Growing Green

It's summer, so life is slowing down a very little. I. has started what began as a small backyard garden and quickly expanded into a butternut jungle. These photos are a few weeks old and don't reflect the impressive rain-induced growth spurt the squash have demonstrated in the last week.

Rosebushes (these came with the house):

Our first squash plants:

My handsome gardener:

I.'s peppers:

And aloe from my little window garden:

Back in School!

At long last, we are emerging from the fog of the 2014-15 school year. It has been exhausting. I'm in no way ready to plunge back in, and somehow the summer has ended up giving us only about four weeks off. I don't know how some people stay in this career for forty years.

The good news is that I. has been able to venture forth into greener pastures! Back in the winter, he applied to nursing school at a nearby university, and he was admitted into an accelerated program. Because it's accelerated, he not only had no time to recuperate from the school year, but he actually spent the first week of nursing school writing finals (and having them administered) for his middle school students. He is thrilled to be on the way to a medical career after many years of wishing and hoping for just such an opportunity.

Here's I. on one of our early trips to get to know the campus:

We took this in front of what we then thought was the nursing building (we were wrong). Oh, well! School started in mid-May, so he has now been in the program for about a month. He comes home often and regales me with new facts about bowel movements and germs.

We've also moved about 30 minutes from our old house, in order to split the commute more evenly. We now live in a house that is twice the size of our old one, and are enjoying the fact that for the first time in our marriage, we don't share walls, floors, or ceilings with any neighbors. Our new home has three bedrooms (really one bedroom and two libraries), a luxurious bathroom (it is actually larger than our bedroom on the last house) and a separate garage. We are blessed! We also now live downtown in one of my favourite small towns in Tennessee, within easy walking distance of the public library and a Christian coffee shop. I. has taken up gardening, and I am desperately trying to get unpacked and ahead on meals before the school year kicks me into my endless cycle of exhaustion again. In the meantime, we've been sleeping in until 5 on weekdays and 7 on weekends, which feels like the height of luxury.

Christmas Cheer

We went away for Christmas, and I missed the last days of the December Photo Project because our "smoke-free" hotel with "free wifi" turned out to be a "wifi-free" hotel with "free smoke." We ended up being moved because smoke was pouring into our room from our next door neighbors' suite; though it was nice to breathe (eventually), neither room had any real access to the Internet.

That said, hotel aside, our Christmas getaway was fairly magnificent.

Living in the United States and without a lot of disposable funds, planning our solo Christmas escape was a little tricky. After a lot of debate, we settled on Niagara Falls. Knowing that it would be a crazy tourist destination made me nervous, but I've never seen the falls, and I. hadn't been since he was young.

After  two days with family, we drove up through Detroit and meandered across foggy Ontario. We had an adventure when searching for a bureau of exchange, but eventually ended up with Canadian currency. We pulled into our first hotel on Christmas Eve afternoon and made it to the falls around dusk.

The crowds were crazy!

We first saw the falls in daylight on Christmas Day. (These below are the American Falls, with America in the background). They were stunning!

On the 27th, we had an adventure: we walked from Canada to America and back again (this was officially my first border crossing on foot). The American side of Niagara has been turned into a state park, which means that all the Americans get a nice view of Canadian skyscrapers, while all the Canadians get a view of a very lush green park. However, getting to see the rushing water up close was amazing!

 

We were warned that Niagara would be touristy, and the warnings were wise. However, we had a pretty awesome time walking around the city, driving around Ontario, and spending hours of every day staring at the falls themselves. The highlight of the trip really was the rushing water, and walking down to watch the falls never disappointed.

 

On our final morning, we rose early and went down to the falls to watch the sun rise over Horseshoe Falls. A few moments after the sun broke through the clouds, snow began to fall. It was most certainly one of the highlights of our trip!