just be

I feel a certain measure of guilt that we live in a state full of national parks and monuments and yet nearly every school holiday we choose to stay home. In theory, we love to travel, we love to camp, but with the reality of an intense school/music/sports schedule, we usually need those precious days off to just be.

Of course any non-trip represents financial savings, so I felt completely justified in ordering a stack of books from Amazon. In truth, I buy a lot of books, but not this many at once. Guess which book was read by the most people over our four-day weekend?

Our apple adventures continued with four pies, two gallons of applesauce and Xander’s obsession– dried apples, he prefers the name ‘apple crisps.’ Our friend Lisa gave us the instructions: peel/core/slice, cut in half sprinkle with cinnamon and place in the food dryer.

Bemoaning our lack of a food dryer, Xander complained to his Grandpa Fritz. Incredibly, Fritz had rescued my mom’s 1973 dehydrator from the DI pile when her house was sold this summer.

To me (and Xander), it felt like a miracle, like my mom reaching down from heaven to say, “I’m still watching over you.” This silver box was a standby of my childhood– my mom dried apples, pears, tomatoes, poured out batches of fruit leather and infamously, one year, dried several pounds of hot dogs.

No, let’s add six or seven more.

Even more than apples, my boys love baby Darren. They pull faces, sing silly songs and tickle his feet just to hear his golden laugh.

But no game compares with pulling Kevin’s hair. Don’t you want to pull his hair? Can you imagine how fascinating it is to a baby?

Rather than hiking , we simply wandered; the boys found a natural teeter-totter that occupied everyone for an hour.