Travel

Labor Day Respite

September 1, 2014 By amusingmjblog 1 Comment

Did you guys miss me? Is there anyone still there?

I can’t believe it has been over a month since I posted last! Actually… scratch that, I can. It has been an insanely busy month in my life. I unexpectedly had to take care of an emergency at work which has required me to be in Kansas for about 6 weeks. I’m facing down my last week here, so I’m getting back into my normal life… and that means I have a little extra time to blog! But not being home means I have done zero projects at home, so I’ll be catching up on a few that I haven’t had a chance to blog about yet, and a couple that I left half done 6 weeks ago and will be returning to when I finally get home this Friday. I’m anxious to get home, and pretty excited to get back to my normal life!!

This weekend my husband and brother came up to Kansas to join my parents, grandmother and myself at our little lakehouse out in the country in Kansas. It has been a relaxing weekend of skiing, swimming, playing fetch with the dogs, sleep and board games. This place is a dog’s paradise, so Lexie and my brother’s dog Q have had an excellent weekend!

The dogs played fetch until they basically passed out.

I caught this funny picture of Lexie and my husband as Lexie was shaking all her water off.

This is one of those places which has been a constant in my life and some of my best memories are here. I learned to ski here, I spent countless 4th of July’s setting off fireworks, played hours and hours of board games, took long walks, brought friends, and spent time for family. So after a crazy month of long work hours and high stress, this weekend of relaxation was exactly what I needed!

lake6

I also got the chance to practice some of my photography this weekend, just getting to play around a little bit. And I definitely had some great natural subjects! I was playing around with long exposure after having such good luck at Fourth of July with them, and I have to say I love the way the long exposure turns out!

This was of the outside looking in last night of a beautiful and peaceful night! Then after some storms rolled through overnight, I woke up early and saw the most beautiful sky with a double rainbow and an amazing sunrise. (both are completely unedited except for size)

Kansas is definitely one of the best places in the world for sunrises and sunsets! And after living in the city, nothing is quite as amazing as a calm clear night with amazing stars!

I hope you have all had a wonderful and relaxing Labor Day Weekend!!

Filed Under: Life, Travel

4th of July

July 9, 2014 By amusingmjblog 2 Comments

This last weekend the husband and I had the opportunity to spend 4th of July weekend with my sister-in-law’s parents at their place on the river in South Texas. It was a fantastic weekend to get away from the busy-ness of life and relax. We literally did nothing but eat, sleep and swim and it was glorious. They have a beautiful home outside of Houston on the Colorado River. Its the perfect beachy-cottage and was an excellent place to get away!

Judy and Tommy are some of my favorite people!! Judy is one of my craft buddies, so we always get to talk crafts, DIY and quilting– she just finished Becky’s t-shirt quilt and is inspiring me to get mine back out to finish!!

matagorda10

And Tommy– our fearless captain for the weekend is one of the best storytellers I’ve ever heard, he had me in stitches most of the weekend. He even let Reese drive the boat!

And I can’t forget Duke, the yellow lab who is getting on up there in age (but an excellent subject for pictures!)

Tommy was also our chef for our shrimp boil (ps… de-heading and de-veining shrimp– kind of gross) which made for some awesome pictures!

And one of the few pictures I got of myself during the weekend!

Since working on my photography skills is one of my priorities this year, I decided 4th of July would be an excellent chance to snap a few photographs and test out some long exposure photography. I’m pretty pleased with the results!!

Fireworks and sparklers made for some pretty fun long exposure attempts:

And when we went over to the marina to watch the fireworks show, I killed some time trying to take this shot:

As I was attempting to take the shot above, lightning struck at the very end of my long exposure giving me one of the coolest photographs I’ve ever taken!! (ps.. all of these photos are completely un-edited)

I’m pretty sure I couldn’t recreate that picture if I tried, but I’m kind of excited about it, and am thinking about finding a place to print and put it up in my house!

The 4th of July has all of my favorite things: sleep, food, friends and some family!!

Filed Under: Life, Travel

¡Costa Rica!

July 8, 2014 By amusingmjblog 1 Comment

Do you have those times in your life where you look at the schedule a few months down the road and think: oh, I’ll have tons of free time as soon as June gets here, or August gets here… and then June or August get here and SURPRISE!! you still don’t have any free time. No, just me? Well… this is pretty much the story of my life. But since I love crazy busy and a little out of control schedules (I know you can’t really do it all, but I really love to try!) this is really how I like to spend my life.

My full time work life has been busy, and I’ve traveled quite a bit for it, I got to squeeze in a few days with my husband’s youth group as they rebuilt houses in Moore, OK (and an ER visit… because while 99% of the youth escaped injury free from the trip, Reese hit his head on a desk in the dorms they were staying in and had to get staples in his head), and then pretty much as soon as I got back from that I left on a trip to Costa Rica to visit the medical clinic our church started and for which I sit on the board.

I’ve been on the board helping to get Clinica Emanuel (the picture above) started for about 2 years now, and it has been an awesome blessing and an interesting experience. 4Corners is the non-profit organization that we created and so far we have opened and been operating a medical clinic for the Cabecar people in the mountains of Costa Rica. The Cabecars are indigenous people that live in the southeastern part of Costa Rica in the Limon Provence. They live in 16 different villages up the mountain, and have very little medical care, clean water, transportation, etc. Our clinic operates a couple of days a week and serves people from all the villages, with patients frequently walking 3-4 hours to get to the clinic (and you think you’re 30 minute wait in the air conditioned waiting room was long!).

Our goal with this trip was to do the prep work for a team that will be travelling to this area in the fall to build a community garden in a second village. I traveled with the Executive Director of this organization and we stayed in a small tourist spot on the Atlantic Ocean called Cahuita. Even though this was not a vacation trip, I was pleasantly surprised by the nice (and cheap!) rooms with air conditioning… since the whole time it was there it was either 100% humidity or raining.

From Cahuita the clinic is in a village that is about an hour and a half drive up the mountain… 4 Wheel drive mandatory. The first portion of the trip is through a Dole banana plantation which is pretty cool to see! They have all these banana trees with blue bags covering the bunches of bananas. The bags apparently prevent birds and pests from getting to the bananas. (I got out to take a picture in front of some of them)

From there they hook the bags onto a pulley system and this donkey brings them to the processing area where they are put into boxes and shipped to your grocery store!

Anyway, after the Dole banana plantation, we get to a river that we cross in the Jeep (hence 4 wheel drive necessary). Its not very deep right now–as you can see the woman wading through on the right–but it does get pretty deep in places and when it rains a lot, the river can get too high to cross.

From there we spent some time at the clinic and then went to another village up the mountain where Ulysses (in the picture below) is donating some of his land so that we can build a community garden for them to have some additional food and income for the village.

On our way into that village I snapped this picture of the Cabecar women who definitely work hard and walk long distances. It was a great trip and a fantastic experience, aside from my run-in with American Airlines who chose to cancel and delay our trip home 36 hours (48 for my co-traveller). Is it just me or do companies just not really care about customer service anymore?!

I’m so glad to have been able to go on this trip, it definitely helps shape some of the decisions we make on the board to have gotten to experience these people’s lives first hand. I am so excited for the group to go in September to make the garden a reality!

And a total bonus… at the end of the week my college spanish was coming back to me!

Filed Under: Travel

Labor Day Respite

4th of July

¡Costa Rica!

Things I like talking about:

Recent Posts