We Heart Visitors

My parents came to visit this weekend, and I feel just how I always feel after such a visit. Sad and prosy. I had an English teacher in high school who said, "The memories and anticipation of summer vacation are more important that the actual holiday." I've anticipated their arrival for weeks; it has motivated me to clean, unpack, paint and decorate. Settle, in other words. But as I said goodbye to my mother this morning for I don't know how many months, I just feel gray and snarly. There are mountains of laundry I've put off for four blissful days, dishes galore and goopy leftovers. There is vacuuming to be done. Instead, I just feel like I want to crawl into my covers and have a good, selfish cry.

To combat this feeling of having been left adrift 700 miles away from my family, I instead will focus on the happy memories, hoping they will sustain us until the next visit. Because, as awful as "home"sickness feels, how much worse to NOT have a family I missed!




This is my mother talking with the Honey Hippie and his wife at the local farmer's market. This place is awesome. Plantboy has been telling me about it for weeks, but we haven't gone yet. The organic produce side was incredible and the smells in the air were divine, but even more fun was the arts and crafts portion. I have such a love for silly, dangly earrings in all their forms and it was a homemade jewlery paradise. I passed on the tarot reading, however.


Plantboy took our picture while we posed under this huge, double hanging basket. The inside of my house is nearly settled, the next job will be to get going on our yard. If I can get past the snakes and spiders, gardening here will be heaven.

STM's Dad posing with Poopy Pirate and Captain Tootypants. We spent several minutes trying to get CT to smile, but he just kept looking at me with the dazed over face that said, "Too much flash."

Scallywag Plankwalker wanted to be a farmer after church on Sunday, after a discussion about where carrots come from, so I got him all dressed up. Then he decided it was more fun to shoot bad guys than to plant crops so he added the hat below and became a cowboy. An Aussie cowboy; Plantboy doesn't have a real cowboy hat. The one below is from his Indiana Jones phase.

Next time my parents come we want to spend a day at the coast and hike to the lighthouse, or maybe see the Sea Lion Caves . . . so I will look back with fondness and anticipate the future with hope and look for small happinesses from day to day.