How all of you bloggers stay up-to-date is beyond my comprehension! Needless to say it was a busy, but good summer.
Maybe I’ll get into some of the stories, but for now I’ll just post some pictures that tell their own story.
We finally invested in some camping gear and drove 4000 miles round-trip to be at the Youngberg family reunion at Cascade Lake in Idaho. It’s one of the places that gives me some of my fondest memories of my childhood and growing up.
This is a picture of 5 of the 6 of us who were all within a year of each other. It wasn’t until this year that I realized that all but one of my mom’s siblings had given birth within the same year! What a gift that was to us! I love my cousins. One night I stayed up until 4 in the morning talking with my girl cousins. I couldn’t get enough! The week went by WAY too fast. I need more of that.
It rained while we were camping, including a downpour that started right after the rest of my family arrived at night. We had set up one tent and were trying to make dinner. We ended up eating mac ‘n cheese in a screen tent that didn’t really keep us dry but it kept us from turning into prunes.
The sun came out for at least one day.
We even had our salon-in-the-woods time.
Thank you, Grandma, for putting this together. You were truly inspired. You told us to follow our hunches; thank you for following yours.
On our way there we stopped at Mount Rushmore. I can now say that I’ve been there, but it’s probably not worth a trip in and of itself. But it was cool to see what someone did with rock.
I think Jeremy liked stopping at the Sturgis motorcycle rally better. There were bikers of all styles, ages, and colors!
We saw a LOT of the country. We drove through 8 states. EIGHT. There were a lot of beautiful scenes. So naturally, I had the camera with me, but unfortunately photos taken from a car going over 80 mph don’t look so great. But these are some of them…
On Labor Day weekend we went to see the Train concert at Ravinia. They were awesome! We had pavilion seats, but stood almost the whole time. It was amazing to see a band that somehow sounds better live than they do on the radio. We sang along to almost all their songs. I don’t think I was supposed to take these pics but as you can tell they aren’t good for much except to say we were there! If they come back, we would definitely go again.
Then about 2 weeks ago the Waukegan air show was going on and the jets fly over our house. Check out this jet! (I don’t know what it is)
And I can’t help but to put a picture of our Benny kitty. He is so cute. Though he got out last night and I worried that he had gone too far and wouldn’t come home for awhile. Luckily I posted on facebook that I couldn’t find him. My neighbor, who has taken care of him once while we were on vacation, came over without asking with a flashlight. With her help we found him about 45 minutes after he left. He only made it about 60 feet away and was sitting on a cinderblock wall. He puffed up his tail when she called him to come to her. When he got inside he laid down and was purring and panting. It was over 80 degrees and humid last night because a rain storm was coming, so I think he was cooling down. So glad he’s home.
On a sad note my cat from childhood finally passed away. Boots made it to be 19 years old. She was frail old kitty. I felt so bad for her and thought she must have been in pain. But she never showed it. She would purr and purr for her favorite brush. She was a great cat that I really had a connection with. All growing up she was always at my side, laying down in my puzzle boxes, trying to bite my pen/pencil while doing homework, waiting for me to come home by looking out the window while sitting on the piano, rubbing and nestling against me while I cried, and kneading my hair. I’m so happy that we decided to go through Utah on our way home in August, because I got to see her one last time. I’ll miss you Boots, but am so glad that you are finally at peace and can rest.
So that’s about it for now. I’ve been cooking a little more lately, so hopefully I’ll post some recipes for you to try. We had ham & cheese quiche this week and it was delicious. I also made baked egg cups (ham as the crust in a muffin tin with an egg baked inside it – very yumm). I still have more ham, so I need to find another recipe or at least freeze it.
More to come….though I don’t know how soon! Whew! Now I need to go do something else productive.
Later.
