind soul that he is, he agreed to help anyway. Around 10:45, we discovered that we were nearly out of flour, so he ran to the grocery store (which closes at 11:00) to save the dough day. By the time we popped the pans into the oven around 11:20 and saw that they needed to bake for “50-60 minutes,” the ridiculousness of staying up so late for some banana bread had us both laughing hard.

However. . . I don’t seem to learn from these lessons! Tonight I again found myself in a too-bizarre-to-explain-why scenario of making angel food cake and whipped cream while my three hungry children circled around me. Caleb is out of town, so the appeal of emergency baking is even less (if that is possible!). . . and yet it happened anyway. The baking did not last late into the night, but the clean up (and, admittedly, the blogging about it) has kept me past my bedtime once again.

Anyway, the next time you have the urge for a midnight snack, come on over. You never quite know what we might be pulling out of the oven!

Pop Quiz:
1. Name a term commonly used for the event held to memorialize a recently deceased person.
2. Describe the biological relationship between two people who are “cousins.”
3. What are half-sisters (or half-brothers)?

If you’re anything like me, chances are your answers are along the lines of:
1. Funeral (or maybe wake or memorial service)
2. People whose parents are siblings
3. People who share only one biological parent.

However, if you are like my classmates, your answers may be along the lines of:
1. Homecoming celebration
2. Anyone who is related to me and about my age or anyone with whom I am very, very close
3. I don’t even know when someone would use that term. . . (and then, upon hearing the answer given above): No, I would just call them my sister (or brother). Half sister is just plain offensive.

You see, the majority of the students at my community college are black.* This includes immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean, descendants of these immigrants, and descendants of slaves. I literally can think of four students I see regularly who are not black: one Chinese girl, one British guy of Southeast Asian descent, “the other white girl” (Jamie), and me. And for the record, yes, Jamie and I have been confused for one another. . . even when I was nine months more pregnant and four inches taller. (Note: I remain four inches taller.)

Prior to this year, I spent five years living in a neighborhood in which I was a minority. Sharing walls and driveways and sidewalks with my neighbors inevitably forced me into their lives, and them into mine. I began to grasp- for the first time ever- how wide the gap is between the white and black worlds. It took first-hand experience for me to recognize just how little I understood about black culture- or, for that matter, how diverse “black culture” is. Attending a community college where I again am a minority has reinforced and solidified some of what I experienced in DC, and taking a Human Growth & Development class at this school has helped frame these differences in more formal, academic terms.

Though focusing on our differences too much can be divisive and harmful, I believe it is important to acknowledge and learn from people whose worldview, experiences, and backgrounds are different from our own. Enrolling in community college has taught me much more than I anticipated, and I’m grateful for this part of my education, too.

*I deliberately use the term “black” rather than “African American” because of the diversity of heritage of the student body. In fact, one of my professors (who is descended of slaves) says she prefers “black” because she does not consider herself African at all.
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I promise more kid updates (and pictures) soon!