We've been running around a lot since we arrived at Peace River, so we decided to stay "home" and just hang out today. What's that mean? Well, we did a little Christmas decorating:
And since I'm looking at the library books sitting on the table, I'll stop and take a minute to give a plug for using libraries. I've always been a fan of the library. In fact, I tend to lean towards thinking they should hand out library cards as a must have to every parent when they give birth. I'm shocked when parents say they don't go there. To me being a mom and spending time there go hand in hand. And that's with a healthy sized home library (which is one of the few things I do miss about having a bigger house).
So I've been tickled pink that this habit of ours has not had to temporarily disappear. We've yet to come across a library that didn't work with us in some way to allow us to use their services. The one here even has the online books, music and videos of which some have already made their way to my MP3. This is also how we listen to lots of books together. We can burn those audio books to CD and listen while driving. It's awesome. If you have a library, don't take it for granted-use it. Ok, that's the end of my public service announcement.
Let's see, what else did we do today? Auburn has been working with this sweetheart of a couple's dog named Schnookie, to teach her some tricks. She is practicing for now, with the hopes of building this into a paying gig. So they offered to pay her. She turned them down. They treated her anyways with this nice gift:
And a Pedi Paws, for which Ace is super grateful. Doesn't he look so sad? They also tackled Shine, who was as thrilled as Ace. I noticed they didn't even try with the Godfather (Mimi). She must have given them the evil eye to let them know better, before they held her down like Ace.
Don't feel too bad for him, he always looks sad. He just has puppy dog eyes to the max.
At some point, Austin announced that he'd just located the famous Stumpy so we headed down to the river. We stopped to check out the miniature golf course:
Playing golf under palm trees and live oaks sounds pretty cool to me. No matter what Diana has to say about the game. ;->
Got to the river, saw the commonly found sign in Florida:
Saw birds:
Saw more birds:
Saw bird near Stumpy:
Saw bird seeing Stumpy and flying away:
Yup, that's Stumpy. He's a gator and quite famous around these parts. Isn't the river beautiful? In a sort of horror movie kind of a way that is. We've spent many a hour on this river, before we went full time so we have fond memories of it.
We also did a potluck dinner and played pickleball. We tried to watch Six on the Road, but there wasn't a TV available. So we sat on the porch swing and chatted with an interesting couple that have a home base in Winchester, VA. Winchester is a stone's throw from where we lived in VA, so that was neat. I'm aware again of how much I love this and why. Because no matter what, there is always something to do here and always someone interesting to meet and talk to.
I'll say it again, that I miss very little about living in a house, including the lifestyle it involves. We did it for years. I enjoyed it for years. It was a busy, intense thing for years with children, other family, parties, school, work, volunteer work, church things, neighborhood things, sports, drama, band, choir, camps, running here and there with big calenders full of these events hanging in the kitchen just so we'd know where to be each day...you know all of that stuff. I can hardly even imagine it today. We truly wouldn't trade those years for anything. In our minds, they were exhausting years-but good years for their own reasons.
We were tired from all of those years though. More than we even realized. Until now. Now is when we feel ourselves not just relaxing, but actually gathering our strength again due to taking a huge time out from that stuff.
I just finished the book Eat, Pray, Love and I could relate to that year. I can relate to why she needed it and what she discovered when she did it. It's what we are doing, in our own way.
To be able to just stop and breathe a bit deeper, fully absorb the very few things we have on our plates for now, and really listen to people when they talk is a treat to us. It's as if we've been allowed to retire, long before we are able to retire. Not retire from a job of course, but retire from the the busy-ness of life. We've been allowed to travel at half speed (for us at least) for this season. We had no idea that this was even possible. So this is good too, for its own reasons.
We still desire interaction with others. We love it in fact. We like the feeling of community still. We just like doing it at this pace, in this sort of a way....for now at least. So if I say over and over and over again that our life is good, please forgive me. It's still a strange thing to me at times that this can be our way of life for now after years and years of all of the other that we somehow thought would be on our to do list forever. And so for today, I'm so incredibly grateful for that gift of being allowed to slow down sooooooo much and so aware of how much we needed it and so honored that we could do it while we still had children at home with us-all of which leads me to say yet again:
Life is good.
Here is what is in the cage in the center-20 years old and HUGE!
What makes this even more interesting than the fact that someone lives in a castle, is that Howard Solomon built this castle. And he built this with recycled items.
He did all of this, including the stained glass windows.
So what can you expect inside a castle? A gallery of the artist's work. Which included some art:
So what can you expect inside a castle? A gallery of the artist's work. Which included some art:
More art in the more traditional sense, or at least traditional compared to most of the art here.
Everywhere though, Howard's sense of humor is evident. Like this Redneck Coat of Arms:
A really big mouse trap:
The Tortoise and the Hare (turtle shell with wig peeking out):
And the practical pieces such as beer can chairs:
Since I already have so many pictures, I'll stop here. There was soooooo much to see here and we laughed the whole time and were impressed the whole time. He is a "self taught" artist, which Austin really loved. He wasn't a high school drop out, he was asked to leave school. Which again, Austin loved. If you know Austin's story, you can crack up here. He finds it funny too, so he's ok with you laughing. I could go on and on about the interesting things we learned while here, but instead you can read more here and here and here.
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