distracted...

I hardly know where to begin, and I don't mean to sound all dramatic, cause it's not like anything bad has happened. Quite the opposite actually. But yesterday Jason went out of town, he will be gone 3 weeks!!! and that is just totally crazy for us! So everything is feeling kind of off... the past week was super busy getting him ready to go... we were in town 3 or 4 days which is more than we sometimes go in one month... and we have never been apart for anywhere near this long! About once a year he will go on a backpacking trip for a few nights, occasionally a skateboarding trip for a couple days, he has even worked at home for most of the girls lives, so we are really used to having daddy around! I guess you may be wondering where is he went... He is at "Tracker School", a nature and wilderness survival school, all the way across the country in New Jersey. He flew there Saturday. (It did not go so well, he threw up 5 times, I wonder if he would care that I am telling you this...) But he made it, he is excited to learn, and even more excited to come home with the experience and knowledge.

The girls have of course been pretty sad about him going for so long, but they actually did really well today for his first day gone. They played with paper dolls all day. Really, the whole entire day. They started making them at about 8 this morning and cleaned up at 5 for dinner. I had to make them stop in the middle of the day to eat. Once I heard Chloe say, in a pretend daddy voice, (cause they have lots of play voices), "Guys, I have to tell you something. I'm sorry, but we're paper."


Now, the results of my hectic, scattered, distracted week... Jason is a pretty emotional person, he said with all the butterflies in his stomach he probably didn't even need an airplane to fly across the country, so he didn't have much of an appetite. So I made him cinnamon rolls. Surely he could manage that. (And a spinach lasagna for dinner Friday night.) I wanted to double the cinnamon roll recipe so there would be extra for him to take with him. I accidentally quadrupled it! 30 cinnamon rolls! Anyone want some? Wish I could share...


Good thing we have an abundance of fruit to make the breakfast a little more healthy. Apples from the forest! There is a valley here that long ago had many orchards. Now there are wild apple trees scattered about, Jason brought home so many bags of apples last autumn, this is just the beginning for this year. Nectarines too, which we picked at my brother-in-laws house. And the girls even love the crabapples!


I tried to take some pictures from the car while we were driving home from one of those many town trips last week. Jason took the camera on his trip, but my sister sent me hers so soon I will be able to take more pics.



It's still pretty green here, but every day it's looking a little more golden...