Painting Bliss

Walk the Loop

 

 

One can not explain the connection to a place they may have. Perhaps it's just  a love for what's there or the feeling you get when visiting... but I feel in my heart a place you feel connected to means that somehow over time and space... perhaps a past life, you had a reason to love this spot and once again love the same place but without knowing exactly why or how.

For me... this is and has been the Liberty Loop. It's a 2.5 mile walk around a large marsh area (Audubon Reserve), where a plethora of different bird-life resides and flourishes. Egrets, herons, swans, geese, mallards, bald eagles, hawks... and well my list could go on and on of  the feathereds to be seen. Turtles... my favorite small aquatic creature perch on mounds of grasses, logs, and rocks. They mull around in depths of water that are just low enough for them to feed and wander... like a toddler in the shallow end of the pool, perfectly delighted to be doing their turtle thing.

 

 

I walk this place regularly and feel at peace. My feet take the pace of the beats thumping throughout my ears from my ipod that plays emits bands such as The Paperkites, Xx, and The Staves. This place isn't meant for anything too loud or demanding... it deserves a background set for heartbeats... not drumbeats.

 

The Liberty Loop changes by the day and season. Not only by scenery but by wildlife. My place is a place for holding hands, walking silently, and smiling at the giggling children running up on geese.

I can think clearly at the Liberty Loop, feel deeply there, and find a rhythm and space that I need to feel what I need to feel. It's a place I try and not answer texts, return emails, or even touch my phone at all unless it's related to changing a song.

 

 

Everyone needs a place to go, to feel in, to breathe in... everyone needs that serene banquet of earth and sky and feathers.

 

 

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Spring and Transportation through Memories

 

 

 

Most things bring me in thought and memory to my grandparents house. If your a regular reader, you are familiar with this and my other tales of being at home with them. The smell in the air yesterday brought me to there, to their yard... to the cow pastures that surrounded their home and the pond that brought promise of sounds and sights of spring.

I remember early spring wandering slowly around their pond, for the pond was my safe haven from the world. I couldn't play in it through the winter, but come early spring I could at least assess what was happening within it's waters. Peering inside the still cold waters I looked for signs of life, spotting frog egg masses with tiny black dots inside each bulbous form yearning to grow and wiggle inside. Around the wet edges of spring I would spot the beginning of green and take in the tweee tweee sound of the red winged blackbirds.

My grandmother and I would take walks down their road come spring, collecting pussy willows. How I would love to come across pussy willlows and get lost in the whimsical memories they would prevoke. They are so hard to find these days... Red wings in pussy willlows... perhaps a painting?

Red winged blackbirds with their distinct call, only start singing in spring. Not second before, but precisely as it begins. My grandmother told me that at a young age, and I have gauged the season by those words ever since. I thought I spotted a red wing the other day in some reeds passing by the swamp I love... but I couldn't be sure. I haven't heard them yet, but I can already imagine the joy my heart will experience as the first twwweeeee of their chattery voices fills the air and space between my ears.

 

 

 

50 degree days for us mean walks to the general store, sandwiches on their porch, and the soaking in of warm sunshine. Seems like forever since I felt it (literally)... and I thought I heard my freckles give a little cheer as they too soaked up the warm rays. Sunshine is medicine in my book, the best medicine their is.

 

 

 

 

 

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I Collect - It's What I do

 

 

If you are a frequent reader here you already know that I am a collector. A magpie, loving all things that catch my eye. I enjoy the hunt, the excitement, and the moment that I know I have found something that speaks to me... and in an antique shop like this, how could I not look in every nook and cranny until something spoke my language.

I adore seeing glimpses into your human past. Little snap shots of the modern family, when that time was modern. Like this little goodie we saw...

 

 

The mom helping the children, dressed her best. Her husband, sitting off to the side... taking no part other than to smoke his pipe. It is Christmas in the 1950's home. A magic moment where every child behaves and every family in America is happy. That was advertising then, life as it used to be.

This time around I purchased a tiny sapphire blue pharmaceutical bottle (I have a deep affection for vintage glass bottles), a 1940/50's turquoise tea pot, and a pair of lemon yellow 1950's salt and pepper shakers. The hubby himself found a lovely edition of Wuthering Heights illustrated with gorgeous wood cut illustrations.

 

 

I could do it all day, every day.  Hopping from shop to shop, barn to barn, store front to store front. Something in me yearns to collect. Sometimes I wonder why people feel the need to collect. I hypothesise that they need to comfort themselves with items... or that perhaps they remember their past lives and are constantly searching for things from the time they can't quite remember.  Whatever it is... there are lots of us... all over the world collecting, keeping, displaying. I can't explain why I collect. I just need to.

I am drawn to things, and I like to think the things are drawn to me. Random things.

 

Finding the Right Fit - My Ukelele

 

 

I don't publicize that I have a musical background. Not because I'm not proud, I'm very proud... it's just the musical gene never adhered to my skin like it did for others. Trying to learn piano as a young child, a lesson was often ended in tears and frustration. I opted to learn the numbers of my fingers instead of the actual notes. Piano was abandoned after much pleading, begging, and all out refusal to play the instrument.

Instruments never felt right to me. In elementary school a clarinet was put in my hands when I really wanted to play the flute. The music teacher told me my teeth were bucked and that I could never play the flute... so here she said. (Years of braces later, she can kiss my arse!) I brought home the clunky, ugly clarinet in it's heavy black box and gave it as much effort as the piano. I still remember the taste of wood in my mouth and the access of saliva from trying to play.

I never picked up an instrument again. That's not to say I didn't want to know if I was able to play something. A deep affection for music and raised in a household where the piano was a permanent fixture. Times with my mother sat on the piano bench singing "A Spoon Full of Sugar" were followed with my sqweeky child voice belting out the sound of music's "Some of my Favorite Things". As a teenager while all other children were listening to the (awful) grunge rock of the 90's I was hanging Beatles posters on every inch of my room... and I mean every inch. Including the ceiling. I immersed myself with every album, song, and B side they put on while also listening to Pink Floyd, The Animals, and The Steve Miller Band. I chose a different route than most kids my age. You can say, I was a bit misunderstood.

Do you think I cared? If you knew me then, you know that I didn't ;)

It wasn't until this year, after hearing a song via my pink zebra headphones while working in my studio that I decided I wanted to learn the ukelele. Amanda Palmer's Ukelele Anthem screamed in my ears and I knew I had to get my hands on a uke. Christmas was looming and it was the first thing on my list.

 

 

 

Santa being the good soul that he is delivered me the ukelele I picked out from musiciansfriend.com. It's a concert ukulele which means it's just a tidge bigger than a regular uke... and that's exactly what I was looking for. I wanted neither to hold a large guitar, nor a teeny tiny traditional uke. I wanted something just right. Sort of like baby bear in the three little bears :) Not too hot, not too cold, just right.

 

 

 

It feels that way, this uke. Never in my life have I held an instrument that didn't feel absolutely awkward. I look forward to learning. I look forward to hard tipped fingers and being able to just pull it out and sing a song. I want to write my own songs, with my own words and feel accomplished in doing so. I see myself backpacking my uke, and bringing her/him along on hikes for brief chords played during our picnic lunches. Most of all I look forward to having music in my own house for my own children to experience. Maybe someday one of them will be blogging the same as me, saying how they could never settle on an instrument but had found one that felt like a feather pillow in a bed of pins.

The song below isn't for everyone, but if you give it a go maybe you will hear why I wanted to play the uke.

Which still needs a name... like a good car, a good instrument must be named. I think it's a girl... but I really like the name Angus (stop your snickering) from a band I adore called Angus and Julia Stone.

 

 

 

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Memories of Marbles

Marbles are tiny glass memories for me. When my grandfather died and my grandmother had to sell their house... the one that he built with his two hands and only his two hands without the help of others... the house I had to turn down from owning... well the only thing I thought about seeking out was my marbles. I looked in my bedroom, as I stayed so often and for so long sometimes that I needed a room of my very own but they weren't there.

 

 

I kept my marbles in a little spring hinged brown box and they were special because of my grandfather. The television never entered our minds until evening at their house, so days were spent in my imagination and around their pond and some of it on the floor playing marbles with my grandfather.

 

 

 

It was one day while playing that he brought me into the kitchen with my marbles, I didn't know what he was doing and I can't remember if I asked a lot of questions... but being very visual and having a bit of a photographic memory I can now play snippets of the memory in my head like a recorded event. I watched him place the marbles into a frying pan while a glass of ice water sat next to it on the counter. Around the pan he swirled the marbles, slowly and patiently. Round and round they went as they heated up. Still I didn't know what he was doing but watched intently, excitedly.

 

 

When the marbles reached whatever point he felt was right he poured them into the ice water where I heard the unforgettable crackle sounds within each marble. Pouring them out and onto a towel, there they were transformed. My already beautiful marbles were even more so as the insides had crackled like an aged piece of wood.

Now if you end up doing this for yourself, please be advised that after the marbles are crackled they are no longer playable. The crackling is literally cracks in the glass... so if smashed or roughed around with they will break in half or into pieces. So I advise putting them in a shallow dish in a window sill where you can enjoy the sun shining through them like treasure.

 

 

The house sold, the attic routed by a local antiques dealer... everything gone including my marbles. Or so I assumed. From time to time I would think of my marbles, wonder where they were... missing them...Uuntil yesterday that is.

When I was younger and spending time at the grandparents, we also played a lot of mancala (this is where my marbles tie in). My first set was made by my dad, the second by my grandfather. For hours on end my mom and I would play the day away on the set my grandfather made. In a relationship where we often butted heads, this game found us getting along every time. I loved playing.

Yesterday my 5 year old came downstairs and says, "look mom, marbles!".  I looked and sure enough yes there were marbles, but I hadn't bought any marbles for him or any of the children so I was perplexed. They looked old, not like the new cruddy marbles you get these days... further perplexed was I.

"Sammy where did you get those nice marbles?" I asked.

Sam being a great story teller replied "I found them in my dreams and kept them in my special place".

God I love that boy!

 

Later that day he pulled out the mancala game my grandfather crafted, and I realized quite quickly that Sam had lifted the marbles from the set. My marbles weren't lost at all but used as the playing pieces! That when it was made I had put my marbles into the set!

The marbles that my son found and were playing with were my marbles! The ones I had been missing!

It's funny how things come to you, and come back to you. Just when you think they're gone, there they are. And so... marbles always bring me back to my grandfather. When crackling some of my marbles with Sam yesterday I let him toddle the pan back and forth circling the heating marbles... he asked how I knew how to do it to which I replied, "My grandfather showed me, I'm showing you, and someday you can show your children, ok?"

He smiled... no answer needed.

I Got Lost in Her Diary

 

 

I got lost in her diary and I barely knew her. We ate together maybe 3 times at Thanksgivings over the years, but never really talked other than a hello and goodbye. She seemed sweet and a kind soul. Someone who liked to read A LOT and knew all of the flowers by name.

There it was sitting on the table and I couldn't help but read it. It was my husbands grandmothers diary. She has been gone now a few years and my hubby's mother has been bringing things home of Grandma's. Of all the things I have seen my mom in law bring home, this has captured me straight through the heart. "Mom, can I read it?"... of course she said, admitting she had only been through a few pages. This diary was from 1935, 1936, and 1937 when Grandma was 16, 17, and 18 years old. It was a 5 year diary where each page has 5 sections and in each section you write the year, then a little something of your day. Down the line you can see what you wrote on the same day the year before, and the year before that.

In 1935 Grandma was 16, a real flirt for the time and what I can gather a popular girl with lots of friends, boyish admirers, and lots of names on her dance card. In just a month she visited 2-3 parties and just as many dances. Her handwriting just about perfect, spelling not too bad, she wrote every day for the whole year of 1935 in pencil. Grandma used the lingo of the times, words like swell and fella! I especially love how she would say something important and add a playful "Ahem!" afterwards. She went to a lot of movies, it was neat to read she had seen "the latest Shirley Temple movie" and add "she's a real sweetie!".  My favorite entry of 1935 was when her parents visited some neighbors and she and her brother got to stay home alone! It was such an excitement for her and her brother!

1936 was hit and miss. She would write a little, leave a few weeks, then return saying how it had been an age since she wrote on the pages. Until  June of 1937  that is, when an interest of her got serious... Sam arrived. Before then, my husbands grandfather was mentioned but no relationship took hold... at least not yet. And in that entry about hubby's grandfather to b,e she added in the last sentence... Sam you deserve just what is coming to you! Unknown foreshadowing?

 

 

Grandma and Sam fell in love. True teenage love. Her writing was so vivid and passionate, wrapped up in her daily entries I found myself turning the pages wanting to read more and more. It was like being in the midst of a Nicholas Sparks novel! Chills lined my arms and straight down to my toes as she added "we understand each other more and more"... "he says I'm dangerous"... then a few entries later a talk of going to a carnival and finding herself "dangerous again". But then something happened... and although it didn't say exactly what or maybe it was that grandma's handwriting was a little sloppy that year, I assumed Sam had to go to war. In the entries after receiving the "news" Sam tries to break it off with Grandma but they find themselves only 24 hours later running to each other's arms in the evening. She counts and writes how many times he called that day and how she doesn't know how "they are supposed to make it through this". Close to the last entries Grandma says "one more day with Sam, we laughed when we should have cried"... swoooon. Then he left and her entries became desperate, her handwriting larger and quickly written. "Haven't heard a word of how Sam is doing... please Lord let me hear"... and then the last entry of 1937 "Have received a letter from Sam, he's ok... Dear God bring him home to me!".

Then for a whole year nothing... nothing! Heartbreak. Then an entry in 1938 about future Grandpa, a few days later another. " We went on a date, I am engaged." From there it seemed like she tried to convince herself that she was in love, but I could tell it was only self convincing. I'm sure she loved Grandpa, but why keep a journal till the day she died from her teen years? How could she keep it without careful keeping it. Something kept for so long, is bound to get lost.

 

 

Other than this wonderful love story Grandma was an artist like me... mentioned painting and drawing! Not to mention she had a deep love for flowers and gardening... spoke of going to the woods to dig up flowers and bring them home for planting. One entry said "Saw a wild columbine today on a walk!", important enough to her to write it down. I can't help but think that Grandma and I would of been great friends! I wish I was able to know her sooner but am glad and feel very blessed to have gotten to know her from the pages of her teenage diary. What a privileged.

My mom in law found it and the book was still locked. Key lost... but cover locked. I would of held on to it too if I were Grandma. How long did she continue to think about Sam? Is Sam still alive? did he go to war?

Oh the mystery!

Feeling Froggy and a Summer Visitor

 

Since I was smal,l frogs have been a part of my life. Growing up around my grandparents pond I was a tom boy to the highest degree. From sun up and until sun down the only reason I stepped away from that pond and into the house was to eat and/or go to the bathroom. Even then, it was a quick in and a very quick get back out. Every visit to their house and long wonderful summers of vacation at their house, the only place I wanted to be was standing tall in my grandfathers way over sized muck boots, aluminum bucket in my hand (I still have my bucket by the way).

At one point my grandfather made me the very best frogging tool around, it was mine and it was an absolute one of a kind. While frog catching I always snuck into the kitchen to steal a strainer. It was yellow like a school bus and had a perfect sized handle... and best of all it was THE perfect frog catcher. Until it was better improved you see. My grandfather in all his creative genius took my strainer and attached it to the end of a 4 foot wooden pole. Now not only could I catch close to the edge, but I also could scoop up floating kermits way out far. My grandmother, right up until the sale of her house and into my adulthood didn't have the heart to throw my scooper away, most of her summers too revolved around this yellow frogger and it's pig tailed master of frogging.

Imagine me, 6 years old and blond haired traipsing around the pond, pole over my shoulder like a kid with a runaway sack on a stick. Except I didn't want to be any other place but right where I already was. In a child's playground of mud, forget me nots, and bass bugs that is. I hated bass bugs... which for those of you who aren't upstate New Yorkers, are actually juvenile dragonflies. Before they leave water and become the charming winged dreamers we all know and love, they are nasty black ugly and to a kid scary as h-e-double L. I was always aware that I might draw my scooper back and find one, and if I did I would quickly have a wee internal but very reserved (as most girls would not be), freak out. Of course at that point I didn't know what they were, I just knew them for what my pa-pa called them... bass bugs... for he I am sure used them for fishing.

 

 

Now grown and long since familiar with my childhood pond I have had to get my frog needs in other ways.

In our yard, it has been the very froggiest year of all. Not only did we have so many froggy visitors to our very small 3 foot round pond with solar powered pump but we also managed to find 20 baby frogs in one day within our basement window wells. But out of all our come and go frogsters, one has stayed the entire time. Sometimes he disappears for  day or two at most, but then the following morning he's there to greet us. His name is Worts... and that is because he has a big ol' shiny wort on the left side of his mouth that has only seemed to grow in size over the summer months.

This frog is extremely friendly and super patient as little boys insist on holding him several times a day. He's a real good sport if you ask me. Even when he's being shoved into a friends face when visiting our yard! she was surely alarmed, but think of him! hee hee ;)

 

 

All of these photos today are photos of our friend Wort's. We will surely miss him as the colder weather emerges from it's autumn shell and he finds a warm place to winter over.  It would be great fun and a super treat to see our friend Wort's as spring blooms once again.

Sweet Corn Nostalgia

 

You wouldn't think sweet corn could be nostalgic, but for me it is. It's not about summer, or the tastes of summer, or the fact that you can get only really good corn in the summer... its about family, and more specifically its about my grandfather.

When I was small I spent many a summer with my grandparents...

Enter Otego New York, go straight down Main Street and take a left at the deli. Keep going until you see a hand painted church sign, and notice that the empty spaces of the "A's" are painted in. When my grandfather had a minor stroke just a few years before he was tragically taken, he lost his ability to read and couldn't remember that the hollow centers of letters were meant to be hollow. He could build anything so when the church needed a sign, he was the man...

Go straight down that road with all it's twists and turns, past barns and houses, and soon you'll be there.

 

Arrive at their house, a yellow one level ranch with beautiful large yard, pond, cow pasture behind and corn field in front and you'll know your in some sort of private heaven. Sitting in the swing that used to be nestled between the large maples my grandfather planted with his own two hands and peer across the street, and there was and still is a large corn field. Behind the corn field is a great opening expanse of grass, and then woods. I used to tell my grandparents that I would build a house on the open expanse so I could always be near to them, and close to the land that made me feel whole and with purpose. That corn field was welcome to our picking. The farmer, being a friend told my grandparents to pick corn whenever they wanted and so they did. Not with excess, as they did nothing in excess... but when wanted, and enjoyed down to the very last kernel.

My Pa Pa would walk across that road and into the tall corn stalks, pick a half dozen and walk back. Somehow I remember the very first time. I remember him going and me waiting, watching... I remember sitting in the yard and teaching me to shuck. Shucking corn was and will always be about my grandfather. He taught me to take the top with two hands, separate the silk between each hand, and pull straight down. Once the husk is pulled all the way down, you snap off the base and remove the final strands of silvery silk.

Boil, butter, salt and pepper if you want and eat until you can't eat anymore.

 

 

My grandfather was a corn eating professional. He did everything slowly and perfectly, from washing the dishes to eating his corn. One cob was meticulously chewed until nothing was left but cob and the one cob probably took a good 20 minutes or so. You see, each kernel is held by a transparent silky pocket... and for most of us we leave this part on the cob... but he didn't. Every part of the corn... kernel, pocket, and all was gnawed away thoroughly. I was never sure how he did it, and I wasn't sure until last night when I tried being careful... and I figured it out.

Bite hard, bite down to the very cob, and show no mercy. Do it, like a cow would do it. When you do it this way, the corn has so much more texture. It seems meatier and fuller in the mouth.

Nowadays when I visit the grocery store and see a big trash can next to the corn table I chuckle to myself, and wonder if anyone knows what it's like to really pick, shuck, and eat corn. In Reality, you don't get to check every cob for imperfections, there's no knowing what you have until you get it home and peel it open for yourself. When you pick corn straight from the field you must beware the corn grubs. You never know if there will be one inside munching the sweet yellow niblets, and I remember always being super cautious as a kid when helping shuck. Of course I would scream and throw the cob if one were to be found! I was a tom boy through and through, but when it came to that... I was all girl.

Now when I go to the store, and if I buy corn (which I only do in the summer), I choose not to look. I push the trash can aside and just pick out what I think looks biggest and fullest while some lady or gentleman next to me opens and checks each and every one they want. This is my way of staying true to my grandfather. It's my way of staying a little bit country. It's my way of staying real.

 

 

An Old Stuff Kind of Week

 

 

Yesterday's post sharing my antique store adventure, also found me stopping at a small consignment shop which really wasn't worth much other than the book that greeted me my first step into the door. I had no idea Candy Land was a book before it was a children's board game... so either I'm really young or I'm unlearned in the ways of child's literature.

Either way this book was an excitement for me,  and I had to have it!

 

 

Printed in 1928 its no longer attached to its cover, but gently sits inside hoping for future professional repair. The hubby knows how to bind books, so I will probably have him take a look see. I was truly surprised by the richness the book still held in it's color. Bright illustrations in mostly primary colored printing are a sight to be dazzled by.

 

 

Being that just moments before I found my vintage red bear friend from the American Teddy Bear Co. I knew I had to read this story to my boys and tell them that my red bear was the very same bear that led little Betty into Candy Land! So far the kids have been taking turns sleeping with "Brunny" each night, and there's not a room he doesn't follow us into.

 

 

If you ask me, the board game doesn't hold even a small candle's light to this book and the original story... and where did the bear go in the game? Where did all the freaky characters come from and the wacked out LSD hued colors that we all remember as a child? To be honest I remember altering the order of the cards when my mom turned her head or went to the bathroom so that I could take an instant jump right to the candy cane castle (ooooooh cheater cheater!)

 

 

And perhaps the book and the game have nothing to do with each other as the story other than traveling to a place called Candy Land and the castle looking exactly the same, truly don't resemble each other. I am having trouble researching it actually. Anyone know anything about my beautiful old book? Anyone recollect reading it as a child or happen to be an antique book aficionado?

 

If the book and the board game aren't related I would of seriously sued the board game creator over creative rights... or something like that, I'm no lawyer! Sounds official... sounds good :)

 

 

I have always had an affection for old children's books. They inspire me and intruege in their mysterious ways. Perhaps it's the magpie in me or the girl from another life that needs old things nearby. Whatever it is, someday I'll probably be living in a house full of cats and boxes of old stuff... atleast I'll be happy!

Where did I go? Spontaneous Trip to The Adirondacks

 

 

 

You probably noticed there wasn't any blog from me yesterday, something truly uncommon as I always have a post scheduled for the following day. Well... did you wonder where I was?

Sorry circumstances found me journeying on a road trip almost 4 hours drive with my mom up into the Adirondacks of northern New York. My aunt lost someone near and dear to her, and so we were venturing up to show her our love and support as her family.

 

 

Oh... my... gawd... the Adirondacks... I had no idea it's beauty, it's peacefulness, or it's lack of cell service for that matter. Not only was I in the middle of moose country (no I didn't see a moose, dammit), but I was without modern technology. I should of known that I would be, but it was something not exactly on mind. It really turned out to be a blessing, something I truly needed. For me, and for the one on one time with my mom another needed blessing came for us to have time together. Four hours drive into the pine woods of Raquette lake found us on a girls road trip, not a moment lacked of  laughter or chatter. The kind of chatter that found us 3 miles (thank goodness only 3 miles) past our turn for route 28. It's ok, we asked a toothless antique dealer what to do, and he said to go here - there - and the other place, so we just turned around and ignored his suggestions. HA!

We were two girls on an adventure, finding our own way without the help of our men and loving every second of it! If we wanted to stop, we stopped. If we wanted to go into a shop or antique place, we did! If it was iced coffee on our mind, we prayed that somewhere in the middle of no where we would find it.

 

 

 

Time in this part of New York state... a place where America, still resembles the America of times gone by, is a place of pure beauty. The size of the town can be determined by the local restaurant, liquor store, and general store, which all reside in the very same building! It may have seemed out of sorts to me, and completely intriguing... but to the locals, this was their life. Their go to if they needed something as simple as toilet paper, or elaborate as dinner makings.

 

 

Every morning fresh, homemade, and delicious donuts are delivered by hand from the nearby home of the baker. Probably some elderly woman who's really good at baking, as her husband that day had made the delivery for her while she attended to other things.

A dozen of these beauties came home with me,
still warm and seeping with spots of grease through the paper of the bag.

 

 

In our short overnight visit, there were memories made with my uncle Bob, whom I never ever get to see and rarely have seen my entire life. It was a pleasure to meet his wife, my aunt... and get to know them in the short time we visited. I admire my Uncle Bob and feel a deep closeness to him that I can't explain. For never having the opportunity to really bond, I felt as close to him as if we saw eachother every day. I wanted to be near him, put my arm in his arm, and snug a hug whenever possible. I think we look alike too!

 

I'm not exactly a dog person, but I just fell in love with my Aunt and Uncles two little doxin pups, Lucy and Lukey! They were just the sweetest little things, I think I would like one of my own!!

 

 

There was laughter between myself, my mom, my aunts, and uncle... time with them, watching my family and hearing stories of the past was a privilege I will not soon forget. I just wanted to soak up every moment, take in every laugh, and keep it forever in the most tender part of my heart. Saying goodbye was harder than I had anticipated. After hugging everyone, I snuck in one extra from my Uncle Bob.

I don't know when I will ever see him again.

 

 

Some moments are expected, some are not... and it is in those unexpected moments that magic happens. I loved every minute of this trip... from the very start to the very end. It's a trip I will hold near and dear forever and ever. There was more that we managed to squeeze in while there, I'll be sure to share it over the next few days. For now, 8 hours of driving has me a bit tired. I missed the hubby and my boys... some well needed time for some snugging, cuddling, and sleeping in my own bed is past due :)