It’s so cliché’ to say “time flies when you’re having fun” but it really does! That saying is popular for a good reason.
As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, we sold the farm and moved into this apartment during the second week of May this year. People kept asking me “won’t you get bored without all the animals to take care of” and “won’t you miss it?” My reply was always, “Probably.” But, we were ready for this move and it’s been great so far. Yes, we missed all the new babies in the spring and well, to be honest, that’s probably all we’ve really had time to miss. We’ve kept ourselves extremely busy and really haven’t given a lot of thought to what we’re missing by not having the farm. I do miss sitting on our porch and enjoying the scenery there and watching the alpacas and horses graze was very relaxing. The apartment, however, has a huge balcony that our patio set fits nicely on and we hung a hummingbird feeder early on and have enjoyed catching the hummingbirds trying to sneak a drink from the feeder. A couple of potted plants to water and we’re happy! Most of the month was busy just getting unpacked and settled.
In June, storm season, we were concerned that my truck would get door dings, hail damage and/or storm damage, so we rented a garage here at the apartment…the first time Jon parked the truck in the garage, I realized it was not going to work…it simply wasn’t big enough for that big truck and well…I don’t trust my parking skills well enough to squeeze it into such a small space and even Jon was concerned. SO, we thought maybe a covered car port would be sufficient so we traded in the garage for a less expensive car port. However, parking under the car port, we had to decide if it would be better for the front end to get hail damage or the back end…the car port wasn’t long enough to cover the whole truck. One day, it dawned on me that…well…why do we need the farm truck when we’re no longer hauling feed, hay, & every other which thing we needed to haul on any given day? I mentioned this to Jon & the next thing we knew we were out shopping for a new vehicle…one that would fit in the garage or carport! A few days later, I was driving home in my new yellow and black Jeep Wrangler! A week later, we had it in to KC Customs for a lift and bigger wheels & tires, bug guard and a few other little personal touches. I know I’ve driven people crazy with my chatter about the Jeep so I won’t get into it again here.
Anyway, we’ve had lots of free time to take road trips in the Jeep for the day & have spent several weekends at Truman Lake with our dear friends Bill & Rhonda. Rhonda’s dad lives right on the lake and she & Bill bought a pontoon boat this spring that we have thoroughly enjoyed “breaking in” this summer. Another long weekend was spent at Table Rock Lake celebrating Jon’s 50th birthday at White River Lodge Bed & Breakfast. We participated in a gruelling day doing the Warrior Dash. A crazy, 5k run with obstacles in 100+ degree temperatures. I won’t say that was fun just yet. It’s still too fresh in my mind. Several weeks later though, I participated in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, which was a blast! I’ll do that one again, any day! This summer has really given us a chance to really focus on eating better, “cleaner, ” getting healthier and dropping a few unwanted and unneeded pounds. We both still have some room to improve in all those areas so that’s the plan going into fall now.
I’m counting the days now for our trip out to California to visit my brother and his wife. I went last summer and had a blast so I decided this summer I would take Jon along with me and make it our last “hoorah” of the summer. We are, however, looking forward to taking a 3-day SCUBA diving course coming up later this month and getting our SCUBA Open Water Certification next month at Table Rock Lake. With this, we’ll be able to SCUBA dive in the ocean and on our trip to the Caribbean this winter. That being the final countdown event of the year for me…
