35 Days of Favorites: Grass!

This post is part of a series called “35 Days of Favorites”, in honor of my 35th birthday. You can read more about the details here…

It’s been awhile since I’ve had any grass to enjoy.

When we were living at camp, the grass was thin and patchy. Then, our yard was given a fantastic makeover, and we got some thick, beautiful sod, but we moved away before we had much time to enjoy it, and spent this last summer with a new yard which looked like this:

(So scary, I know. People kept telling us to mow our weeds, but we ended up just killing them all in the fall.)

Last fall, Ben put sod down in our front yard about 2 seconds before it snowed, and our backyard was done two weeks ago.

Oh, my goodness! I love grass!!!

Sometimes I lie down on my back in our grass, just because I can. Last night, Ben and I flopped down in our front yard, and just enjoyed sitting on our grass and talking.

Next project is landscaping. I hope I love that as much as the grass….

Do you have a yard to enjoy? Loving any grass or gardening or anything green this spring?

One Last Evening in Pictures

We are home from our beautiful Florida vacation. I will not write anything about the weather here at home, because I think that topic has been covered quite thoroughly.

However. I do have two things to say:

1) To everyone on Facebook: Post about the muffins you’re baking, or about your favorite shoes, or anything other than the weather. Facebook needs you to be strong. Resist the urge to write about the weather.

2) To the lady at the mall who said the snow today is her worst nightmare: It’s time to get out more, and experience new things. I could think of some pain and suffering in the world that might be more difficult to bear than a snowstorm.

Alright, now that I’ve gotten those two important thoughts off my chest, I will share some pictures from our last evening in Florida. Maybe they will comfort you in your suffering.

If not, then maybe you should not look at them. I promise this will be my last Florida post. After this, my pictures will all look white and wintery again, if that makes you feel any better.

But not for long. Because it’s almost spring.

On our last evening in Florida, we went for a “family golf cart ride”. Kaylia still fits in the basket in the back, so there’s still room for the four of us!

We headed off for the `jungle`, which really isn`t technically a jungle, but rather a strip of uncleared land beside the retirement village.

It was a beautiful evening, but I’m so happy to be home. Vacations are nice, but ordinary life is quite wonderful, too.

Soaking Up Fall

Yesterday was golden. Really, was there ever a more beautiful fall day?

Who knew it would be the best day ever for family pictures?

I certainly did not know it two weeks ago when I arranged with our friend Morgan to meet with us yesterday, but we managed to pick a beauty! We spent a sunshiny hour with Morgan, wandering around in the glowing leaves.

Then Morgan left, and Ben hung out with our girls at his parents’ house while I went back and took a bunch of my own pictures. I love it that he gets how much I need to do that.

I really do need to go lie in a field and take pictures of weeds against the sky. It does something good to my insides.

What are your insides begging you for today? That sun is shining, and it’s just so beautiful, but sometimes we’re far too busy to notice.

When I finally slow down enough to go lie in a field of weeds, I realize how much I’ve been needing it. And when winter comes, I’ll be so glad I soaked up all this goodness now. Winter will be good, too, but I’m sure that when I go lie in a snow drift, I’ll still be remembering the smell of dry grass in the hot sun.:)

 

 

Fall is My Favorite

Fall is just beautiful.

When it’s fall, I think it’s my favorite season.

But then, I feel the same in spring and summer, too. (Not winter. There is no confusion for me about winter. It is beautiful, and I love some parts of it very much, but it’s not my favorite.)

So we’ll say for right now that fall is my favorite.

And my favorite place to be in fall is the Whiteshell. There is nothing like it.

That’s where we were this weekend.

We stayed at Ben’s parents’ cabin with friends, and on the drive home, Ben and I decided to make this particular weekend of September in the Whiteshell a fall tradition – kind of like people who spend Labor Day weekend at the lake. Always, each and every year.

The first weekend of fall will be our Whiteshell weekend.

We made this decision, and then sat back feeling brilliant – the way you do when you make a solid decision you’re totally proud of.

Another fall tradition for our family is a hike to Look-Out. We’ve done it every fall for the last five years, and it’s just one of those things that needs to be done.

It’s also mandatory to take a family picture with that view in the background. I love seeing how our family has changed from year to year, but that view stays the same – always amazing. (Last year’s family picture never worked out, though – click here to read about last year’s trip to Look-Out. And here’s the post from the year before, when everything went “right”!)

And even though we had enough coughing and runny noses to fill us up for the whole winter, we still had a wonderful time with our friends who joined us.

So, what about you? Where were you this weekend? And what are your mandatory requirements for fall activities? I hope you’re enjoying everything that’s bright and beautiful out there!

 

 

Oh Weekend, How I Love You

Weekends are wonderful, yes?

I thoroughly enjoyed this one. The weather was unbelievable, and it was so, so good to have Ben home for a day off. These days, most of his days off are spent going into the city to prepare for our big move, or he doesn’t take days off at all, to bank them up for the future when we know we’ll have to be gone from camp.

But Sunday was just a wonderful, relaxing, stay-at-home-all-day kind of a day.

There were pancakes in the morning.

(Kaylia wouldn’t show her face for the picture, so I got her under the table instead!)

There was a picnic in the living room.

There was reveling in the spring weather…

…and one last sled ride in the disappearing snow.

It was pretty much perfect.

On top of all that relaxing, Ben even had time for loading up all eight boxes of stuff I’ve purged in the last few weeks, to ship off to MCC. Yesss!

So pretty much, purging is the theme of my life, and you’ll probably be hearing a lot more about that this week. My new passion…

I’m working on a list of all my most practical purging tips and tricks, in case you’re wondering. In the meantime, I hope you had a most fabulous weekend.

What I See When I Walk Out My Door

Ever been to the Whiteshell in the winter? It is fantastically beautiful.

I got out of the house the other day for an afternoon walk in the sunshine, and I was reminded all over again why I feel like such a lucky girl in winter – run out the door, and there’s so much beauty right there.

Sometimes I feel a little out of place in the Whiteshell. We don’t have a snowmobile, and Ben doesn’t hunt, and really, we just are not very rugged people. We don’t live off the land much.

But I drink in the beauty of it on a regular basis. Does that count?

I don’t even wear Sorel’s.

I know, I know. After having been out here for almost five years, one would think that I would be properly booted.

But I walk around with my face lifted to the sunshine, my eyes fixed to the top of those glorious evergreens piercing a perfect blue sky, and I try to soak in all of that wild, untouched beauty.

And even though it hasn’t made me “rugged”, it has made me fall in love with winter.

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