This is Vacation

Kent is on a month long paternity leave for January, so our days have been slow and easy going.
It is just what was needed after all of the hustle and bustle of December.
I've been catching up on some design projects,  (Plug- Zimbags is having a sale! And Mars Hill is starting a new series this Sunday!), rolling around on the floor with the kiddos, and enjoying the time Kent gets to spend with us during the day.
Ah, but the evenings, that's where it really feels like vacation. Kent is in the middle of an epic wood working project called "Das Bachs", which is our silly German for "The Box" (as pictured). Which is a handmade wooden box roughly the size of our microwave that will house all of our Settlers of Catan extensions. Kent is beyond excited to be chiseling, clamping, and sawing for as long as he can stand it in our freezing garage. While I am inclined to let him, because I am also on an Epic Quest through Middle Earth. (WOW, we are so cool.) I'm reading my gorgeous copy of The Lord of the Rings, and the less I am distracted from my reading and maps, the better.
(I wonder...Dear reader, did you know that I am a monumental Tolkien fan?
Ah yes, I may look like the average 20-something mother of two with varied interests, but under this facade lurks a love of Tolkien lore that surpasses the depths mined by Durin's Folk*, and a knowledge of Middle Earth seldom seen outside of the Eldar race*.
At any given moment I can bring up an extensive Map of Middle Earth to my mind that is (a little sadly) probably more accurate than a Map of our state.
I think it's time I stop...discussing this that is.)
But by night we snack, and hang out, and again join the race of People You Would Want to Hang Out With, until about 2:00 am. Our children don't sleep in, so we are everyday as tired as the day before. But that only perpetuates our determined slow and easy going pace.
This is vacation! And we are loving it.

*Lord of the Rings reference cool people won't understand.