Welcome to our World

It’s hard to believe it had been 10 years since we moved into the house we had built for our children.  With all the rain we’ve had the trees and weeds have grown like crazy, telling us yes, we have lived here a while. This is the longest the kids and I have ever lived in one place and I am still so grateful Hubby picked this place out.  Natalie redid our fairy garden after helping me pull weeds and I am so glad we still have that fairy garden magic here. Oh, and we threw a neighborhood potluck in the pocket park to celebrate 10 years but only 2 other families showed up. It was still lovely and now I’ve learned that a simple Facebook post isn’t enough to get the word out. Natalie also got to celebrate a wonderful friend’s birthday before school started with a morning of ropes, zip lines, friends and food.  All of my teenagers went to the county fair at least once with friends and now we can all say we’ve watched the Barbie movie at least once. Exactly 10 years to the day ...

It’s fun to quote the Village People and they are not wrong!  We went glamping with our family for Fist City 2023.  Hubby did an amazing job taking over the planning and organization when I decided I couldn't handle the tech free way the YMCA was doing things.  If they could just get some good software/website on their end, I could recommend planning family reunions there to everyone!  Of course the best part was being with family in a beautiful place doing lots of fun things but it was also awesome to not have to cook and have nice long windows to get food around the activities we had scheduled. I am so grateful Hubby's family was willing to drive out and meet us closer to where we live.  Our first activity together as people got settled into the lodge was to have a campfire with s'mores.  Then it was time for three full days of adventure!  First up, rock wall climbing, which made me want to sign Michelle and Natalie up for the local climbing gym. ...

For our 20th wedding anniversary we dreamed of taking the entire family on a Mediterranean Cruise but then Covid hit and ruined lots of travel plans.  Then we dreamed of the two of us visiting Prague… until we realized how much it cost to fly to Europe in summer.  So next best thing was to find a neat place to visit in summertime for just the two of us preferably somewhere Southwest Airlines could get us to since Hubby still has an active companion pass. After some research and remembering how much my friend liked Acadia National Park, we decided to celebrate in Maine. From what we were told by several different people our timing was perfect. Apparently we arrived for the first week of nice summer weather they had.  Hooray!  Funny thing was I had packed for the forecasted chilly and rainy so there were a lot of things in my suitcase I didn’t actually wear and eventually I ended up buying two t-shirts and a knee length skirt so I could dress more appropriately. Since ...