Magrilless

It’s possible that we missed celebrating this holiday last year…

*Trick or treating update: We found the house of urban legends — full size candy bars! Balanced by the house that gave out individually wrapped prunes.

October has been glorious!Hikes, friends, and crafts galore — fall is just yummy, isn’t it?

We popped down to Albuquerque this weekend so the girls could experience the New Mexico State Fair. (I love our little county fair, but it is definitely wee.)

We saw low-riders galore in the parade (compete with hydraulics tricks), were introduced to a mammoth donkey (he was so so soft), treated ourselves to pie a la mode (everyone choose a different flavor), learned how to weave on a loom (you’d think those ladies were earning a commission they were so passionate), got inspired for Halloween pumpkin carving (the girls were gifted an all-vegetable fidget spinner), rode a select few rides (without ever stepping foot on the midway), and lots and lots of other things too!

Oh, and we watched a horse race. Maggie got a high five from the winning jockey!

Plus, we just soaked up general grandparent love, special toys, and generous permissiveness.

Now back to our cool little mountain town. See you next time, Albuquerque!

What does a long holiday weekend mean to us? Well, let me show you!

We drove 5 minutes out of town to the lake that was opened while we were gone. Our friends joined us with their borrowed paddle board and we (unsuccessfully) tried to avoid sunburn. (We were there for 4 hours and applied twice!)

We knocked out some projects, including the little friends I’ve been working on since the beginning of the summer. And I didn’t get a shot of the berry cheesecake, cuz we ate it.

We played in backyards and parks and, although most of the neighborhood kids were off camping, we got some quality time in!

And we hiked our back yard trails, makinga lot of noise and trying to come up with synonyms for “whee!” on the scramble down.

We’ve got some good things going!

Okay, so it’s been a month (just about) since we arrived home (that’s crazy!), and y’all have seen neither hide nor hair of us here.

You probably have hypothesized that we are busy settling back in. That’s true. Although it instantly felt normal to be back in our town and our house. Still, there are lots of boxes and moving-in decisions and blah blah blah.

And you may think that in-person conversations (in English!) and activity planning (with good friends) and plain old mountain gazing (it smells good here) have distracted us from realizing how much time is passing. Right again!

Perhaps you also know that before and after pictures of Ikea builds are not quite as glamorous as … well … photos of most anything else. But we have moved into/onto our new furniture and are loving it!

Do you also think that our daily life here is not quite as full of adventure and fun and grand experiences as our travels? Well, you’re wrong about that.

It may be a tiny bit different, but we are still having fun, adventuring, planning, problem-solving, and getting our fill of excitement! Here’s a little bit of what we’ve been up to:

Has it been an easy reintegration? Actually, pretty much yes. There were definitely some butterflies before first day of school. And changes in the neighborhood have resulted in a few “I’m bored” complaints. Plus the work load of real life is very different from that of travel life.

But all considered, we feel right at home again, and did pretty much from the first moment we stepped out of the car. (I even remembered how to drive! I thought I would have to concentrate pretty hard, but like so many other things, it just came easy!)

Maybe one day in the not-too-distant future I’ll write a final wrap-up, a lessons-learned reflection, from our big adventurous pan-European extravaganza. In the meantime, I’m going to boil some eggs for breakfast, pack some lunches and stuff them in backpacks, and walk out into the forest with a neighbor. Tonight I’ll sip wine on the front porch with my husband, watch bikers pedal up our street, and fall asleep with the windows open (even with the possibility of skunky night visitors). And I’ll feel lucky that this is my normal life!