Dwindling Summer

I don't have much summer left. This is actually my last week of summer at home. I technically have this week, the next, and the next. Next week though, we will be in Spain. And the week after that I will be working in my classroom. So this week is the last chance to be lazy at home.

Kalyn finishes up this week in Spain. She spent last weekend in Madrid visiting some museums that she doesn't want to have to drag the rest of us through when we come back to Madrid for a couple days before we leave Spain.

She actually sent me pictures of her in front of each museum she visited. She's a museum geek.

We will fly into Madrid and take a bus to Salamanca to meet up with her. She will have moved out of her dorm earlier that day and we will meet at our hotel. We'll visit Salamanca, Segovia, Seville, Cadiz, Cordoba, and Madrid while we are there. Very exciting.

So this week I am taking care of some of the garden produce. I have been making sauerkraut in a fermentation crock for the past 4 weeks, and yesterday I finally opened it up and ladled the sauerkraut into mason jars to keep in the fridge. It was perfect!

I use Alton Brown's recipe. It calls for juniper berries, and I pick them right from the trees in our yard.www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/sauerkraut-recipe-1942351 

I grow my own cabbages, you know. This photo is from a couple years ago when my cabbages were just beautiful. I always said I would grow them just to look at them in the garden. They didn't look that great this year. None of my garden looks great this year. You can tell from this picture that my garden is never weed free. I got pieces of carpet last year to put between the rows to help keep the weeds from getting too out of control. This year the carpet is a little ragged, and the weeds have just kind of popped up through the pieces. Now, I'm not a perfectionist. I think when the plants are well established and doing fine, a few weeds aren't going to hurt anything, they just don't look pleasing. This year though, I have decided that I have too much of a life outside gardening to worry myself too much about weeds. I just wander through the jungle that's growing out there and try to find the tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers that are growing amidst the chaos. (maybe it's not that bad)

Let me tell you about the book I am trying to read. My mom knew I was struggling to find something to read and wanted to help. So, way back in June sometime, she checked out 4 older books from the library that she thought I might be interested in. I think she's right about them. I only picked up one and liked it. It's just a fiction story about a southern woman's life, nothing heavy. I read a few chapters. All the books were due back at the library while I was in Colorado and I was still working on the one, so she renewed them. Then they were due back again, so I took the other three back and checked out the one that I had started but hadn't finished. So....were talking like 4 weeks or so I've been reading this book. A couple pages a day, probably. I am not quite half way through the 315 pages of the book.  I am really pathetic. I noticed when I was in Colorado that everyone I was with settled in with a book for an hour or so before going to bed. I settled down with my laptop. I have a short attention span. I am always teasing Alina about her short attention span and I have no right to do that, what so ever. My new approach is dedicating about an hour to reading every day. I don't know that right before bed is going to work for me, I know that is what most people do. We will see.

Those little get aways!

Note: This post contains some poor quality photos of scrapbook pages from dozens of scrapbooks lovingly put together in DesMoines, Iowa annually on weekend trips just like the ones I refer to in this post!

Troy and I went to Tucson, Arizona after Christmas one year when Kalyn was little with David and Lisa.

This post is about what makes me happy.

I've had good fortune in life and I'm grateful. I can't take credit for most of the circumstances that have landed me in a pretty happy spot at this point in life, but I am responsible for a portion of the development of my own happiness over the years. I learned quite early in my adult life the importance of nourishing my own soul before I try to take care of others. And I do that. I whole heartedly agree with that wise, anonymous person who is quoted to have said "If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." It makes perfect sense to me. Who's job is it to take care of the care giver? Answer: the care giver (herself)!

 As I write this, I am sitting in a truck in a hayfield while my husband is out on the tractor cutting hay. I'm here so that he can have his truck available for tools if he needs them (and he has) and also to be available to run to get fuel if he needs it (which he has). Earlier today I made two trips to a town several miles away from our home so that my daughter could hang out and swim with a long distance friend. Plenty of my life is spent taking care of those I love. But I know how to balance taking care of them with taking care of me.

I like to go places. Home is where my stuff is, it's where I sleep and where I cook. I like being at home, but I don't have the attachment to my home that I know some people do. I could get rid of everything in my home and still be happy. (Except my scrapbooks)

I am not a wealthy person, but if I was, I imagine I would blow all of my money on experiences. And I imagine this because I currently live paycheck to paycheck.....and I blow all of my money on experiences. Going places, taking trips with my husband, my family, my friends. On a regular basis. As in, there is always a trip in the process of being planned. A couple weeks ago I was on a trip in Colorado, planning my next trip to Spain. This is what makes me happy.

It mostly hasn't been big trips, it's mostly been weekend get aways. Many with Troy, several camping trips with the kids, a lot of little trips with the teachers that I work with. I got out my scrapbooks to find some pictures of weekend get aways over the years and there are just so many of them! I am just showing you some scrapbook pages of a few, to get an idea of what kind of things I think are fun to go off and do.

This was a trip down to a beautiful cabin in Arkansas with teacher friends where we hiked, played games in the cabin at night, rode horses. We tried to canoe the local river but the rental place owner wouldn't let us on the water that day because it was so high and we didn't seem experienced enough. Smart guy, seriously, what were we thinking?

To the beach with the kids and my sister

To Branson with friends

To the Stanley Hotel with friends

To New York with Susan, Kalyn and Emily

This was a fun weekend trip to Hannibal, Missouri with teacher friends. We did a riverboat dinner and stayed in a charming Victorian era bed and breakfast Leah had a groupon for. The next morning over breakfast, the owner told us a long, creepy story about how the house is possessed with an evil spirit. At first they thought it was a lovely little girl, but now they know better, and he believes it is responsible for him cutting off his own fingers with a saw on Halloween night while he was working in the basement. Yeah.........over breakfast.

To Utah with Kalyn and friends

Here is a bigger trip with Carrie, to Scotland. We had hiked down a cliff on the Isle of Skye to the beach and might have had tea and biscuits down there.

And we took a dip in Loch Ness. In our clothes, of course.

My family remembers a time that I left my barely potty trained almost 3 year old behind to take a short trip to explore Scotland with my friend Carrie. Troy had to spend a night coaching our 10 year old daughter's softball team with the barely potty trained almost 3 year old on his hip because she wouldn't let him put her down. Guilty feelings on my end? Mmm....not so much. It was such an amazing trip that I took him back to do the same tour with me two years later.

Here we are!

 He gets my need to go places....which helps. I returned home from one of these week long trips last week. He was grateful when I returned home and affirmed to me that life is a little bit harder when I am not there. That's kind of a good feeling, hearing that.

This trip was what has become an annual summer trip to Colorado with some of my teacher friends, using my sister's house as a base of operations.  It was an incredibly fun time, as always, with little memories and stories to tell. Like how the house alarm went off at 4:30 in the morning because of a faulty smoke detector. (YES, DesMoines friends, another after hours fire alarm incident! Not because of bacon wrapped chicken this time.) And the firemen showed up, in the big red truck, in full gear, prepared to protect us from whatever danger.....fire, intruders, bears....old smoke detectors.....
And we felt bad because we were in our nightgowns, not dressed decently enough to feel comfortable  even to offer to make coffee or something to thank these fine gentlemen for their trouble. I think our shame was apparent through our nervous giggling.

Or when one of us accidentally left a size GIGANTIC black underwire bra in the bed of a truck that belonged to one of our group member's brother in law, who graciously transported us to and from one of our hikes. The puzzled look on his face as he brought the bra over to us while we packed up our car was priceless.

At this stage in our lives, these stories are what we live for!