Spending Time

The "living at home" portion of our family spent Labor Day weekend at our favorite haunt for vacationing, a quiet, snug cabin about an hour Northeast of home, where the air is filled with pine scents and the freshness of the river. Craggy rocks add character and immense beauty to the softly dark green mountains--I like to admire them from the vantage of the porch swing just on the other side of Opal Creek, with a big mug of a spicy, hot tea (mountain mornings do tend to be chilly). We had a rich, chocolatey ganache cake both evenings after our special Trader Joe's dinners, while we watched Little Dorrit (Friday night) and The Croods (Saturday). Me and Ladybird worked up hearty appetites swimming in the icy cold, crystal green water and going on inspirational hikes in the rain and dew-glinting sunshine, and spent a bit of our time reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (we're making not very much headway in the series, although we both love them). I also got to go on a wonderfully stormy, 9-mile run with Daddy, read my own fun book, The Eagle of the Ninth, and play Ticket to Ride with Ladybird. Mama may not have had as relaxing a vacation as I: Gavin woke up at 4:30 on Sunday morning and could not be convinced to go back to bed. We finished our trip with Sunday dinner at Olive Garden on the way home (I thoroughly enjoyed my Garlic Rosemary Chicken and mashed potatoes, and am now determined to recreate the delicious concoction, with a valiant attempt at those garlic cloves, chewy, whole and caramely sweet). And then Daddy had to drive all the way back to the cabin to fetch his laptop, forgotten on the antique stove in the corner of the kitchen.
I spent my real Labor Day catching up on school reading, which was actually very pleasant, putting my room to rights, watching Doctor Who with Ladybird, doing push-ups with Daddy, running for an hour along my home roads... it was good. And in the afternoon, when everything else was happily accomplished, I slipped off into the woods, found a resting place, and lay there letting time slide by while I watched birds and dancing fir boughs, felt wind and fir needles wafting around me, and thought contentedly about life and health and beauty.
P.S. Happy September!