Peru Trip! (Cusco)

DAY 3: TO CUSCO

We flew from Lima (sea level) south into the Andes to Cusco (11k feet or something bananas), and it was a really stunning flight.

I can see why doing this journey by bus would take 24 hours, even though it was such a short flight. There are so. many. mountains. And not that many roads, and definitely not great roads. It was beautiful to see though.

When we landed there was a bowl of coca leaves (not coco, not cocoa -- but coca: a whole 'nother thing) which we were welcome to chew on to help with elevation sickness? Apparently? I don't know it looks pretty legit to me?

ONLY THREE FREE THOUGH, DO NOT GO CRAZY NOW.

I mean, if you're not getting off the plane in a new place and putting random plants in your mouth immediately, then why even travel, right? (They were not tasty. But, yknow, when in Rome or whatever.)

Basically when we landed it was suddenly winter (because, it was winter) (and in the mountains) but we got checked into our hotel/ guesthouse and I climbed to the roof to look at the hillside. The building is an inteesting mix of indoor/outdoor space (chilly!) but it makes for fun exploring.

We all went out for a great dinner together. Steaks (more alpaca!) came on sizzling hot rocks and finished cooking right at the table. This is also a trend America should embrace, soon and very soon.

It was cold at night. Like, cold! No heater! Winter! Mountains! But they had these giant wool blankets (heavy rugs, basically) and oh man can I say again how amazing alpaca wool is? That stuff is no joke.

Unrelated, I met a baby goat. So there's that.

DAY 4: CUSCO

We started our day with Peruvian Starbucks (judge away, it delighted me and I'm  not sorry) and we used a room there to drink our coffee and have some team meetings, which, well. {Insert unbloggagble frustrations here, and feel free to ask me any time about the intersection of faith and workplace, when you're not in a specific faith-related call. It gets... complicated.}

But the historical city square is just gorgeous.

I really liked this door. It was my favorite door I saw in Peru. I called it early, on day 3.

Also, there's a random courtyard with random alpacas. I don't know why. I wasn't with any spanish speakers at the time so I couldn't ask. I just waved.

Always with the alpacas.

We adventured on a city bus (they don't look official, BUT THEY ARE) to the home of one of my colleagues who lives there. He is heading up a nonprofit with some local teachers, to aid and support kids who are aging out of orphanages and group homes. Foster care isn't really a Thing in Peru, so for most of these kids they don't have much of an idea about what living alone or cooking or getting around a city even looks like. I mean it would be a lot for any 18-year-old, but particularly when you've never even seen the life you're trying to live. It's very cool work they are doing, and it was fun to meet his friends and other people involved in his organization, and some of the kids he is working with.

Also the view from his house is not shabby.

We had Pervuian pizza for dinner. Peruvian pizza is a lot like American pizza except you have to walk to the carry-out place to order it, and then it takes several hours (!) because Peru.

While we waited, we went to a Peruvian grocery store, because grocery shopping in new places is one of my MOST FAVORITE THINGS to do when traveling in a new place. I bought all manner of fun snacks and treats to bring home.

Why are these juice boxes this shape, besides simply to delight me?

purple maize!

it's super dry and cold. my lips needed help. this seems legit yes?

Also, we had Inca Kola! I don't know why this delights me so much, it's basically just a super sweet tropical Sun Drop, and yet. Delightful.

I bought Mark an Inca Kola shirt to bring home. Oh yes I did. WHAT. HE LIKES SHIRTS.

I actually did some other fun shopping and wandering in our downtime in Cusco, with one of my colleagues who is also prone to such things. Places stay open late, and shopping in the dark in crowds of people was totally fun! (I'm not being sarcastic in the least.)

There were some really nice stores with beautiful clothes and hats, and I splurged on some amazing alpaca-cashmere scarves in bright colors that I could not walk away from, and a tunic sweater for Charlotte.

I also got to haggle in some little stalls for cute kitch, like coin purses and alpaca ornaments and these tiny Peruvian style hats that I cannot wait for my children to adorn their winter coats with. They're so charming. I'm charmed! SO CHARMED.

Less charming: since most bathrooms don't provide toilet paper, there is TP for sale everywhere, by the roll. Everyone just keeps a roll in their purse. It both makes all the sense in the world and yet none at all. By the end of the trip it made me smile to see it everywhere on every street corner and even roadside farm stands. Ha.

And thus ends this post, with toilet paper.

Hippie Bullsh!t Coffee and Other Quick Takes

1.) I bought some hippie bullsh!t coffee at Fresh Market a few weeks ago. I got sucked in because I had a taste for cold caramel coffee in a bottle, and the packaging is so pretty! Good font choice! Matte labels! And on the side there is a funny blurb written by someone admitting to be a blurber! It was all very enchanting, except it said things about how it doesn't have any of those "nasty chemicals" in it like other coffee (YES IT ACTUALLY SAID THAT), and I could not have rolled my eyes harder. Y'all! Once again, brief lesson: everything has chemicals. Everything is made of chemicals. Nothing but chemicals actually. Yes. EVERYTHING. Full stop.

But despite my eye rolling, and knowing it would not actually make me "focus" in any "natural" way, I bought it and drank it and it was delicious. Excellent use of one dollar next time you're at Fresh Market. Hippie bullsh!t coffee: RECOMMEND.

(Children who photobomb coffee pics for blog post: not included.)

2.) Mark took Charlotte to a park a few weeks ago, and in case you were wondering if she only likes to take selfies with me? Nope. Girl loves a good pic with Daddy too. I mean, who wouldn't? He's a pretty awesome human.

3.) We started a thing last month with a friend and preschool classmate of Anneliese's, whose big sister gets dropped off at school before his mom takes him to church on a route that goes right past our bus stop, at the exact time we are outside waiting on the bus. Which means Nathan and I did a lot of waving at them as they drove by, until we realized hey! Anneliese could just... get in their car, and save me a trip of loading up the babies and taking her to school.

So that's the story of why there are now two kids at the bus stop with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays (those are the days only Anneliese goes). They both love it. It's fun.

4.) When I was in Minnesota I got the worst chapped lips of my life, I think. I was using lip balm, just not enough I guess, or not often enough. One night when I was home I needed some and didn't have any in bed, so I asked Mark for his out of his night stand, and the next morning, I kid you not -- MY LIPS WERE HEALED. Like, almost completely better. Overnight. A second night and they were as good as new.

I can't believe the small fortune I have spent in the last decade on fancy lip balms, when REGULAR OLD CHAP STICK is basically a miracle balm. Y'all! Buy this! I am now officially a chap stick evangelist. Recommend.

5.) My new identity as a Kindle user is coming along. I like it. It is handy. It was especially handy for traveling. And for reading in the evenings in bed when my doctor-designed Sleep Plan (capital S, capital P, it is a PLAN) dictates that I should not have lights on. And e-ink is safe reading in the evening hours of dimness. Anyway! Guess who else likes the Kindle?

Our library website has a great page where you can sort the children's e-reader books they have, by topic and grade level. So that means Nathan can see a berjillion book choices, and two clicks sends them to our house in minutes. For free! LIVING IN THE FUTURE IS SO GREAT Y'ALL. In related news, I think someone might be getting his own (very basic) Kindle for Christmas, since someone's mommy is tired of sharing.

6.) Speaking of Nathan and reading, he picked out this book from the dollar spot at Target a few weeks ago:

Yep, that's Moby Dick. Most boring book in the history of books and English. (I love Melville, but I freaking hate that book.) Anyway all he saw was chapter book! one dollar! sperm whale on the cover! and he had to have it. It's a thing I would never say no to, of course, so he bought it and read it and then sent Another Nathan this adorable email about it and oh my lands.

This is why we let kids read adaptations of boring books we hate: because it's surprising that a whale would eat someone's leg, and he's guessing the whale must have been a girl. WELL.

7.) Still speaking of reading, I read this last week and found it just delightful. A lady who loved the Little House books visits all the sites in real life, and finds some disillusioning and some lovely.

This isn't the best LHOTP travel guide you can find, nor the best biographical info, but it doesn't intend to be either of those things - just a funny thoughtful lady traveling to Little House sites and writing about it, from her perspective. Really fun book.

8.) One last book thing! Another Nathan and I, unbeknownst to one other, both checked this book out of our respective libraries last week. A book about friends and influence and I mean... haaaaa okay universe. Good one.

9.) We let the kids try for a three-way sleepover last week. Usually this is just a Nathan/Anneliese thing, every Friday night, but Charlotte always wants to join, and so we let her try. We had done it once before and it was fine, but this one was doomed.

This photo was taken pre-doom. It was super cute until it wasn't.

10.) It got very cold this week, and the girls look very cute in their cold weather clothes. That is all.

Fridays With Anneliese

After weeks of little Anneliese being weepy, and trying to make time for just our sweet middlest by herself, we have kind of worked ourselves into a nice Friday routine with her. (It's the only morning of the week when Charlotte and Nathan are both at school, but she isn't.)

We bring Nathan to his track club before school, and then drop Charlotte off at church, and then we go to Starbucks for a coffee and a cookie. We talk about whatever she wants to, and she tells me about her friends and her favorite colors and asks questions I could never fully explain to a four-year-old ("what is money? why can't we see it? is it like God, like it's there but we can't see it? why can I hear my heart beating when I am trying to sleep? maybe some day can we find a new swing for the swingset but like one that has rainbows on it?") but it's a good time to be with her and listen, and we both love it.

If Mark is off work, we leave Ali home napping and go do something with just us. One week we got no-good-reason pedicures together, which was awesome and sweet.

Or, when Ali is with us, Anneliese is glad to have time with me at home. She colors or paints, glues things she finds around the house to paper, and calls it an art project. (Please no one tell me we are trashy if my children think that beer bottle caps are "treasures.")

She still wants to color pictures for people, and write letters too, even though all her letters say the same thing, exactly, the only thing she knows how to write: Hi I love you Love Anneliese.

(It's also what I write on a note in her lunch box every day, because it's the only thing I'm sure she can read. Hi Anneliese, I love you! Love Mommy. And she keeps them all in a little sandwich baggie in her room, even though they're all basically the same, because she is just the best.)

Most Friday mornings she also FaceTimes with Another Nathan in Minnesota, not that she has a whole lot to say, but she likes to see him and giggle and tell him about nothing,

Some weeks she will go on outings with Mark, whatever errands he has that he's glad for her "help" with, or to get things at Costco and eat pizza there together. She loves some special time with him too.

She, like all of us. sometimes needs one on one love, that is only about her. And especially in what seems to be a hard season for her, we want to give extra of that, and more extra, and more.

Also she's just really fun and sweet to hang out with.

Yay September

It's September! I love September. It is still warm, hot even, but not opressively so. Feels like fall is coming but the chill itself isn't here yet. Kids are back to school and full of energy and smiles. Facebook is a dream of first-day photos, and very little arguing or stress. A routine is coming back. The whole lovely fall is still ahead of us, to look forward to. I like that.

I'm not sure what else I have to say about that besides... yay September?

So here, look at some pictures instead.

Nathan and I went to Starbucks with our library books and it was lovely. Often I am a chatterbox, and he can be one too, but sometimes when I want to be with someone, but also be quiet, he is just the best.

(Mark also gets millions of points in this department.)

Anneliese and Charlotte snuggled on the couch for a bit. This is rare. So I took a picture.

Also Charlotte and I took some selfies, because we just do that a lot.

Note the "I just stopped sucking my thumb for this pic" thumbs up that is the clear mark of a Goettsch child.

Aaaaaand here is a sperm whale wearing a onesie, because emu says I don't know how to blog without mentioning a sperm whale, so why not prove her right?

Also, I feel very sure no one reading this (THAT'S RIGHT I SAID NO ONE) is has ever seen a sperm whale wearing a onesie. So... you're all welcome. (Nathan also says you're welcome.)

Also heeeeeeeeey my sweet Montreat friend Liz was here last night. We went to dinner which was meh and got lost in an office building parking deck because I thought I knew I shortcut (spoiler alert! I didn't) but the drinks were good and the company was great, and here is part of our little dinner group and besides my adorable Marky, mostly I just want to say isn't Liz SO PRETTY?

I mean she is a wonderful human too, of course, but seriously so! pretty! She's my favorite thing about Utah. (I have never been to Utah but I can still say this with certainty.) Even the MoTab choir is only a very distant second. Yes, I get to call it the MoTab choir I HAVE A PRETTY FRIEND WHO LIVES THERE SO I CAN USURP THEIR COOL NICKNAMES. (Our other friend in that pic is Amy. She is pretty fantastic too.)

That's all I've got for today. Happy September.

The End of This Summer

Well since labor day is over and Nathan started back to school last week and the girls start back to preschool tomorrow, I guess it means summer is over... and I feel complicated about that. I don't know whether to feel relieved that this season is passed (because it kinda sucked), or cry because it isn't what I wanted to be and I don't get to go back to re-do it, time being one-directional and kind of a bummer like that.

I am trying to think less about Mark traveling so much, less about the sad screamy-baby months, less about the best friend goodbye, less about the largely-untouched bucket list of family fun -- and think more about the lovely moments (yes! they were there! swearsies!) and fun trips and and new memories. I'm trying. I am! But I'm having trouble shaking that overall, it wasn't what I wanted it to be, and now it's over.

Blah.

At least we did up our last day of summer in style. And by "in style" I mean in a frenzy. Although you would never know it from this here, right?

Besides Charlotte being halfway out of the picture (even after I tilted the camera to accommodate her), and Ali working on her poetic Thoreau-contemplating-Walden gaze, we look like a completely together and un-frazzled lot, yes? Right? SAY YES.

So anyway our frenzy involved taking an extra friend, Beatrice, for the morning (there was a fifth kid) (of course there was a fifth kid) (she is a friend of Anneliese's and her mom needed to work and she is a dream to have around, and after a few days of Anneliese being weepy, she needed some happy distraction so I have never been gladder to have a fifth kid, actually) and then getting Nathan on the bus and Ali to her first day of MMO (see, that's how the fifth kid thing balances out, you send two others to school).

Also, it should not be called MMO, not only because I'm an aunt, not a mom here (and isn't it all about me?) but because I am not the only non-mom who might want or have a kid in the program, and the language around it is gross, and I will begin my campaign to change it shortly.

Like after some more coffee.  Several weeks's worth.

So Ali went to church and I took the big (big?) (middle?) girls out for coffee treats, which was really fun and cute until Anneliese spilled hers and then even Beatrice couldn't quell the weepies. Sigh.

Starbucks with outdoor seating + September = RECOMMEND.

We regrouped and went back to church to do preschool orientations, which were all fine and easy. Charlotte's teacher is one we already know well (both Nathan and Anneliese also had her, but at different ages). Anneliese's teacher is new to us, but seems like maybe the most on it preschool teacher I have yet to encounter, so I'm pretty thrilled about that match.

Anneliese found her coat hook and she loves it.

She also took posession of a rainbow nametag.

Charlotte danced in the hallway with no one watching, as she is wont to do, and then stopped and got all smiley instead when I wanted her to do more.

Then Beatrice and Anneliese climbed on her, because we are the dream family to have lingering in preschool hallways when teachers are trying to do orientations.

Seriously you want us around. We are delightful. And definitely not loud or anything.

And then we skipped grocery shopping to swim in the pool because y'all, the schedule only had so much room.

Also it was hot as the blazes outside. Is it September? It was like mid-nineties today. I literally sat under a bush by the pool like freaking Jonah, just for a tiny spot of shade. I took a picture but it ain't pretty so you don't get to see it.

And then we went back to church to pick Ali up from Aunt's Morning Out™ because apparently three round-trips in one morning is how much I needed to drive to church today. Oh wait! I also did two more, for children's choir in the afternoon, after Nathan's carpool! Yay! Five round-trips! My life is full of meaning and purpose. Wait, what? Anyway.

Ali did just fine at church this morning and was smiling and happy to see me after lunch and she napped hard after her big morning.

But not before she pooped all over me and then (after I took my shirt off) spit up all over my back and down my jeans so I got to do extra laundry and get an extra shower today! I also got to change not one but TWO sets of poopy underwear, AND wait in a carpool line that was longer and slower than it would have taken the bus to get home. Sigh, again.

MEANING AND PURPOSE.

But actually it was not a bad day, just a frenzy. After a few sad no-Another-Nathan tears, Nathan had a fun first children's choir of the year, and he and Anneliese were giggly and playful all evening, excited for her school tomorrow reading books together and practicing writing. Anneliese wanted to write a letter, so Nathan showed her how to write hi and I love you, and I think the love might have just been a heart shape, but it still totally counts. Also she wanted to dot all her i's with hearts, which I would have (probably patronizingly) discouraged, but Nathan sweetly told her "okay just make them as tiny as you can," which is why he's a better person than I am.

(Queen poopy crabbypants went to bed early. If you pretended not to hear her tantruming upstairs, watching Nathan and Anneliese together was lovely.)

Whoever tells me to *cherish every moment* gets a chair to the face.

Hm  it occurs to me (brace yourself, obvious epiphany coming up) that sometimes real life tedium and lovely tender moments happen all at the same time, and maybe my disappointing summer can be disappointing but also okay too? No happy ending needed. No brilliant closure better-next-year takeaways required. Just letting it be what it was, missing what it wasn't, and now starting the next thing.  I think I will try to be okay with that.

Some Things I Have Been Mulling

Here are some things I have been mulling in my head this week (brace yourself, this is bound to be profound) (*shakes head no*):

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I do think overall, I like my iphone better than my android phone, but that is MOSTLY because of imessage. And it isn't that imessage is inherently better than anything else, it's just that everyone else is on it, so it is therefore convenient. Herd mentality something something. And the stream/cloud photo sharing feature is also kind of great. I find myself using that a lot with various people.

BUT I will say these things about the iphone vs my old android:
1. The camera is not better.
2. The battery frankly sucks.
3. The auto-correct on the keyboard thinks it is super smart but it is not as helpful as it could/should be, and not nearly as smart as the android spelling corrector.
4. I am about to have a big ol' fight with my home button, because I have one of those glass screen protectors on it, which means I need a button cover, yet good button covers (which go flush against the curve of the button DO NOT EXIST. Can someone please get on this?
5. Why can you not purchase content from within the kindle app? (Or even link to the mobile site to do it?) (Or purchase downloadable content from the Amazon app?) Stop forcing me into Safari! Just whyyyy?
6. I have this new chevron case for my phone (my other one got dyed blue in my jeans pocket and I keep forgetting to run it through the dishwasher), which is cute but cheap and hmmm I'm still deciding.

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These are all very first world housewife problems, so I should share here with a pic what I already told facebook: Charlotte dropped a crayon in the potty while she was pooping the other day, in case you think three-year-olds don't have problems too. (Like... nine seconds after I took this pic.)

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Nathan has been asking a lot of questions about coffee recently. Like, how to make it. And what is that brown dirt stuff in the bag? And then trying to clarify it all -- so, the brown stuff is the coffee, and the water you pour over the brown stuff is just water that tastes like coffee, but that's not the actual coffee, just the coffee you drink? When I told him the coffee itself was actually ground-up beans that had been picked and then cooked, it blew his little mind. We had to look up a YouTube video. Coffee comes from farmers! So does chocolate! It's also beans! And they look very similar as a plant but then they make foods that look very different by the time we eat and drink them, and isn't that cool mom? And sometimes you can put coffee in chocolate! -- so anyway, now he calls it my liquid coffee which isn't actually coffee, just water that tastes like coffee because you poured it over some ground up beans. "Are you going to drink more coffee mom? Like the liquid kind." Yes, sweetie. People know what you mean when you say drink coffee. In related news, BUDDING PEDANT UP FOR GRABS, LOVES WEEKEND VISITS.

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Also, those look like children who need their own tervises, yes? They want to drink coffee "coffee" like mommy, which is sweet and I will indulge it forever, but maybe I don't want my cups all dirty every day, and maybe we should find some kid-sized ones and splurge, finally? I think I shall procure them for Christmas maybe.

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Everyone else is using the Timehop app, right? This app really speaks to my soul, since I have basically been my own walking Timehop for years. I've been using it for some time, like (I assumed) everyone else in America. But then I mentioned it to a friend, a very smart friend (who is sometimes admittedly clueless when it comes to the thumb of pop culture) (like, maybe once he asked me who Taylor Swift was? I can't remember the details) (*cough*) and he had never heard of it so maybe other people haven't either?

Anyway. It's a simple premise. It tells you what you were doing x number of years ago today. If you're thinking this is information you might not want or need, let me help you understand something: YOU ARE WRONG. Because of this app, I know that seven years ago today, my current second-grader was exactly a month old, and looks like this:

So. It's an app you need, is what I'm saying.

That's all I got today. I will go have some more liquid coffee now.

First Day of Second Grade

Nathan started second grade today, y'all. SECOND GRADE. Every year I am all-caps shocked that he is a year older, a grade ahead in school, etc etc, and I am going to go ahead and assume now, three kids and seven years into this parenting thing, that that will never stop.

SECOND. GRADE.

(He spilled hot chocolate on those yellow shorts he was so insistent on wearing for his first day, which he also insisted on putting on before drinking said hot chocolate, even though someone super smart *ahem* advised against it, and fifteen minutes before we took this photo, there was a little bit of eye rolling and laundering-by-baby-wipe-and-hair-dryer, but it worked out okay. For his shorts. Which he loves. So.)

So he was very excited and easy about his first day, but he did want me to drive him. And then he wanted me to come in with him (Mark is out of town so that meant parking several blocks away and schlepping all four kids inside, which went better than I expected, actually), and then he was a little teary and wanted extra hugs, but then he was excited and fine again.

He has a desk! Inside which he can put books and notebooks and and and! (Not just a table.) His favorite friend from last year is in his class again, and his teacher-to-be is on maternity leave, but I am trying to have faith that the interim situation will be sorted out and he will be none worse for the wear. And in the meantime, desks!

So we got him settled, and then I buckled the other kids into the minivan, instagrammed a picture of him, and drove through starbucks with my back-to-school tears, because I am a mom cliche.

SECOND! GRADE!