It’s finally here. We’re leaving for vacation Saturday morning. For me, this means getting every stitch of clothing we have clean in the next two days. Then, quelling through all of that clean laundry and packing up clothing for 4 for a week in Hot Springs, AR. We’re going to visit my family and spend some serious time on the lake. The boys are so excited about going fishing with my Dad and so am I. I am excited because I’ll get to fish and see my Dad, but mostly because I might have enough people around to entertain them that I might get a minute to complete a thought.
We’ll be meeting my sister, Caroline, and her husband, Jamie, fresh from Costa Rica in Arkansas. It should be a great time. We get to borrow a family member’s house that’s right up the road from my Dad (we get the upstairs, they get the downstairs).
If I can survive getting up at 5am, trudging through two airports and a layover with the boys, then I’ll have a whole week to regain my sanity before I have to do it all again.
I should have some internet access, so there will be pictures as time allows.
This picture was from today around lunchtime. It’s been miserable, but a breeze has finally started blowing and it’s clear for now. Rumor has it that the smoke will settle back in tonight along with thick fog…..oh joy.
What does all this smoke mean to my everyday life? Well, to put it in the simplest terms, it means that Mommy doesn’t get a pedicure.
In order to have nice toes for our upcoming vacation, I volunteered to shave my father-in-law’s 2 huge Norwegian Elkhounds (for a nominal fee) so I could head out one evening this week and get a pedicure. Well, those plans have been scrapped. Since the boys can’t play outside (and that’s where we spend most of our time) I’ve been slowly whittling away at my pedicure funds to get little things like rented movies and Happy Meals to keep them entertained.
Oh well, my sanity is much more valuable than pretty toes. With any luck it will blow out tomorrow night and we’ll get our outdoor life back on Saturday.
Well, after almost two weeks of heat advisories and only being able to go outside for 30 or so minutes at a time, the boys and I are trapped inside for different reason today. We’re blanketed in smoke. Visibility is less than 1/4 mile and the whole world smells like a campfire. The boys haven’t had any respiratory problems in the past, but I don’t think I’ll tempt fate by letting them out to play in this stuff. There’s a 40,000 acre wildfire burning about an hour from here and the wind changed direction this morning to bare the smoke down on Washington. The pictures don’t quite do it justice, but here are a couple of shots.
We’ve also been enjoying having the helicopters fighting the fire based out of our local airport. The boys and I drive up there almost everyday.This morning we got the pleasure of getting inside one of the helicopters. The guys in town with Carson Fire King Helicopters were nice enough to let the boys sit in the pilot’s seat. It was enough to make Ollie proclaim that he was going to be a helicopter pilot when he grows up. I left my brain at home this morning and forgot to take the camera out while the boys were touring the helicopter, but here’s a shot of one of the choppers taking off.
