Summer 2024 Bucket List

Once again, the summer season is upon us and, as usual, it promises to be a busy one. I've been thinking about some of the things that I'd like to do this summer. I know, in reality, I probably won't get to all of them, but having a list will certainly help me to focus on the season and remind me to enjoy it to the fullest! 

"...ye see and know of your own selves that

summer is now nigh at hand" 

(Luke 21:30)

Summer Bucket List 2024

• Write my summer bucket list
• Plan my summer menus (these will be posted each week in my 'Master To-Do and Menu Plan Monday' posts) 
• Celebrate summer birthdays with the grandlittles (there are a bunch of them!)
• Eat watermelon
• Welcome a new granddaughter into the family
• Observe a full moon (June 22 - Strawberry Moon, July 21 - Buck Moon, August 19 - Sturgeon (also a seasonal Blue Moon) September 18 - Harvest Moon (supermoon)
• Lead an evening wildflower hike at the Battle of Island Mound State Historic Site
• Complete the following programs at work... 

    - Winged Jewels

    - Nature's Clean-up Crew

    - Spider Sniff

• Complete the following library programs...

    - Vulture Venture

    - Ssssnake

    - Nature's Masked Bandits

• Celebrate the 4th of July with family and friends
• Catch lightening bugs
• Serve as an election judge
• Enjoy fresh-cut flowers from my garden
• Divide irises and clean flower beds
• Get the word out about my new Zazzle shop and add lots of new products
• Celebrate my 63rd birthday
• Enjoy the Perseid meteor shower
• Listen to cicadas
• Find a cicada shell
• Observe a periodic cicada 
• Paint, hide, and find rocks with the grands
• Visit Cape Girardeau, Missouri
• Enjoy fresh produce and herbs from my garden
• Speak at a 4-H meeting
• Get van serviced and any needed repairs taken care of
• Schedule an eye exam and get new glasses

That's what's on my summer bucket list (thus far anyway...I may add to it as the season moves along). What's on yours?

Until next time...
~Rebecca

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Autumn Bucket List 2023

Summer has, once again, come and gone and...here we are...in the earliest days of autumn 2023! It came on so fast that I hardly realized that it had even arrived. I'm telling you the past few weeks and months have passed in a complete whirlwind! In my heart and mind I'm still stranded somewhere in late June. I don't know that I have ever been as totally oblivious to the change in seasons as I have been this year! 

Oh, well! Enough of my incredulity! Now that I'm aware that my favorite season has arrived, let's talk fall! 🍁🍂🍁 

Autumn on the Tallgrass Prairie

"While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, 

and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day 

and night shall not cease" (Genesis 8:22).

Although I probably won't get to all of them, here is a list of things that I hope to do and accomplish over the course of the autumn season...

My Autumn Bucket List 2023

- Write my autumn bucket list 🍁

- Post consistently (at least once per week) ✍

- Celebrate autumn birthdays with the grands 🎂

- Welcome my first great-grandbaby into the world 👶

- Attend Missouri Town 1855's 47th Annual Fall Festival of Arts, Crafts, and Music 

- Visit the Louisburg Cider Mill

- Enjoy a cup of Louisburg cider (it's THE best!) 🥃

- Enjoy a Louisburg apple cider doughnut (always a real treat!) 🍩

- Enjoy a juicy red apple 🍎

- Get lost in a corn maze 🌽

- Observe the autumnal night sky ⭐🌠🌟

- Listen to a cricket sing 🦗

- Swap out summer clothes for winter 🧥

- Take a walk in the woods 🍁

- Make a batch of Mini Baked Pumpkin Cake Doughnuts 🍩

- Enjoy a cup of hot tea ☕

- Help with and work the bison at their annual vet checks 🐃

- Enjoy an autumnal full moon (Harvest Moon - September 29th, Hunter's Moon - October 28th, and Beaver Moon - November 27th) 🌕

- Host a wiener roast 🌭

- Enjoy a fall getaway 🚗

- Visit a pumpkin patch 🧡

- Watch falling leaves 🍁🍂🍁

- Observe a flock of migrating birds 

- Enjoy a bonfire 🔥

- Attend the following conferances and classes through work...

    - 2023 AMI (Association of Missouri Interpreters) Conference at Macon, Missouri

    - Living History Academy at the Nathan and Olive Boone Homestead State Historic Site/teach cornhusk doll-making

- Complete the following programs at work...

    - Looking At Leaves (September) 🍁

    - Spider Web Wonders (October) 🕸

    - Terrific Turkeys (November) 🦃

- Follow through with a commitment to be a  guest speaker at a local 4-H chapter meeting 

- Light a fall-scented candle 🔥

- Listen to the honking of geese as they fly high overhead 

- Enjoy hot soup and fresh baked bread on a cool day 🥣

- Go on a hayride 

- Enjoy a rainy fall day ☔

- Have the propane tank filled

- Make a batch of Pumpkin Streusel Muffins 🧁

- Listen to a pack of coyotes sing across the prairie 🐺

- Celebrate National Bison Day @ work

- Bake a pumpkin pie 

- Lead an impromptu frost flower hike to observe frost flowers in the field 🥾

- Make a pumpkin roll 

- Set the clocks back when daylight savings time ends 🕑

- Walk (or dance the equivalent of) 90+ miles 👟

- Complete a six-week study on the Reformation 

- Celebrate Reformation Day

- Weatherize my home before cold weather arrives ❆

- Clean the heating stove

- Clean up the yard (cut trees, trim bushes, etc.) 🏡

- Get my car serviced before winter (oil change, new wiper blades, etc.) 🚗

- Do a winter food and supply stock-up 🥫

- Celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends 🦃

That's what's my autumn bucket list! What's on yours?

Until next time...

~Rebecca

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Summer 2023 Bucket List Update

Usually I dread the coming of summer but, this year, I've been in such a whirlwind of activity that the season came and went with me hardly noticing it at all. 

Ladybug on Coneflower

In fact, in looking back, the last post that I made on this blog was nearly two months ago (July 31st). I'm not sure that anyone even noticed that I was gone...including me! 😆 But that's okay! My goal is to get back on track and, if I can, fill in some of the blanks. 

I thought I'd start by posting an update on my Summer Bucket List 2023. Pictures and comments (in bold type and parenthesis) have been added where applicable. 

• Write my summer bucket list
• Plan my summer menus (these will be posted weekly in my 'Master List and Menu Plan Monday' posts)

(Over the past couple of years, I've discovered that menu planning when cooking for one is kind of pointless. Things have gone much better for me since stopping the menu planning. I'm eating healthier and I don't think about food all the time. Well, maybe I do, but in a whole different light.)

• Celebrate summer birthdays with the grandlittles (there are a bunch of them!)

• Celebrate Independence Day 

• Eat watermelon 
• Welcome a new granddaughter into the family 

Miss Sophia Zira Capri

Born August 25, 2023 @ 5:17 p.m.

7 lbs. 11 oz. and 20" long

• Observe a full moon (July 3 - Buck Moon, August 1 - Sturgeon Moon, August 30 - Blue Moon) 

Super Blue Moon - August 30, 2023

• Catch lightening bugs
• Enjoy the Perseid meteor shower 

    (It was too cloudy to catch it on my 

    birthday, like I usually do, but I did catch     sight of a few shooting stars before the shower was over.)

• Celebrate my 62nd birthday 

    (I had an absolutely lovely birthday this

    year! Not only did several of the kids

    and grands get together to have a lovely

    birthday tea for me, Amber and I spent

    the day before in Joplin taking a painting class together! My 62nd birthday was absolutely one of the best birthday EVER!)

Amber and I With Our Own

Renditions of a Claude Monet

Birthday Cheesecake and Tea

• Find a cicada shell
• Grill burgers on the grill 
• Enjoy fresh produce and herbs from my garden 

• Enjoy a banana split 

    (Granddaughter, Lizzy and I enjoyed

    birthday our annual banana splits while

    on an outing between our two birthdays

    which are very close together. We had

    a great time!)

Granddaughter, Lizzy, on our Birthday Outing

• Cut fresh flowers from the garden and make a bouquet 

• Work on some new photography ideas 
• Paint, hide, and find rocks with the grands 

Rocks That We Painted and Hid

• Take a day trip to northwest Arkansas

    (Got in a quick visit with our friend,

    Roxanne, while there. Then, later in the summer, Roxanne came up here and I had the privledge of giving her a tour of my park and she had the privledge of helping to round up the bison! Later we met Amber and the girls for lunch and visiting before Roxanne headed home.)

Roxanne

• Complete the following programs at work...

    - Wild Cats of Missouri 

    - 'Little Moss, Big Tree' Library Program 

    - Civil War on the Border Day Camp   

    - Sunflowers a la Petite Prairie 

• Attend a family reunion

Me, Charlene (the last of the older generations left),

and One of Charlene's Grandsons

Cousin David and I

Cousins Jeff, Teresa, and I

Cousin Larry and I

Second Cousin Tara and I

Third Cousins Karsyn and Kyrei, and I

• Enjoy a Kansas City Royals game at 'The K' (Kauffman Stadium) 

Patrick and Amber and the Kids and I

Royals v. White Sox

September 4, 2023

Granddaughter, Esther, Caught A Ball...

...and Isaiah Made a New Friend

• Attend a baby shower for my first great-grandbaby 

Heather and Corey Opening Baby Gifts

• Go camping
• Enjoy time around a fire 
• Finish cleaning out the shed on Pedro

Well, that's what was on my summer bucket list! Feel free to post a link to what was on yours! 

Until next time...
~Rebecca

(#17 in this week's lineup over at Grammy's Grid's Unlimited Link Party #131)

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Spring Bucket List 2023

"For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over

and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; 

the time of the singing of birds is come..."

(Song of Solomon 2:11-12)

Winter is behind us and, here we are, in the earliest days of Spring 2023. I've been thinking about some of the things that I would like to do and accomplish over the course of it. I know that I probably won't get to everything on the list, but, it will, at the least, help me to stay focused on the season and enjoying it to the fullest. Won't you join me as I dream? 🌷 

1. Write my spring bucket list. 📜

2. Plan my spring menus (these will be posted each Monday in my weekly Master To-Do List and Menu Plan Monday posts) 📇

3. Celebrate spring birthdays with the grandlittles 🎂

4. Listen to spring peepers 🐸

5. Observe a bright, beautiful, and magnificant full moon (April 6th, May 5th, and June 3rd) 🌕

6. Pick a bouquet of pretty yellow daffodils 💛

7. Eat fresh asparagus

8. See a brand new baby bison 🧡 

9. See a prairie chicken

10. Plant a vegetable garden 🌱 

11. Take a walk in the rain ☔

12. Celebrate the kittens' first birthday (Tiger and Bear's) 🎂 

13. See Indian paintbrush blooming on the prairie

14. Observe eggs in a bird's nest 🐦

15. Pick a bouquet of purple violets

16. Eat fresh strawberries 🍓

17. Smell lilacs 💜 

18. Go geocaching 🧭

19. Paint, hide, and, hopefully, find rocks 🎨

20. Go on a picnic 🍗

21. Shop at a farmer's market 🍅

22. Plant flowers 🌷

23. Go camping ⛺

24. Dye eggs 🥚

25. Celebrate Resurrection Sunday with family and friends 🕆

26. Visit a state park that I've never been to before 🏞

27. Hike a new trail 🥾

28. Celebrate May Day with a basket of fresh flowers 💐

29. Attend Spring Training

30. Go fishing 🎣

31. Visit Hannibal, Missouri 

32. Go on a Mississippi Riverboat Cruise ⼮

33. Explore a Missouri cave 

34. Visit the Dalton Museum at Coffeyville, Kansas 🤠

35. Spend a weekend with friends at the lake

36. Visit the Steamboat Arabia Museum in Kansas City (again)

37. Move stuff over from shed on Pedro 

38. Get lattice repaired on front porch and have a solid floor built 

39. Clean out north shed and refurbish

40. Have my car serviced and readied for summer 🚗

41. Wash the windows inside and out 

42. Get a chaise lounge or a zero gravity chair (something to recline in outside) 

43. Put up bamboo shades on the west side of porch

44. Pick a new color and repaint the house 🏡

45. Get a hanging plant or two for the front porch 🌸

What about you? What do you enjoy most about spring? And what are you most looking forward to about the season's arrival? I'd love to know what's on your spring bucket list! 🌷

Until next time...
~Rebecca

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