Winter Cabin – Again

It’s that time again. What time? Winter Cabin Time! As you may know, my family goes away each winter for a winter cabin adventure. We rent different cabins based on the number of family that can make it and we enjoy down time, relaxing, visiting, and just time with each other.

This year has rocketed to the top of my “favorite cabin adventures” list. The main reason for this is that 21 out of 24 of our family made it. That is astounding to me, and it’s been a while since we could almost all make it. And yes, you read that number right. When you add up our kids, partners, grands, and greats, we are that big. I’m in awe of each and every one of them. They are amazing adults, totally cool teens, and energetic and fun kidlets.

It’s my favorite vacation of the year and it certainly starts each of our years off on the right track. We eat, play games, eat, watch football, eat, paint rocks and shells, and, umm, eat.

We generally have snow, but had more than usual this year. It was also very ccccold, with minus temps at night. One day, the HIGH was zero! Some got out for some sledding, though they weren’t out for long.

This year, the kids gifted us a photo album of all the best pictures from our 20 some years of doing this. They each wrote how important this event is for them and how grateful they are for it. It brough hubby and I to tears. We are just as grateful for them. The fact that they still want to do this, still want to get together every year, is both unusual and gratifying.

I love our family. And I hope you have this kind of love cocooning you from life’s challenges and giving you heart smiles.

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Family Blessings

I am blessed with the most wonderful family. Whether your people are blood relation or not, friend or partner, I hope you see the blessings in those relationships.

We are at our annual family summer camp out and my back is completely stoved up. Using a cane and minimizing walking. And everyone around me is doing everything. That’s hard for a caretaker like me to swallow, but I just can’t stop thinking how wonderful my people are and how loved I feel. I wish that kind of comfort for everyone. It’s what keeps my heart beating, if that makes any sense?

We are staying at a campground in Eastern Washington for 4 nights with as many of our family as could make it. Hubby and I rent a trailer. Our tent camping days are well behind us, so this way, we can be with the kids. And grands. And sleep comfortably, though I might offer up that having the restroom so near is the biggest bonus. 🙂

Anyhow, thought I’d share few pics of the weekend. I hope you’re having a wonderful, sunny, just-the-right-amount-of-warmth summer, with your people surrounding you.

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Beach Life

I’ve never had the opportunity to stay at the beach longer than 3 days at any given time. Until now. I’m enjoying life on the edge of the Pacific Ocean in Washington state for four weeks right now. And it’s awesome!!!

I’ve made no bones of the fact that the beach is my happy place. I came here to find out if living here, either permanently or semi-permanently, was something I would enjoy. After all, it’s pretty drizzly, windy, and cold most days here. Fall, Winter, and Spring are like that. I don’t come here often in the summer, but there are more sunny days then, I’m sure.

I’m spending more time outdoors. Afternoons are for beach walks and reading in my chair…on the beach.

Anyhow, as I type this, I’m a week in and still totally hooked on beach life. What do I love?

• The slower pace and less frantic lifestyle.
• The ambiance.
• Sitting in a chair on the beach after a long walk, just watching the waves.
• The friendliness of the people around me. I sit and work in front of the window and they wave as they go by on their beach walk.
• Finding beach treasures.
• The weather. I don’t mind chilly and windy. In fact, I prefer it to the heat of summer.

What I don’t love:

• That we don’t already have a place of our own at the beach.

Seriously, I don’t have anything else on the negative list. The place I’m renting is one row back from beachside, so I have a good view of the water and it’s a short walk to get there. I’m enjoying amazing sunsets, watching the tide roll in and out, and the clouds herald more rain or blowing out to let the sun in. It’s amazing, it’s beautiful, and it’s a world all to its own.

And I am hooked so far. I’ll post again next month about how I feel at the end of the four weeks. In the meantime, I hope you all get to find a beach, or mountain, if you prefer, and enjoy some outdoor time!

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Vacation, take me away!

I live a ferry ride away from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Until a couple weeks ago, I’d never had a chance to visit the city. I should have made more of an effort because it’s awesome and I wish I could have spent more time there!

We walked on the ferry, choosing to leave the car. That meant walking, something that I’m not great at these days due to hip and back pain. But I did it, and I’m proud of that.

The ferry let us off in downtown Victoria and we walked about a mile to the condo we had rented. Turns out, that mile was mostly uphill. Uh oh. Here’s my reddddd face as I’m on a daughter-enforced rest once we arrived. 🙂

But the condo? Worth it. We had GREAT views of downtown Victoria and even a touch of the bay.

Day one was all about getting there. Day two was adventure day, at least for the two teens with us. We took a city bus out of the downtown corridor and had breakfast at Tim Horton’s, a national chain whose coffee I enjoy. Then it was off to a zipline adventure. Remember that aforementioned pain? I chose not to zipline but the kids had a blast, and their mother was running from tree to tree taking pictures. It was awesome.

Then we went to Chinatown and Fan Tan Alley, another high recommend. It was an amazing place to visit.

The next day, I rested and let those younger than me explore the city. I read, relaxed, and, when they were ready for some downtime, we met at a wonderful Board Game Café. You rent a table (when we were there it was only $6 CAD.) We sat there for hours playing games. They had over 800 to choose from! We laughed, we ate, we let everything go and just stayed in the moment. It was awesome.

I came home relaxed and refreshed and my granddaughters got stamps in their passports. My daughter was thrilled because we made so many memories. Thank you so much for letting me be part of this mini-adventure, daughter and grands!

There were things we didn’t do in Victoria, like Buchart Gardens. I didn’t think I could manage the walk, but I’ve heard from so many people that it’s beautiful there no matter what time of year you visit.

Victoria is a very welcoming city and, as I said at the beginning, visiting is a high recommend from me. I think there’s something for everyone there!

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Winter Cabin – No Adventure

We held our annual winter cabin weekend with the kids and grands in January. When you total up our kids, partners, grands, and great-grands, hubby’s and my family total 22. Soon to be 23 as a great-grandson is due in March.

Eleven made it to the cabin. Since COVID, everyone makes their own decision to go or not go. No pressure. This was our 24^th year of doing this and I’m so grateful for this tradition. Our family has spread out along the west US coast so it’s a time to come together in person and catch up on our lives.

And let our lives go for a little bit. No hustle, no bustle, just us. Visiting, eating, playing games, eating, painting rocks and wood and canvases, and yes, eating. (I came home and had to go on a diet!)

Our talented daughter’s painted rocks.

Pay no attention to my moon rock failure. Lol.

The cabin we usually stay in is no longer rented out, so we found a new place for this year. Smaller, but with two separate living spaces so we were cozy but not on top of each other.

I don’t know if I’ve ever relaxed as much as I did at this year’s cabin. Food prep was simple and we only left the place once, to check out a distillery in a nearby town. In fact, that’s really the only “adventure” I can tie to this year’s cabin. I had a lavender-infused lemon drop. Never had anything like that before and it was yummy!

Now cabin is over and we’ve all gone back to our lives. Hubby and I are blessed because our kids are close, not only with each other, but with us. So we talk regularly throughout the year. It’s just nice, once in a while, to gather in person, you know?

Our daughter brought this sand thing and it mesmerized us all. It’s very peaceful to just watch the sand fall. Very meditative.

Have a wonderful month, everyone!

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To Cruise or Not to Cruise

We got to take a cruise last month! When COVID hit, we cancelled four cruises we had scheduled. Last month, we finally got to take a replacement cruise. And you know what? It was awesome. We did Alaska, which we’ve done twice before. This time, instead of doing the inside passage, we did a round trip Seattle which took a route on the west side of Vancouver Island.

Embarkation, settling in, and our favorite foods.

And we caught COVID. As careful as we were, masking on board ship and ashore, washing out hands, we still caught COVID. Thankfully, we’re vaxed and boosted so didn’t have a bad case. Cold symptoms and I had a headache for a few days. The worst thing was the lack of energy. That took a while to return.

And now that we’re past that, I have to ask myself if it was worth it.

The answer is: Yes.

We’ve always enjoyed cruising. You unpack once and see so many places. Even having been to Alaska, it was great to go again. Like greeting old friends. And we made some new ones on the cruise, which I’m very grateful for.

On board ship

And now, looking forward, we’ll take more cruises. Maybe not for a few months. I’d personally like to see what COVID does this winter. But we’ll embark again as it really is our favorite way to vacation.

The views

We saw lots of whales, some dolphins, but no eagles this time.

I hope you’ve been able to find a way to get away and relax. Retired or working, we all need a change of scenery once in a while.

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August Musings

Here we are already in the middle of August. It seems unbelievable to think in a few weeks’ time we will be in the ’ember months of the year. Before you know it Christmas will be upon us again. It has already arrived in some of the stores here in the UK, and the children haven’t even returned to school yet from their summer break. But enough of that.

I missed posting last month; my apologies – major meltdown due to extreme heat! Heat that has only today started to climb back down the thermometer, and we have rain. Not a lot, admittedly. We do need plenty here as, like many countries, we are in a drought situation. Keeping the flowers and plants alive in the back garden has been hard work, but we’ve made the most of our grey water from the kitchen, about the only real exercise I’ve had, backwards and forwards several times a day. The vegetable garden and annual flowerbed at the front has, I’m sad to say, been a failure because of lack of rain; we have avoided using the hosepipe. As a consequence, we’ve written this year off on the gardening front and back, because the back garden will be given another make over.

The reason being, we have demolished our large koi pond and intend turning the area into another flowerbed. Whilst we both had a lot of pleasure from the fish, which had grown huge, it was becoming increasingly hard work for Dave to keep it going despite so-say modern filters and UV lamps and fitting a new pump each year – not cheap. We were plagued with pond weed, the water never clear. The fish loved it; we didn’t. We agreed back last October that we would run the pond down as each winter we invariably lost a fish or two. Needless to say, this past winter they all survived.

One of the koi (28lbs)

We gave the fish, some as long as 2-3 ft and weighing many lbs, to a local koi keeper so we know they would be going to a good home. Catching them was another matter. All three of us got soaked! Then
began the fun part, demolition of the pond walls. The pond was/is over 8ft deep, with half of it above ground, so we were hoping the bricks and blocks would fill that below ground level. Miscalculation. We now have to dispose of a lot of rubble. This Dave will do in the autumn when the weather is a lot cooler.

Before

After

Demolition begins

The extreme heat here has meant I have not done a lot of art. A special request for a contemporary flower painting was completed and I began working up one for my students to copy at my next workshop at the end of September. They had requested a waterfall, so waterfalls I did. Several of them. It became clear to me that each one was a little too adventurous for some of my group, but I finally came up with a much simpler version that hopefully will stretch them without any duress.

“Pastel Pastures”

“Autumn Waterfall”

Other than these efforts, I have to admit nothing has been done. Hardly any writing because my office was too hot even with a fan running. No housework other than the basics – no point with all the doors and windows open; little laundry to wash – thank goodness for kaftans to lounge about it in all day. On the plus side, we’ve spent most days and long into the evenings in the garden. Our patio is in shade from midday so it has been comfortable, and I have been able to enjoy uninterrupted reading, getting through 5 books, unusual for me in a short space of time.

We treated the month as a long holiday, being exceedingly lazy and relaxed. It was fun while it lasted; now it’s back to normality. I hope your month has been good too.

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Remodel and Renewal

Remember paneled walls? Not the cool wainscoting or shiplap, but the old, brown, thin stuff with the dark indented lines to make it look like fake wood? Well, that’s our family room in a nutshell. Straight out of the 20^th century. 🙂

We made the decision that it was time to bring the room into the 21^st century. The paneling is gone. Hallelujah!  My husband did all the demo and is in the process of re-insulating the room.

Then the plumbers come in to re-pipe the last part of the house that hasn’t had new plumping since it was built. After that, it’s sheetrock time! I can hardly wait to see what it looks like, and I’ll have to post finished pics if/when we ever get this done.

Once the sheetrock is done, it’s time for my project. Cleaning the fireplace rock.

I’ve done some research into it and it just takes time. I’m also considering re-painting the grout. The sheetrock will be so light, I think the grout will look dull in comparison. But, I won’t be able to decide until I get the rock cleaned.

While waiting for my turn, I decided to get away from it all and renew my psyche in my happy place. The ocean. Whether calm or blustery, it soothes my soul.

I hope you have a place you can head for to renew yourself. We all need that sometimes, eh?

Have a wonderful May!

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Precious Times

Most of you may know my family does a winter getaway each year. We call it a winter cabin that we rent, but with our numbers topping 20, it’s really way beyond a cabin. We didn’t do it at all last year because of COVID. This year, also because of COVID, only 8-12 made it.

THIS YEAR

TWO YEARS AGO

I’m really proud of how well we did. We were all vaccinated. We all tested before going to the cabin. And now that we’re past the isolation mark, no one has gotten sick with COVID from the cabin. It took a lot of work to make that happen and the kids worried, especially, about hubby and I. But we did it and I’m really glad we did.

There was a LOT of snow.

We saw deer and wild turkeys.

We painted (a lot). Here’s my attempts at art and my granddaughter’s ocean picture.

And we talked, chatted, ate too much, and yes, may have inbibed a bit. This annual catching up weekend is precious to each and every one of us and I’ll be praying that next year, COVID doesn’t put a wrench in our cabin machinery.

I hope you’re having a wonderful, cozy winter that fills you with happy memories.

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October 2021

This gallery contains 5 photos.

We spent the month of October in Arizona and are still wondering why we came back though now that it’s less than a week from Thanksgiving the holidays are the reason to again brave the cold wet weather when there … Continue reading →