A Front Porch Picnic

Our Memorial Day weekend was full of projects for me in between baby naps and Brett having little adventures with the kids. They went hiking up Helen Hunt Falls with Sunday and came home filthy and wet which always translates into a good time. They also got out to Territory Days to find the homemade root beer stand and the dancing horse before it started raining on everyone. The weather was moody all weekend in between gorgeous skies full of puffy, white clouds so we weren't sure what we'd be doing on Monday but we knew we were going to celebrate with a picnic.

I kid you not, five minutes before we were going to start loading the car with our cooler and children it started to rain. I was disappointed until Sebastian pointed out that we were lucky we weren't out in the middle of a big open field having a picnic and getting drenched. With that I changed my attitude and decided a front porch picnic was as good as any other picnic and we moved our stuff into pretty bowls and brought the flowers with us.

Ruby ate all of the watermelon, I traded in chips for quinoa, and Sunday snagged some leftovers when we weren't looking. We talked to the kids about being thankful for the soldiers and their families that have sacrificied so much. I thought of my grandpa that drove a tank in Germany in WWII, my brother that flew Black Hawks in Iraq, our 60-year-old neighbor that worked as a mechanic in Desert Storm, our friend's husband that is currently in Afghanistan and our other friend's husband serving in S. Korea, as well as the hundreds of families in Colorado Springs alone that do life without their soldiers every other year or so.

I'm so proud of my own soldier and thankful that the sacrifices we've had to make have been small in comparison to so many.

I hope you had a relaxing long weekend if you're in the U.S. and enjoyed the unofficial start of summer. We're finishing up with school this week and then we're making up for last year's lost summer months when I was couch bound and nauseous while Brett was deployed. We've got a lot of hiking, swimming, and penny arcading to do!

-Rachel

Photos edited with the Fresh Collection Actions from A Beautiful Mess.