Back Home....Reboot!

And then there was the time I went meandering off to the Pacific Northwest and fell into a giant black bloggy hole and didn't post at all for three whole weeks! Whew! I didn't mean to do it, I really thought that I would be clicking along in the evenings recording all our adventures and staying in touch like I did while we were in California this past fall. Sometimes you can do it, and sometimes life has other plans.

 I managed one measly post and found that there was a bug in the app I use for mobile blogging (I don't have a laptop that I can take on the road so blogging on the phone is my go to, when not home). Anyhow, it turned out that the app wouldn't work properly and refused to allow more than one photo per post. It sounds kind of silly now, but I think I felt like posts with only one photo weren't worth it. So, I just went AWOL. I think I meant to do an explanation at some point in the trip to let my readers know what happened to me but I never really did.

Whoops!

Anyhow....three weeks on the road and now we are home. Whew. It was such a long time away that I heard A telling a friend the other day that he had forgotten which direction the light switch flips in his own bathroom. Strange to feel those muscle memory habits fade because you've been away so long. Home feels just slightly odd.

I am feeling daunted by the massive weeds in the garden, the gigantic house to clean and keep renovated, feeding and caring for all our animals and the enormity of keeping four little boys occupied and happy without a daily itinerary. I know there were tools that I had set up to manage all these things. The boys take care of some of the animals when they are in the swing of things, normally I am not slogging through jet-lag so I get early before the family and have a little jump on the day and normally I keep up on the weeds day by day and they don't get out of hand. I'll get in back in hand, I know I will.

I am rebooting my healthy eating, trip food is fun and celebratory but not particularly the way I want to live. I am resuming my standard of one sweet treat a week, aiming for organic, and eating the triad of meat, produce and dairy while trying to have three colors of produce at every meal.

We've also been playing games together, the boys are actually decent players at Uno, Set, Go Fish, War, Monopoly and a beginner version of Scrabble which I like to call Camaraderie Scrabble....no competition, open hands and lots of cooperative help about coming up with words that we know how to spell. Also, I realized why my grandma kept the scrabble tiles in a ceramic jar with a lid. You can't have too many tiles, they are always scooting away under the couch, and I can understand why...not only are they small but they just feel so good to handle....all silky and meditatively smooth. I'd like a jar of them just for running my own fingers through in the early morning while I drink my tea. :) Our little garage sale set of Scrabble is now a bit shockingly short on tiles so I think a bonus purchase will be in order. They have to sell the tiles alone someplace online, right?