South Africa Day 8, cont.: First Madikwe Safari

Okay! Back to South Africa we go! When we left off, I took you on a tour of the most amazing beautiful place we've ever stayed, Mateya Safari Lodge. Once we got settled in our spectacular rooms, ate some lunch, and then immediately had a fancy tea, we piled into our Jeep and headed out with our guide Aiden!

Like our guide at Marataba, he was just incredible. So knowledgeable, so full of stories, so happy to tell us all about everything we were seeing for the hours and hours we rode. We learned about the incredible conservation work Susan Mathis and Mateya Lodge made possible in the Madikwe reserve.

They haven't lost an animal to poachers in 7 years and they have the largest concentration of rhinos in South Africa.

And so many elephants!

Like this little guy who was trying to show us how big and tough he was, but then he decided maybe we were bigger and tougher so he scampered off and raised his trunk at a herdmate who was much more his size.

I feel like in Marakele we spotted more individual animals among the bushes and trees, but in Madwike we got to sit back and really observe the interactions of whole groups of animals. Sometimes we sat for close to an hour and watched whole dramas play out. It was absolutely incredible and fascinating and Aiden narrated it all. (I really highly encourage you to watch the videos with sound, Aiden is such a great narrator!)

Like this mama and baby rhino.

Baby was nursing and a single male was roaming through his territory.

THe scorned would-be-lover consoled himself with a drink of water.

We saw lots of giraffes, which remain one of my loves.

They are just the craziest most majestic creatures.

We hadn't seen an African buffalo yet, and we still didn't on that day, but we did see a skull of one!

Because Madwike is a preserve and not a National Park, the rangers have a little more leeway to interfere (according to strict protocols, etc) and they'll sometimes move bones like that closer to the dirt paths (once they're picked clean by every animal that gets something from them) so visitors can see them more easily.

We did see a live buffalo the next day. I didn't get a picture as he was a little ways off, but they are VERY big and also probably wanted to be my friend.

It was a really wonderful first game drive at Madwike and we had no idea how incredible it would get over the two days ahead (spoiler alert: LIONS!).

We stopped for our sundowners and snacks and enjoyed the sunset as we headed back home.

Dinner was at a cozy table in the lodge with a fireplace roaring and then when we got back to our rooms at night the staff had started fires in our bedrooms there as well, with hot water bottles under the sheets.

Since the rooms don't have wifi, no one's phones worked. We had to show the kids how to dial the in-room phone so we could talk to each other and realized they'd never heard a dial tone before. They kept thinking something was wrong with the phone when they turned it on. I was only 24 when Landon was born, but man did we grow up in different worlds in so many ways.

I took a bath in my beautiful bathtub and then slept like a log until our 6 a.m. wakeup call the next morning for our first sunrise game drive in our new preserve!

Saturday Morning at Home

Good morning and happy Saturday!

I have a ton of work emails to catch up on, but I just dropped Claire off for warm-up at a high school swim meet, I'm about to wake Cora up so she can get ready for her swim practice, and Landon and James are already at their respective pools for their own swim practices, so I'm stealing these few minutes between swim carpools to catch up here.

Then I'm going to pilates, maybe, because I'm trying to go to fitness classes again, but I get annoyed at how long they take. (Picture of me above at a class a couple weeks ago; I know they're good for me, but I don't even get sweaty and it's hard to feel like the time is "worth" it. I wish the harder studio was closer to my house.) Anyway! September. I was in DC, then we had our anniversary, and then everyone was home for one whole weekend before we scattered again.

We made use of the time with a new card game - Play Nine - that is a fancier version of the Golf we'd been playing with a regular deck of cards for years.

Despite Landon's face in this picture, he both had fun, refused to follow any rational strategy, and somehow won by so much I had to check my math multiple times.

The pets remain a constant. Maggie continues to occasionally trap herself in the downstairs guest shower with no clue how to get out.

To be clear, she's the one who gets herself inside in the first place. She uses her big head to push open the door that easily swings in and out in both directions, turns around in the shower space, and then stands by the door on the other side of it, with seemingly no clue how she got there or how to ever get out again. Eventually one of us will realize she's missing and go look for her. This is always the first spot to check.

Murphy is settling in nicely. He's very friendly and is always around us. He completely resists cuddling though. Has anyone had a cat who didn't want to cuddle at 18 months old (and only 1 month into being adopted) but then became snuggly later? I'm trying to adjust expectations.

Moose is being more social! He's been jumping on the couch when humans are already on it.

He's doing this by choice, but always looks a little/lot uncomfortable about it.

Landon went on his first swimming recruiting trip! He and James flew to The Ohio State (turns out, the "the" is important) on Thursday.

The schedule was packed with fun for swimmers and parents alike. The school flew out Landon and covered the hotel for James. Both were very impressed with the athletic facilities, which had changed a lot since James went on his own recruiting trip there in 1998! Landon roomed with some swimmers, they both attended a game, and everyone had fun.

James and Landon flew back Sunday morning, landing about 30 minutes after I had taken off for NYC for work. This passing of ships (planes) meant that James and I were apart for 7 days which is the longest we've been apart since we were married! Kind of a funny mielstone after just celebrating our 20th anniversary the week before.

My trip was 5 nights, but my trusty carry-on suitcase (and large "personal item") managed to fit everything I needed.

NYC remains one of my very favorite places to be.

I walked miles and miles in Central Park, reaffirming my plan that James and I are moving here after Cora graduates high school.

Some people have a city adventure in their 20's. Mine will be in my 50's. I'm genuinely very excited about it.

My new firm's NY office is great and I got to meet several more of my partners.

I discovered a gluten-free bakery directly across the street from the office and I ate a pastry and bagel sandwich every morning I was there.

I weighed 4 more pounds when I returned, but I have no regrets.

Except not getting an extra cinnamon roll to go for the flight home.

Speaking of "home," my temporary home in NY was a crazy hotel room at The Lombardy. I booked a normal room, but somehow opened the door to a Titanic stateroom from the early 1900's.

I had a very fancy foyer, a huge living room and dining area (with fire place!), and a full kitchen.

A giant bedroom with clouds on the ceiling.

My bathroom was all green marble and amazing molding and a mysterious black tufted leather door.

That turned out to be a secret entrance from the foyer.

It was really something.

I finished taking my last deposition on Thursday midday and was able to hop on an earlier flight home to reunite with my loves. The plane started boarding while I was still in the Uber to LGA, but I made it! And even the second-to-last-row middle-seat was worth it to get home more than 12 hours earlier than planned.

This weekend I need to catch up on many work things, attend Cora's meet tomorrow, find outfits for our family pictures coming up in a couple weeks, exercise (whether or not in a studio), and catch up on South Africa blog posts. So obviously the first thing I did was switch out the winter/summer bins in my closet. Most of my clothes stay out year-round, but I have two bins that I switch halfway through- sweaters for sundresses, etc. It's going to be 95 today, but it made me feel hopeful that I can wear sweaters soon. Ish. By January for sure.

Let's close out with some favorite outfits of the past couple weeks!

Ayron comes back in a couple weeks for styling and I can't wait. I continue to be amazed at what she puts together in my closet- nothing in the above pictures is new, but it's all worn in a way I hadn't before.

Happy Saturday all!

Twenty Years

On this day, 20 years ago, a 22-year-old me and a 23-year-old James, vowed "to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do us part."

What an insanely naive and optimistic thing to do at those ages, and yet, here we are, having done - and still doing - exactly all those things.

(Side note: I realized one second before this moment that James and I had never talked about the kiss. I assumed he'd keep in mind we were in my childhood church, mere feet away from my pastor, and with all of our family looking on. He did not.)

I don't know why twenty years seems like such a milestone this year, but it does. Twenty seems so solid. It's almost longer than we were alive before we got married. We started dating at 18 and 19 so we've been together longer than we ever existed apart.

I've watched marriages of friends and colleageus survive, thrive, wither, and fail, and sometimes interesting combinations of all four. I don't know what the through line is, but I know a good part of it is luck. Luck that the man I met when he was 19 has evolved into the man he is today at 43. That he is truly my partner, that we compromise, that we have always split home and child duties based on the understanding that for this to work we both have to be giving 100% all the time. That when one has more to give, they give it, because it usually means the other has less. We're partners, in every single sense of the word, and I still jump him in the pantry when the door is closed and the kids are busy.

Decades ago I read a line in a romance book that marriage is "an adventure and a comfort" and that feels as true as anything else I've read about it. It's an adventure- I love how much I still love spending time with James, how much we are still learning together, how I can be brave and bold in my life knowing he's behind me, and it's a comfort- coming home is my favorite thing in the world and home is him on the couch beside me or snuggled under the covers in bed. Marriage is choice and work and patience and faith and actively finding reasons to be in love, to feel lucky, as much as possible.

Even in our hardest years of grad school and young children and job stress and no sleeping, I always maintained that it was life that was hard, marriage was easy. Twenty years later I still think that's true, though I'll note that it's only been in the quiet moments of our lives that our marriage has ever felt shaky or less secure. Maybe because there's time to see the cracks, to either dwell on them or fix them. I'm glad we've always managed the latter.

My sister got married jsut before our 10th anniversary and I remember thinking that I should probably include some kind of advice in my maid of honor speech. But as I said then, and I think is even more true now, every marriage is as unique as the two individuals who create it. I have a lot of advice and thoughts on being married to James Fike. I know nothing- and I think would be quite bad at- being married to anyone else. My only general advice was "going to bed mad is sometimes the very best thing you can do- very little will be made better when you're both exhausted and little things seem so much bigger after 10 pm. If it's truly something that needs to be dealt with, it will still exist in the morning and you'll both be better able to discuss it" and "remember how lucky you feel today to have each other; feeling deeply and truly lucky to have the husband I do--and knowing and seeing James feel the same about me--is sometimes the perspective we both need when we're focusing small."

In a fit of nostalgia, I found my wedding box and binder and dug through them over the weekend. We were officially engaged for a very short amount of time (2 months? and I spent 6 weeks of it gallivanting through Europe with a group of UT graduates) and I planned the entirety of the wedding before James actually proposed (I knew he was going to and I was not going to be planning a wedding from Chicago during my 1L year) on a very tight budget, but our wedding day was the happiest, most fun, seriously best day of my whole life. We didn't do personal vows, so we decided we'd give each other personal toasts at the reception. James wing'd his (to great success) but of course mine was written, edited, and printed out on paper long beforehand. I found that paper in my wedding binder and copied the text below. Other than laughing at my 22-year-old self making grand statements like "my whole life," it remains so very true.

"My whole life I have watched the joy my parents have shared together in their marriage; and for as long as I can remember I had this fear that I wouldn't find that someone who made my life complete- the one I would look forward to coming home to, the one who would put a smile on my face just by thinking of him twenty and fifty years later. And then my first weekend in Austin my freshman year, I found him. I didn't know it immediately when I met you- you had drunk about 5 too many Jack & Cokes and one of the first things you did for me was hand me a drink 5 seconds before a cop came by and kicked us both out of the club for underage drinking. I think I started to fall for you when, even in your state of total intoxication, you insisted on holding the door open for me to leave the club. In the end, it was the Jack Daniels in you that asked for my number, and I'll always owe the whiskey for that one.

I fell in love with you without knowing it at first- you were so polite, so talkative, and so fun to be with... when I found out later that you had driven the 45 minutes out to the restaurant where we had our first date earlier that day just to make sure you knew the right way, I fell in love with you a little more. That night, when I had to ask you to kiss me, I fell a little more. I knew I was marrying you by the time I went home for Thanksgiving 3 months after meeting you. Over the past 4 years and 4 days, I have fallen more in love with you than I ever imagined possible. I love that you make me laugh when all I want to do is be mad at you; I love that you are the first person I want to call when something good happens; and I love that you are the first person I want to call when something bad has happened.

It's been an amazing four years - we are so different from the people we were the night we met, but we have evolved together, loving each other through it all. You are my best friend, greatest challenge, and the love of my life. I love you James."

Our South Africa trip was part of our big gift to one another, and the family we've built, to honor the occasion, but we couldn't resist a little something just for us closer to the actual date. We realized that we now have an 18-year-old who can drive and take care of the house and girls for a night (and who is such an introvert the thought of throwing a party makes him want to bar our doors to all outsiders, plus his sisters would tattle immediately), and I have a million hotel points from work travel that we never use because we rarely stay in hotels for family travel. One quick search later and I found I could get us a night at the Dallas Ritz for free! We booked it immediately, James added a couples' massage, and we made dinner reservations for our favorite restaurant within the zone of the hotel's courtesy car.

It was so, so great.

I wore a dress I bought with my sister at the Farm Rio sample sale in Dallas and did my makeup from a Youtube video.

The massages were great. The meal was wonderful. The hotel room was better.

We realized Sunday morning that Cora had texted us goodnight at 10:01 pm and we were both already fast asleep.

We walked to brunch Sunday morning, enjoyed a little more time in our room, and were home by noon.

Here's to twenty years. To film photography and a small selection of pictures I had to scan individually at Walgreens when I received them in 2005. To the our wedding being best dang party I've ever been to. To a love that is passion and comfort and ever-evolving.

And to so many more.