Weekend #1 of Summer Vacation 6/14/14-6/16/14

I do apologize for not getting back before now. It's now been... what, 14 days since my last post? This is starting to sound like a Catholic confession.

Forgive me followers for I have had fun, it's been 14 days since my last post. :-/ My kids are visiting with family again and the fiance is sleeping off the night-shift so I'm left to my own vices. Yay! I think...

It's 5 o'clock somewhere!

So two weeks ago we packed up the SUV with camping gear, dog and kids, with a general idea and direction in mind. We had from Saturday morning until Monday evening to spend the weekend doing whatever. A little while before I had stumbled upon the interesting and intriguing information that a person can get a permit to build a summer/hunting/vacation cabin on National Forest property. Who'd thunk it?

So being the outdoor enthusiast that I am I had decided that we needed to go seek a location in a National Forest near us. Lucky us, we have 3 within 30 miles of our home in 3 different directions.

Our first trip out we went East, because it was near a lake that we've done a little fishing at before and the Cascade mountains tend to have better weather than the Coastal mountains and the weather was questionable at best. But camping in the rain wouldn't be a first for us, I prefer the snow myself but being in the mid-Willamette we get very little snow and it's generally a very wet snow which might as well just be 33 degree water on the ground. Dry, cold, snow is much better for camping the wet, cold snow.

Beautiful, secluded, National Forest

So our first weekend of Summer vacation or as I've come to know it as in between my vacations was spent with this beautiful scenery surrounding us. When we found the spot we knew this was it. The only downside was we'd passed up the lake by about 10 miles but we loved the seclusion of passing up the last campers by 10 miles as well. No worrying about the dog or kids being off the leash. Half joke, the kids don't wear leashes, but you get the idea. I think...

Zoom in a little and see how happy the kids and dog are off their leashes. 

Before the leash comes off. "Mommy are we there yet?"

After the leases come off!

Me? I took a nap under the trees. Ah... outdoors at last.

Check out this cool forest of fungi.

Starting a fire on a wet day, with wet branches and wet grass beneath calls for a wee bit of patience and persistence. The bear who peeled the tree behind our tent helped by leaving peelings to keep the grass from killing the fire.

We didn't geocache because we finally found a place where Verizon does not go. 

"No, I can't hear you now."

And I hadn't thought ahead to save an offline list. Which is a very cool way to geocache without 3G but I'm still new at geocaching and we had yet to be anywhere we haven't had 3G or 4G so honestly it never really crossed my mind. 

However, weekend #2 I made an offline list.

We had so much fun exploring the forest around us that the weekend went fast enough without treasure hunting so it wasn't all lost. We did discover that the road we took was littered with mineral claims. Sort of like gold claims, because we were camping above Quartzille Creek (wink wink), but they cover all the minerals in the ground. Fortunate for us, a posted claim just means, don't take my minerals, so camping is still allowed.

The fiance and I both spent the week researching claims after our first weekend camping. He's more of a treasure hunter than I am, which is why I introduced him to geocaching as it was, so the idea of striking it rich really piqued his interest. He's now fully on board with the idea of a cabin in the woods as long as it's close to some mineral loaded soapstone. :-) Let the hunt begin.

Weekend #1 was great.

Despite no geocaching, rain and bear peelings behind our tent.

But no closer to finding a location for our summer/hunting/vacation cabin.

First Weekend between Vacations

Collage of Awesome!

Because the fiance works graveyard shift our weekends don't officially start until Saturday mornings. Although the girls were let out of school yesterday at noon and we had a special celebration of geocaching and roasting weenies on a fire.

Sissy, my oldest daughter doesn't like her picture taken on fun family outings "Not cool Mom!" so I had to trick her by making her think I was taking a selfie. :-D I don't like my pic taken either, family fun or not, I'd rather take one or five of everyone else. My little one loves her picture taken but refuses to do the candid camera thing if she knows she's in the spotlight. :-/ The fiance is fine with it as long as he doesn't have to see the picture. Go figure :-)~

Anyways, so yesterday we spent a few hours in the afternoon cache hunting and roasting weenies. It was pretty damp but the fiance is a backwoods kind of guy and no challenge is too big. He loves hunting things too, which is where geocaching turned to wildfire as soon as he realized what it involved. What guy doesn't like hunting treasures?

Oh so for MY first weekend between Vacations. Lucky duck fiance got the weekend off. I say lucky because he probably won't see another day off until September. Because of this luck we are loading up the SUV and going exploring until Monday (graveyard shift means his work week starts Monday at 11pm).

This is the first year in 4 years that I haven't had a goat in lactation (yes, you read that right, I use to keep a couple of dairy goats for all sorts of yummy homemade dairy foods - I'll tell you about that some other time) in June so I'm eager to be in the woods. Besides that, I found out during the week, driven by fantasizing about disappearing into the mountains for the summer that there is a special uses permit for the national forest that allows you to build a hunting/fishing/summer cabin. Who knew? So we're going to go check out our local national forest which lucky for us we have 3 different ones within 50ish miles from home, the closest is only 21ish miles. Yay for cabin in the woods!

Summer vacation, er um... between my vacations, rocks! Even if I seem to be the most enthusiastic about it.

Hope we run into S'quatch! :-!

25hrs and counting

My happy little family headed home after finding a new cache!

In about 25hrs I will be collecting my kidlets from school for the last time until September. Eeek! I can't wait. Oh... wait. Official vacation comes to an end. Well that's ok. I'm sick of school. And I'm not even the one who has to go. Go figure. But I have a summer of fun waiting for us. Unfortunately the fiance will have to sit out on a lot of the fun. However, last night, in tradition with the lengthening days we went for a stroll to town. Part of the reason is we discovered a new geocache to go find. Part is to help work off some of this winter fluff and well mostly because we had enough daylight left after eating dinner and washing dishes.

So we walked the .68 miles down to where our geo-finder pointed us, found the cash and then made a loop around the next block so we wouldn't have to backtrack too far. Adding a little extra to our walk. Of course the geo-finder tool only gives us the as-the-bird-flies approach so the walk itself was a little farther. Oh but how fun would it be to fly!

As a side note, completely unrelated to geocaching, school coming to a close and evening strolls to town we discovered we're not big fans of ground beef anymore. Weird right? We've been living mostly on deer, goat, alpaca and chicken with a little pork and fish to fill in the gaps but I got a hankering to try beef after... I don't know how long... and well, unless it's a perfectly cooked steak or ribs I think I can do without.

Oh, my mom and 13yo nephew will be coming up to visit from down south for a week sometime next month. I promised to plan a couple of walk in cache hunting with a possible over night camping trip. Should be interesting. I introduced my mom to geocaching last year and she really got into it. She loves hiking and the thrill of finding something hidden with a souvenir you can take home is something you just can't pass up.

Chores and little helpers.

As far as my vacation being mostly over due to the man in bed from 9ish till 4ish. I think my face is suffering. I haven't used a deep-cleansing peel in almost a week. And I have to put my make-up on before 9am, which if you know what it means to have no where to go officially until 3pm then you understand. Who the heck needs make-up on at 9am when they don't have to face the world until 3pm? Not me. But I hate leaving home without putting my best foot forward. :-/ Of course he teases that I look ready to go somewhere. Ha! I just smile, kiss him goodnight and carry a load of laundry out as I go. Such the life.

I'm not complaining.

The upside to being locked out of the master-bathroom the majority of the day is I'm getting a lot more writing done. Yup. I have a feeling it's going to come to a halt once the kids are home full-time, it's hard to write romance when your 12yo and 6yo daughters are there to remind you that romance just doesn't happen often enough and will be happening less frequently without the ability to "take a nap" at 9am.

That's ok. We'll keep ourselves too busy to think about romance. Off to the woods to hunt caches! Maybe I'll take my laptop along and see if I can't find a comfy place to sit, let the kids roam like wild things and get lost in a scene or two.

Well back to writing... I have about 3hrs left. I should be able to scrounge up another 1500 words to my budding (~9800 words so far) romance "For Granted".


If your kids are already home from school for the summer check out www.geocaching.com it's a load of fun and kids love it. Take a couple of small things to trade for the treasures inside and don't forget a pen.

If your kids are still in school, check it out anyways and plan some fun. Ha! Can't lose either way.

Weekend of Fun!

Look at Walter go! No mountain too high!

The fiance and I celebrated this weekend. He was saying hello to another summer of graveyard shift which will keep him working 7 days a week minus maybe 3 days off for the next 4 months. I was saying goodbye to my vacation status. So I guess you could say it was a slightly bittersweet celebration. Something to countdown to once again. Kidlets are not out of school for a few more days but with a body sleeping in the master-bedroom from 9ish until 4ish it puts a damper on my afternoon relaxed facial routine.

Anyways, back to the weekend fun. The kidlets hung out with family (they get cabin fever if they have to spend too many weekends with mom - I don't blame them) while we took the hound and hunted geocaches. If you don't know what geocaching is go to www.geocaching.com and check it out. It's a load of fun. We just started not too long ago and have less than 50 caches under our belt but I plan on putting that number up before the summer is over. The kidlets love hunting caches as well. So on Sunday when I went to pick them up we made found a half-dozen more in that general location.

After we spent all day Saturday hunting caches we had dinner with a gorgeous view.

Vacation might be coming to an end but I am looking forward to having the kids home so we can go play and hunt caches whenever we want. :-)

Staying Sane Between Vacations

Welcome to my newest project: Staying sane between vacations.

Yesterday I was reading my latest harlequin download (Crazy, Stupid Sex written by Maisey Yates) on my android while getting my toes wet on a beginners guide to programming, thinking about pouring an afternoon hurricane to go with my peppermint infused facial peel when I got a call from the school asking me to come pick up my 6yo daughter. She wasn't feeling good and she being the type of kiddo who never complains at school, seriously, her kindergarten teacher and part-time sub (while the teacher was out having her baby and recuperating) are both thoroughly impressed with how little this kid complains despite her "issues" (we'll get to that later) so she was obviously worried. So, not having done any of my fun afternoon stuff I ran my fingers through my nappy hair, slipped Nikes on my bare feet and went to get her. I spent the rest of the day tending to her and then getting ready for class (I have a Thursday evening - 4-5:30ish - coaching certification class which will last till mid-Aug but I'm actually thinking about putting it on hold for the summer and then picking it back up in September), then cooking dinner and then bedtime stuff and that wrapped up my day.

I went to bed missing my afternoon routine of peel, romance and diluted fruity and sweet resemblance of an alcoholic beverage. I did spend a little extra time in the bathroom getting ready for bed though but that just doesn't have the same affect. I laid in bed thinking about how another school year was coming to an end and my vacation (I'll explain that title to you further down) was coming to an end. No more leisurely afternoons doing house-chores in my skivvies while my facial peel did it's magic, no more lounging time reading yet another soft-core harlequin or write my own fantasy but still the same amount of chores. Ugh! Summer!

Actually, I love summer. I love my kids. Love my family time. It's just that this year I got spoiled, unintentionally. My youngest started Kindergarten and here I was at home to do with the day as I pleased. You know what? It's freakin' fantastic. 1-2 hours of house chores a day is all it takes to keep a house spotless. Breakfast, packed lunches and dinner for the clan. A little bit of homework, bedtime stories and making love after dark with the fiance. Some fun filled weekends with the family. All the rest of the time was mine to do with as I pleased.

Wanna know what I did?

I started a coaching practice, volunteered on a weekly basis for a mom group and a couple of elderly people, started a non-profit to fund coaching hours for low-income people,  I wrote about 50,000 words towards 3 soft-core erotic wanna-be-harlequin dramas and I learned the deep gratification for a facial peel. Seriously, being a homemaker is about as good as it gets.

Love your family. Check! Love your home. Check! Love yourself! Double Check!

One more week, 9 days and counting, summer will begin and my new found freedom will end. sigh

As for this project. Finding ways to stay sane without all that lovely me-time that I was so suddenly spoiled with. My coaching practice hours will be cut down to a minimum of 5-8hrs per week (just long enough to keep up with a few clients and make sure everything keeps running smoothly and bring in enough play money for summer fun) so I have optimum time for the kidlets. The fiance starts graveyard shift sometime between Monday night and next week which means keeping the kidlets quite, happy and busy (boredom is the best recipe for bickering and getting loud).

And most of all, counting down the days till vacation school starts up again. Though for this homemaker my real vacation doesn't start until January when the fiance heads back to dayshift. So my vacation is slightly shorter than some. Oh, how nice would that be to have 9 months instead of 6 for vacation. Ah... the things I could do and get done.

If you're a homemaker and don't see your life as a vacation, stick around, I want to show you how to get the full richest life homemaking has to offer. Seriously, there is no reason to be miserable or bored and the status of your housecleaning does not have to suffer. In fact the best part about my method of vacationing is that a happy woman in a clean home makes a happy family. Oh and if you have toddlers roaming the floors still it's alright. From now until September though I will focus mostly on staying sane between vacations.

Bring it on!