Beautiful November

Justin is home from Colorado. A week and a half ago. Which is lovely. The morning he came home, I had a line of a poem running through my mind--"Home is the hunter, home from the hill" but after googling to see what the rest of it was, I found out that that is apparently about death. So I gave up on being poetic about it. 

I remember being in Alaska and hearing one of our good friends saying that it was actually hard when her husband came off the North slope for his two weeks off of his two week on/two week off work cycle because it meant she had to readjust her schedule completely. I remember thinking how terrible that was and that we would never live like that because I never wanted to have my husband being home be a disruption. (I also once declared that I thought it was selfish that someone only had one child because she hated childbirth so much. Foolish, foolish me. I was quite obnoxious and know-it-all-ish. I blush for my young self.) And now, here we are, after five months of Justin not being home during the week and his being home now has thrown my vague schedule for a loop. There is adjustment. 

My foolish young ideals are turning over in their grave at me. 

But it is lovely to have him home. My hunter. Home from his mountains. 

Looking up towards Owen and Ashley's

I always think of November as just a time filler between gorgeous colors and brilliant snow. Drab, dreary, and ugly. But this year. it is beautiful. 

Or maybe we just have had more sunshine lately.

I took Gilbert to Burlington this Monday. We were driving along when I saw a cloud of snow geese. I only had my phone, and snow geese are so hard to see against the sky.

But isn't that a lovely morning light? November light just seems so.... honest some how. 

Grainy geese on Lake Champlain

And on the way home, there were even more snow geese. The sky was full of geese and honking. 

We have just been listening to "On the Shores of Silver Lake" by Laura Ingalls Wilder and they often talk about the sky being full of birds during migration times the first year they were there. 

And then, this sunset. 

Teensy moon

Homeward bound