A Photo Essay, Sort Of

So, there have been a lot of race cars these past two weeks.



A lot of lot of lot of race cars.

We've been on vacation.

Two weeks of vacation about to come to an end. Jen goes back to work tomorrow morning. Sam and I go back to work and school Monday. I'm sort of dreading the return... the freedom has been amazing. I haven't had two straight weeks of time like this in years. The last time was when Sam was born, and that wasn't quite a relaxing vacation.

Two beautiful weeks.

Early on, we had an onion harvest.




19 onions, 12 heads of garlic. Beautiful stuff.

And here's my garden Buddha doing a poor job of fending off hungry rodents during The Zucchini Wars. I lost two zucchinis during that fight. Finally managed to keep them out with dog hair and wind chimes. Since then, I've managed to make three awesome meals with zucchini and yellow squash. I was ready to declare myself victor, but someone snuck in and took a couple of nibbles last night. Time to up the game, I guess.



And see this look?



That's the boy as we headed out to his first ever camping trip.

We didn't go far. For the first time, I figured we'd play it safe and I set the tent up in the back yard. We ate dinner on the back deck, then went into the tent, ate snacks, read a pile of books (including that Little Critter classic Just Me and My Dad) and told stories till it got really dark. Then it was a great but unproductive firefly hunt. Almost caught a few, but they outsmarted us. I managed to make it up the next night, chasing them around the yard by myself till I got one and brought it in to Sam.

Anyway, here's our very first night in the tent.


He had a surprisingly good time. And woke up at 4:45 in the morning, ready to go.

There was some other stuff.

I got to read lots of good books. Jen and I watched Season 3 of "True Blood." And I really like "True Blood." There was lots of time for the gym, and for yoga, and for sleeping in. We had a large pool of people wanting to take Sam places, so Jen and I actually got a surprising amount of alone time.

And there was Farm Sanctuary.

This is Blitzen. He's the six month old bull that head butted me a few times. He is very very cool.



And one of these two young bulls ate my shorts. Sort of. Got an entire leg into his mouth before I managed to pull away from him. He was pretty cool too.




And this is the sweet, cute little goat who head butted Sam. Gently and sweetly.




Throw in three trips to the Great Escape in Watkins Glen (that's the awesome ice cream shop with 24 flavors of vegan soft serve), a few good dinners in town, and a surprisingly awesome lunch at The Harvest Cafe in Montour Falls (that place needs a post of it's own), and good lord, but it was an amazing week two.

Can't wait till the next vacation... till the next trip to Farm Sanctuary... the next chance to just be "free" for a while. It was a wonderful way to be.