Flying north with dogs and big feet

Disclaimer: these are not actually my feet; my toes are much more crookedy than these!

It seems like only a little while ago we were moving into our Little House on the Prairie. Alas, it's just about time to go - north that is. We moved in here the last day of March, now we're heading back to northern Idaho, and will head south before Thanksgiving.

The last few times we made this trek we drove, all 2100 miles, which usually ended up being more like 3,500 by the time we went down rabbit trails to visit family and friends along the way. Ends up it's twice as expensive to drive, and much easier on our backs and backsides to fly. Cub Sweetheart flies on points, I am his 'companion' and Miss Lily is the only one we have to put out cash for. So flying it is.

Lily becomes my 'carry-on', at a fee of $95, and has to spend the entire flight in a little doggie suitcase with windows, which she despises, so she wears the world's smallest bark collar. I not only have to pay for her to sit where my size eleven feet are supposed to go, but they don't allow me another carry-on. Seems to me if I'm paying for what would otherwise have been a free carry-on I should get another one. But I don't. So I move all my stuff, plus my real purse, into the world's largest purse, and off we go. We resemble Mary Poppins and her carpetbag I suspect.

We fly into Spokane, and alas, there are no direct flights between there and DFW, which makes for fun walking Lily through the airport. She always gets lot of snuggles and smiles, because she is quite possibly the cutest dog on the planet. We usually find ice cream somewhere, which we hope she thinks makes up for having to spend hours in her dog suitcase.

Once we're settled into our CDA home, we'll jump immediately into celebrating the 4th of July. My mother was born on the 4th, and always said she loved that the entire nation celebrated her birthday every year. This will be our first year with her not here to celebrate, but maybe there are fireworks in heaven? Although she always loved the BBQ, watermelon and homemade ice cream much more.

Later in the month my baby brother is flying up to spend a few days with us. He's never been to that part of the country, so we're excited to show him around. He loves, loves the outdoors and is a rock hound, so I expect he's going to love being there. We're planning to suck one or both of our son-in-loves into taking him fishing on one of the lakes there. Hopefully he'll catch something big enough that he doesn't have to lie about it.

We've got spots reserved for camping with friends the middle of August, in Thor, our pop-up. September we'll be driving to Yellowstone with family for a handful of days, then in October we've booked a ten day California coastline bus trip.

So obviously, I'm / we're planning to be on vacation for the next few months. The past four months have been full to overflowing with emotion, loss, moving, and more hard work than we're really up to these days, so we're going to counter balance that with an extra helping of goofing off for the next few.

To bring that about I've come up with three weeks of summer menus. All the meals are easy peasy lemon squeezy; there are repeats of things like tacos, pizza, stir fry, grilling because who wants to go three weeks without all of those? I'm keeping desk work, housecleaning, errands, and anything of that nature as minimal as possible. No projects, no big plans, and not a single solitary thing that needs to be written in ink on a calendar on a weekly basis.

This little blog is one of almost a handful I've had, but all in all I've been coming here to write for over ten years now, so it's obviously something that feeds my soul. It's not on my work/obligation list. I won't be writing 'post' on my calendar, but will be popping in now and then to show and tell what we're up to.

Those days of shimmering heat, brilliant blue skies with not a cloud in sight, ice cream cones melting faster than you can lick them up, watching Littles jump off docks into ice cold water, nights where campfires and fire flies are the only light, curling up in a hammock or patio chair, lazy mornings of staying in pjs til well after what is respectable, and meandering conversations that spring up over patio tables or fences - they're all too precious and fleeting to do anything so serious as bill paying, or bathroom cleaning any more than is absolutely necessary.  Surely that's why God made winter, right?

We'll talk soon, on the other side.