Past Surgery, Onto China

Thankfully, KLC is through her surgery and on the mend. When I say that, I think it somehow minimizes how painful and involved this surgery is. I had surgery last summer to repair my torn meniscus, but that was nothing compared to ACL reconstruction. We both have family members who have had worse surgeries (ie, knee replacements), so let’s just say we’re going to do everything we can to avoid that for us if at all possible.

Anyhow, it’s a good thing that KLC is healthy and a quick healer (not to mention a committed PT patient.) That’s because we are less than two weeks away from our trip to China. Yes, China. I am giving a talk at a conference in Beijing, which means my flight and the hotel are covered by work. So once we found a relatively reasonable flight for KLC and their Co-Parent said she could watch the kids, we’re off.

We’ll have a few days after the conference on our own and we just booked flights from Beijing to Guilin for a long weekend with frequent flyer miles. (Don’t even get me started on their hidden fees, etc. in these airline programs, but it was still cheaper than buying the tickets. I think.) I am super excited about Guilin, but this is just based on a handful of websites that I’ve looked at in the past few days. We’ll have to see if they just have a really good photographer who works for the chamber of commerce.

First up, however, about six days in Beijing. I think we’re going to have too much to see and too little time – especially since we’ll try to keep the walking to somewhat of a minimum because of the new ligament in KLC’s knee. We’re extremely excited for this trip. I’ve never been anywhere in Asia and KLC has always wanted to go to mainland China after spending a year teaching in Taiwan.

I’ll try to update everyone back home on our whereabouts on the blog so you may want to skip the entries beginning on October 8th if travel write-ups bore you.

Now we just have to take of seemingly a thousand or so details for our usual lives before we can head out a week from Saturday …

Out With The Old (Sooner or Later)

We try our very best to keep the house -- and our lives -- as decluttered as possible. This can be an uphill battle. For everything we get rid of, it seems like there is some toy or piece of clothing that is already there to take its place. And that goes for the kids' stuff as well as ours.

One area that we are pretty vigilant about are the shoes for the kids. The goal is that have one pair of whatever they need per season. For example, we try to have one pair of sandals, one pair of sneakers, and one pair of winter boots in the right size for each kid at any time. (KLC and I say one day we might hold ourselves to the same standard, but so far we give ourselves a lot a little more latitude for footwear.)

This works, more or less, until it comes time to actually get rid of last year's pair. This is a picture of the twins' shoes that they wore virtually every day last fall, winter and spring. They spent most of the summer in their sandals, but these were really their every day pair for a year. They just got their new pair so it's time that these get tossed, but they are super cute and they do remind us of their year of being three.

In other news, this will be a busy week for us because KLC is heading in for a little ACL reconstruction. It was a fluke injury -- especially for someone who works out as much as she does. I had surgery on my knee last summer (torn meniscus), and then Zeek, the cat, had essentially the feline equivalent to KLC's surgery last spring. After this, we're hoping everyone in the house can avoid joint issues for at least a year ... or ten.