Life Has Been Good

I was lying in bed this morning under an oversized down blanket and plaid woolen throw when I decided to finally look over at the time- 5:20 a.m. I went to bed kind of late last night and I only grabbed a few hours of sleep the night before, so I was still a bit tired. After trying to fall back asleep and realizing that I was getting nowhere with it, I decided that I'd rather enjoy the morning on the east side of the house while the sun crept up rather than from the back of the house buried beneath my heap of blankets. And so I got up, filled a cup of coffee and crawled beneath another woolen blanket on the couch. Of course, the sun doesn't rise until about 6:30, but I was okay with waiting.

This past week has been really great. Joe and I spent 5 leisurely days off together and celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. We went camping and canoeing, did a couple house projects and planted a crabapple tree. We've decided that we are going to plant a new tree every year for our anniversary and call it our anniversatree. This year we chose a Donald Wyman crabapple and a Velvet Pillar crab as well. I thought the deep cranberry-plum colored leaves would look good in front of the paint we chose for the exterior of the house.

I was pretty excited that the weekend was cool enough for long sleeves and a knit hat. And I was even more excited when I realized that my hair is actually long enough now to where I don't look like I'm bald when I wear a knit hat. Always a plus. We really like the tree and after a visit to the UW Arboretum, we're pretty giddy in anticipation of it getting bigger. The birch that was tiny when we moved in has grown to be taller than the house, so I figure it's just around the corner that this tree gets big too.

A couple days before we got the tree we went to Mirror Lake State Park which is one of my favorite places in the area. We invited our friends who have never gone kayaking before and we ventured off to the water after we made dinner in our dutch oven. I didn't get any photos of the canoe/kayak excursion because by the time we got down there it was already past dusk. Canoeing in the dark is always fun...the bats swing down and glide just above the water before darting back into the sky and the coyote ramblings carry out from within the bluffs. It's so so cool.

The weekend before last was really great too. Our friends Mike and Jodi who came kayaking with us were burning down their old farm house. Mike is a firefighter and he donated the house for fire training. He invited my department which is just the next town over, so it was a lot fun for me to go to a fire. There was a bunch of interior fire training which was awesome since I hadn't been in a house on fire before that. And then after like 15 different interior drills it was time to burn down the entire house. I'm standing on the left in the yellow helmet. Most of the other firefighters were hanging out up on the hill behind the house. I went up there for a bit but decided to come back down because it was a lot cooler on the side I was on.

It was a good time and I learned a few things too. I wasn't able to be on any of the teams that were putting out the interior fires since I haven't finished my classes yet, but I did get to hang out inside while Mike lit the fire and then we waited for awhile and watched it build until it took over the whole room. It was a nice opportunity for me to get more familiar to the SCBA mask-- I had a hard time with the mask at first and will probably still have a hard time for a little while. It's a psychological thing I suppose, but I can get past it if I can distract myself with other things that are going on. Plus I'm a little better off now that I am more acquainted with the way it works. It was fun to wait as the fire and smoke and heat built. I started fire classes last week so I'm looking forward to see what's next. I think this fire thing is going to be a good fit.

Today I'm painting the house a bit more and cutting a bunch of wood for some new art pieces. Hopefully I have enough sand paper to get everything ready to paint, but we'll see. Cutting the wood is my least favorite part.

But anyway...what's new with you?