Catching up

 It's been a minute! And we've had adventures!

I went to Miami for work, thoroughly enjoyed it, never going back.

Then Cook and I left the girls at home for a week and went to New York City. (I told a coworker this was our first EVER vacation together without the kids, and she was horrified to the point that I got embarrassed about what I guess is yet another failure of Self Care.) This was utterly delightful. We went to museums (Transit Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cloisters, Museum of the City of New York), we went to the Comedy Cellar like good tourists. We went to a bar to listen to live jazz, we visited a bunch of interesting city stuff (so many parks, the Roosevelt Island Tram, Stuyvesant Town, the East River Ferry, East Village community gardens). We ate a lot of good and/or interesting things (an egg cream soda, enormous Italian sandwiches, khachapuri, pickled kumquats, etc.). And while we were gone, the kids took excellent care of themselves and each other. So it was a triumph all around, totally worth waiting nearly 20 years.

 

And then I went on a short camping trip with a friend to a hot spring in southern/middle Oregon.

And now suddenly summer has begun! Skipper is done with school and looking forward to a summer of naps on the couch. Duchess is off in Sweden again, visiting family and friends and exploring on her own, but she'll meet us on the East Coast for a family visit to Maine.