Good Saturday to you from our corner of Iowa where seasonable weather has the trees and bushes budding and many shades of green bursting out all over. The birds are singing and the resident rabbits are busy "sunning" themselves. We get a nice view of them from our living room window. Gotta love Spring!
Speaking of living room windows, this particular oversized window has given us seasonal views for many years now. Sixteen to be exact. We have lived here in Iowa for 25 years this week, but this is our third house in our fair micropolis. We are movers and shakers, but alas that has changed in recent years. To be honest Iowa was not on our radar for living or retiring, but this is where we find ourselves now, in the middle of all our kids and yet with no kids in town.
Speaking of kids we took our first trip last weekend to visit one of our families and got to hug on mom and dad and the three grands. We always enjoy their peaceful existence and this was no exception. We did not look at a TV for 4 days, but spent plenty of time visiting and eating some amazing food. Spoiled for sure! It was not hard to find things to talk about, but especially when it has been over 15 months since we have hugged on this beautiful family. Looking forward to seeing more family soon!
It felt a bit strange to be out on the road after so long. We mapped out rest areas to stop at as they are the cleanest and we brought our favorite traveling lunch along........yogurt with all the goodies thrown in like blueberries, bananas, cashews, and for Joel craisens and walnuts. We just found a cozy spot with a view of nature and ate in our car. After not talking with a number of people at once for days at a time we found ourselves getting pretty tired out! Seriously, I am suspicious that our age is catching up with us! Or the isolation.
As we visited with family we shared many old stories of our two years in the Philippine Islands. One story is about our trip across the ocean bay to Corregidor Island in little Bunka boats. I grabbed the only life jacket available ~ a kids~ before we headed out with a young Filipino lad who spoke no English but was manning our boat. It went fine going over but on the way back our motor quit. The other boats went ahead of us and there we sat in the ocean bobbing in the waves. Soon the young man was taking a small can and scooping water from the boat because it was leaking. A couple minutes later he handed both Joel and I cans and motioned for us to scoop and he tried to start the motor one more time. After what seemed like an eternity of praying and scooping water out of the boat we saw someone coming back for us. An older man tied our boat to his and towed us back to shore while we all scooped out water to stay afloat. It makes for a great story, but was very scary at the time.
We arrived home from our trip on Monday afternoon, so the week went by quickly as we caught up on laundry, grocery shopping, and more. Like we are sooooooooooooo busy? Right!!? Our house is sure quiet.......
Today I am grateful for traveling, for so many hugs, for laughter and tears, stories and good food, for being back in Minnesota, for a grandson's 20th birthday, another grandson's trip to Haiti, for walking through life with Joel, for getting older as it means we are still here! Yes so grateful for it all, and so very much more......
Enjoy your weekend!
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