The Difference a Year Makes...Part 1

A lot can change in a year.  In the past year, I quit my so-called "dream" teaching job to go back to college for the next 3-5 years in the hopes of becoming an RN, and maybe (just maybe) a nurse practitioner one day. In the past year, Barrett and I got our own house, a home in the country that we love. Some things don't change much though, they stay constant, and perhaps the only change is that the seem to get better with each passing day. A little over a year ago Barrett and I were married. This weekend we celebrated our one year wedding anniversary on a get-away planned solely by my husband. He did good. He is out foraging for my morning coffee as I blog. Only a man that truly understands me could possibly know how important my quiet, reflective time is...and how much better it is with caffeine.

Friday night we left in the late afternoon (Barrett luckily had a training that day and got home earlier than we had planned), and we headed to our favorite camp area, outside Gilchrist, Oregon, where the dirt is like powdered dust, and there is scrubby vegetation all around. It doesn't sound like much, but Barrett started bringing me here when we were first dating, and I have grown to love the unique beauty of this area almost as much as he has-what I love is that he shares it with me. Anyhow, having sold our toy hauler earlier this past year (moving money), we tent camped for the first time together. It was fun, setting up the tent as a team, and we rested on an air mattress with sleeping bags, the tent flaps open like windows, gazing at the clear, dark sky full of stars above. I love the way we camp by the way. It is a mixture of roughing it combined with totally modern amenities. So, while we may have brushed our teeth using a jug of spring water and lit our tent with a lantern, we also read to one another (a favorite pastime) with my Kindle Fire, and watched downloaded episodes of House, MD (our favorite TV show) on his lap-top! We woke to cold air (it had dropped to the low 40's overnight), and readied ourselves for the next adventure.

We had breakfast at the same place we'd stopped for dinner the night before, a funky restaurant full of stuffed animals (like the taxidermy kind, not the fluffy bed toppers for children), and shelves full of knick-knacks, but incredibly good food. Barrett would not tell me where we were going, but I finally guessed (with the help of road signs!), we were off to Crater Lake. I had not been since I was a kid, and he had never been. The water of Crater Lake is a sapphire blue, and emerald green in some spots where it is presumably even deeper. This beauty was obscured by some smoke (it is forest fire season, and this area of Oregon gets hit pretty hard just about every year), but we could still see the lake fairly well and the fat chipmunks that ran along side the viewpoints, and listen to these weird, clicky bugs (they make clicks when they fly), that I think are called click beetles, rightfully so. We enjoyed some quiet time at the lodge, reading our books together. Then we headed to the place we were staying that I had no ideas about...

Barrett's "paper gift" from me was a deck of cards hole-punched and tied together with ribbon. Each card had a reason  I love him typed and glued to it to make a little booklet.

To be continued...