Look Who’s 40!

This guy!  Yep, the giddy guy in long johns after a day of skiing who still worked out to a YouTube video.  This was the last night of his 30's, and evidently he wasn't going over the hill without a fight.  Honestly, this guy is somethin' else.  He is a go-getter and a man of many talents, but most importantly, he's a great friend, father, and husband.  I'm so happy that we were able to celebrate you with such a fun weekend!

Sunapee is a quintessential New England town in New Hampshire.  However, it's unique in that is has both a beautiful lake and a Vail Ski Resort right next to each other!  With our Epic passes, we'll be able to ski there multiple times this season.  Plus it's less than 2 hours from Boston!  Score!  I should mention that it was the coldest weekend of the year, and we skied in 0 degree weather!  Thank God the sun was out!!!

Jamil spent half a day with Mariam on the practice slopes while I skied with the boys.  At the end of the day, he decided to take her down a Green.  After Gabriel, Abraham, and I waited for what felt like forever, Mariam and Jamil finally made it down the mountain.  As you can see from her eyes below, and from the soreness in Jamil's arm from picking her up, I believe she needed a little more time on the practice slopes.

On day 2 of skiing, Mariam was thrilled to join our neighbors and friend from kindergarten on the bunny slopes!  Jocelyn and Evelyn spend many weekends here at the mountain and motivated Mariam to be much more independent.  However, after not quite enough practice, she thought she was ready for the lift up to the big Green.  I'll spare you the details, but it was brutal.  Thankfully, Mariam only remembers how awesome it was to ski with her friends.  Me, on the other hand, I'm spent just thinking about it.

Day 3! While Mariam and I perfected her turns and getting up on her own after falling, the boys worked their way up to the Black Diamonds with Jamil!  Jamil and I are constantly in ahh since we didn't ski until our senior year of high school and college!  They are so fortunate!

We ended our 3 days on the slopes by skiing a Green all together!  Mariam made it down the mountain faster than me with only a couple of minor falls.  What a difference a couple of days makes!  Of course, this was a breeze for the boys and the perfect scenery for me.

After changing out of our ski gear, we walked across the street to a frozen Lake Sunepee.  Wildwood Smokehouse was just down the road, and we barely made it in for Jamil's birthday dinner (a quaint BBQ joint with no reservations and limited seating due to COVID).

It is a running joke in our family about how Jamil never owned a pair of Girbaud Jeans.  40 year olds, tell me you remember the Girbaud era!  Well, thanks to Ebay, our kids no longer have to hear his sad saga.  We just need a 90's party to bust these bad boys out in style!

Back at the cottage (Airbnb), we enjoyed banana walnut cupcakes (one of Jamil's favorites) and listened to Mariam play "Happy Birthday" on her guitar.  Somehow I only have a picture of Jamil with the guitar.

By accident, a tradition began back when Jamil and I were high school sweethearts.  With the help of friends and family, I gifted him a book of letters on his18th birthday.  It was such a treasured gift, that we did it again for his 30th and now for his 40th.  Thank you to everyone who has contributed to these books.  Your thoughtful words and memories on paper are the best gifts of all!  Happy 40th, Jamil!

We love you!

Happy New Year

Oh Happy Day!  More than any year in recent history, so many of us are welcoming 2021 with hope of a better tomorrow.  I was tempted to let our personal struggles of the year flood this page, but I came to my senses and am making a gratitude list instead.  This is definitely an overdue practice I need in my life, so why not start today?

-The health of my family

-My dad continuing to fight cancer into 2021

-A visit to spend time with extended family

-Summer pool time with Aunt Leila & Uncle Claude

-Playing with sweet cousins at Uncle Casey and Aunt Diana’s

-Meeting the latest addition to the family, baby Chadwick

-The love of Grandparents

-Great Grandparents still alive to share their fascinating stories

-A forced and much needed slower pace of life

-A spring full of reading books in a hammock with rare and glorious PNW weather

-A squadron family whose love and appreciation will be cherished always

-A wise and sincere therapist

-The opportunity to live in the Pacific North West and New England in 2020

-A minivan that held us all + Saif for an epic road trip across the US

-Jamil’s job security

-Health insurance

-Air Force friends who stay connected through distance during a year when it’s nearly impossible to make new friends

-Friends who easily pick up where we left off

-The Golden Girls

-A neighborhood full of kids who are playing outside in masks daily! ❤️

-Masks

-A white Christmas, sort of...a little left over snow from a winter storm

-Snowplowing trucks in MA...talk about efficient!

-Mail carriers 🙏🏼

-Sledding hills in the neighborhood...we used to have to drive hours and pay for this!

-Living in a community with morally responsible citizens

-Living 5 min from Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s...it’s the small things

-A rental home with space for us to spread out

-A “therapy” dog who is so happy we’re home

-Soft toilet paper

-Oprah’s Super Soul, Jen’s For The Love, Richard Rohr, and the Liturgist podcasts that take me to church

-Flash briefing news that’s keeps me quickly informed

-Two mornings a week to send my kids to school and have time to run errands

-TEACHERS going above and beyond

-Leaders who are not afraid to make sacrifices for the whole

-A vaccine

-Science

-Religion

-Spirituality

-A change in administration

-Watching the first female VP with my daughter

-Music easily streaming through our speakers daily

-Mariam’s personal playlist

-Abraham’s desire to use his own money to buy thoughtful gifts for his neighbors

-Gabriel holding onto his childhood and playing outside

-Soccer for the boys

-Dance for Mariam

-Harvard for Jamil

-Time for me to breathe and catch up on this blog

-Turning 40

-Fall in New England

-The TJ Maxx family of stores that is my happy place

-Quality television

-Christmas Movies (doesn't always fall under Quality TV but grateful nonetheless, particularly this year)

-A sunroom that functions as relaxation, reading, yoga, meditation, dance party, min tramp, and my personal office space

-Earl Grey, Chai, and Ginger Turmeric Teas

-Our first king sized bed (although it’s only ours for a year)

-The AF keeping us on our toes about our next assignment (slight sarcasm implied)

-The resilience our family shows through each move

-And even the pain and suffering that are chiseling their way into our beautiful lives

We have created a family tradition of bowling on New Year’s Eve, thanks to the Weiner and Tellez families for inviting us in 2017.  We’re able to simply show up and have some innocent fun before the night gets too wild, and we’re safely home to ring in the New Year together (awake or asleep)!  I just find it comical that Mariam associates putting on her fancy, sparkly clothes with going “bowling ball”...quite the irony.  However, I will say that the Kings Bowling Alley we went to this year was the fanciest place we’ve bowled since living in Seoul, Korea!  Currently, they are limiting capacity, have clear shields between each lane, don’t allow food or drink in the bowling area, and require masks.  This was important to us, as this was out first indoor family outing during COVID.  We’ve tried hard to make sacrifices to keep ourselves and others safe, so I do have to say that there was a sense of guilt going out.  Thankfully, there was only one other family bowling on the other side of the alley, and I feel like we were able to treat ourselves responsibly, regardless of our lowest scoring games ever.  We just blame it on 2020.  The Musas are definitely looking forward to bowling a high scoring game in 2021 in a packed, gritty joint eating pizza and playing in the arcade!  Cheers, friends!  We hope to hug you soon!

Merry Christmas 2020

First Day of School 2020

To say this school year is just plain wacko is an understatement, but one thing I know to be true...Thank God for Teachers!  I truly hope this year helps us prioritize our school systems and teachers in the future!

This year may have been delayed serval times, my kids may all have started online in a less than organized manner (I'm being very kind), but they are all now in school (for the time being) for what we are calling a hybrid model.  To keep class sizes smaller, they have divided the district into 2 cohorts (A & B).  Therefore, one group goes to school Mon/Tues, everyone is online on Wed, and the other group attends in person on Thur/Fri.  To break it down even further, they come home at lunch time and continue school online in the afternoon.  Therefore, they are in school for 4 hours twice a week.

Let me begin with the positive; simply put, we are healthy and certainly have a lot of privilege.  Thankfully Gabriel and Abraham are older, hard workers, responsible, and are capable of doing well in school without a lot of support...for the most part.  Sweet Mariam, on the other hand, is super social and simply a 5 year old who desires to do well in school but needs supervision and guidance....cue Mommy.  I'm trying really hard not to complain, but please just let me say...I have been staying home with babies or working around limited preschool schedules for 12 years...12 years!  Of course, we would be hit with a worldwide pandemic the year I send my baby off to kindergarten.  Oh, and it's also the year that we are living in a new part of the country in a furnished home for only one year.  Therefore, what little sanity I have left until we move again is unfortunately not being devoted to a new job.  We all have our individual stories about how difficult this school year (including last spring) has been.  So just let me say, I hear you!