We woke up to the beautiful sounds of birds chirping, roosters crowing and dogs losing their ever loving minds. Welcome to Arkansas.
The weather is amazing. It’s warm and sunny with a slight breeze. We pulled out some chairs, grabbed a coffee and sat. After a week of rushing, it feels luxurious to just sit and be.
The trees are just beginning to explode with greenery in a million different shades and it’s beautiful to sit here in this private forest oasis and listen to the sounds of nature and city collide. Woodpeckers and garbage trucks, the roosters and sirens, frogs and an RC car being played with on the property next door. And dogs, there’s a lot of dogs on the neighbouring properties and they all try to vie for dominance with their song.
Mac found this turtle a week or so ago and the poor guy gets put down, manages to crawl a few feet before being discovered again. We haven’t seen him open up and move around; but he’s pretty cute, all tucked up in his shell.
Jon has made pancakes for the kids – from his mother’s recipe – since they were tiny and it was fun to see him and Xani in the kitchen together. They were delicious, as always!
The boys are in dog heaven and I’m pretty sure the dogs think they have gone to heaven with the amount of attention and belly rubs and butt scratches and ear rubbing that they are getting.
We sat out on the back porch and chatted. I dragged my chair out into the sunshine; and it was glorious. I struggle with the amount of rain we get on the West Coast. Even though it’s all I’ve ever known, it feels like my soul washes down the drain with all the rain between October and May. I live for the warm sunny days of June, July and August but even as August winds down, I feel the sadness start creeping in and it’s hard.
Yesterday, we finally managed to get in some drawing. The prompt was mushroom. Jon created the psychedelic pencil drawing above and I drew the colourful version below.
It’s been fun to take the time to draw each day and we’ve missed it, in the race to get here.
Jon helped Xani run an errand and I tidied the trailer. We had a delicious meal of barbecued chicken, potatoes and Greek salad. Xani also made cinnamon buns for dessert. Everyone helped to get dinner cleaned up and then we went out on the property and built a fire.
It was nice to sit and chat and laugh and be with family. We pulled out the marshmallows and had some s’mores. Talked and laughed some more.
There’s something soothing about sitting around a fire at the end of the day. You can talk or not talk but just being with family fills your soul.
At the end of the evening, we put the fire out and headed back to the trailer for a quick tick check before climbing into bed. It was a pretty great day!