Ten Days - Just Ten Days!

June 6: 10 Days ‘til We Hit the Road!

It’s been a busy few days since I last posted…It’s been a Hot few days too!

I guess that I’d better get used to the heat; it’s a wonder that someone like me who prefers to stay indoors on such hot days and even more so prefers to stay indoors even in the mild climate of Washington State is signing up to travel to some of the hottest regions that our country has!  But as my DH pointed out, “On a hot summer day, I can’t think of anything better to do than to be sitting in a car for eight hours with the AC on taking in new sights…if you’re going to be doing anything, that’s it!”  I must concur.  As the last few days have proven, our house gets exceptionally um, “warm” on sunny days so sitting at home for the bulk of the summer roasting and sweating this year is not my idea of delightful nor is it on my itinerary.  My idear of delightful is driving from scenic location to scenic location in a climate controlled air-conditioned car stopping to photograph such beautiful landmarks as this country is blessed with and I am blessed to be able to see, getting back into Air-Conditioned Car!, stopping for the night in a lush hotel with plump soft beds, fluffy pillows and a cool out-door swimming pool to slosh around in…THAT will be lovely.

In the meantime, I’m trying to not get too antsy – living one day at a time vs. being too excited for the vacay to get here ‘cuz once it does, well, that will fly by…and I’m a big believer in living one day at a time.  Making the most of each day (although truthfully, all I’ve done today is check my FB, check my email, check Craigslist, read photography articles, read political articles, repeat.  Oh!  And I took a nap!).

But what I mean is, feeling like “I can’t wait to get out of here!” takes away from the joy of just being here in the meantime, and by the Grace of God, I pray nothing and no one would ever steal my joy!

Blessings on ya’ today…have a good one! 

P.S.  And please remember today is D-Day… If you don’t know what that is – please take a second and look it up, thank you!

Countin' Down!

Countin’ Down!!

So…I have been a minute in getting back to my blog – isn’t that the way of it?  But I have exciting news that has been simmering on the back burner and it’s just been moved to the front!

WHAT? Is this Momentous News that has me bursting from all seams?!

Well, it’s just this…My JoTucker and I are heading out on the road in exactly 16 days!  Just him and I!  And when I say out on the road, I mean, that – Lord willing – all our scheduled stops are found within no less than FIFTEEN states!  And we might just try to hit a few more!

I’m still wrapping up my itinerary – it’s pretty much finalized, I do tweak it every now and again, but I’m not showing it to anybody! ;-)  It’s going to be a grand surprise as we visit various locations and I post the pictures from each of these adventures.

I welcome you to come along as it will be a geography lesson to boot!  I’ll try to incorporate history with my anecdotes and stories and photographs…Oh!  And photographs!  We just bought both Josiah and myself “new” cameras specifically for this trip.  I want to photograph EVERYTHING! (Well, when don’t I?)  And Josiah will be getting in-depth photography lessons from his Momma; heck he may come back more a pro than his Momma!… Now the outfits that we purchased are small and light…I’m really hoping that I will be able to work with this one “Nifty Fifty” lens on a crop sensor camera, especially with regards to landscapes and structures and things like that which almost demand wide-angles…

Anywho, not to blab on for too much longer, I must get back to my itinerary…It’s a pretty time consuming task too.  When I’m not “working”, I work on it. 

Working?  Nope, I didn’t get a job.  I have been blessed with numerous NUMEROUS opportunities to earn money in the last month.  As soon as I put the word out that I was in need of earning some fundage for said trip, I had people bowl me over with blessings in the form of tasks and labor and it’s definitely helping to ease my mind with regard to the budget to see the sights and places that I have determined that we NEED to see.  From the ordering of $4 a dozen homemade flour tortillas (and, yes, they’re Grrreat!) to $60 meals to Photo shoots to Landscaping Jobs to purchasing some of my books and furniture to even cooking for the tribe!…I have had multiple streams of income and they have all helped – in some way – to fund this trip.

Because of all this work, Consequently, with regards to formal lessons, we haven’t been doing any, lol…That’s alright…As liberal a method as homeschooling is…he’ll be learning.  We’ll be living Geography (identifying where we are) and history (identifying what happened there) as well as keeping a timeline, a history and geography notebook with colored maps, and marking the routes we follow on our beautiful road atlas. Math (distances and budget), not to mention actual formal lessons from his book we’ll take along.  Josiah -as well as I - will be practicing photography as well as Spanish since my parents will be traveling with us the first part of our trip and I have requested almost 100% Spanish spoken!  We’ll be “doing” art: visiting museums as well as sketching and coloring with watercolor pencils what we see and again, taking photos.  Science comes from studying Nature and all of God’s creation outside of our own small boundaries.  He will be keeping a daily journal so there’s his writing..  We’ll be doing a bit of creative cooking as we learn together how to grill out in order to save money on eating in restaurants and with all the hiking that we’ll be doing?  Well, you’d better believe we’re getting some serious Monthlong P.E.!  And, of course, we are both packing along two or three or more good literary novels to keep our brains and language skills sharp, helping us to make a connection to what we are seeing and experiencing as all of them will be connected to our travels.

We are just so blessed at this opportunity and I pray that the Lord that I serve will bless our trip as mightily as he’s blessed every moment leading up to it!

Alrighty, well, I’m hoping to start really getting some responses while I’m out on the road and hopefully make some new friends out here in Internet Land!