family – Page 4 – The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

August 5 Heading North for Mo’s Family Reunion

Current Location: Rocky Point, OR Breezy and Pleasant at 69F

It was just over two weeks ago when we headed north toward Spokane for Mo’s reunion. Her family manages to get together every two years and with five siblings, Mo’s turn hasn’t rolled around for almost a decade. Our last reunion in 2012 was north of Denver in Colorado and we added on a great extended trip that time to visit South Dakota and Wyoming. Loved that trip that we shared with Mo’s brother Roger and his wife Nancy! If you want to check out our travels through the Black Hills and the Big Horn Mountains, the posts start here.

This time we decided to take advantage of the Inland Northwest location and travel north into British Columbia and do the beautiful circle route along Kootenay Lake. I was really looking forward to the trip. When I lived in Coeur D Alene, I would make the trip north every once in awhile and have a special place in my heart for Kaslo.

When we were packing up to leave, conditions around the compound here were hot and smoky from so many fires that were burning. Some are still smoking, but at least the worst of the fires are out. It was a bit disconcerting to drive off early in the morning accompanied by the strong smell of smoke and a red sun. We looked at each other and said, “Well, fire could come whether we are here or not, so I guess we will just have to trust that it will be OK”.

There is such a mixture of delight and frustration when I know we are heading out for an extended trip. Although two weeks isn’t anything like the three month sojourn last winter, I still hate to leave the gardens, the sewing machine, all the myriad life things that keep things interesting around here. Blooming at home (14 of 28) Everything was looking fresh and the tomatoes were just beginning to ripen. Still, the road calls, and I was excited that we were actually getting on the road again, with some great plans waiting.

Once again we traveled north on Highway 97, though Bend, to the COE campground at the mouth of the John Day River at LePage adjacent to I-84. We could make the 529 miles to Spokane in a long day, but there is no reason to do that. LePage waits, with half price using our senior pass, and hookups to manage the hot temperatures that always seem to accompany our trips in that direction. I think the last time we camped here was on our way to Alaska in 2011, and it was something like 105F.

Of course the heat gave us the excuse to stop at the ice cream shop in Shaniko (Where the West Still Lives) for a cool tasty treat. I think that is some of the best home made ice cream I have ever tasted. I’ll have to be sure and remind Sherry and David to try it out if they ever get to Oregon.

When we arrived at LePage in late afternoon, it was only 104. Sure do like having hookups for the air conditioner! Dinner was simple, and indoors, since the hot wind that was whirling around outside made putting out the BBQ too much trouble. Time for quesadillas, my go-to meal when I want something quick and good. The hot wind was a great white noise and with the cool air blowing over us I slept very well.

The next morning we took Abby for an early swim, walked around the park after breakfast, and readied the rig to meet Mo’s brother Dan and wife Chere at the entrance to the campground. They were right on time and we caravanned north toward Spokane without incident except for a minor miss in Dan’s engine. Dan’s Class A is 30 some feet and being a great mechanic he takes care of it himself. He figured out the problem eventually, but in the mean time we stopped a couple of times to check it out.

Traveling north on 84 to 82, and then 395, crossing the river in Kennewick, and then continuing north towards Spokane is a bit of a puzzle if you aren’t used to the route. Having done the road a bazillion times, I still have to watch the GPS to remember which lane to be in to make the proper turns. Mo was sure there had to be a more direct way north, but there isn’t. Gotta get across the river and across a few interstates before 395 continues toward Spokane.

tricities We never seem to spend much time in Tri Cities, just passing through. Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland are all clustered along the Columbia and Snake Rivers and are famous for the big jet boat races every year. The area has grown exponentially, with huge housing developments, lots of big shopping, and lots of traffic. Good wineries abound, and it can be hot in the summer. I know there is a lot to see and do in the area, but I have never had the inclination to do so. Deanna and Keith (trucker daughter and her husband) stay there when they are on home time, with Keith’s brother who has a beautiful house in Kennewick along the river.

We arrived at Riverside State Park in Spokane around 3, and it was 99 degrees F. There always is a bit of confusion about exactly how to get to the campground area of the state park, and if you use a GPS, don’t count on it. If you put in Bowl and Pitcher, you might have better luck, but either way the GPS will try to take you down through the golf course parking lot, down a very narrow street, around a very sharp right turn onto another narrow street to get to the campground. After being there a few days we discovered it was a LOT easier to go north to Rifle Range road and out Francis Blvd no matter where we wanted to go in town.

Brother Don and his wife Wynn were in charge of the festivities this year, and they came down to the park as folks began to arrive to make sure we were all settled in comfortably before bringing in something like 20 pizzas for everyone to share. It was great fun seeing more than 30 Oukrops all together in one place. First night at Riverside Oukrop Reunion (4 of 15)

Next: The Oukrops descend on Silverwood and Boulder Beach Theme Park in Northern Idaho

What is it about the Fourth…

Current Location: Rocky Point Oregon 88F and clear with a predicted high of 95F

I got an email this morning from friend Jeanne telling me all about her great weekend on the lake in Vermont, shared with family and friends and her sweetheart. I don’t know what it is about this holiday that triggers such summertime nostalgia, but I love it. Loved reading about Jeanne’s adventures and loved remembering the holidays of my childhood as well as the more recent family times we have managed to share.

Fourth of July 2014 (26 of 63) At the moment, I am at the computer in my home office, windows wide open, breezes cooling the house from the morning banana bread bake, and sunlight lighting up the elm leaves under the forest canopy. The elms were supposed to be a hedge, purchased a dozen years ago by Mo from a mail order catalog. Some are still hedge size, but most of the row have morphed into tall if rangy trees, reaching for the tiny bit of available sun. They are home to lots of birds and bugs this time of year, and make a great backdrop for gazing out the window instead of focusing on the task at hand.

Fourth of July 2014 (1 of 63) Sorry to say, it certainly isn’t patriotism, although I do like flying the American flags on this day. I love my country, but am not rabidly patriotic, celebrating the Fourth as the birth of my country. I celebrate the Fourth as a reminder of family tradition.

As a kid we got up before dawn and foster mom Dorothy would pack up all the fixings to make biscuits in the coleman camp ovens on half a dozen coleman stoves. We made biscuits for the entire church picnic gathering at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia. There was a “plunge” for swimming, baseball diamonds for one up softball games, lots of grass for sack races. We had a huge breakfast, and usually there were more than 150 people from the church that participated in the day’s activities.

Fourth of July 2014 (31 of 63) Bocci Ball at Rocky Point

By evening, after the hot dogs and potato salad, we gathered up our blankets and found a spot on the grass to watch the fireworks, shot high above the park. There were sparklers and smoke bombs and of course those amazing fountains that everyone loved. There was the smell of sulfur and the fear of stepping on a hot sparkler wire among the blankets. In California in July, the days were always hot and the nights were warm. The fireworks were spectacular.

Arcadia Park (1) Arcadia Regional Park in 2014

I searched the internet to find that the park is now the Arcadia Community Regional Park, administered by the county of Los Angeles, and nary a word about a fireworks display on the Fourth of July. Some great memories are destined to fade into the past, much like the old Firefall at Yosemite. Not many remember what that was like either, but I do, and treasure that memory as well.

Now we make new memories. Most of the time, in July, we are close enough to Rocky Point to gather at least part of the family for a celebration. Potato salad is always part of it, but I no longer force my kids to do sack races. Sometimes we don’t even bother to go to the fireworks, even though there are displays in Klamath Falls at Veteran’s Park and just 15 minutes away at Lake of the Woods.

Traffic, crowds, mosquitoes, midges, all have a bit of a dampening affect on our best laid plans. Instead, we stayed right here and played bocci ball into the dark of night. No fireworks here at Rocky Point. Not a one at our place. Even though we are on the edge of the national forest, where fireworks are illegal, the drought knows no boundaries and there is no need to take chances with fire and explosive stuff.

Instead, we listened to distant neighbors shooting either guns or firecrackers or both. Maybe next year we will actually get a reservation at Lake of the Woods and go camping 15 minutes from home so we can watch the fireworks and not have to drive anywhere when they are finished.

Fourth of July 2014 (23 of 63) Daughter Deborah

Daughter Deb came up from Grants Pass, and daughter Melody and my grandkids came out from Klamath. We ate lots of summer fruit and veggies, with sinful dips to offset the healthy stuff, and Deb shared her Dijon marinated chicken with all of us. Melody came with three, yes three watermelons and we did manage to eat two of them.

Fourth of July 2014 (24 of 63) Daughter Melody

I made brownies that were perfect and my favorite potato salad that wasn’t so much. I learned that if you put too much celery and onion into it, the dressing gets watery as it sits. Can’t believe I didn’t know that, and also am amazed at the world we live in where I can type in “watery potato salad’ and get answers in seconds.

Our closest neighbors, Wes and Gayle, are here for the season, and we were delighted to have them join us for supper and lawn games.

Fourth of July 2014 (3 of 63) We got out on the lake twice, a nice long paddle up Recreation Creek toward Malone Spring in the afternoon wind and then the next morning another beautiful paddle on the glassy bay toward the main lake. Midges are just beginning to hatch, the lake is just beginning to show an algae bloom so it was great to get out there before the season progressed further.

Paddling out on the main Klamath Lake from Pelican Bay. That is daughter Deborah out there.

We punctuated the day with a few silly old movies that I converted from ancient VHS to DVD. It was a happy sadness as we laughed at my deceased husband Lance making silly jokes and watched my iconic grandmother, also deceased, being her famous self. Melody made sure the grandkids watched, since they have no memory of this matriarch of our family.

Granddaughter Axel

Of course, there was a “flower walk”, another tradition that has followed us through many homes in many places since I started gardening in earnest back in the late 70’s. Gotta share all that is blooming, all the successes and some of the failures. I think the grandkids disappeared into the cabin before the flower walk, checking out facebook and phone messages. Some things stay the same and others definitely don’t.

Grandson Xavier

Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and the Fourth of July. And oh yes, don’t forget Halloween. Somehow these days have come to mean far more than what they stand for in our family. They are the times that we all do our best to get together and participate in some of the old family rituals that have come down through the years. Our family is small, it is me and my kids and their offspring. I do hope that the grandkids will remember some of the times that we have shared in the same way that I remember Fourth of July at Arcadia Park.

Life and the Rest of May

Current Location Rocky Point Oregon Sunny and 45 F with a predicted high of 75. Perfect

If the month of April at Rocky Point is mostly about winter cleanup, the month of May is definitely about gardening. Real gardening, not just all the cleanup, but the kind of gardening that rewards one with watching beloved perennials grow lush, shopping for the hundreds of annual plants required to keep some color in the yard over the summer, and planting all of them.

The house at Rocky Point is on land that isn’t really that big, even less ground than the Grants Pass winter cottage, but there is a lot more to do here it seems. Lots of nooks and crannies, lots of different planting beds, and of course, lots of pine needles to keep digging out of the rocks.

A big job this time of year is getting those pine needles off the roof. Mo does the climbing and I hold the ladder and manage the electric cord for the blower. I laughed this time as she carefully crawled back down from the steep side of the eaves and I said, “How much longer do you suppose?” We love it here, so much. But it IS a lot of work at times, and the question lingers…how long will Mo be able to climb that roof to blow off the needles.

In the mean time, after returning from the coast before Mother’s Day, we spent some extended time over at the cottage, doing some of the cleanup jobs that are on the list over there. The nice thing about the cottage is that there is really no deadline. Other than burning the debris in the springtime burning window, we have as many years as we need to get that .89 acre cleaned up and ready for us to live there. The defining moment may never come, then again it could come all too soon, maybe when Mo no longer wants to plow snow or blow needles off the roof at Rocky Point.

As luck would have it, we decided to be in Grants Pass for Mother’s Day, with a plan to do the classic Mother’s Day activity of Sunday Brunch at a beautiful restaurant. Daughter Melody and the kids drove over on Sunday morning to see the cottage and share the morning with me, Mo, and Deborah at the Taprock Grill next to the Rogue River.

Mothers Day 2014_039 I had so much fun watching all the moms and grandmas and seeing all the flowers and presents and everyone posing for family photos at the various lovely sights in the park adjacent to the restaurant. I felt like I was right in the middle of a middle America tradition that somehow remains the same in spite of a changing world.

During our time in Grants Pass, Mo split the rest of the oak from the tree we took down last year, moved a flower bed that was right in the middle of the planned new drive entry to the MoHo shed, mowed the acre and did a ton of weed eating. We cleaned up the outside corner and built a mound, bought a couple of crepe myrtle trees for color, planted the mound, and Mo burned a ton of debris.

We parked the MoHo along an old cement patio and it felt just like our own private campground. Even though Deb was gone and we could have stayed in the cottage, we chose to enjoy our own space in the MoHo, sitting on the patio watching the sun set over the hill to the west is a special pleasure of the land in Grants Pass. At home, our sunrises and sunsets are blocked by the high Cascades and the immense forest.

sue Deanna Deb on Mothers day

Our choice to be in Grants Pass that weekend was especially auspicious, since daughter Deanna and husband Keith once again were traveling south along I-5 and I got to see them twice in less than 30 days! On the Saturday before Mother’s Day, they parked at a nearby rest area for the night and met Deb and I for breakfast at Elmer’s not far off the freeway.

Sad thing about the Grants Pass cottage, even though it has more land than Rocky Point, there is no place to park the big rig there, and the roads leading to the cottage are too narrow with weight restrictions so the kids can only park downtown at WalMart to spend some visiting time with us.

With their LA arrival time scheduled for the next day, they had a few hours to do some sightseeing with us, and Deb and I drove them through the gorgeous Applegate Valley not too far south of the cottage. Deanna and Keith are saving money while trucking with a plan to buy property somewhere eventually, and of course I am hoping that will be close to me here in Oregon. Grants Pass_005

Lucky for me, the springtime beauty of the Applegate was fabulous, with blue skies dotted with puffy whites and new fresh green bursting out all over. I love the Applegate area, with farms and wineries, and for Deanna and Keith, who love being a lot farther away from town than I do, it was perfect. We spent quite a bit of time looking at some interesting properties that really caught their eye.

Nothing was decided, but I am glad that there will be sweet visual memories of the lovely Applegate area in their minds over the next few years as they make decisions about where they might want to settle down. No snow, kids! Although they also love Alaska, so I suppose snow isn’t yet much of a deterrent to them. Deanna and Theron

Deanna became a grandmother for the fifth time in May, and once again I am a great grandmother. Theron was born in Wenatchee this month, brother to Orion and Tearany. I am glad that Deanna has the opportunity to be close to these grandchildren in spite of family complexities.

I have that crazy obsessive feeling that often happens this time of year: too much to do and not enough time: too many choices: too many things I want to be doing! Obviously, writing has slipped to the back of the list and I am simply keeping track of what is going on with short notes on my Google calendar. I do love that particular application.

On another note, an application that I don’t love quite so much is HGTV’s House and Landscape program. I actually paid for the stupid thing and spent quite a bit of time trying to at least get a rudimentary replica of the cottage and grounds set up so we could get some ideas about what me might like to eventually do there.

Not so much. The learning curve is huge, and I am not completely stupid. The software is cumbersome and after a day or two of fiddling with it, I decided that a piece of graph paper and a pencil was the better option. Maybe some snowy winter day I will get back to it.

In the midst of gardening and landscaping work at two homes, I am trying to have time to quilt. Our quilt group gives away “huggie” quilts to anyone in the community who is hospitalized or has lost a loved one. They have given away 141 quilts in the last six years since they started doing it. As a fairly new member, I have yet to complete a huggie quilt, and am now working on one. I am a new enough quilter that it is extremely hard for me to give away a quilt to someone I don’t know. But I decided it is time to step up to the plate and the quilt is in the works.

Tiny living room in the cottage all painted an pretty thanks to Deborah’s hard work

Late in the month, Deborah was sent to Dallas for a work related training, and her company allowed her to fly home to Grand Junction instead of Grants Pass. When she moved home from Colorado last year, she had to leave most of her belongings in a storage facility and this was her chance to get everything back in one place. With a bit of complexity due to missed flights, she finally got everything on the truck and headed west via I-70 and Highway 50, the Loneliest Road in America, and pulled up to the Grants Pass cottage late on Sunday evening.

Mo and I were waiting with supper and hugs. The next day, with help from neighbors Glenn and Karen, we all unloaded the truck into Deb’s new storage place, just a couple of miles from home. The cottage is tiny, but at least she can go down to her storage and get things like her blender and spices, and other small things that she has missed so much in the last year while adjusting to her new life.

John Jr, Deanna, Sue, and Deborah in 1966 in Oroville California

For me, getting Deb’s stuff out of storage had another benefit. Deb was the caretaker of several boxes of very old family photos. When I think of my “bucket list”, getting all the family photos scanned, organized, named, and catalogued is huge on the list. I took back the boxes and started the scanning project. I know it is morbid, but there are many people my age leaving the planet, and the one thing I want to have completed before I do so is the photos to the kids project.

My mother who passed away in 1952, me at 3, and my grandmother who passed away in 1993.

I knit during the early news programs, quilt till it gets warm enough to get outside, garden as long as my back holds up, and then try to work on photos the rest of the time. I barely scan blogs any more, and like last month, I rarely comment. Thank goodness for Facebook, a bit quicker and I can at least let folks know I am still around and reading.

Friend Jeanne sent an email yesterday, complaining that there was no blog and wanting to know what in the world I was doing. Friend Mary Ann from Albuquerque sent an email asking if I had done something with the Mother’s Day blog she thought was up there and couldn’t find. Nope, no blog. Just a quick facebook post with photos! So, for my two most loyal friends and readers….here is the blog!

Late Easter Family Time

Current Location: Rocky Point Oregon: Sunny and a predicted high of 74 F

As beautiful as springtime is here in this part of Oregon, I still can’t bring myself to change the header photo to this blog. I love seeing that image of Antelope Canyon. There were many high points on our travels this past winter, but somehow the light shining into the darkness, illuminating everything with wild colors, is the memory I return to most often.

It seems as though we experienced the essence of opposites during the trip, and the other memory that comes back repeatedly is the brilliance of every shade of green that we entered on Snake Creek in Florida. Green water and red desert. I can’t quite pick my favorite, and I guess I don’t have to.

April has flown by with all the springtime chores that accompany the reawakening of the earth. At last the tulips bloomed, the daffodils finished this month in full glory, only now beginning to falter with the warm days and still cold nights.

I love Easter. I have no clue why. As a kid, it was the Easter Cantata at church, the new fluffy dresses, the Easter hats, and Easter dinner. When my kids were little, I made Easter baskets for each one, going way over the top with my own creations filled with See’s Candy that I really couldn’t afford. The actual day should be irrelevant, since we aren’t a “churchy” family. However, this year we celebrated our family Easter a week late since part of the family couldn’t be around on the actual Easter Sunday.

Big surprise. It was a great family time, a lovely day, and yet, it did not feel like Easter. I guess there really is something to the idea that people all over the world, in spite of their particular bent on religion, are celebrating Easter on that particular Sunday. It was subtle, but we talked about it a bit. We could feel the difference. Check out the cat with his place setting! Mo left her chair to take the photo!

I still had all the Easter/Spring decorations up, with eggs and bunnies, and pastel colors everywhere, but we didn’t color eggs. We didn’t have an egg hunt. Somehow it seemed like a bit too much trouble.

Since Deborah has been living in the cottage in Grants Pass, she has enjoyed the friendship of wonderful neighbors. Karen and Glenn have children and grandchildren of their own, but they are all a bit distant. They have taken it on themselves to adopt my daughter, taking her to Sunday brunches, to outings at the Moose Lodge, keeping an eye out for when she gets home from work in bad weather. Not bad neighbors to have around when you are a woman living alone as Deb is right now.

We invited them to join us for our celebration, and they decided it would be fun to drive their fifth wheel over the mountain to camp at the big house with us. The weather and scenery between Grants Pass, just two hours away, and Rocky Point, is fairly dramatic. They laughed and thanked us for adding a bit of snow to the spring mix for their entertainment.

Mo opened up the cabin, and again a pipe was broken in spite of the heat we left on during the winter while we were away. Mo fixed the pipes while I vacuumed out all the spiders accumulated on the ceiling and in the shower for my spider phobic daughter so she could relax and enjoy her little vacation time in the cabin. Once the wood stove was cranked up, the cabin was warm and cozy for Melody and the kids.

Karen and Glenn had so much fun camping at our place in their older fifth wheel that they drove home and the next day bought a brand new fifth wheel! Looking forward to seeing that one!

It seems that the major focus of the non-Easter celebration was eating. Deborah made a truly magnificent eggs benedict casserole, and we slathered it with at least a quart of hollandaise sauce. Karen made another kind of tasty breakfast casserole, so we had two main dishes before the dessert course of fruit crepes, one of Melody’s great accomplishments. She can even flip those thin crepes in the air like a pro. Delish!

I had some Key Lime juice brought home from Key West and this was my chance to make a Key Lime cheesecake to share with family. Yum! We were all too full to eat much of it, so I had some to share with the Quilt group on Tuesday. Perfect. Now I want to make another one, cut it up into nice small servings, and freeze them. Just for me. It was that good, and made me smile as I remembered all the great Key Lime stuff to be found in Florida. Still hoping to make some Key Lime hollandaise someday when I get around to it.

I have been quilting on the fabulous new Bernina in the mornings when it is too chilly to be outdoors, and then going outside for gardening time. The greenhouse needed some spiffy work, and the soil was a bit hungry so I added some organic manure/compost to the raised beds. Mo and I will get the roof back on today, removed over the winter to keep it from caving in due to the weight of the snow.

Still working on the photo project, importing all my photos into Lightroom and publishing them to my SmugMug website. I think my most favorite feature of the SmugMug site is the ability to sort and organize my photos into folders and sub folders. Unlike Google, where there is no ability to do that, it makes it so much easier to find stuff. With thousands of photos on Google over the last few years, I really hate having to scroll down and down to find something from long ago.

On Smug Mug, I can go to a fold called “Holidays”, down to a folder called “Easter”, and then find each celebration listed by year. I have chosen to keep family celebrations private unless you have the link, however the photos from our trip are “public”. SmugMug also has a feature that keeps people from grabbing my photos with a right-click. Pretty nice. The website was recently updated and I am still trying to learn about all the features. It sure does make it a lot easier to share photos and to find them online. Also, SmugMug doesn’t mess with my photos the way Google does. (PS. I just noticed that I have TWO logos on the lower right of these photos. Hmm…seems as though I did it once in Picasa and then again in Lightroom. As I said, I am still learning!)

Mo ordered a VuCube portable satellite receiver almost five months ago from Camping World, and it was an excellent price. We had hoped it would be delivered in time for our winter trip. Nope. Mo’s willingness to wait saved her a couple of hundred dollars. It was finally delivered a few days ago, and yesterday we managed to figure out how to hook the thing up to the TV in the cabin. It is now working great with our extra Direct TV receiver, and the next job will be to figure out how to get it all hooked up in the MoHo. Since the rig was built prior to 2007, our TV isn’t digital, and there is an input for cable but not for satellite. Also, with a smaller rig like ours, we have to figure out how to add two more boxes that require a power outlet to the TV which is built in to a fairly tight space. Stay tuned.

I did finally manage a day in the MoHo to get her all spiffy again after three months of wandering. Deep vacuuming, polishing and carpet shampoo were part of the mix. I found myself sitting in the lovely sunshine at the dining table, feeling as though I was right at home again. Time to go on another trip!

In a few days, we will head west to the our favorite campground at Harris Beach State Park. As much as I loved the Florida beaches, Mo found herself missing the wild rugged Oregon Coast. We thought about traveling upcoast toward Florence to camp at Tugman State Park, but the weather may be a bit iffy, with rain and wind predicted for a few of our days, so we might just sit tight in our favorite place and enjoy the wild coastal weather without adding a bunch of extra driving to the menu.

We will be back in time for another celebration, this time a Mom’s Day brunch in Grants Pass with Deborah, and Melody and the kids coming over from Klamath Falls to celebrate with us. More food! Good thing I am getting outside most days to garden!

April

Current Location Rocky Point, Oregon 55 F and overcast today with rain coming tomorrow

When I look through the previous years of journaling my life, April is notoriously empty. I looked at the calendar and couldn’t believe that we have been home almost an entire month and I haven’t written a single word about ‘life’. Thinking I could do a bit of comparison, I traveled back through the blog and found that almost every single year since I started blogging has just two posts or even less during the month of April.

One is usually about Easter, and the other one is about gardening. In fact, I could almost post last years blog from April and it would fit this year without a hitch. I can remember times in my life when everything shifted at such a pace that there would most certainly be huge differences from year to year, even from month to month. I have to say how grateful I am for a life that is just a bit more predictable, a bit more calm, a life where April means gardening, cleaning up the pine needles, and decorating for Easter.

If I had lived a safe, predictable life for the last 69 years, it might be different. I could be hankering for change, for adventure, for variety. I have been blessed with more than enough adventure, more than enough variety, with parts of my life so long gone and so unrelated to this current existence that I barely recognize myself in those old stories. Instead, I am celebrating sameness, celebrating the repeat of the seasons, celebrating watching planted trees mature and gardens fill in over the years. You might have had to have lived a mixed up life like mine once was to really ‘get’ this. I now have adventure and unpredictability in small manageable doses, enough to keep me energized, but not enough to make me crazy.

Predictably, this year in April, we have been working daily at the big house in Rocky Point. The beautiful forest makes for lots of springtime debris to be raked and burned. Gorgeous flower beds must be uncovered, trimmed and weeded in order to once again be gorgeous. Grass needs mowing and fertilizing, raking and over-seeding. (Mo handles most of the grass stuff and I do most of the flower bed stuff.)

In between all the yard work, I have been quilting. When my sweet little Bernina 1230 needed some serious repairs (she is after all more than 30 years old), I succumbed to the siren call of a new sewing machine, the Bernina 550 Quilters Edition, outfitted with a special stitch regulator for free motion machine quilting, and a superb walking foot for getting through all those thicknesses of fabric and batting. Mornings are cool enough that I can spend them at the machine working on a springtime quilt I started a year ago before going outdoors as the days warm up for afternoon work.

We took a few days early in the month to work at the Cottage, with a chance to mow and rake and share meals with Deborah. While Mo and I were gallivanting around the country this winter, Deb was busy painting the cottage interior, making things look so much cleaner and brighter. Mo and I loaded up the tractor to take over the hill so we could do some dirt moving and tear down an old building or two. The burning season will be short this year, with the serious drought, so we needed to do this job as soon as we could manage it. More to come, but it is nice to see the place looking cleaner outside as well as inside.

Daughter Deanna and her husband Keith managed an I-5 run through Medford, and we celebrated with a spontaneous morning breakfast. I can’t believe just how quickly those two move back and forth across the country. Just two days prior to our breakfast, she and Keith were having breakfast with son John and his dad back in Missouri. Deanna and Keith are dealing with new rules for California emissions that have created epic troubles for their truck and for them. They haul to Canada and Alaska, haul all over the country, have to have a heating system that will work in sub zero temperatures, but the new law requires some sort of emission thingy that is giving them tens of thousands of dollars worth of headaches. Deanna is needles to say, furious. Once again they are back at their home base in Washington, waiting for Cummins to get the dang thing fixed.

It is amazing to me that after three months on the road, with almost daily writing, that I have no desire whatsoever to track my life with a journal. Or maybe not so amazing. After sewing all morning and gardening all afternoon, I fall into bed much too early, attempt to read some blogs or a book and am usually asleep within minutes. Now and then I attempt to make a comment or two with the ipad fingers, but that usually results in some stupid sort of typo that I can’t undo, so I just give up.

To all those loyal readers out there, who followed along on our travels, I am glad you have so many other places to go for entertainment. To all those bloggers who may or may not have noticed my comments, sorry. I am trying to read, but commenting isn’t coming very easily these days.

I decorated the house for Easter almost immediately after taking down the Christmas tree in early April. That felt just plain crazy, actually, and I hope I don’t have to do that again. If we travel quickly after Christmas in the future, I will make an extra effort to get the Christmas decor put away before we leave!

It has been nice this year to have Easter late in the month, and for us it will be even later. Due to some family commitments, we are having our traditional Rocky Point Easter celebration next Sunday. The weather has been gorgeous for the entire month, with moderate daily temperatures and nights barely near freezing. The sun has been invigorating, an unusual thing for April in this part of the world. There have been times when we are still looking at snow on the ground in April. It is beautiful, but does engender a bit of concern for the coming summer season. The predictions for mixed snow and rain next weekend will be a bit of a damper for our Easter celebration, but are definitely a good thing for the water situation here in the Basin.

Another little extra time user in my life has been the addition of the Adobe Lightroom software. I started shooting RAW format photos while traveling, but didn’t have the time or the computer hardware to handle them well. Once home, I installed Lightroom, and with encouragement from both Erin and my daughter Deanna, I have learned to import, develop, and manage the huge RAW files into something useable. Of course, with all those old files from the trip, including several hundred from Antelope Canyon, I haven’t picked up the camera once this month to shoot anything new. The few photos on this blog were actually shot with my iPad. In addition to taking a break from journaling and reading, it seems I also have taken a break from carrying the camera around!

This time last year I was still working part time, and as most full time retirees say, how in the world did I have time to work? Hopefully after next Sunday I will manage at least one more post for the month of April with photos of our belated Easter celebration.