Tuesday Tango

'Tango' because, ten years ago when I was blogging more regularly, theme days of the week were all the rage. Thankful Thursday, Manic Monday, etc. 'Tango' because I'm dancing through my random thoughts and updates on this post.

The smoke stacks at dusk

This weekend was a very low key and random smattering of stuff. We had a heat wave locally, so it was very hot and heavy outside. The kids attended a birthday party at the bowling alley, and I went to the nearby thrift store to seek some of my wishlist items. The internet fitting hack of using your neck circumference to see if the waist of pants/shorts will fit actually seems to work! I also scored a nice black bathing suit top to go with my red high-waisted bottoms. 

Saturday night, we tried to attend fireworks put on by a local festival, but the winds were too strong. We only found out after keeping the kids up very, very late, going to a viewing location on the harbour bridge, and waiting for an extra twenty minutes because the organizers didn't communicate very well what was going on. There was a bit of disappointment but mostly everyone was tired and just wanted to go home to bed, so no tears or attitude. Both kids seemed to enjoy looking at the city lights from the bridge. 

Sunday was absolutely a swimming-at-the-lake day. My goal for the summer has been to go swimming as much as humanly possible with the kids. Once we got home, K built a hanging storage rack for our totes - this will hold most of our camping goods since we had no storage space for much of this stuff. He's very proud of it and calls it his holder holder. 

The new holder-holder

 My parents-in-law, who provide child care on my work days, were originally planning a little overnight trip with the grandkids for Monday overnight into Tuesday, but the weather forecast kyboshed that plan. Instead, they kept our kids overnight. It's always nice to not have to get the two small humans ready for such an early work day departure for childcare once in a while. Unfortunately, a close family member has a brand new case of Covid, so K and I used our night to do a supply run (it's a fair distance). 

While "down home," K asks about the small sandy beach we were combing: "This sand must be imported, right? Trucked in a long time ago?" Dear reader, I couldn't resist ribbing him since we were located in a place called Sandy Cove which, not coincidentally, got its name from being a cove full of sand. He seemed genuinely surprised sand could naturally occur at this part of the sea coast.

It's now Tuesday and my plans for the rest of the week include buying running shoes (lol but how am I going to do that if I need to take a disinterested ten year old and a six year old who LOVES to shop a little too much?), meal planning and prepping for our camping trip next week, and lying low. 

Drop me a comment to say hi if you made it through all that.

Happy Campers

 Our family was never really into camping - closest we came was, before we had children, a booking for Fundy National Park in New Brunswick that we cancelled due to poor forecast. I always maintained that we didn't have the space for all the gear in our home with limited storage space. 

But after the umpteenth summer of trying to find a reasonable accommodation for a week of cottage living that wasn't going to bankrupt us, I began to daydream of having a little camper to call our own. Sleeping on air mattresses on the ground isn't my jam, but neither is the expense of a larger trailer and something with which to tow one. I dreamed of a tent trailer much the same way that my parents dreamed of a tent trailer when I was little. 

I let my interest grow, mentioning it only in passing last fall to my husband who looked shocked but didn't shoot me down.

Then, in March, I approached K more seriously about getting a camper instead of renting increasingly-pricey cottages each summer. We decided we'd casually look for an older pop-up camper until the right one came along.

In April, the right one came along via Facebook Marketplace. It's old - old as me at thirty-six. But it still works, is easy to set up and tear down, and has introduced our family to camping. I put a lot of work and money into maintenance and gear acquisition this spring, sourcing what I could from thrift stores (pots/pans), family members with duplicates, and buying new when it was necessary. We've done two weekend trips so far, with a week-long trip coming up in early August. 

1986 Jayco pop-up camper, remodelled by previous owner

Camping is certainly a lot of work, but now we've got a fair amount of kit stored in the camper itself and that means we only need to think about clothing and food each trip. In spite of all the preparation and then all the clean-up afterward, I have found each trip restorative. Spending all day outdoors, the kids running off with campground friends, swimming when we can, not worrying about bedtimes because we'd rather the kids sit by the campfire and toast marshmallows with us - it's absolutely more than I could have hoped for. At the end of each night both kids just pass out and sleep so soundly. Do the adults sleep well? Certainly not the first night of each trip. But that's okay, we've survived.

Our set-up as of the June 23rd camping trip

Maybe in a future post I'll detail more of the work I've put into our camping set-up, but for now I was just so excited to put it all into words. 

Do you like camping? Are you a tenter or a trailer kind of camper?

Blogging With Abandon

Blogging just isn't something people do anymore, is it? The 'gram reins supreme these days, and the young people are all about tiktok. I never feel eloquent enough to manage regular tiktoks. Influencer culture seems to have started with blogging and travelled into social media where it found its truest home, and personal blogs have mostly disappeared. Some of the blogs I formerly enjoyed are now lifestyle sites that I lost interest in as someone with limited income and time. 

The thing is, I really liked personal blogs. I liked reading about the real, imperfect lives of regular people. Little by little, all my favourites stopped updating. I get it - why put in the effort if your readership has migrated away from reading? But there are those of us who still want to read. In fact, I used Twitter to do a new blog round-up today, and spent the morning reading some new-to-me blogs. It gave me hope that I'll find even more. Maybe there's still a community of personal bloggers out there. 

It's been a hot minute, or eight years, since I blogged. I was in the rigors of motherhood with my first child, and it was hard back then to find a minute. Now, as mother to a ten- and almost-seven year old, time is a bit easier to find. Maybe I should stick to a personal, private journal, but I have the drive to blog again. I want to be a voice for lives simply lived. 

Without further ado, I'll update you, or introduce you to my life in its current iteration: 

- I've been married to K for 12 years now, and together for 15 

- Though we're a military family, we've somehow managed to stay at the same location in Atlantic Canada for the entirety of ours lives together, and this just happens to be the same city I grew up near. So I'm truly grounded 'home' here. 

- We have two children: A, formerly known as Baby Bird on the blog, is now ten years old. Our daughter J is almost seven years old. 

- I work part-time at a non-profit where I started as a temp seven years ago. It's the perfect work/life balance for our family, brings in just enough income to be helpful, and allows me to not lose my mind in the event that K is deployed or away for work. I sometimes feel the tendrils of ambition try to pull me forward to match my potential, but I value the lifestyle that we have because of my current employment situation. 

- My current interests are adult beginner ballet (again! I returned to class after 11 years this spring!), slow running, and all things to do with my 2022 project of making us a Camping Family. 

I'm looking forward to writing about my 1986 Jayco pop-up camper, my adult ballet classes, and my life. 

So that's me! Now, tell me about you! Do you blog? Do you still read blogs? Don't forgot to leave a link to your blog and/or your favourites.