What We've Been Doing.

Behold, my sanity!

Otherwise known as:
Heaven on Earth...

There's this little tiny A-frame camp on this little tiny island in Rangeley, Maine where we spend one glorious week or more every single summer.  It is my most favorite week out of my whole entire year, and now it has come and gone for another season....but oh, it was amazing.

I am so happy that Kev's Mom married my father-in-law.  For many reasons, really.  He is a wonderful man.  But, this here camp came with the man, and for that I shall love him forever.  His father bought this little island and the one next to it for something like $200 for one and $300 for the other way back in the day.  Then, he built this little camp with a boathouse and an outhouse...and that's pretty much all that fits...

And, it is a little boy's paradise.
And a Daddy's and a Mama's as well.

This is where we came for the second week of our Honeymoon fourteen years ago...after having spent a week in Cancun, Mexico - which was amazing...but I tell you what ~ I would have been disappointed if we had stopped our honeymoon, there.  It was here in Rangeley where we went deeper and where we slowed down -- in this tiny spot with no electricity, and miles of lake to canoe...this haven where the sounds of loons crying with the waves slap slapping the dock lulling us to sleep every night...this place that holds so very many special memories for me...and this place where we have kept on coming back to year, after year, after year.

My boys live to come to Rangeley - where there is never once a thought of watching t.v. or of playing video games.  They are up at the crack of dawn fishing and swimming, canoeing and catching crayfish and they fall asleep hours and hours after they normally would at home.  On this tiny space of an island - that you can walk around in under two minutes flat - they are never once bored, they are wild and free, and they are at peace...

And...oh my goodness.
So am I.

And while, this summer ~ coming back to this place with a newborn ~ wasn't nearly as "restful" or as "relaxing" as it has been in past years...it was still amazing.  Every summer comes with a different flavor:  A Honeymoon summer, a summer with a six-week old, a summer with a little boy and a wild child, a summer with two little boys and a baby, a summer with three little boys, and now this, a summer with three crazy Hoolies and a wee eight week old baby...

Each summer is special and unique.  Each comes with its own set of challenges:  be it watching like a hawk for a toddler to not fall of the wharf, or helping a baby fall asleep for a nap with no place to help them to really get away from the noise.  It is what it is...and each summer I take it for whatever it is...

I find myself.
I "check out" from the madness of reality for awhile.
I reconnect with nature and life...and disconnect from technology and all of the whirling and the spinning.
And so then...when I come back to reality...I am more centered.
And I am more at peace...