When they arrived home from the festival, my wife was excited to show me that she had purchased some hickory syrup from a vendor at the festival. Neither one of us had ever even heard of hickory syrup before, and she said that the booth caught her eye. Having lived in New England for much of our lives, she was familiar with maple syrup – but what was this hickory syrup stuff like? The vendor was giving out free sample tastes, and all three of them had a sample. They all agreed that it was quite tasty, and bought a small bottle of it to bring home to share with the rest of the family. They told me that there was live music, and a lot of vendors and free food samples. And lots of funnel cake booths! Back in New England we called them “Doughboys” and they are so tasty! I guess that the next time my wife extends invitations to go to a festival I should accept it and go along.

After the festival they stopped at a grocery store to pick up the fixings for lasagna for dinner, and when they arrived home they prepared a really nice lasagna and served it with garlic and cheese bread. We created our own dessert by combining lemon cookies and vanilla creme cookies – the combination of the two cookies was much tastier than either cookie by itself. We talked about putting some vanilla frosting in between the cookies to make them stick together, but decided against it for today. Maybe next time!

I hope that everyone ELSE had a good Mother’s Day!

Ever since I’ve been on my own, I’ve always filed my taxes much earlier than the deadline; I don’t even know if any of the Post Offices stay open that late on tax deadline day. One thing is for sure – that mad dash to the Post Office on tax deadline day is one family tradition that I don’t want to continue and pass down to future family members. The stress of waiting until the last minute for anything just is not worth it!

My kids were just not loving it in the city – they weren’t really making any friends and I didn’t necessarily feel safe with them walking long distances and things like that. I thought about it for a long time and I finally made the decision last year that it’s time for us to all move out here to the country for a different life. We’ve been here for about 6 months now and the kids are adjusting really well. We got a dog and http://internet.hughesnet.com internet so they could still get on Facebook and all that and I generally just feel more rested and less stressed being out here. My boss is allowing me to work from the farm most of the time which is great since it’s about an hour commute and I just feel good about the changes my family is making. My kids are great kids but they needed more room to thrive and I feel like now that we’re out here in the country they can really be who they were meant to be.

Last night I was watching a repeat television show of My name is Earl. I’ve only ever watched that particular show two or three times in my life before because normally I am busy doing something else when it is on the air. But last night I was having trouble falling asleep and turned on the television just as that show came on. The show was about how tornadoes kept hitting the trailer park where the show’s characters were living, and that everyone’s possessions were strewn around. When the tornado subsided everyone was going crazy trying to take possession of the items that were strewn around.

In a way it made me think of a treasure hunt, people looking for the “best” find. They had a “finders keepers” rule – whoever gets it in their hands first gets to keep it. What was particularly humorous about this was that people were valuing some items that would hold the interest of most people. The adage “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” was demonstrated throughout the show. The next time I’m channel surfing and see that My name is Earl in on, I think I’ll watch it again. It was a little bit slapstick, but funny just the same.

We’ve been thinking about putting some patio pavers on the ground right outside of the sliding glass doors in the basement to make the area look like an outdoor living room/lounging area. I am even thinking about turning the area out there under the deck into a screen room, but first we want to take care of the yard. We’d like to make a path with paving stone that winds down to the platform at the pond’s edge from the back deck.

For now we need to come to a decision about whether to set the stones in gravel, concrete, or go the more natural route and simply have them set in mulch. I’m inclined to go with gravel or mulch because concrete does not fare well in this area. I’d like to do something in the back yard that will reduce the amount of mowing that I have to do back there; there are several steep hillsides that need to be terraced. I think that with a little bit of elbow grease that we could have this yard ship-shape in no time at all!

I guess we should be grateful that they came and picked us up! We never would have found them if they had just moved away and left us there! Wouldn’t that have been a nightmare for the camp owners and/or family friends! Anyway, the point being we never saw the work involved in moving, all of the packing and unpacking, none of the negotiations with removal companies, none of the headaches.

Since I’ve grown up and been on my own I have had to move five times. And they were a pain. Especially the first four – prior to the invention of the Internet. I found it very difficult to locate the services that I needed to make the move go smoothly. Thank goodness for the Internet and all of the resources that I’ve been able to use to find the right companies and services that I needed to make the last move as easy as possible. It even helped me find the house that I wanted to buy!

There were several cars off of the road, having slid into the ditch. Whenever I see that I think to myself that the people were very lucky that they didn’t lose control while they were driving across one of the many bridges on that road. That is always something I worry about with my family when the roads are slick like that. The bridges around here don’t even look like bridges – they just have guard rails on the side of the road, and I worry that any car going at the posted speed limit of 55 could easily crash through the barriers and end up in the river or the bottom of the ravine. I don’t trust those guard rails much at all.