Reunited!

They finished the van early!  I picked up my van and returned the Jeep to the rental place.  It was a great chance to see that no one in the family, myself most of all, likes a Jeep.

A few things I did not like: it felt flimsy, the passenger seat was nearly in my armpit, the back seat was teeeeeeensy, there was no proper space to put things.  It had 2 cupholders, lots of shallow slots, an open area in front of the passenger seat that things slid back and forth and flew out of and the windshield was so far away that putting my phone on it with the suction cup thing to use as a GPS was impossible.

Shutting the rear hatch made the door feel like it was made from a couple of those disposable turkey pans stapled together.

What I did like-it had good clearance, long a complaint of mine with the van.  It got slightly better gas mileage, though it had a wee little 11 gallon tank.  It does me no good to get more MPG if I have to stop even sooner to refill than I do in the van.  Though I did get my $22 fill up fantasy fulfilled.

Anyway, I have my van back and the Jeep is banished to Planet Enterprise.  I have a LOT of travel decals on the van from places we have gone.  I wasn't going to sticker it up like I did Nettlevan and held off for the better part of a year.  Then I decided it's my freaking van.  STICKERS!  I was doing state flags on the back and that of course was hit.  The body shop was able to take the rear window off the other lift gate and reuse it, so I got to keep half my stickers.  I reordered what I needed to and I realized why the back looked so weird-it wasn't that it was blank, it was that it was BLANK.  No Kia insignia!  I immediately ordered Batman symbols to replace it.  hahaahaha!  When I went by the car shop to pick up the SIX PAGES of what they did to the van (ACK, it was $2500, it was nearly totaled out for a freaking lift gate!)  they had the new SEDONA strip to put on.  I said, "No way!"  They gave it to me and it's on the changing table in the living room now.

The changing table was Matt's dad's when he was a baby.  His dad's mom was freaky tall, so us mere mortals just use it as a cabinet, since the changing surface is about nipple-height.  It's still called the changing table, though it has not seen a baby butt in over 60 years.  I never used a changing table, just the foot of the bed.  Which is another reason to make the bed the minute you get up.  It is the platform for the rest of the day!  Ben and I are bed makers.  Jake and Chan are not.  And who has the most luxurious hair and nails in the whole house?  Nia, but Ben and I are close seconds. Coincidence?  No. Because after you make the bed, you take your hair and nails gummy vitamin. It's called routine and it's lacking in 2/3 of the under-25 set around here.

Speaking of under 25, Jake will be 22 this year and Ben will be 18.  It SEEMS like it's a long way off, but it's already mid-year already.   I just need to be horrified a bit.  Okay.  Jake had a margarita last weekend.  He didn't like it.  But the fact that he can just go buy one is alarming.

Enjoy this pic of Murphy Jones

And this snake that was under the gate.  

Pumpkin Flavor Season

It's still summer for another week, but cinnamon brooms, brown, yellow, red, and orange table runners and delighted cartoon turkey decor have already breached the local store and the next aisle over is crammed full of lights, red hats, desk top trees and wrapping paper.  School supplies quickly gave way to shelves of candy and the gardening section is now lined with cheap costume accessories and cups with ghosts, witches or spiders stamped on the side.  Cadberry Scream eggs, Reece's peanut butter skulls and MnM in Candy corn flavor are stacked up at the register.

In every single aisle, pumpkin has taken over.  Coffee flavors, cake mixes, pancake mix, cereal. Candles.  Room spray.  Things to plug in the wall...it's overwhelming.

But, it is a signal.  The birds will soon smell the pumpkin spray and begin their long flights, lakes will flip over, leaves-the ones that have not just died from lack of rain-will fall off the trees.  And the sun-that monster of the past several months that has made all activity after 10 and before 5 the equivalent of standing in front of a roaring fire with a wet cloth over your mouth and nose-it will be lulled by the scent of sweet, ripe squashes and fade a little in intensity.  Scary movies start popping into my queue like mushrooms after a rain.

I took a personality test.  It's not even remotely surprising, the result.  Basically it said, I will keep my mouth shut unless it's to blow things up or call others on being stupid.  SO good to know that's a personality trait, I just figured I was a walking sabotage machine.  Apparently, sarcasm is also an attribute, living in my head, avoiding people, judging people and smiting people.  All hobbies of mine.  'Turn the other cheek' simply means 'pivot so that when you come back swinging, there's more force behind it.'  I think Marcus wrote a song about me.  It's called Hot Gates.  Also, I think Hallelujah might be about someone like me as well.  But, interestingly enough, the song 'someone like you' isn't about me at all.  hahaha!

I guess the good points (of the personality traits) are that if I say something, I mean it.  I really don't gush and compliment. That made me feel better actually.  I already knew I don't forgive.  But I don't jump at conflict, I just deal until I can't and then end it.  

We did a major grocery trip over the weekend, we cleaned the house, mowed.  I am making Tom Yum soup for dinner.  I ran all my errands yesterday.  It's a lovely, lazy day in which no projects need starting and other than laundry, nothing even needs topping up.  If Jake were not working, it's the kind of day we'd rent some dvd's and make pizza rolls and pile up on the papasan and insult various plots.  The closest Ben and I come to that is when I point out lyrics in which they make a word 'rhyme' with itself and he nods.  Ben and Chan are not movie watchers, they don't want to spend a whole afternoon staring at a screen (TV anyway) and yelling about how Moby Dick didn't end like that.  Maybe I should get them to take personality tests!

Things are in the works, field trips and camping trips and swimming trips.  Better get in the swimming soon, if it gets under 80 we won't go!  haha  But for today anyway, nothing needs doing.  So we are off to do nothing.

The Week 8/52 & 9/52

Put in 7 miles with Karen on Friday, we had so much fun!  Karen wore her new Osprey pack (ours match!) and we fiddled with it until she was very happy with the fit.  Hurrah!  I have not even done that with my own pack yet, the one day I loaded it to try out, I pulled a neck muscle picking it up, then the food was still in boxes, so they poked my kidneys.  I had it loaded for a full week of no resupply-clothes, food, water (well, 3 liters) stove, fuel, pot, cup, light, rain gear, tent, bag, pad, down jacket, hat, maps, camera, batteries...it was 33 pounds and toooooo heavy for my liking.  I was glad she was loving hers, I am hoping for a better plan next time I haul mine out! haha

found these at Big Lots, bought...a lot of them.  SO yummy!

deeeeer

Afterward, I went to meet Andrea at Ditto Landing and it was flooded!

We got in a couple miles anyway, then had dinner at Tazikis.

A weekend trip to Hobby Lobby for more art supplies for the Chan netted me some half off figurines to place along the trail.  

Lots of trail work and the occasional stab at trail work that ends with just hiking around.

This is the top of the log road I want to open back up, that's about 4 afternoons of just burning the downed stuff.  It's been so much work, but a really good way to sneak in some exercise.  After I get the loop at the north end done, that will add a serious climb.  It's 600 feet at the confluence where the property line is and it's 1000 at the cliff where the campsite is.  The house is about 200 feet higher than that, so a good elevation change!  The trail is a mile long now end to end, so a 2 mile walk to do it all.  So far. Going for 3 for now and planning to add 2 more miles next winter.  I don't want to disturb the critters too much by moving brush around, snakes in particular!

I needed to sit at the top a bit and plan where to start the trail down.

Jessie likes the contemplation time.

That's a dog smooch IN my backpack.  Nosers!

The start of the north loop path, so far I have just been moving large fallen things and rocks out of the path.  That tree was too heavy!

Salamanders are waking up!
Don't touch with bare hands, they absorb through their skins and can die from the crap we slather on ourselves.

On leap day, we returned Kurt's car and went geocaching so Matt could get a special leap year badge.  On the way home (all 5 of us crammed in Matt's tiny car) I snapped some pics out the window.

Lovely!

And that's it.
I got Ben registered for the next school year.  We talked it over and are TIRED of homeschooling.  He's going to work at getting his last few credits done early, so he can graduate next May instead of 2018.  So, without realizing it at the time, I enrolled us in our final year as homeschoolers!

So, I only have to plan 6 more events in my role as AC and I am DONE.  I am nearly giddy with the relief of the end being in sight.  I have planned so many things and led so many events and outings over the past 16 years.  I will be glad to be at the end of it all.  Fittingly, my last homeschooling event will be the May campout in 2017.

Guntersville and Other Things

I am having kind of a hard time juggling what goes where, I have a trip/camping website and this blog and the new 'my stuff' blog and...where do I talk about this or that at?  I did the website because I could write it while not online while and arrange photos and such while we were still off running around. I have a new computer, but my copy of photoshop is so old it will only run on the old laptop-same for my .html editor to build pages, so I go back and forth between them and I use 3 different cameras at any given time, I feel like I am juggling!  I guess it will sort itself, but for now, here's the link to our quick overnight at South Cumberland last week that I put on my other blog.  At the end of the day, I really do enjoy going back and looking at the things we have done, I have no desire to stop tinkering with blogging, just need to figure a way to streamline more.  And perhaps start thinking about handing off the roamschool copyright to a younger family to carry on while I head into the next phase!

Matt had a 4 day weekend and we had planned a longer backpacking trip.  That didn't happen.  So Saturday I suggested heading to Guntersville to hike.

I can not read this map.  That middle trail part no longer exists and getting around the far left side, the trail goes from wide and clearly blazed to head-high weeds and no clue, passes under a pylon and BAM, back to wide and blazed.
It used to loop around and climb to the bluff where you could see the dam.  We brought our hammocks with the intent to hang out up there a while, but where it starts going up, the trail forked and only the new part that is nearly flat and leads back to the parking area is clear.  The other trail was covered over in fallen limbs and leaves and looked like you were not supposed to use it.

Wide, blazed.

The view on the overgrown bit, I was not exaggerating that it's higher than my head.

Straight up

And, back to a trail!

Look how wide and clear that is.  !

We headed from there to another trail we started hiking last fall with Nia and a tree had fallen and blocked it.  As we were leaving, a crew had shown up to clear it and the leader said it was the prettiest trail on the lake.  So, we headed back to check it out.

The trail was badly overgrown and after about a mile of wading through weeds, poison oak and spider webs-not to mention totally losing the trail in a series of blowdowns, we headed back to the car.

At this point, I was discouraged.  2 crappy overgrown trails leading nowhere I was interested in seeing.  So, we abandoned the hiking plan and started geocaching.

Hmmm Maybe that should have been our plan from the start.  Garh

Beauty berry

We had late lunch at Arby's, which Matt pointed out was RB's for Roast Beef.  I wondered why there was a hat on the sign!

Another geocache

I want beauty berry in the yard, so I harvested some seed from the side of the road.

Horrific flesh wound!

Today, Sunday, we planned to go to the Ocoee to swim and then camp out.  Matt developed a huge nasty blister yesterday (not sure how as we did not actually hike) and all the campgrounds were booked, the kids were lethargic about going-though Ben and Chan did get up early and start loading their backpacks.  We changed it to backpacking at one of our favorite balds and then decided 12 hours of driving in the next 36 hours was not going to be much fun.  We hemhawed around until all that happened was Chandler went back to bed and Matt put the new bike rack together.  I have been nursing a stomach ache, I can not eat onion in any form, it makes me SO sick.  I think my fries were cooked in the used onion ring grease!  I sound paranoid and crazy, but it was the same icky tummy feeling I get from onion-the icky tummy I used to get traveling and never knew why.  People who have camped with me know ALL about my 2 a.m. crawls to the bathhouse, moaning.  If I make it that far.  At least I hope that is it because if curly fries start giving me belly aches, I will be SO sad.  And probably 15 pounds lighter.  *sigh*

We have one more day left of Matt's 4 day vacation.  There are plans.  I hope they work out.