a breather

I am looking into the face of two full days off.  Although we are schooling through the summer, we are NOT touching schoolwork for the next two days.  This momma needs some time off.  The boys are getting a little worn down as well with the workload.  So we breathe.

Summer is busy at my job.  We are dependent on tourists, campers, and vacationers and they are in abundance in these warm months.  My days are rarely shorter than nine hours.  This is not fun.  One recent week I racked up 45 hours.  Not fun.  Not ok.  I like earning a bit of money but not at this cost.  Anyway, just a little transparency there on my part.

We've had a couple opportunities to swim at a nearby lake.  We have to hike into it and once there we have a sweet little spot with a rock that is fun to jump off of.  It's maybe 6 ft up, not a lot, but it makes me feel brave.  Especially when I'm the first one to dive in!

For Independence Day we took the boys to the carnival in town.  Our town finds any and every reason to hold carnivals and/or parades but this is the first we've been to in the 4 years we've lived here.  It was a perfectly sunny, warm evening and we bought them each a fistful of ride tickets.  They even used some of their tickets so Dad could ride with them.  Aaron and I sat on the grass for a time listening to the live band play then joined up with the boys again to catch the fireworks show.  We brought blankets and laid on the grass under the fireworks and felt them burst in our very chests.  I can never see fireworks without thinking of our Star Spangled Banner and  the story behind it's inspiration.  Tears, every time.

That's all for now.  Need to finish recording grades then get some dinner started.  What we'll have I don't know because "someone" forgot to defrost meat (that'd be me).  Yep, it was one of those 9 hours days again.