We found our happy place.

This has been a truly epic summer for us. This spring we noticed how much time the television was sucking up from our lives... how hard it was to get all the things we needed to get done and still find time to keep current on the shows we all liked to watch- so we did something drastic. We got rid our cable. We kept the wii, the dvd player, and the kindle and DS. We aren't unplugged by any stretch of the imagination... but we are cable free, and richer on so many levels, for it.

 

The kids watched Pinocchio. Much better than some of the garbage they were watching, and quoting, and emulating... happy mama.

 

The beauty of this freedom? More time. We've built a shed, expanded the vegetable garden, put a few new seating areas out in the yard and actually sat in them- for no reason at all but to stare at the stars, watch the sunset, look for bats, enjoy the hummingbird traffic. To just be. And its been wonderful.

 

We also took 2 back to back camping trips up to the Minnesota shore of Lake Superior, and we've fallen in love. We visited the southern half of this area last year, and this year we did the northern half, and liked it so much, we went back a month later. We stayed at Judge Magney State Park. We hiked Devil's Kettle Fall in a thunderstorm, skipped rocks (well, theo did... we all can't figure it out) on Lake Superior, ate wild berries on a mountain overlooking Canada, marevelled at 185+ year old red and white pines, looked for moose, wolves, and bears... collected agate, went to a rock museum, hiked up creeks and strolled down paved trails... and had the world's best donuts- twice. Here are some pictures from our second trip up there. Theo and I are already planning our move... and yoyu know what? Our kids are on board? They love it up there, too! We want to let the boys go to school here, but gradually- this heaven on earth up in the north woods should someday be our home.