"Kids-At-Camp-Week" 2012

I love my kids so much it's crazy, but they left for Hume Lake on Sunday morning, and holy cow  are Jamey and I having fun at home all by ourselves!  On Sunday, we had our friends Reid and Misty over for dinner (without their kids - they have 3 and 1 on the way; clearly they needed a break!) and Jamey smoked a tri-tip and we grilled a bunch of veggies and had a big salad and cake (food that grown-ups like to eat).  Yesterday I made some shrimp po' boy sandwiches and we took them down to the beach, along with the dog, and enjoyed dinner by the ocean (doesn't the photo look absolutely peaceful?  Well, truth be told, it was horribly windy, so we didn't stay all that long, but still....).  This afternoon we are heading to SLO for some thrift-store furniture shopping (we are looking for a coffee table) and then dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant, Upper Crust.  I think the best part is that we decide what we want to do and then we do it - it's just so easy!  No negotiating, no working out schedules or rides, we just go!  This gives me hope for the future, because Jamey and I have joked about having to move to separate houses when we retire, since he loves the warm-water surf of southern California and I love the foggy rugged coast up north (better for hunkering down inside and reading!).  But now I have confidence that we will indeed be good empty-nesters when the time comes (still years from now).  And of course I couldn't relax at all if I didn't know that my kids are having a fantastic time at camp.  Grace is a counselor for the week with the junior-high girls she's been leading all year in Sunday school, and I'm sure Jason and his friends are having fun although I really don't want to think about what exactly they might be doing at this moment (chances are it involves a game of some sort, or eating some kind of food, or a bodily function...). I think about them often but I hope they have such a blast that they don't really think about us at all.  Or all the fun we have planned for the rest of the week (Fourth of July in Cayucos, drive-in, bike rides, neighborhood bbq, and so on).  Who knew that not going anywhere could be so relaxing?!