summer wrap up

 

Summer is over! the kids have gone back to school and september has begun. notice that i don't say autumn has begun because here in florida, september is just more of the summer heat and humidity. we won't get a break in the weather until the middle of october, at the earliest. 

We had a couple of fun things happen in August. The first thing was that friends from England visited and we took a day off work to spend at the water park with them. the weather was perfect and we all rented a cabana so that we could have lounge chairs and seats. The air was warm, the water was cooling and the food was pretty good. We spent all day there then headed off to Sea World where we got rained out almost immediately so we went to dinner at Mellow Mushroom, which I've always wanted to try because it was my older sister's favorite, and everybody loved it.

I've known these friends for almost 20 years now. They were Taz's first wedding couple in 2006 when they came over to Orlando to elope and he took their wedding photographs. Actually he planned their whole wedding. They were planning on just going to City Hall but he found them a beautiful park and an officiant and they had a real wedding. We lost touch for a few years but I found them again on Facebook and we all had a lovely reunion when they visited Orlando again in 2017 and 2018. They have remained close friends and a source of support for me since Taz's death and they got to meet Chris and the kids in 2022 so it all came full circle.

We got to spend quite a bit of time together this visit (they come for 3 weeks at a time) and the bond just keeps growing stronger.

Speaking of strong bonds, we got to spend a weekend with my sister and brother in law recently at their new house and it was such a special time for all of us. We've had so many plans to get together this summer and one thing after another has conspired to keep us apart from kids stuff and illness (on her end) to car repairs (on my end) so we were especially happy to have our plans finally work out.

We got to visit the beach near her house a couple of times and it was so beautiful. we ate some good food, had a lot of laughs and just enjoyed being together once again. I am blessed to have her only a few hours away from me for the first time in my life and we hope to see each other as often as possible.

Hopefully the next time we visit with my sister we will be kid free because having the kids along puts a whole different spin on our visit. Between endless "are we there yet" and "I'm bored" the whole focus of the visit is different than if it were just adults. My "favorite" (note the heavy sarcasm) part was when we spent the whole morning at the beach just for them and 15 minutes later in the car they are grumpy because they are bored without their electronic devices. I used to ride on cross country trips with my parents during the summer (for my dad's job) so I would spend 8-10 hours in the car by myself without an electronic device in sight and I wouldn't have dared complain about it. I learned to amuse myself by reading or napping or looking out the window and living in my imaginary world; my kids can't go 10 minutes without complaining that there isn't anything to do. I'm really not sure what to do about it - I don't want to reward bad behavior just to keep the peace but I'm not sure they have the capacity to use their imaginations the way I did because they have had no practice at it.

So, yeah, the next few trips are going to be adult only.

Not that we have any trips planned, finances have dictated that we stay pretty close to home for the next several months but that's ok because it's time to start decorating for spooky season!

scenes from the weekend

 

Summer, which I was dreading the last time I posted, is almost over! Just 2 more weeks until the little darlings are back in the classroom during the day and I have the house back to myself; I can hardly wait.

It actually hasn't been that bad, the kids are quiet during the day while I'm working, but I don't enjoy going into the kitchen to get a meal for myself (the kids are self feeders) and having them come bopping in to see what I'm doing. I feel like I'm always on display.

We have done a couple of fun things this summer and I will update on all of that later but I just had to pop in and talk about this past weekend.

We were supposed to meet up with my sister for a vintage show in Lakeland but she had to cancel. I was totally bummed about that to the point of crying a little and then I had a brilliant idea.

This is the Lakeside Inn in Mount Dora, about 50 miles from our house. This has been a very special place to me over the years and Taz and I loved it. I haven't been back since 2020 and I've missed it and the town. Part of me thought it wasn't fair to take Chris to a place I visited so many times with Taz including Christmas and our last anniversary but the other part of me thought it was the perfect place to make new memories with Chris.

There is a boat tour that leaves from the dock there and they had advertised on Facebook that the town of Mount Dora was having a special "end of summer" fireworks display on Saturday so they were offering a special fireworks cruise at 9pm. When I first saw the post I thought "oh, too bad, we won't be able to go because we'll be hanging out with Lisa" so when Lisa canceled I decided to revisit the idea of the boat trip.

That led to me checking to see if the inn had any cheap-ish rooms for Saturday and, miracle of miracles, they did. That led to me making a reservation and then planning a fabulous getaway weekend for the two of us.

Words can't even express how perfect this weekend was. We made so many happy memories - we swam, we ate, we cruised. It was fun and peaceful and full of adventure all at the same time. We shopped the farmers market on our way out of town on Sunday and picked up some fun sauces we can use in cooking so that the memories will last even longer.

It's been a long summer and this was just what I needed to recharge those batteries. I hope it's just the first of many fun weekends up in Mount Dora.

summer

 

dang! i don't know how the time goes by so fast. doesn't it seem like spring break just happened and now here we are starting the summer break from school.

as you may remember, i don't enjoy summer anymore now that i have to be nanny to the kids while also working a full-time job from home. i have to change my work schedule to be at home (and not in the office) more days because the kids are still too immature to be left by themselves.

summer break has just started and already they are fighting, using voices with each other that are better suited to demons from hell. 

and it's only the first week...pray for me.

since spring break i've been busy visiting my sister, having my car break down (it's still out of commission because i can't afford to fix it,) having my mother break down (broke her hip, had surgery at almost 102, back in the nursing home but refusing to do physical therapy and being generally hateful to everybody) and getting the kids through the last weeks of school. c made straight a's for 3 out of 4 quarters and was asked to join the national honor society, j was on honor roll every quarter and started doing 4th grade math halfway through the last quarter when he was only in 3rd grade.

and then there's the kitten population explosion going on. one of the feral cats who lives in our yard (and has warmed up to us a bit but still doesn't want to live inside) decided that we would make great adoptive parents to her kittens so she snuck them inside one day while the door was open and deposited them on our bed and then left.

while we appreciate her trust in us, we didn't really want to be cat parents but here we are, killing it. she comes back each day to nurse them a little but then leaves before we get any bright ideas of giving them back to her.

so far in may we've gone to daytona for our grandson's birthday (held on a weekend we didn't have our kids), taken the kids to busch gardens (on such a hot day i thought i would pass out) and visited weeki wachee state park with the kids where they have real live mermaids who perform a show twice a day AND they have a fun waterpark with 2 great slides, a lazy river right out in the springs (with the snakes, no thank you) and a protected swimming hole that is 72 degrees year round. it was, by far, my favorite waterpark ever and i can't wait to go again.

we searched and searched for an affordable above ground pool and finally found one which was delivered yesterday. chris asked the kids to help him move some dirt to provide a level surface for it and they offered very little help but when i tried to speak (calmly) to them about that, i was the bad guy. i keep my mouth (mostly) shut when they don't do the very few chores we've asked of them, i smile (ok, it's more like gritting my teeth) when i pick up all the crap they leave in the living and dining rooms and kitchen, not to mention the hallway to their bedrooms that i try to avoid at all costs. i don't yell (ever) and i don't cry when they don't like what i'm fixing for dinner even though i spent a lot of time planning, shopping and cooking for it but i'm the bad guy because i feel like they should help their dad when they're asked especially when it's a project that's going to benefit them and not try to get out of it.

i'm going to enjoy the hell out of the pool both when they're in it and when they're far, far away but i think i'm taking a break for the rest of the summer and not planning any more fun activities for the weekends we have the kids. they won't care once they have the pool anyway and it'll cost us a hell of a lot less money.

yay summer, only 11 more weeks to go until school starts up again!

mountains

 

chris and i finally got our long awaited "honeymoon" trip together last month and it was perfect and amazing.

we spent 5 days in the smoky mountains of tennessee and it was so beautiful and restful and wonderful.

we'd actually been planning this trip for awhile - ever since last july. it started out as an observation from me that we never get a whole week together because of the kids' custody arrangement which has them splitting half the week with their mother and half with us. even our` actual honeymoon was only 2 days. so chris said he'd work things out with their mother to keep the kids for their entire spring break in march.

we started planning a cruise but that proved to be too expensive so i found a timeshare deal that gave us 3 nights at a great resort in gatlinburg for only $100. i added 2 extra nights at a much cheaper place and suddenly we had a trip.

we decided to leave after 5 nights and drive to chris's brother's place in south carolina since we hadn't seen them in a couple of years (because they didn't come to our wedding but i'm not still a little bitter about that - nope, not at all) and family is really important to chris (even though none of his family managed to come to the wedding...oops, sorry, my bitter slipped out a little) and i wanted him to get to spend time with them (even though we've been up to their place 3 times and they've never, ever even talked about coming to see us) because that's just the kind of awesome wife i am. 

i'm pretty funny too. ;-)

so we left on a friday morning, stopped for the night just north of atlanta and met up with my brother and his wife for dinner then got up the next morning and drove through the smoky mountains national park to gatlinburg.

it was a spectacular drive even if the weather wasn't stellar. we stopped to stare at a bunch of elk along the way and it felt like we had stepped into a whole different world.

throughout the next 5 days we visited the aquarium, the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in the us, saw a pirate show, visited the titanic museum and enjoyed a lot of good food.

oh yeah, we also did a moonshine tasting which was so much fun!

the timeshare resort was absolutely beautiful and we had the most amazing condo type suite for the 3 nights. of course we had to endure a presentation and the hard sell but we resisted and it was totally worth it to lose 3 hours of our vacation for the great, inexpensive lodging.

we did a lot of fun things but i think my favorite adventure was booking a time for chris to forge his own knife. we used to watch a competition show about forging knives and it's something he's always wanted to do and i was happy to figure out a way to make that dream come true.

while i had a lot of fun watching him make his knives (he actually made 2, 1 was a birthday gift for his best friend and business partner) i had no desire to try it myself. all the pounding looked like way too much work for me but he loved it and can't wait to do it again one day.

all too soon it was time to pack up our car and leave the mountains. this was really very hard for me, i fell in love with it up there, but i did have a lunch with a former co-worker to look forward to.

my friend tracy moved away a couple of years ago to asheville, north carolina, which was going to be on our way to chris's brother so we stopped there at noontime and met her for lunch. it was great to see her again, such a treat.

we spent the next 2 days with chris's family and then headed home to pick up charlie and the kids in time for easter weekend.

and just like that, our lovely time together was over but i have amazing memories.

time with family

 

happy monday once again! see, i'm getting better at keeping y'all informed about my amazing life, right?

my weekend actually started on friday because i decided to take the day off from work (which had been incredibly frustrating all week) and go check out a couple of beaches i'd been reading about.

as you know, i keep trying to find the perfect beach/town that is within easy driving distance so that i can run there whenever i need a beach fix but also that would be fun to take the kids on the weekends.

unfortunately, the first beach i got to - sunset beach - wasn't at all what i was looking for. you can probably tell by the fact that i wasn't really smiling in this picture that i wasn't feeling it.

it's on the gulf side which automatically means it isn't really going to have waves but it was also just a little round circle of sand so it wouldn't even be fun to walk and by 11 in the morning on a friday it was crowded so i didn't even feel comfortable sitting on a bench to chill because i could barely see the water through all the beach chairs. too bad because it was an easy drive.

i went to visit the next beach about 4 miles away and it was more of the same, just bigger, and there you even had to pay for parking. i didn't even stop to take a picture, i just drove on.

i was going to check out a third beach about 40 minutes away but i changed my mind and just headed back home feeling rather discouraged because this little outing did nothing to take away my beach cravings.

on the way back, however, i decided to stop at a hawaiian bbq place i've wanted to try forever and that didn't disappoint at all.

taz and i loved hawaii and ate at a few hawaiian bbq/plate lunch spots when we were in the islands and also had a favorite one in california but i haven't been able to eat that way in florida until friday so it was a little taste of "home" for me.

then friday night we decided to take the whole family out and that was fun and, because i didn't order much because i was still stuffed from lunch, it wasn't even all that expensive; normally i cry a little when we see how much it costs to feed the 4 of us.

we went back to the place with the koala ducks and i got 2 more so now i have one in my studio, one in the car and one in the bedroom. i had a whole thing for koalas when i was a kid and this koala duck has reignited that obsession so i see a trip the zoo in my future because we're lucky enough to live near a zoo that actually has the little furry guys.

saturday morning we were up bright and early for a daytrip to visit my sister and now i get to finally share the most exciting news ever - she and her husband bought a house in florida!

They currently live in alabama and this florida house is going to be their retirement place BUT they aren't really at retirement age yet so they're going to go back and forth. my sister works from home so she can work anywhere and will spend more time at the retirement place than her husband will for now. 

the reason this all is really great news for me is that it isn't too far from where i live so we'll be able to see each other way more often. like saturday, we went to see the house then had lunch then came back and ran around in their (new) golf cart and then we drove home, all in one day.

i haven't lived in the same state as family since my parents and i moved to virginia when i was in elementary school so having my sister so close (we can call up on a weekend and decide to get together for a cookout or shopping or a movie) is a game changer for me.

plus the house is amazing! it's big and beautiful, has land and the wrap-around front porch of my dreams. the kids love it too, j stared at it when we drove in and declared he never wanted to leave and that was even before he got driven around in the golf cart.

i have these stools that i bought for my old house and there really isn't a place to use them in my current house but my sister has an overhanging kitchen peninsula where they would be perfect so i'm going to bring them to her the next time she's down there. it's something she can really use (forever or until she buys ones she loves but barstools are way down on her priority list) and i'll get the pleasure of seeing them so it's a win-win.

we're going to get together soon and go thrift shopping for furniture and decoration for this new house and that will be super fun. i think we have similar styles and i have all sorts of ideas about this place.

i really want to decorate the bedroom i've chosen for myself and chris and make it a sanctuary for when i'm up there. i know i'll have to let her granddaughter use it when she visits this summer but the rest of the year - it's mine!

speaking of things that are mine - i got to spend some time in my studio yesterday, making a few pair of earrings for an upcoming trip and it was lovely. we bought c a sewing table of her own that will fit perfectly in her room and then she can either decide to start using the sewing machine or not - it's up to her.

but i am making great use of my studio and i was definitely inspired yesterday. in fact, the earrings i'm wearing in the picture at the top of this post are my own design combining 2 stones i really love - turquoise and pearl.

i sought refuge in my studio yesterday after a full weekend of peopling (this includes my own family) which was so much fun but i was drained and my battery needed recharging. and i wasn't the only one - charlie was quite happy to jump up on the trunk and take a nice long solitary nap away from children.

all in all, it was a fun 3 days and i look forward to more fun outings with my sister and her family for years to come.

but for now, i have several days with just christopher to look forward to as we're going to spend a whole week together on a road trip that we're calling our honeymoon since we only had a couple of days right after the wedding. it's not the beach but it's just as fun in my book.

can't wait to share pictures and tell you all about it!