Geddessentials

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

The Empty School Nest

Eight o'clock feels early.

School-supply-laden backpacks wake them up a little.

As does the excitement for the first day of fifth grade,

kindergarten,

and second grade.

Mommy-daughter shot.

A familiar walk,

although reams of paper in the packs make it feel longer.

Back to the blacktop.

Miss Millie starting to look a bit concerned,

as she gets her turn to line up outside the classroom.

Finding her seat at the blue table,

and finally getting a turn on the very carpet both her big brothers have sat on for story time.

Guess who started to tear up during The Kissing Hand?

Definitely not Millie.

Chester Raccoon stood at the end of the forest and cried.
"I don't want to go to school" he told his mother.

"I want to stay home with you. I want to play with my friends.

And play with my toys. And read my books.

And swing on my swing. Please may I stay home with you?"

Is it so wrong that I relate more to the kid than the mom in this story?

Calm down, Mommy, it's going to be okay.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

The road to Seattle ended up being a little bit longer this year, thanks to a few fun pit stops along the way. We started in Sacramento with our friends, the Broadbents, whose AMAZING home kept us so happily occupied that we completely forgot to take any pictures. Wish we had. Acres of peaceful, beautiful property surround their bright, spacious home decorated in that distinctly-wonderful (and magazine worthy in my opinion) Heidi style. Their backyard leaves nothing to be desired, either. I'm pretty sure our kids could have spent the full two weeks of our vacation playing in it.

Next we headed over to Brownsville--near Grass Valley--to visit Stephen's uncle and his girlfriend. Blair and Roseann live way up in the hills with only the deer and bears as neighbors. Roseann and Stephen have been talking vegetables, fruit, and flowers for several years, so of course the first order of business had to be a tour of the garden, orchard, and yard. Fantastic. They grow, jar, pickle, jam, dry, dehydrate and cook with all sorts of produce and herbs. Lucky us, we got to try some of that yumminess.

Gardeners unite!

The boys sad to leave the tree swing and Bugs the cat

After Brownsville we headed over to Redding. Uncle Bill lives around the corner from Stephen's grandma's house, so we had a chance to visit with him. We also got to see Stephen's cousin and her family. The kids love swimming in their pool with Jack and Ava, and we love chatting and catching up with Katie and Josh.

Benito and Billy Idol with Jack

Millie in girl heaven, a.k.a. Ava's room

After our fun Northern California walk-about, we drove on to our first official stop: Portland with my little sis and her adorable family. Normally, we pit stop at their house for a night and then move on to Seattle. This year we had the luxury of staying longer and spending some quality time with some of our favorite people in the world! We loved it too much, I'm afraid, because it made me wish we lived closer to each other more than ever.