There’s nothing like an impending houseguest to force you to get your shit together.  My brother-in-law was arriving for a visit last Sunday so I finally got off my butt and got the house picked up and cleaned.  Bill helped of course, but I had made headway before he got home.  The finishing touch was flowers from the farmers market.  I love fresh flowers in the house.

We had a nice visit with Steve.  It was a short trip, but nice to catch up.  We chatted and ate and watched a movie.  Steve slept. I think he got some good rest while he was here.  He brought his iPad with so I got to play.  It’s beautiful and shiny and fun, and I want one, but I’m not sure how I would use it.  I keep telling Bill that if we had one, I would figure out uses for it, but he’s not really going for it.  It’s on the heavier side so I can’t see holding it for long periods for reading or game playing.  A stand is a must.

Unfortunately for Steve, we had a heat wave.  95 plus degrees for three days.  It really zaps your energy.  That might account for all the sleeping Steve did.  The house stayed relatively cool except for one day.  I turned the air on, but it was too hot for it to really make a difference.  Bad hostess.  Steve was a good sport though and didn’t complain.

Now things are relatively back to normal at Casa Napier.  The housekeeper has been found, the laundress is laundering.  The grocery shopper needs to shop, but I’m making the grocery list.

In the midst of all of this, I started a new project with some fabulous yarn!  It was shipped from A Good Yarn in Sarasota, FL.  It’s a colorway unique to the store.  You can read about it here.  Anyway, I am knitting it up into a Whippoorwill shawl (rav link) and I think it’s lovely.

the housekeeper is nowhere to be found.  We are immensely relieved that the laundress ended her work stoppage voluntarily. The husband did pony up some cash for a few skeins of yarn, but that was a small price to pay for clean undies.  As for the housekeeper, apparently she would rather walk around the neighborhood and smell the…

roses.

Or she would rather play with fabric squares…

The husband sees the housekeeper and she behaves as if she owns the house, sitting on the couch knitting.  In the meantime, we’re up to our eyeballs in dust and animal hair tumbleweeds. What is going on in this house?  Sabrina thinks we’d better get it figured out ASAP.

A cute little kitty can’t live in these kinds of conditions.

Two weeks ago, Bill and I hopped a plane to my hometown, Chicago.  The trip was mainly to visit my dad, but of course we had to see the Cubs and stuff our faces with pizza.  Our first adventure was to see a taping of the radio show “wait, wait…don’t tell me.”  Bill’s a big fan of the show and we were able to get tickets.  I found it to be very funny and entertaining.

Friday we headed to the Cubs game.  It was not our best trip to Wrigley Field, I’m sad to say.  It was too hot and humid for my Grandma so she wasn’t able to go to the game with us.  It was for the best though, because we had the worst seats I’ve ever had in 35 years of going to that ballpark. The construction of Wrigley Field lends itself to some obstructed view seats.  However, I strongly feel that obstructed view seats should be sold as obstructed view seats.  I paid $36 plus a bunch of taxes and fees and service charges to NOT be able to see the batter.   Ok, I’m exaggerating because I could see the batter by leaning forward and to my right.  It was very comfortable, as I’m sure you can imagine.  So we sat in empty seats to our right until those people showed up.  Then I sat in my seat for about two innings until the people in front of us couldn’t handle the heat anymore and left.  We stayed for the whole game and the Cubs won, but it was only an okay afternoon.

After the game, we picked up my Grandma and met up with all my aunts and uncles and one of my cousins.  It was a nice visit as I haven’t seen them in probably four or five years.  Yeesh…  We caught up over pizza and pop and homemade cupcakes with ice cream.

On Saturday, Bill and I hopped on another plane to St. Paul, MN, to attend the wedding of a friend from college.  It was a beautiful ceremony and reception, held in an old library.  The bride looked stunning and so happy!  They played a slide show and showed a photo of the two of us from college and that made me realize that she and I met 17 years ago!

We actually got to visit a little bit at the reception and of course we met her new husband.  It was a really wonderful evening and I’m so glad that we went.  Bill enjoyed himself too, but it could be that he was riding the high of having had a beer that was “better than Guinness.”

Sunday morning, Bill and I hopped a plane back to Chicago. Dad picked us up at the airport and we headed to the Connie’s for pizza.  Yummy!!  The humidity broke and it was a very pleasant day so our next stop was the lake.  We parked right by Buckingham Fountain and walked in a northerly direction along Lake Michigan.  We skipped Navy Pier, and continued until we found the Milton L. Olive III Park.  It’s a park dedicated to Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient, Milton L. Olive III.  It was worth the walk as we were rewarded with a beautiful view of the city.

We walked back to the car along Michigan Avenue, stopping at the Blackhawks Store on the way.  We wanted to follow the helicopter that was shooting Transformers III on the river, but we didn’t have enough time on the meter.

We did make time to stop for photos at the bean in Millennium Park.  Despite the pleasant temperatures, we were ready for liquid refreshment and a rest.

Monday, we relaxed and accompanied my dad on a trip to the dentist.  And on Tuesday we headed home.  It was a pretty jam packed visit.

I struggled through today.  When you roll over in the middle of the night and your sore butt muscles wake you up, you know it’s going to be a rough day.  Yesterday, I resumed my class at the gym which I’ve been away from for about a month due to travel and a cold.  I was surprised it had been that long, but the calendar doesn’t lie.  I took it easy, cut the weight on my barbell, but I am moving like a 90 year old woman.  Actually, that is probably an insult to 90 year olds.  My legs are not my friends.  As painful as it is to move my bottom half, in a weird way it feels kinda good to get those muscles working again.

Despite my soreness, I spent the afternoon laying out a quilt.  It wasn’t easy scooting around on the floor, but I’m pretty happy with how the quilt looks so far.  When dealing with so many different fabrics, I couldn’t think of any other way to make sure that the fabrics got “evenly” distributed.

The supervisor approves.

Then she had to mug it up for the camera.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for the day, Bill and I went to see Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band at the Mountain Winery. It’s a nice intimate venue not far from our house.  I have to admit, I wasn’t super excited for the concert.  I knew it would be a nice evening, but that was the extent of my excitement.  Well, his All-Starr Band was really an All-Star Band.  Edgar Winter sang Free Ride which was my favorite song to play when I was in the Penn Band.  And then, Richard Page sang Kyrie which is my favorite 80s song.  Favorite.

Rick Derringer sang Hang on Sloopy, Gary Wright sang Dream Weaver, Wally Palmar sang What I Like About You…  Ringo sang, played drums.  It was pretty cool.  And can I say that Ringo looks great at 70.  (He was moving way better than I was.)

Now that really was enough excitement for one day.

This is pretty much how we’ve been spending time lately.  Bill was home sick last Friday and slept almost all day.  On Thursday night, he thought he would be able to help me with a paint project I had on the to-do list for Friday.  I managed to do it by myself while he napped (for four hours).  The project was not exciting and easy enough.  I was repainting some trim on the patio.  It’s the set up and the taping that takes time but does make things easier.  The project was completed and I managed to do it without spilling that much paint this time.

The rest of the weekend was spent laying around and relaxing.  I finished reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo which I enjoyed.  We also watched lots of baseball and bike racing.  I would have finished knitting my Sagano Shawl (rav link) except that I ran out of yarn on my bind off row.  I am about 6 yards short.  I’m contacting people on ravelry to see if anyone has scraps they would be willing to part with.  This running out of yarn thing is getting quite frustrating.  It’s the second time it has happened in the last two months.  I’m weighing my yarn compulsively, reading other people’s experiences on ravelry.  By all accounts, I really should have had enough yarn for the shawl.   Yarn issues notwithstanding, it was a very pleasant knit and I enjoyed the daisy stitch.

On Sunday night, I started to feel under the weather.  I really thought I was in the clear as far as Bill’s cold was concerned, but yesterday and today I have been feeling quite crapsy.  Bill is doing better so hopefully I will be on the upswing tomorrow.  I did feel well enough to make some more zucchini bread.  Our zucchini plant is doing pretty well.  This is our third batch of bread, and we’ve used other zucchini in pasta, and we probably have enough left for a fourth batch of bread.  I have made some healthy substitutions in the recipe, using applesauce for half the oil and egg beaters for half the eggs, and 1 cup of whole wheat flour for regular flour.  Those are changes that, to me, don’t change the flavor or texture of the bread.  I tried to cut some of the sugar, but that was noticeable and not so good.  I am thinking of substituting some honey for some of the sugar, but that will require some experimentation and I wasn’t quite up to it on Sunday.

I hope that you enjoyed your weekend, and that you aren’t dealing with a cold.  It’s not fun.

I’m sure you’re wondering what’s going on in the Casa Napier these days.  Well, it’s a little of this and a little of that.

I’m making progress on my twin size quilt.  I need a name for it, other than twin size quilt.  I’m sure something will come to me.  I finished cutting all my white squares and have made a very good dent on the patterned squares.  I took this picture Thursday afternoon and I think I’ve doubled the number of cut squares since then.  I don’t really have a plan for this quilt, other than I will alternate white squares and patterned squares.  I’m just cutting a ton of squares and hoping that they will somehow all come together.  My focus is on yellow and white, with bits of other colors thrown in.  Doesn’t look like there’s much yellow in that pile, but that has changed.

I started a new knitting project, the meandering vines shawl (rav link here).  I’m knitting it in Sweet Georgia Cashsilk Lace which is Divine.    Yes, with a capital D!  I love how it feels moving through my fingers.  It is 45% cashmere and 55% silk.  Soooo soft.  The color is a beautiful, vivid  aquamarine, with bits of green throughout.  I’m also enjoying the pattern, thanks in large part to my stitch markers.  The pattern is easy to memorize and ends up looking a lot more complicated than it is.

And of course, there’s been time to relax outside.

Last week, Bill and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary.  I can hardly believe it.  I don’t feel old enough to be married for 10 years, unless I got married at 12, which I didn’t.  And 10 years seems like a long time, but it doesn’t feel like that much time has passed.  When I think back thru the last decade and all that’s happened in the world and in our lives, I’m surprised we haven’t been married longer.  I’m just so lucky to have found the perfect partner and best friend in my husband.

We felt we needed to do something special to celebrate 10 years together, but within a reasonable budget.  I had been wanting to go to Las Vegas to stay at the Wynn|Encore and see the show there, La Reve.  We visited the casino last fall when we were in Vegas with my in-laws and I immediately wanted to go back. During that first visit, we joined the players club where you earn points for your gambling.  (And you can earn points pretty easily at the penny and nickel slots.)  Since then, we’ve been receiving emails with special hotel room rates, especially for weekday stays.  What better way to celebrate our anniversary than do something I’ve been wanting to do?

It felt like the trip was a total splurge, a break the bank weekend. But it wasn’t, they just made you feel like you were in the lap of luxury.  We got a great deal on the room for our stay, because we stayed overnight Wednesday - Friday and checked out on Saturday.  Bill’s parents paid for our show tickets, a fantastic romantic dinner on our anniversary (at Hugo’s Cellar), and breakfast at our favorite place (Hash House A G0 Go).  We hiked two mornings (free!), spent time at the penny and nickel slots where we took advantage of the free drinks (budget friendly and free!), sat by the pool (free!).  That left us to pick up our air fare (Southwest and cheap!) and a few meals. Oh, and we both earned complimentary meals at the buffet from our players card, so we stuffed our faces for free!

This is by far the nicest hotel room I’ve ever stayed in.  The attention to detail was amazing.  The elevator lobbies were gorgeous!

All the rooms in the Encore are suites.  It was a shame we didn’t spend more time in our room, because it was really beautiful. Really, it was just a place for us to sleep and change.  We had a nice view down the strip, which was much more impressive at night.  We saw fireworks and special effects from the outdoor show at Treasure Island.  My favorite accessory was the console next to the bed which controlled the lights and the shades.  The sun woke us up on our first morning and I rolled over to hit the shades closed button.  It was a Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous moment.  Our bathroom was huge!  There was a separate tub which I wanted to utilize for a relaxing bath, but we didn’t have time.

We did go hiking during our trip.   Red Rocks National Conservation Area was about a 35 minute drive, and though it was hot!!!, we did hike on two mornings.  We hiked four miles each morning.  Not too far, but enough that we felt better about the large meals were were going to eat.  It is a beautiful area which a new and informative visitor’s center.  There are at least 20 trails for hikers at all levels, and a nice scenic drive for cars and bikes.  We were surprised at how lush some areas were, and that the streams still had water above ground.  I’m also surprised by the flashes of color and flowers in the desert.

We saw the show, La Reve, which is hard to describe.  From their website:  ”LE RÊVE, presented exclusively at Wynn Las Vegas, offers breathtaking performances in an intimate aqua theater-in-the-round. The show features aerial acrobatics, provocative choreography and artistic athleticism.  The cast of 85 captures the imagination with their outrageous antics and daring feats of strength and agility. Live music and elaborate special effects immerse the audience into a world of fantasy, adventure and intrigue.”  I was most interested in the show because of the synchronized swimming which I did in high school.  That was just a small part of it.  There was dancing, aerial acrobatics, diving, humor.  It was a unique experience.

We did find some time to relax by the pool.  We found a spot in the shade, but that only lasted for an hour (maybe 90 minutes) and then we roasted in the sun.  Then we went in the pool where we only boiled in the sun.

We’ve had a lot of fun over the past week remembering our wedding, and the fantastic weekend my parents gave us.  We have a lot to be thankful for, and we celebrated all of it!

I just got back from a trip to Maryland and Virginia.  I spent a half day in DC, but that doesn’t really count although I did eat a meal there.  It was a trip to visit friends.  I can’t believe that it’s been a year since I moved away.  It was great to go back.  I do miss Maryland a little bit.  Mostly the people, but it is a beautiful state and we weren’t actively trying to leave the area, but when your husband gets a job at Google, you don’t have a choice.  Not much had changed; it was beautiful and green and lush.  And humid.

It was a relaxing, low-key trip.  The nice thing about having lived there is that I don’t feel compelled to do the touristy stuff.  Been to the Washington Monument, done the Lincoln Memorial.  I was able to relax and visit and hang out with friends.  I stayed with my friend Suzie, who just finished renovating her husband’s house.  It was beautiful!  It was a year-long project and my visit spurred them on to finish.  It was the motivation they needed to get it done and they did a fantastic job.  I helped her pick out flowers and plants for the front porch, we saw Just Wright (love Queen Latifah!), tried the local coffee place, rented An Education (interesting), cooked out, ate lunch with our old coworkers, shopped for shoes, watched Grey’s (wow!) and hung out.  I was also able to meet up with a friend in Silver Spring, and we tried out a new restaurant and visited.

After three days in Maryland, I metroed to DC and had lunch with another friend.  I just found out she’s pregnant with twins so we had a lot of catching up to do!  We ate at my favorite Chinese place, Mei Wah.  Yummm…  After that I met up with my dear friend, Claudia, and we headed to her place in Virginia.

Claudia had recently moved and it was fun to see her new place and give my (solicited) opinion on the decor and accessories.  We are soul sisters and had so much fun going over projects, and looking at her stash of material, and talking over things we want to do.  We keep in touch rather obsessively over email so we know what’s going on with each other, but there was tons of show and tell.  We went to most of my favorite places for meals, including Five Guys for the most delicious and juicy cheeseburger.  Yummmm…  And we had quite a few salteñas which are  Bolivian empanadas/pot pies.  More deliciousness!!  I even brought back 16 frozen salteñas to share with Bill.  Claudia was a good sport and let me watch my beloved Blackhawks who are headed to the Stanley Cup Finals!!!!!  We did girly stuff like getting our eyebrows done, and I went to my favorite bead store (Accent Beads), we met the girls for brunch, and the only disappointment of the weekend was our inability to find fabric for throw pillows for her couch.  Fabric.com came to our rescue.  And we argued over the humidity.  She loves it, and I do not.  It makes for slightly curly, frizzy hair and a very shiny Margaret.  I have become spoiled during my year in California.

It was sad to say goodbye to everyone, but also a little easier this time because a year had passed and we were still in touch, still friends and there wasn’t the fear that it would be a final goodbye.

This trip also reaffirmed my love for my Kindle.  My flight out east was delayed by 90 minutes (and I was already at the gate 90 minutes before my flight).  I was ready to start a new book and it was so fantastic to have 73 options at my fingertips, not including the Kindle Store.  At that moment, I was in the mood for something on the lighter side, and who’s to say that’s what I would have packed had I had to choose only two actual books to bring on the trip.  Kindle, I heart you.

I just returned from a ten day vacation.  You might think I am recharged and refreshed but I am exhausted.  Bill is happy to be returning to work so he can rest.  We had a fantastic trip, it was just wasn’t as relaxing as we thought it might be.

The reason for the trip was my Mom’s 60th birthday.  (Does my mom look 60?  She’s second from the right.)  Her husband took the family (eight of us total) on a Caribbean cruise.  Bill and I also took an extra day at the beginning and end of the trip to visit Bill’s family in Miami.  It was great to reconnect with family, especially because it’s been years since we’ve seen them (both Bill’s family and my family).

We had so much fun which is why I’m so tired.  We met almost every morning for breakfast, except for one because Bill and I had an early excursion.  Bill and I would get up early to get a little exercise before our morning meal.  We were busy during the days, especially in port either hitting the beach or doing an excursion.  On the days at sea we found comfortable chairs in the shade to sit and read and chat.  We ate dinner together every night, usually meeting for a pre-dinner cocktail, went to most of the shows, and usually hung out afterwards.   Bill and I didn’t stay up terribly late except for maybe two nights, but the constant activity throughout the day tired us out.  There was a lot to do on the ship, including a water slide.  They also had games.  Mom and I played The Match Game where couples are asked a question and you are trying to come up with the same answer as your partner.  Mom and I won and were given medals!

We stopped at four ports: Grand Cayman, Carnival’s private beach in Honduras, Belize and Cozumel.  The eight of us hit the beach in Grand Cayman and Honduras, and Bill and I went cave tubing in Belize and to Tulum in Mexico.  The beach in Grand Cayman was my favorite.  I think because it was the first stop, our first visit to a gorgeous beach, and we weren’t tired yet.  Cave tubing was interesting.  Basically we sat on inner tubes in a river that ran through caves were Mayan’s made sacrifices.  I’m glad I did it, but don’t see myself doing it again.  Tulum was beautiful, but a two and a half hour trip (one way) for a two hour visit to the site.  And it was HOT.  And HUMID.  If I look unhappy, it is because I am HOT.

The Mayans did do some pretty amazing things and the site was impressive.  The view was incredible, right off the most blue water.  It was just a long boat and bus ride and I generally like to spend more time at the site than it takes to get there.  Although it was hot and Bill and I felt we saw everything we wanted to see.  If we had more time, we would have gone to the beach, but we decided to have lunch instead.

We were on a Carnival ship, which I liked.  The focus is on having fun and I like that all age groups are represented.  The food was delicious, although we agreed that the sit down meals were better than the buffet food (although the buffet food was very good).  Carnival is known for making towel animals and I had my picture taken with our animal every day.  Our room steward even let us keep some of our animals.

The rooms are a nice size.  We had an ocean view room on the first deck, and had a lot of space for two people and three towel animals.  The service on board ship was excellent and you are really spoiled.  It is a bit of a shock to my system to be home and having to cook and clean myself.  I guess that is a small price to pay to sleep in my own bed and be with my furry babies (whom I missed terribly).

Because this is supposed to be mostly a craft blog, I will finish by letting you know that I made the teal blouse in the first picture.  My mom made the skirt I am wearing.  The skirt is made of brown/bronze (depending on the light) sequined fabric that we bought in NYC.  The blouse (which looked much better before I sat it in for two hours and stood up wrinkled) is made of Robert Kaufman Radiance fabric, which is a cotton/silk blend satin fabric.  It is fabulous material.  The pattern is Simplicity 3893, though I modified it to cross over in front and I did a pleat under the bust instead of gathers.  I wish the skirt had photographed better because it is stunning, and one of the best things my mom has sewn for me.  I also made my necklace (which is hard to see).  It is a large quartz focal gem.  I’m not sure exactly what kind of quartz, but it was practically made to be worn with the skirt.  (Here’s a picture where I’m slightly less wrinkled.)

Well, I’m impressed that I have managed to stay up until 10pm as I was ready to crash five hours ago.  Sabrina is snuggled up against me as I type and as much as I hate to disturb her, she is going to have to move because I am ready to sleep.  I guess we all should be so lucky to be exhausted after a wonderful ten days with family.

I hope you all had a lovely weekend.  Bill and I went camping at Pinnacles National Monument.  It’s our second visit to this park, and it was a tad bit more pleasant in April than in August.  Being twenty-five degrees cooler can make life more comfortable. Also, the park was in bloom and lush from all the winter and early spring rain.  And there were frogs!  Lots of ribbiting going on.

This was definitely the best camping trip that Bill and I have taken.  It was my ideal version of how camping should be.  Lots of noise, but good noise. People having fun and laughing, children playing, frogs ribbiting, occasional yells of excitement or trying to get someone’s attention, the subtle hum of miscellaneous conversations, fires crackling, birds chirping, guitars being strummed. And most importantly, no radios.  I can tolerate almost any other noise in the outdoors except for a radio, even if it’s my kind of music.

We bought a new tent for this trip. We call it the Taj. It is huge. In fact, we can fit our old tent inside the new tent with lots of room to spare.  Actually, our air mattress doesn’t even fit inside our old tent. Well, it might but you’d have to put it in the tent uninflated  and then once it was inflated, you’d be about a foot from the top of the tent. The photo above is my favorite from the weekend, and it shows how dorky we are. That’s us in our old tent on top of our air mattress inside the new tent.

It was a relatively quiet and relaxing weekend.  We set up camp on Friday, made dinner, and went to bed. Boy did I sleep well, especially with a decent air mattress. The temperature did drop at night and at one point I woke up and my face was freezing!  So I flipped my sleeping back around so that my hood covered my face.  Problem solved.  It also made it very dark and I slept soundly until 8am.

Saturday, we hiked.  We almost didn’t hike as I started to pull out my clothes and realized that I never packed my pants.  I had the pants I wore the day before and my jeans.  Ack!  There are definitely worse things I could have forgotten, and it wasn’t a big deal, just about five seconds of panic.  After breakfast, we started on our  relaxing 8.9 mile jaunt, with a 1200 foot elevation gain in the first three miles.  It kicked my butt, but it was fun.  The view was beautiful and it was nice to see a lot of green and to admire the different wildflowers.  We took our time, tried to have fun and ignore the profuse amounts of sweat, heavy breathing, burning legs and unrelenting sun.  We had a nice break for lunch around the five mile mark and gave our legs a much needed rest. Then we continued on to the caves where the “excitement” began.

We’ve done the caves before, but it was more treacherous in the spring.  There’s water running in all the springs, and there’s a spring that runs through the caves.  Water tends to make rocks slippery.  Very slippery.  I took those sections on my butt and it still required a lot of concentration.  We were almost out of the caves when we heard this horrible crashing noise.  At the time, we didn’t realize what it was, until we saw the man sliding down the rocks.  He was able to stop himself so that Bill didn’t have to break his fall, but the man was in a lot of pain.  I’ve always wondered how I would react under pressure, and I’m pleased to report that both Bill and I were calm and efficient.  I have carried around first aid supplies for the three years I’ve been hiking and until now, I have never needed them.  We were able to give him a cold compress, clean his wounds, apply antiseptic, give him some ibuprofen, keep him company, and help him out of the cave.  It wasn’t the best first aid as there were a lot of things I didn’t do that I probably should have done, but he was ambulatory and most of his wounds appeared to be superficial. Our other “issue” was that there was no cell service, we were at least 1.5 miles from the ranger station, and his car and friends were in the opposite direction of our car.  I didn’t feel comfortable leaving him to walk back by himself, but I wasn’t sure that we could add an extra three miles to our hike.  At the trailhead where we would have parted ways, we tried to find some people that were heading back in his direction so they could keep an eye on him, but no such luck.  I was concerned about him going into shock or getting disoriented, even though the man thought he would be okay, but he was in pain.  We decided that I would wait at the trailhead with our packs, and Bill would start back with the wounded hiker and hopefully, we could find someone to take over for Bill.  If not, Bill felt confident that without his pack, he could make it all the way to the ranger station and back and still be able to make it back to our car.  My first thought  was “Damn, why did I leave my book in the tent.” As it turns out, Bill was back in twenty minutes after they had been overtaken by another couple who agreed to help. I’m sure there are plenty of things we could have or should have done differently, but I think we provided that man with some comfort in a scary situation.

I wish I could say the rest of the trip was uneventful.  The remainder of our hike was, except for the five itty bitty snakes we saw.  The rest of the excitement came the following morning when we went to start the car and the battery was dead.  We should have realized the potential for a problem when Bill had trouble starting the car after our hike, but we were too tired to notice.  With all the opening and closing and in and out of the car that evening, that was all it took. We had been planning on another hike before heading home, but those plans changed. Thankfully, a family across from us had jumper cables and was able to help us out.  How quickly the tables can turn, from helping to needing help.

While more “exciting” than we expected, it was a beautiful weekend.