Back at Work.

Ugh. I spent the first 30 minutes of my day laying in bed with a big frown on my face. It's so hard to go back to work after a vacation, however low-key.

And low-key it was, thank god. Kev, Stevie and I spent 4 days (and 2 travel days) in Missouri, basking in the roomy and cheap hotel room that is my parents-in-law's house. My mother-in-law bought ALL of Stevie's school supplies, which included an entire wardrobe of navy, khaki, red, and white dress pants and collared shirts and a pair of red Chuck Taylor high tops for "edge".

The highlight was definitely our mid-week foray to our land which included outdoor pleasures on the deck of our cabin and a slow walk through our prairie grasses and oak trees. Afterwards we took a long drive through the countryside to the little town of Blackwater which was almost entirely deserted. In the last place I looked in the antique store there, I found three excellent towel hooks for our bathroom and negotiated a $12 price tag (a coup--the same hooks at Restoration Hardware or another such hack place would have set us back nearly $100, I'm sure). It was great to just hang out with Kevin for an afternoon, fully realizing why we are so damn happy together.

We slept, we ate, we fished and read. I finished a long-overdue quilt. Kevin loaded up a bunch of nice old boards that will soon become various tables for our living room. Stevie went swimming, fishing, biking, fish-feeding, sliding, and cicada-shell collecting. On the shell front, he collected about 45! He hung a bunch of them on a shirt and made hilarious "scared" faces for photos. We went to Matt and Deana's, played cards, and ate about 30 Freezee pops. I didn't even look at a computer sideways. It was great.