A Blog Is Born

After two-plus decades of raising my three young men, I found myself an empty nester. Somehow the girl that existed before, with all of her hopes, dreams and grand aspirations, had disappeared. This is not to say that I did not relish my lifetime of being Mom, but somewhere along that road I lost who I was apart from that.

As Mom, I lived a very busy life. My boys were very active in multiple sports, school activities and Boy Scouts. Of course, they each had a social life and I did my best to plan fun family activities as well. It was a very complicated schedule to keep everything straight and make sure everyone was at the right place at the right time. Oh, and did I forget to mention that at one point I was also working three jobs to make ends meet?

When we sent our middle son off to college, my sweetheart and I decided to give up the four-bedroom home and downsize into a two-bedroom townhouse. As it turns out that was one of the best decisions. Simplifying has been very freeing. We are comfortable, but no longer responsible for the major upkeep involved with the bigger home.

We love food and Chris loves cooking (for me cooking is an entirely different topic) so we watch a lot of cooking shows. We watched an episode of Chef’s Table on Netflix that featured Grant Achatz and his restaurant, Alinea, in Chicago. We decided that we would like to go to Alinea. Put it on the bucket list, maybe one day…

Fast forward a year and a half. Out of the blue, I receive a Facebook update from Alinea saying that they have reservations open for July and August. I looked at Chris and asked, “should we do it?”. We checked with work to make sure we could get the time off and found another couple that wanted to go with us. Everything just fell into place and we made the trip. It was hands down one of the most exciting things I have done in my life.

That trip inspired in me a wish to travel more. We had been in the habit of taking a vacation every year since we have been together. We have taken trips to the Virgin Islands, New Orleans, Atlantic City as well as an annual road trip to Florida primarily to play disc golf and seek out great food. But Alinea inspired us to take a second trip each year.

Last year we decided that second trip would be to Imagine Festival in Atlanta. This trip, however, would consist of camping for three nights. The boy’s reaction to this news was, “you are going to camp?”. Not to say that I have never been camping before. When Joe was a new cub scout the Troop planned a camping trip. As cub scouts, a parent must camp with the boys. His dad had agreed to take him, but at the last-minute, that changed. I could not tell my very excited little boy that he could not go on the trip, so I packed up the mini-van with my three little boys and we went camping. I had no clue what I was doing, but the Troop made sure that we were ok, even providing us with a tent. By the time Kevin became a Boy Scout, I had gotten fairly proficient in my camping abilities. I was, however, no longer required to camp with them as Boy Scouts, and very happy that my camping days were over.

Chris, knowing my reluctance towards camping, made sure to create as comfortable a camping experience as he could. We bought a tent that goes up in 7 seconds (yes, we have timed it). We have a double high queen-sized air mattress and a power supply to blow it up. He even made sure that we had a potty tent (which was a blessing as we were far from the facilities). We had an amazing trip.

I had previously decided that it might be fun to go to the mountains for a few days to see the fall colors. After the Atlanta trip, I thought it might be fun to camp. On that trip, we realized that we had been so wrapped up in the mundane of working that we had forgotten how much we enjoyed each other’s company. We decided that we should go camping every month to have time to reconnect with each other away from the every day of life.

On the drive home from Assateague Island in February, I had the thought that it would be great to create a blog chronicling our little adventures. By the time I was home, though, I had talked myself out of it. I never even mentioned the idea for fear that he would think it was dumb. After all, who would be interested in anything I had to say?

Last month, after our trip to Natural Tunnel and Devil’s Bathtub (another bucket list trip), Chris told me that he thought I should write a blog about our trips. And so here we are…