2nd Annual Strength of Moms Retreat

A year and a half ago, my friend Dawn and I lamented that it's a shame that given how much fun our group of friends has together, that we don't actually travel somewhere together, just us moms. Wouldn't it be nice to hang out without being interrupted by our children or planning our day around their needs? The more we talked about it, the more we realized that if this is something we wanted to do, why wouldn't we try to make it happen?  Maybe we were intimidated by the word "travel," which makes us think of a longer trip involving a plane; i.e., time and money, which are in short supply for those of us with young children and exorbitant daycare costs.  So we started small, because honestly, it's not about where we go or for how long, it's about spending time with our friends.  I suggested that all we needed was a cabin in the woods and a free weekend.

Out of that conversation came what was to become known as the annual "Strength of Moms Retreat."  We purposefully called it a "retreat," because we know moms have trouble taking time for themselves, but might feel like they could justify leaving town for a "retreat". And we refer to it as an annual retreat because we knew it would be so awesome that we'd want to do it again. And we did.  Even though it poured on us last year and a tornado warning interrupted our dinner and sent us seeking cover in the basement, we still had a fabulous time and came back for our second annual retreat last weekend.

So what do a group of women do on a girls weekend? My friend's husband (who will remain nameless) thinks this is what happened.

Our weekend actually looked more like this. 

A little wine and a game of cards. Okay, Cards of Humanity did get a little raunchy, but once 11:00 p.m. rolled around, we lamented how late it was and crawled into our beds to enjoy a night of sleep with no children to wake us up.

Much of the weekend was pretty chill, which is how we hoped it would be. We went for walks, took naps, sunbathed on the pontoon in the middle of the lake and ate well.  And we did a lot of talking.  Connecting with other moms is the most important and meaningful part of the weekend for me. We've celebrated a lot of joys over the years, but the group that came together last weekend has also endured many challenges from divorces to illnesses to diagnoses that suddenly pose an unknown future for our children.  Amidst a lot of laughter, there were also some tears.  Some of the moms are new friends and others have been with me since the early weeks of my parenting journey, but we were a camaraderie of moms all in the same stage of life and to be together for a weekend was pretty darn special.

This Stage of Life? It's Hard

The blog post, This Stage of Life? It's Hard was showing up all over my friends' Facebook walls recently.  Maybe that's not surprising given that many of my friends fit the demographic the author addresses - 30-something moms with two, three, even four kids, ages newborn to seven or eight.  But what was surprising was realizing how many of my friends feel the same way I do. Because my friends are awesome and all superwomen in my eyes. And there they were publicly admitting that this stage of life is damn hard. 

I need to remind myself that it's okay to admit that and I'm not less of a mom for it. I've proven I can handle a lot, but that doesn't mean that these little parenting and life challenges, when all added up, leave me feeling pretty depleted.  So that's why on Mother's Day, while seemingly all the other moms were posting pictures of themselves with their children on Instagram and Facebook, I did what I often do on Mother's Day, and that's spend time without my children. Acknowledging that this stage in life is hard is the first step in working on not just surviving this stage, but enjoying it, and for me, that means I need to learn how to recharge.  Without a plan for the day, I ended up on my bike and headed towards the river where I laid in the sun, read a book and actually accomplished something I'm not very good at - relaxing.

Even though I was pedaling uphill on my way home, the exercise, outdoors and time to myself had started to recharge me and this stage in life felt a little less hard. 

Goodbye to Our German Family

After a long wait at the airport with four inpatient children scanning the faces of everyone who walked through the international arrivals security checkpoint, out finally walked Oma Heidi and Mama Danny.  It was a tearful reunion for Mama Danny, who could not stop touching the daughter she hadn't seen in nine months, our au pair, Celina.  And Oma Heidi could not wait to get her hands on my four little ones, the children she'd only previously known via Skype. This is the woman they had come to know as the one to keep us well-stocked with German chocolate and Nutella, thanks to her frequent care packages, and here she was in person and larger than life. 

The evolution of waiting for Oma Heidi and Mama Danny

I can see where Celina gets her personality from after meeting Danny.  Both are quiet and calm and quick to flash a friendly smile. She was as eager to accompany on a trip to Target as she was to sightsee with four children in tow.

Oma Heidi was a hoot! She wanted to kiss and hug everyone and treated us instantly like family.  Like Danny, it was her first time in the U.S. and she embraced all the new sights and experiences with gusto. It didn't bother her that no one spoke or understood German.  She nonetheless chatted it up with anyone and everyone. 

Back at our house in St. Paul, the nine of us crowded around the dining room table for a simple dinner of soup and bread before our guests crashed for the night. They would need their rest because we were going to wear them out with early mornings, sightseeing, and the chaos of a house with four young children and three other adults under one roof.

Celina had previously committed to attending prom with some American friends on Heidi and Danny's first Saturday with us, so I played tour director on her behalf.  I was more than happy to do this because I love showing guests around my adopted state and bringing them to places my au pairs might not think to visit, or even know about. In the case of our German guests, it was also an opportunity to practice my German and get to know my au pair's family.

So that Saturday morning, Kiera and I drove Oma Heidi and Mama Danny over to Minneapolis where we enjoyed the view of the Stone Arch Bridge and Mississippi River from the perch the Guthrie Theater's "Endless Bridge."  We walked through Mills Ruins Park and along the bridge, and then tried some clothes on inside a "mobile boutique" (think food truck parked on a city street, but instead of serving food, they sell clothes).  We also visited the Basilica of St. Mary and the famous "Spoonbridge and Cherry" sculpture in the Walker Art Museum's Sculpture Garden.  Road construction forced me to take the scenic route home, which lead us around the Chain of Lakes and its parkland and $1,000,000+ homes. 

In the afternoon we attended a birthday party for two friends of the kids.  Mama Danny and Oma Heidi were great sports.  They played with the kids and helped them on a scavenger hunt to find all the Hershey's Kisses hidden in the garden. 

Our reflections in the blue glass of the Guthrie Theater.

On the Endless Bridge at the Guthrie Theater.  It overlooks the Mississippi River and the Stone Arch Bridge.

At the Basilica in Minneapolis

In front of the famous "Spoonbridge and Cherry" sculpture

Hunting for Hershey's Kisses at a birthday party

Oma Heidi and Mama Danny helped out in the hunt for Hershey's Kisses.

On the way home from the party, we made a stop at the Adirondack chair for a photo op.

Bright and early the next day, I hauled everyone down to southern Minnesota to visit Forestville/Mysterious Cave State Park, which is a two-hour drive from St. Paul. I'm a big fan of our state park system, yet had never heard of this particular park until about two weeks prior. It was an opportunity to get out of the city and show Oma Heidi and Mama Danny rural Minnesota.  They said the countryside reminded them of Germany.

I'm glad I insisted on packing a cooler with lunches, because there was nowhere around the park to eat.  We had to drive on multiple dirt roads to even access the park and were so deep into rural Minnesota that I was surprised to find a modern visitor center at the end of the road.  We quickly ate our lunches so that we could join the 12:00 p.m. tour. Well, almost all of us joined the tour.  There must have been something lost in translation because it wasn't until we were in the visitors center and Oma Heidi saw the pictures of the cave that she realized what the word meant in English and she wanted nothing to do with it. I'm terribly claustrophobic myself, but the park ranger promised he wouldn't turn the lights out on us, so off we went. 

After a very informative hour-long tour, we emerged from the depths of the earth to see sunlight again.  We moved on to Forestville, which is a small pioneer village operated by the Minnesota Historical Society. Think Colonial Williamsburg on a micro scale.  Unfortunately, we were a week too early for the historical reenactors and tours of the buildings, so we only got to walk around outside.  Danny and I took Soren and Matteo on a hike up to the top of a ridge. The boys were so spent by that point that Danny and I had to carry them on our backs most of the way back down. As I had predicted, Matteo was asleep before we even exited the park.

Anywhere there was a stream or standing water, beautiful blue wild flowers blanketed the bank. 

Matteo and Soren were the only ones to join Mama Danny and me all the way up to the ridge line.

I had planned to stop in Northfield, an adorable college town, for an early dinner, but the kids were so tired and cranky, or as the Germans would say, fix und fertig, that I aborted that plan. I didn't trust that their behavior would be suitable for even the most casual of restaurants, so I skipped the scenic route, put the minivan on cruise control and headed straight back to St. Paul.   

Because I had to work during the week and had a couple evening commitments, I saw less of Oma Heidi and Mama Danny the rest of their stay. But I still got to enjoy their cooking!  As the one generally responsible for all the meal planning, food shopping and cooking, let me tell you what a very rare treat it is to come home from work and have dinner ready. We enjoyed some really relaxing evenings during their stay thanks to relieving us from cooking. 

Even though I didn't get to spend as much time with them as I would have liked, it's more important that they got to spend time with Celina and experience her life here. Both her mom and grandmother told me they never doubted Celina's ability to be an au pair, yet to see her manage my four rambunctious children and the day-to-day tasks of our household must have had a profound impact because they radiated with pride.  

It was sad to say goodbye because we enjoyed Oma Heidi and Mama Danny's visit and we don't know when we'll see them again.  However, I told Danny that I hope we will be able to come to Germany to attend Celina's wedding, whenever that may be. 

Badass

I've always said having a c-section is not the "easy way out" (no pun intended) with it being major abdominal surgery and requiring what is sometimes a slow and painful recovery.  After two c-sections, a surgery for a ruptured ovary and Fallopian tube following an ectopic pregnancy honestly felt like a walk in the park. Yet it's seldom you hear women who've given birth by Cesarean described as amazing or courageous or tough. Those words seem to be reserved for women who have un-medicated, vaginal births. 

As much as I speak up about the Cesarean birth experience in an effort to reclaim that experience from those who try to portray it as an inferior birth experience, I've never thought about the positive things a cesarean reveals about a person.  Instead, I've spent my time defending the experience and trying to put it on an even playing field with the vaginal birth.  It was only after reading the essay My Wife's Cesarean Makes Her a Total Badass that I truly identified with being tough, or "badass" as the author describes his wife. And even though Chris would never be so public about his feelings, I could kind of hear his voice in this essay, which made me teary-eyed when I first read it.