I need a vacation after my vacation.
I’m really not sure why I thought driving 730 miles, spending two days doing physical labor, and then driving another 730 miles was going to be completely relaxing. Not that I’m really complaining. I got to spend a beautiful weekend in southern Illinois, visit my grandparents and several cousins, and meet my cousin’s cute and ridiculously happy five-month-old baby boy. (He’d be my first cousin once removed, right?)
But I don’t even have the spoils of my labor yet. My sister, a friend of hers, and I drove up in her little car, and there wasn’t room to bring anything extra back. Not with the way girls pack. ;) So my parents are bringing our shares back in their (bigger and lighter packed) car.
What was the weekend’s event? An old family tradition: Homemade Apple Butter. We’ve been doing this every few years for as long as I can remember, and my grandparents talk about doing it when they were children. There is some work to it, but there are a lot of people together to do it, and it’s really mostly about sitting around with family and friends. And the weenie roast after the cooking’s done.
You may not know this, but apple butter is the perfect hotdog condiment.
Oh, and thank God for portable DVD players. I binged on twenty episodes of 24 season four over the last four days, when my sister was driving, or at night after most everyone had gone to bed. I’m not sure that my brain will be able to handle that final disk for a couple of days, though. Need to process everything that's happened.
But I don’t even have the spoils of my labor yet. My sister, a friend of hers, and I drove up in her little car, and there wasn’t room to bring anything extra back. Not with the way girls pack. ;) So my parents are bringing our shares back in their (bigger and lighter packed) car.
What was the weekend’s event? An old family tradition: Homemade Apple Butter. We’ve been doing this every few years for as long as I can remember, and my grandparents talk about doing it when they were children. There is some work to it, but there are a lot of people together to do it, and it’s really mostly about sitting around with family and friends. And the weenie roast after the cooking’s done.
You may not know this, but apple butter is the perfect hotdog condiment.
Oh, and thank God for portable DVD players. I binged on twenty episodes of 24 season four over the last four days, when my sister was driving, or at night after most everyone had gone to bed. I’m not sure that my brain will be able to handle that final disk for a couple of days, though. Need to process everything that's happened.