Home again...

We're back from our trip to New Jersey! Well, actually we got back about a week ago...I'm just now sitting down to post. So my trip photos are a bit messed up-not organized here the way I wanted them to be. For some reason Blogger isn't letting me click and drag my photos beyond the window so that I can place them in different spots. Anyone else having this problem?!?!? IRRITATING!
I've spent so much time dinking this that I'm just going to make it short and sweet. We had a GREAT time. The weather was hot and humid and a-okay with me because we were always near a pool or the beach! Different from our other Jersey vacations, on this vaca we spent a lot of time with my step-sister's family on various beaches along the Jersey Shore. The girls and I had a great time with Aunt K, Uncle B and their 2 girls. The cousins all had a ton of fun with each other. Here's what we did:

Exploring the Mountain bike trails by my mom's house. We were wishing we had our bikes-it was a pretty tough trail for NJ! I was able to get out most mornings and run it. Very pretty woods-started a lot of deer(so lovely), tried hard to avoid all the tiny froggies jumping about by the river, and got a kick out of turtle "song"!

The cousins and Pops.

The Jersey shore-Spring Lake

Me and Dea's yearly shopping trip to New York City-

Ground Zero

Ferried around the Statue Of Liberty

Seaside Heights-

We all took a trip to Atlantic City-very fun! Here's our suite complete with 4 bathrooms and 2 "Buttwashers"!

Taking a limo costs the same as trying to get us all into 3 cabs. The kids LOVED it!

Trump Marina Casino

The boardwalk

The pool was on the 6th floor!

Swimming and sparklers at the cousin's house

Long Branch-

I always feel SLAMMED into fall after our late summer trips back East. It's cooling off here in Alaska, the blueberries are ripe for pickin' and the colors are just staring to change! Dea is now a freshmen in High School-holy Jeebus! And my baby starts full time Kindergarten in 2 days-I could just crawl into a hole...but that's the next post....

TAN LINES!!!!

Tacky with my halter, yes, but THERE THEY ARE!!!! Evidence of SUN!!!! We had the best weather on our trip! It wasn't as hot and humid as I thought it would be. Like Alaska, New Jersey was uncharacteristically cool. In the mid to high 70's/ low 80's and not too much haze. We were even treated to a couple of great thunder/lightening storms which thrilled the kids! We rarely get them in Alaska because it seldom gets hot enough to produce them.

So, with a fresh mani/pedi, bikini wax(oi yoi yoi, dat hoits!!!) and my once yearly armpit shaving, we were off! The trip out wasn't too bad(at least for the kids). Our plane took off around 7 ish and we spent the first couple of hours munching on Quiznos sandwiches, drawing, reading. Lo spent quite a bit of time perusing the Emergency Procedures fold out and the Sky Mall catalogue. When it was nearing "bedtime" I pulled out the portable DVD player(scored a good one from Craigslist!) and we watched that old movie, Willow, to kind of settle down into sleep mode. Lo got the most sleep, Dea dozed a bit, and I sat there suffering from severe neck/shoulder pain that came on suddenly( it had been inexplicably kinked up a bit for a few days, but my boss adjusted me before we left and I thought all was ok). After a while the low back kicked in and I couldn't really move with Lo lying on me. That flight sucked big time for me. The 6 hours felt like 20 as I sat there in painful sleepy limbo watching Dea watch "27 Dresses" for the hundredth time. The 2 hour flight from Detroit to NJ went a bit better as I was able to doze for about an hour. Apparently Dea and Lo entertained each other while I slept.

Grandma and Pops were delighted to see us and they whisked us off to their house. Of course the kids wanted in the pool right away and that's what we did. Lo was in that thing for 5 hours straight and when we out to dinner she totally crashed in my arms. We're talking head limp on my chest, mouth hanging open, little bit of drooling, ZONKED. Nothing, not even grilled cheese and fries could wake that kid up. It was wonderful! She hasn't slept in my arms like that since she was an infant! I was lovin' it.


We spent the next couple of days swimming in their pool as well as the DELUXE one at their golf club.

Click to enlarge

Can you believe that Grandma is 86 years old?!?!?! Just kiddin', Ma! She's a pretty lady, that one.

Despite my pain( and by this time I was ready for pain killers and muscle relaxers or even a head pounding by frying pan to ease the pain -which is saying A LOT!)I basked in that hot sun and caught up on some much needed glorious napping. By the third day the pain had moved and I was able to pinpoint the offending muscle's trigger point and massage that bad boy into submission. It's still on the tight side, but I can handle that.

Alright, crying about pain is over. So far we'd had a great time poolside and were enjoying much good eats at various restaurants as well as our almost nightly trips up the street to Gabriel's Fountain for ice cream.

We long for this place all year long and my cruel parents will occasionally call us up and say,"Hey! We're heading down to Gabriel's. Ya want us get you something?!?!?" Mean!!! They think that will entice us to move to New Jersey...

We looked forward to our visits to New York City, shopping, the zoo, eating, seeing the cousins, playing at the Jersey Shore, and a possible trip to visit my REAL bff and the race track! And more napping.



But more on that later!

Off to catch up on reading blogs!

Attempting to write every day in May. HAAAAAAAAAhahahahaaaaa!

Pre-script:  So.....I'm a day late. 

I miss writing on a regular basis.  I really miss taking that block of uninterrupted time to just immerse myself in the laying down of words. ...LOVE to write.  When I'm feeling creatively stagnant, when my painting muse is MIA, writing always gets the juices going.   ....if only I had more time.  I've barely made time for getting down the basics of what goes on in my life,  let alone anything creative.  I'd like to make more of an effort.  Lately I've been looking at writing prompt blogs and have found some pretty good ones that I would like to run with.  Here's one and here's another.  I also have kind of half-assed started a "Beautiful Words" type of meme where I write something based on some of the words I find, you guessed it, beautiful.  I was chatting about all this with my RunnerGirl friend and she pointed me to a reader's blog who is doing a blog-a-day thing for May.  I'm going to jump on her blogwagon  and hang tenuously to the feed trough, if you will.  I need to temper leniency on this one with dedication.  I'm not joining the gang and posting widgets to the challenge and responding to peoples posts... I have no one to prove anything to but myself and we have WAY too much going on this month...Chaotic remodeling, my mom visiting, holiday, birthday, Parties, Dylan's graduation and leaving of the nest........   I want to dedicate a little solace time to quiet mediation and writing  this month.  I'm just glomming some decent prompts from this challenge and doing it my own effin' way.  No promises of anything daily....but here goes:

My life story in 250 X 2.5-ish words:

Earliest memory:  The smell of Certs…a triad of lights overhead…birth…a person of gold light who has comforted me in my dreams ever since. 
 
Uncomfortable pretty shoes push a plastic horsey around a limpid Texas pool. 

I wait for my Daddy to get home from work on the prickly grass of our New Jersey front lawn.  Eyes fixed on the blue above me because I was told he was riding a motorcycle today and was going to jump so high into the sky.  “Whatcha got there?” “Bread and butter”. 

Montessori and whistling, finally, I have what it takes to conquer this fear of that deafening… paralyzing… alarm bell in our Minnesota home.  I love my Irish setter, and my friend Nick, and rides in the car, my kite, Zoom, and was I on Romper Room?!?!?  

New Jersey again. Ridgewood…learning to find my way to kindergarten all by myself-such a big girl- and Miss Ola is the nicest lady in the world .  Imaginations SOAR, my neighbor friends and I visit many worlds as I dodge the first of many bullies to come.  She pulled me down the wooden stairs by my arm.  I dance with Neil Diamond on the landing…

Another new home.  The last one of my childhood.  A pool, my hair is long, my father unpredictable.  My love for running is born as Dinosaurs chase me in the back yard.  Late nights of loud music and arguments chase my dreams. He smashed my tape recorder on the kitchen floor and promised to ALWAYS be there.  A broken cactus, someone sleeping it off in the guestroom, “we’re getting a divorce”.  My cousin cries, I sigh.  My imaginary play reveals truths.  The scale tips back and forth…friends/my step-dad and his grandkids/outside/beloved pets/my tiny glass animals/grandmothers/ sunlight dappling my bedroom window screen/the green leaves shimmer along with cicadas/dreaming of mountains.  Back and forth… the bullies/the Spirit Breakers/the prison of my own brain/…my friend dies.  My family is not of my blood.

My New Hampshire dorm filled with excited and excepting students.  On their own for the first time. It gives me freedom and safety to emerge…… only to cocoon again when my friend is extinguished by a drunk driver and again when my step-father dies(I knew it before anyone answered my call.)

Things are no longer the same.  Off to another New Hampshire college.  Too much excess, too many stagnant “friends”.  I take control.  Body, mind and soul,

And Montana becomes my love.   “All my changes where there”.  I learn to go it solo.  My dog in tow.  The quiet on the hills and high peaks connecting my core to the earth where I dig  my toes into its softness in the spring.  I am growing up with my garden that I share with my soul mate although this reality remains locked unacknowledged deep in my heart.  For years.  I feel a love for his baby girl like I have never felt before.  And then they are gone.  I’m ready for more…

…So one quick yearlong stay in Seattle… and I miss my mountains.  I miss close friends.  I miss my evolution.  I was wrong.  This isn’t “more”.

Alaska.  Reunited with mountains, ocean, my best friend and his growing girl.  Endings and new beginnings and my heart is unlocked forever.  Free to love.  To help complete a broken family.  This child that bestowed the honor of mothering upon me…  This man who said “yes” when I proposed amongst glaciers.  Experiencing the quickening and growth in my own womb.  Together we have joined life, rescued life, created life, and learned to live life as fully as we can.  True friendships, meaningful fulfilling work, raising our young, hard play, continued personal evolution…. 

Us four.  Held in the heart of this mountain valley.

Photo by Mathew Crockett Photography

 

Highlight of our trip #2- The Jersey Shore

Ahhhhhhh, my beach fix. I love the dramatic and sometimes dangerous waters of the Jersey shore, the salt air, and long anticipated bright hot sun. I know both girls loved this part of our trip best! What a fun time in the sea and sand with the cousins!

WHEELS UP! .......Heading back east!!!

And this time, Huz gets to come!!!!! I'm so happy it'll be the 4 of us this year! We're taking off tonight for New Jersey! We'll be spending a couple days visiting with Huz's 2 bro's and fams in Connecticut and then it's a week of SUN, WARMTH, and OCEAN at the Jersey Shore. My parent's have rented a beach house and we'll be staying there along with my step-sister's family. We plan on doing NOOOOTHING but swimming, running, relaxing, beach combing, and Margarita sippin'.

It's been a summer(?!?) of grey, chilly, rainy weather here in Alaska and this break is SO needed! We've experienced some SNAFUs with our construction and the work we had hoped would start the first of July just started YESTERDAY. The waiting was a bitch but we were ecstatic last week when the supplies arrived:



We spent some time yesterday nailing the studs to the plates to form the back wall of the addition. Just me, Huz and the kids. We are feeling very proud of our work!!!! Now we just need to find out from our contractor if construction will be put on hold or if he is going to work on it while we're gone. I really hope we can resume when we get back from vacation-I'm LOVING the fact that we can get this room framed ourselves and I'm diggin' doing the work!!! But, we're not sure if waiting is a good idea since we're already a month behind. We'll see....