I planted a little agave, adorably of the “jaws” variety, outside my kitchen window five years ago. It was a poor choice. The thing grew into an enormous, dagger-toothed monster that was forcing its way through the siding on the house and up under the deck. It curved around a bend in the house and brushed its spiky arms against the hose spigot so you had to be very tender when turning the water on or off. Its sharp limbs protected a sprawling patch of bermuda grass that I would have very much liked to weed. The agave had to go. Last week, I used a reciprocating saw to slice the agave’s arms off, one by one. I apologized to the plant because hacking a healthy plant to bits really felt like a cold-blooded thing to do. And the kids watched me in horror, Henry wishing aloud along the way that the agave would be able to to survive this somehow. It didn’t. After the arms were off, I kicked at and dug around the giant ball of dismembered agave that was still rooted in the soil and eventually rolled it out of its spot. The kids lost interest and wandered inside to play a game of triple dice. It’s a game Henry invented where you take turns rolling a foam 12-sided die and tripling the number it lands on (so if you roll a 12 you get 36 points). The first person to 200 points wins. I stayed outside to finish raking up the bermuda grass and agave massacre, and then the kids started screaming.

Henry ran outside and was crying and yelling incoherently, and George was still screaming inside so I grabbed Henry and ran inside to George. George had a gash on his forehead and blood was streaming down his face and over his little thermal shirt. I scooped George up and held him for a second, wondering what to do, and screamed at Henry, because it turned out he had pushed George, causing him to hit his forehead on the metal bed post. I carried George over to the kitchen and dug through the band aid box, looking for one that would help stop the bleeding. I found a blister bandage, one that’s all sticky with no cotton pad, and put that on. This would turn out to be another mistake. Henry wouldn’t stop following me around and screaming and crying. I glared at him and told him, through gritted teeth, to sit down in a chair and to stop making noise because I had to call the doctor’s office to see what we had to do. I was on hold waiting to talk to the nurse for 15 minutes. I held George in my lap while I waited and sat across the table from Henry. I told him how disappointed I was and how serious this is. For his part, Henry was devastated. Andy came home early and George and I went to the doctor’s office, where I had to use a fistful of alcohol swabs to try to remove that horrible band aid without tugging on George’s wound, and then lie on his chest and hold his hands down while the doctor glued his cut closed. He did so well. While the glue was drying on his forehead we sat in the little patient room and read a Caillou book. I offered to go anywhere he wanted for dinner. We could go get pancakes, we could go to Gattitown for pizza. He wanted Sonic- a burger and fries wacky pack with a hot fudge sundae with a cherry on top. I asked him what he wanted to drink and he said “the ice cream sundae can be my drink!” Whatever you want, George. When we got home, Henry gave George a picture of a light saber that he had spent the entirety of the time we were out drawing, with “I’m sorry” printed on the bottom. We sat around the table while George ate his sundae and talked about what had happened. How George will likely have a scar for the rest of his life from this. Then we put the kids to bed. I told Henry that I was still feeling really angry and upset, but that I wanted him to know that I loved him.

I don’t feel like I handled any of this particularly well. I saw George hurt and I lost my damn mind. I wish I was calmer and quieter and less reactionary. That I had taken the time to tend to George and compose myself before talking to Henry instead of screaming at him as soon as I walked in the door. Also I probably shamed Henry too much for this. Although I’m not clear on how much shaming is the right amount. Is it none? I wanted him to know the full extent of what he had done, how serious it was, but maybe seeing your brother bleed like that and then have to go to the doctor to have the wound glued closed would have been enough all on its own. Blaargh. I don’t know.

Here’s what we ate this week.

Coconut-Lime Pork Tacos with Black Beans. The forehead incident came after a week or so of me feeling like the kids were getting so much easier. Andy’s been playing a lot of real, grown-up board games with Henry- Oceanos, Catan Junior, and Henry’s absolute favorite and new obsession, Nintendo Monopoly. He has memorized every property and its price, how much you have to pay when it has every level of power up and what you’ll owe if you land on one that has been made invincible. While those two play games, George and I have been driving around the city, running errands together. He’s a charming companion, and happy to go anywhere. Although if it’s to the library or Home Depot he will pass the time by wedging his body in an empty patch of the bottom section of a nearby shelving unit and yelling “Come find me!!” On this day, we had an uncharacteristically great day at parkour, which has been the scene of so many of my children’s struggles. When Henry’s class was over I asked him how it was and he swept his open hand across the sky as if gazing upon a vast panorama and said “Great!” We came home and everyone ate tons of this coconut lime pork. George eats a bowl of the stuff that has been reserved before the black beans are added, because he hates beans. Henry eats two or three bowlfuls, scooped up chili-style with blue corn tortilla chips. And Andy and I eat it as tacos. I used two pounds of Blue Earth Farm‘s heritage ground pork, which is extra-fatty and extra flavorful. I drained off a cup of fat, flavored with the garlic, oregano, and smoked Spanish paprika the pork was cooked with, which I’m planning to use when I cook beans or in a small batch of tamale dough. Highly recommended.

Avocado Toast with Blue Earth Farm Greens. Eating green things is part of my new year’s resolution. The day before, the kids and I ate almost a full pound of sopita- vermicelli noodles toasted and cooked with tomato chicken bouillon- the Mexican equivalent of Top Ramen. It’s delicious and entirely unsatisfying. I’m hungry an hour after eating platefuls of it and I feel bad about myself.

Enchiladas Suizas. The kids and I ate an early dinner of these enchiladas on Thursday and then watched My Neighbor Totoro while Andy was at Toastmasters. That is such a wonderful movie. The kids’ favorite line, if you’ve seen it, is “What a stupid bucket!” I love how brave the two little girl protagonists are and the family dynamics. Also that the little boy in the movie is kind of a twerp.

Banana Bread with Milk Chocolate Chips. We’re in the process of renovating our master bathroom. It hasn’t been touched since the house was built in 1968 and it’s got problems. Every pipe- under the sink, the toilet, the shower- leaks. The water that drips out of the toilet tank is a rusty red color that stains the floor tiles. The shower tiles are a musty, mold-lined cream. My brother-in-law Jordan is doing the tile work for us, my neighbor Otto the carpentry, but I don’t have a plumber connection so had to go outside my network for that. It was shockingly expensive to fix everything. And in the process of fixing the broken drain in the bathtub, the plumber discovered that he couldn’t fix the broken drain in the bathtub. The old piece had been welded in, and the whole 700 pound cast iron bathtub would need to be removed to fix it, something they estimated would cost an additional $1200. Fuck! For $2000, he said, they could smash the tub to pieces and install a same-size shower pan so we could have a walk in shower instead. We’re going for it.

This banana bread is supposed to also have crystallized ginger in it, which sounds outrageously good to me, but I didn’t have any. It’s from the Orangette blogger’s first book, My Homemade Life, which I finished this week and enjoyed very much. I especially liked the recipes at the end of every chapter. So far I’ve made the french toast pan-fried in vegetable oil, the red cabbage salad shown below, and this banana bread, all of which I would make again. I offered a piece of the banana bread to the plumber, who was young and fit. He declined, noting that his wife has him on a no-carb diet and that she weighs him every night. Andy later declined because it had chocolate in it. I liked it very much.

Egg and Bacon Sandwich, Red Cabbage Salad with Lemon and Black Pepper. George and I braved the Saturday morning cold to visit the SFC farmers market for the first time in months. I bought a sprightly little head of purple cabbage to make this simple salad from My Homemade Life. It was good but not life-changing. The bacon/egg/cheddar grilled sandwich was pretty great. The kids ate that oil-fried french toast with no cabbage, thank you very much.

Ginger Chia Pudding. This looks like some diseased petri-dish experiment but it was actually my breakfast! My first breakfast. I had another one a little later. It’s pretty okay I guess, if you are on board with the slippery slimy feeling of a million sodden chia seeds sticking to the front of your teeth. I ate a few bites and decided to save the rest for tomorrow.

California and Florentine Benedicts at Crema Bakery & Cafe. Then I went out to breakfast with my friend Christy and ate again. We split two different benedict orders, with two different sides from this little bakery way down south on Brodie. These things were $8 and totally delicious! And they serve them every day! And the owner is a cool lady! It was delicious and it was really nice to go out without the kids and spend time with my friend.

Candied Kumquats. My sister surprised me with a gorgeous bag full of softball-sized meyer lemons and tiny perfect kumquats. I knew Cathy Barrow would have an idea of what to do with kumquats and I was right, as usual. Ha! Seriously though, I was right. These take two days to make but it’s really easy work. And you can do all sorts of things with the finished product. I want to cut some in half and take out the seeds and then nestle them into a buttermilk cake batter.

Vietnamese Caramelized Pork Chops, Cara Cara Chop Salad. The pork chops are more of that Blue Earth heritage pork, cooked in my very favorite way to eat chops- they’re marinated in a caramel/lemongrass/shallot/garlic puree and then cooked very quickly in a hot cast iron skillet. The salad is from Heidi Swanson’s Near and Far, which I got at the library. There are some annoying things about the cookbook-notably her inclusion of ingredients like “micro scallions”- but includes some really stellar looking recipes too. We’ve been hot and heavy with cara cara oranges since the new crop has arrived at Central Market, and this salad made brilliant use of them. The recipe calls for radicchio, not the dino kale I used, so the real deal is even more beautifully colored.

We’re ending the week down one giant agave, one bathtub, and one unmarred forehead. We’re starting a new one with a chance to be better, do better, and eat more green things. I’m all in.

All hope is lost if I can’t get my shit together to write a blog post for the new year, so here I am! Happy New Year! I went ahead and took a six week break from blogging. It’s a bit of a slog, you know, writing these things, and I just didn’t want to. But now I do. This is probably 100% due to that shiny new year feeling where all things feel possible. I can stop staring slack-jawed at facebook! I can read all the books on the table next to my bed! I can not eat sugar after every meal! I can write a blog post every week! This feeling is fleeting, I know that, but I’m going to make the most of it while it’s here.

Top stories from the last six weeks:

I booked myself a seat on a bus to D.C. to attend the Women’s March on Washington. My friend Molly was going and I wanted so badly to go too. When the opportunity came up to get a seat on a bus that would take us there and back for $220, and we didn’t have to try to find a hotel because we could just sleep on the bus, it sounded perfect. In the past few weeks I’ve noticed that my feelings on this subject have changed pretty dramatically. A 30 hour bus ride to DC, 8 hours of marching, and then a 30 hour ride back started to sound pretty terrible. This feeling was compounded by the fact that this would be my first overnight trip away from my kids, which came with a whole other set of anxieties. I’ve been surprised and disappointed in myself that no part of me was excited for this trip. Molly found out that she has a non-negotiable meeting in LA that Monday, so she’d have to fly there from DC and miss the bus ride home. It was all the excuse I needed. I’m quitting the thing. I’m going to write to the organizer to see if she can donate my seat to someone who would like to go, and I’m going to go to the Austin march instead. I feel bad for wasting $220 and for bragging that I was going to be a part of this thing to everyone and then backing out, but I feel a lot better having made this decision. Also, I know I’m way overdue for an overnight trip away from my kids. I’m gonna make this happen soon, but for one night instead of four and for something fun and invigorating instead of a 60 hour bus ride.

Y’all wanted to hear more about my lady parts happenings, right? I thought so. I’ve got two more days of birth control pills and then I’ll be done with my three month experiment. It has been an unmitigated disaster. On the pills, I have bled every other week, for the entire week, for the full three months. The second week of every month has been light, the fourth week, heavy. It made my skin feel greasy and I have felt more tired (probably all the bleeding?) and blah about everything. I’m gonna go off it for a while and see what happens. I don’t have high hopes that everything will straighten itself out, but I’ll carry a little glimmer with me because if this doesn’t work I have to go back on a different kind of birth control pills/ring/what have you to see if that has any effect. I’m adding “getting my uterus in line” to my list of 2017 goals.

We didn’t do homemade Christmas this year for the first time since Henry was born. I got a one-month free trial of Amazon Prime and I bought everything there and was done shopping super early in the month and it felt amazing. I did make one thing to give to the boys and my nephews- a magnetic slime that is supposed to stretch itself to reach rare earth magnets and swallow them up. It’s been in its tin since Christmas morning because it dyes your hands black when you pick it up. I still have black lines around the edges of my nails a week later. So the moral of this story is that homemade stuff sucks.

We spent eight days in Portland with my parents and brothers and sister and their families. We played in the snow and read a lot of books and ate a lot of gummies and had a generally lovely time. Pictures below! Plus a few random tidbits from the last month and a half.

Gluten Free Apple Pie for Thanksgiving. This is just a token photo to acknowledge that Thanksgiving was a thing that happened.

Acai Bowl. Did you have any doubts that this was a Gwyneth Paltrow recipe? I have never felt douche-ier than when I had to ask a Central Market employee where I could find goji berries and chia seeds. The goji berries are monstrously expensive, and so is the frozen acai sludge, and I stained my shirt with the stuff. But this was delicious and I felt fancy and sophisticated eating it and you can’t put a price on that, can you? You can. I won’t make it again.

Henry and Qui-Gon joined me at a rally outside a mosque on the UT campus to show solidarity with our Muslim neighbors. 10 points if you can make out what Henry wrote on his sign. I got interviewed on the local news at this event. They asked me why it was important to me to bring my kids. The honest answer is that I didn’t have a choice- if I wanted to participate I had to do it with them. The answer I gave is that I want them to learn early on that we have to stand up in support of people whose voices have been marginalized. I think probably I just looked like a crazy person who named her kid after a D-list Star Wars character.

We harvested the one and only prickly pear that grew on our cactus this year and made every kids’ favorite, prickly pear lemonade.

These kids put on their butterfly wings and knitted hats and had themselves a lightsaber battle. Why not?

Okay, so one of the things I did while I was not blogging was read Kitchens of the Great Midwest, which was fun and surprising and had the recipes for these bars in it. The top picture is of the peanut butter bars, which end up being an important plot point and which the author describes with breathless adoration. They are the best thing in the world, blue ribbon-winning, untouchable. The second picture is of Kraft caramel bars, which are also mentioned. In the book, there is no comparison between the two. In reality, the caramel bars blow the peanut butter bars out of the water. It’s not even kind of close. These caramel bars are one of the best desserts I made last year, thrillingly good. The peanut butter bars taste like an inverted peanut butter cup. They are good, but they’re something you’ve tasted before. Andy had the audacity to completely disagree with me on this- he picked the peanut butter bars. Judge for yourself:

Peanut Butter Bars

2 1/2 cups crushed graham cracker crumbs
1 cup melted Grade A butter
1 cup peanut butter
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup milk chocolate chips with 1 teaspoon Grade A butter

Mix together the graham cracker crumbs, melted butter, peanut butter, and sugar. Pat into a greased 9×13 inch pan. Melt the chips and butter and spread them on top of the bars. Set in the refrigerator until firm. Cut into bars.

Kraft Caramel Bars

1 bag caramels
5 tablespoons cream
3/4 cup butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup oatmeal
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup nuts, chopped (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Melt the caramels and cream in a double boiler. Cool slightly. Combine the butter, sugar, oatmeal, flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix until crumbly. Press half of this mixture into a 9×13 inch pan and bake for 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the chips, the nuts, and the melted caramel mixture. Sprinkle with the remaining crumbs and bake for 15-20 minutes more at 350 degrees. Don’t overbake. Cut while warm. The caramels and cream may be melted in a microwave.

(I can’t resist adding a couple of notes to this recipe- first I needed to use closer to 2/3 of the oatmeal crumb mixture to cover the bottom of the 9×13 pan. This is okay. Second, I used a really salty marcona almond as the nut and I think it really made for something special. Third, I cut half the bars while warm, as instructed, and it was messy and gooey. I cut the rest after letting them cool completely and they cut beautifully. I don’t know why that instruction is given- I’d cool the things first.)

Even though I wasn’t blogging, I still took pictures of most of the dinners I made. I’m including this one here to point you towards this butternut squash with sage pesto recipe, which is perfect in every way. Henry ate half a squash all by himself- we all wished there was more.

We got to spend the night in a beautiful cabin on Mount Hood. I love the maniacal look on Henry’s face in this one, as he plots where to throw his first snowball.

Oh my god the gloves. Getting the kids to put their fingers in the right holes was a never-ending horror. You’d finally get it and then the kid would pull the thing off somehow and you’d have to start all over.

This guy! He’s a natural!

More snowballs.

A cold front came through Texas the weekend before we left for Portland. When George got out of the car at Grandma Mary and Grandpa Art’s house and felt the wind he burst into tears and had to be carried to the front door. I feared for what that would mean for our impending trip up a snowy mountain. But George nailed it! He stayed outside longer than any of the other kids and sledded and threw snowballs and did all the things!

Just a couple ladies stealing a turn on a child’s sled!

It’s scientifically impossible to ride a sled without a shit-eating grin on your face.

On the way home from our mountain adventure we had a gorgeous lunch at Solstice. Jordan and I split this cherry, chorizo, and goat cheese pizza. Helen had a winter salad with Mountain Rose apples, braised leeks, currants, hazelnuts, & smoked ricotta on top of a parsnip purée and it was outrageous. So many exciting flavors and textures. I wish I had some more right now.

Lying on the floor! Lying on the floor! I’ve come undone.

Cookies for Santa. It was important to Andy that we be honest with our kids on the whole Santa thing, so we were. Henry was glad to hear it, having never cared for the idea of the man, but George was made for this stuff. He loves magic and make believe. And since we were celebrating Christmas in the same house as our niece and nephews who go in for the Santa stuff, we reminded the kids not to say anything about the big man and we put out the cookies and milk, and a carrot for the reindeer. On Christmas morning when George woke up, he walked right past the impressive display of presents around the tree and checked on that plate of cookies. He gasped when he saw the plate empty, the carrot chomped on. Later he said to us, “I guess you were wrong about Santa!”

On one of the last days of our trip, we went on a long and meandering hike through a random park that was near the Target where my mom and sister were shopping. We slipped down a steep hill and ended up in a muddy swamp-like thing. We hiked up to the trail and then back down again and found a twisty creek. The kids were so proud of their discovery.

There and back again! Thank you mom and dad, for having us for Christmas and for all the fun and adventures.

And now it’s back to the real world. I hope to do better in this new year. More books, more writing, and a more intentional use of my time. Lots of (local) social activism. Less vaginal bleeding. Happy New Year, dear ones.

Just before Halloween, Andy and I watched The Babadook on Netflix. Andy liked it. I thought it was the most terrifying movie I had ever seen. As the credits rolled, I thought, this was absolutely made by a woman- the depictions of the hardest parts of motherhood were uncomfortably real and stayed with me for days. (I was right- it was written and directed by a woman and produced by another. They’re brilliant.) Anyway, there’s a scene in it (mild spoiler?) where the mom throws up some vile black goo and it is the best way I can think of to describe how I have felt since the election. I walked around last week with a mass of tar in my stomach and a hollowness in my chest.

I don’t sit with my feelings. I get angry and I do shit. But this time I just let it wash over me, each day bringing fresh realizations of the progress that’s in jeopardy now that Trump has won. My immediate thoughts went to the most oppressed groups in our country- people of color, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, Muslims, the poor, then to climate change, then to the supreme court, women’s rights, voting rights, healthcare, nuclear war, genocide. The stocks in private prisons are rising. Our national parks are in jeopardy. There’s going to be a self-proclaimed white nationalist and anti-Semite advising President Trump’s every move. It’s beyond belief. I want to get on my hands and knees and throw this shit up.

I know I live in an echo chamber. That 99 out of my 100 readers are worried about the same things I am, and that the one leftover reader is probably going to skip this post because I put ‘Politics’ in the title. But if that one reader did get this far, I would guess that they’re thinking that it won’t be so bad, that my life won’t really be affected by all this stuff. And they’d be right that I’m in a better position than a lot of other people. But I don’t know that I’ll be unaffected. I’m a Jew living in Texas, a stone’s throw from the site of the annual sons and daughters of the confederacy reunion. My husband is a type-one diabetic. After he was laid off earlier this year he COBRA-ed his health care plan and went to work at a start-up company, with plans to buy insurance on the ACA exchange when that ran out. The ACA may not exist by that point. He might be denied on account of a revived pre-existing condition clause. The Texas economy might be completely destroyed if Trump backs out of NAFTA. We could all die in a super-hurricane.

Here’s the part I really don’t understand though. I am not an empathetic person. My brain just doesn’t think about or pay attention to others’ feelings. And yet, the idea of immigrant parents being ripped from their children destroys me. That people could be denied entrance to our country based on their religion is appalling. That a woman who needs an abortion will have Pence and Trump making that decision for her is just fucked. So even if I’m not directly affected by a Trump presidency, why wouldn’t I do everything I can to speak up for and protect the people who might be? And why wouldn’t you? I’m really asking this. I know it’s not because I’m more empathetic than you.

We went on a three-day camping trip to Garner State Park over the weekend. It was nice to be disconnected from things and to be able to sort through my grief. I came back ready to get to work. Andy and I set up recurring monthly donations to the NRDC, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and the Central Texas Food Bank. I called my senators (yugh) to ask them to please speak out against the Bannon appointment. I signed up to work in the gardens in the Mobile Loaves and Fishes Community First village, which allows all ages of volunteers so the boys can get involved too. I signed up for an ACLU of Texas webinar about the upcoming legislative session. I signed up for the boys and I to volunteer through Little Helping Hands. And I’m organizing a gift drive for children whose moms are in prison. These are all things I should have been doing all along, but which feel absolutely essential now. If you have other ideas for ways I can actively work to protect the people and things that need protecting (bonus points if I can do them with children) will you please share them with me? I’m all in.

I still feel like throwing up.

This concludes the politics half of this post. On to camping.

Garner State Park. Andy gave me a birthday gift of a reservation at this beautiful park. He picked it on a whim, not knowing that it’s the state park I’ve been to more than any other. I spent several summers swimming in the Frio river with my friend Amanda, whose parents had a house there. We took turns sliding down a raging waterfall and jumping into the river from trees and rope swings. We read Fear Street books and watched The Usual Suspects. I accidentally closed her mom’s finger in the sliding door of their minivan on the drive out there. I still remember exactly what that looked like (I’m so sorry, Cristina!). I camped there the summer before my freshman year of high school with Molly. We ate s’mores and studiously avoided our required summer reading of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology and The Once and Future King. We watched ladies in high-waisted wranglers twirl imaginary lassos to the tune of Whip It at the famous Saturday night dance. I love this park. The river is crystal clear, there’s a huge network of varied and delightful hiking trails, some that take you along the river, some up onto Old Baldy (a big rocky overlook thing), some through caves that are cold inside even in the dead heat of summer. It’s a magical spot and I was so happy to get to go back again.

The fire took a while to get started our first night so I had no light for a picture of our dinner. We had Christy’s famous flank steak (marinated in equal parts honey and tamari plus a whole lot of minced ginger) and charley bread, a recipe from my dutch oven cookbook which necessitated the purchase of my first ever can of creamed corn. I was going to serve kale salad with cashew tamari salad dressing too, but the kale smelled bad when I opened the tub so we skipped that. I think I was the only one who missed it.

Sausage and Egg Breakfast Tacos. Before the trip, I made my own breakfast sausage using the incredible ground pork from Blue Earth Farm. Food always tastes better when you’re camping, but I was deliriously happy with this.

Start-of-the-hike picture. I don’t know what George was doing but it is my favorite thing.

Middle-of-the-hike picture. One of the kids always has to stick their tongue out in pictures. It’s the rule.

We made it! George hiked the whole way! This is unprecedented.

Take one of a top-of-the-hike picture. Not the best.

Take two, staring into the sun. Yes they did stick an American flag on top of Old Baldy.

Garner has paddle boats! I realized halfway through that Andy and I were the only adults on the water wearing the life jackets they give you. We are the nerdiest people you know. Also, look at that water. The whole river is crystal clear. We saw turtles and big fish and then tried to identify them with the fish guide that came in the junior explorer backpack we borrowed from the visitor’s center.

The only picture of my children in existence where they’re both kind of smiling.

It didn’t last long.

I don’t know why.

A damselfly!

Andy almost looks like a real fisherman here. The $9 child’s fishing pole from Wal-Mart shatters the illusion.

These boys! Heart eyes emoji.

No pants. Never pants.

George fell in, naturally. What’s that? You want more tongue?

Wait, wait, I can do better.

There it is.

Thanks for the hammock, Gangie and Grandpa!

Playing the ever-popular How many grapes are in my mouth? game. It’s three.

Also three. Also! We used dry ice in the bottom of the cooler which had the bonus effect of carbonating the grapes! They were so fizzy. Fun fact- a lifetime ago I made a youtube video about how to carbonate grapes with dry ice. I still get the occasional comment on that video- they are almost always a blow to my self-esteem.

Haven’t yet perfected using that dutch oven on a wood burning (not charcoal fire). It’s tricky.

Jambalaya from a box.

We ate it with saltine crackers and Elmo’s fruit punch.

Gotta do Jiffy Pop.

On the morning of our last day we ate chocolate chip pumpkin muffins and more of that homemade sausage. I took a picture, but the sausage, which I squeezed into link-like tube shapes, came out looking like literal poop. It was delicious but I didn’t want you to see it.

Then we went on one last hike along the river trail.

We’re super good at selfies.

And that was it. It was a beautiful escape.

Lots of love to all of you.