Here and There

As I admitted in my last post, I've been, well, busy. Perhaps I should find a synonym that annoys me less. In any case, I also mentioned I'd carved out time for a few things including weekend trips. Below are the highlights - enjoy!

On or around July 4th we began to stew in unending heat and humidity. This has continued with cool offs only a few days here and there up through this week. Today it's 90 and we're in the midwest so that's neither normal or abnormal but still hot (for us). I remember feeling like I was melting when we went to the parade and watched Mr. Franklin read the Declaration of Independence.

Our mid-summer vacation was to the lake, as in the one D spent summers at growing up. It's about 40 minutes north of my parents' home so we bookended the trip visiting them. The lake is small, about a mile wide and probably triple that in length. It has a turn of the century (the last century) amusement park on it which sadly is in need of much repair. At the other end of the lake from the park is an extremely small town, and surrounding it all is rural Pennsylvania. It's quiet. It's beautiful. And we wish we could spend more time there, but alas. Last year J was afraid of the water. He has a lot more fun this year but was still wary of the blue gills that would swim right up and bump your toes or legs.

We celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary in August. As usual we discussed the options of going away versus doing absolutely nothing. And as usual we ended up somewhere in-between. We visited a conservation center, that works with zoos all over the world, and took a safari tour. It was cool but we both think it would have been better if we'd done a sunset tour as it would have been cooler, and more animals would have been active. Now we know what to do next time!

We traveled over this past weekend, Labor Day, to visit my parents and the fair we grew up attending each year. This is a small fair but it still has vendors offering elephant ears, not just funnel cakes, so clearly it's awesome. I like a small fair. I don't need six vendors selling me burritos when one or two is fine. I don't even need a butter sculpture.

This was J's first fair. We went through the animal barns first - horse, cows, pigs, goats, sheep and then the beloved chickens. Not surprisingly this was J's favorite barn. We had to go through it twice. My father met us there after we were done with the barns and the chickens were the only ones J wanted to show him. Of course I too love the chickens and so much so that I didn't actually get any photos of J's excitement as he ran through the aisles. I was too busy getting close-ups of the birds and working through my own excitement. My bad.

After the animals we hit the center field of tractors - so many tractors. J was equally happy here. Then we moved on to lunch, games, and of course dessert (the elephant ear!!!!). It was cold and rainy but overall still a good time and a nostalgic way to welcome fall.