Day 5 Already???

It is so hard to believe how fast this week is disappearing!  But, that is the way it is with vacations, isn't it?!

After walking all over Boston yesterday, we ALL slept in today.....til about 7 a.m.  Did I mention we were in bed by about 9:30 or 10 last night?  :D

So, after we got our showers and ate breakfast, we left Boston a few minutes after 9 a.m.  We took a different route out of the city to head north and we missed most of that horrendous Boston traffic!

As you can see from the pictures, it was another beautiful day for traveling!  Our first stop was the Nubble Light (aka Cape Neddick Light) in the bottom of Maine.  Some young man was kind enough to offer to take our picture when he saw me holding the camera at arms length.  Tim returned the favor to them.

Here's a nice picture of Tim's mom with the lighthouse in the background.  It was so beautiful and peaceful we could have stayed all day just listening to the seagulls.  She and I both bought a print for ourselves of this lighthouse.  The artist painted boats into his paintings and he was entering our name and date onto the boat today.  He was giving the money from these prints to a charity.

Our next stop was Kennebunkport where we drove down Ocean Avenue to take pictures of the Bush Compound out on Walker's Point.  Notice the flag at half staff for the Americans that were killed in Lybia.

Well, we are not seeing much fall color like Tim and I did the first time we came leaf peeping here back in 2006, but there is a bit of color!

And, our final stop for the day, Portland Head Lighthouse at Cape Elizabeth.  So pretty!

OK, here's a test for you.  Where did we go shopping today?  Here's your clue:

Nite!

Day 4

And the winner is...................Jessica Day, for giving me the name of the bread our chicken pesto sandwich was eaten on yesterday.......foccacia bread!  Thanks, Jessica!

We are all BEAT tonight!  We were picked up by the trolley company at 8 a.m. this morning and taken to Boston for our tour.  Seventeen stops plus a free harbor cruise.  The trolley shuttle dropped us off at stop #6 and that is where we bought our tickets.  Tim's mom was mostly interested in stop #2, Paul Revere, North Church which meant we were going to travel almost all the way around before we would get back to that stop since we started at stop #6.  But, somewhere along the way, they made a ticket check and also told us that the harbor cruise was getting ready to leave if we wanted to get off then.  I want to say it was stop #10, but I can't swear to it.  In any case, we did the harbor cruise and that took about 45 minutes.  Well, the cruise did not end at the same place it began.  It ended at stop #3, the USS Constitution museum.  So, we toured that.....in the hot sun!  Tim's mom was worn out!

After we went into the museum, we headed for the trolley stop.  Tim's mom was ready to hang it up.  Well, we really had no choice but to at least keep riding the trolley because we had no way back to the hotel except the trolley shuttle, which would not pick us up for the return trip until 5:15 p.m.

I believe we ate lunch before we got back on the trolley.  Since we got back on the trolley at stop #3, we rode all the way around until we could get off at stop #2.  That took about an hour.  By that time, Tim's mom had rested up so we could visit the North Church, the gift shop and see the Paul Revere statue.  Walking up the hill to get to the North Church was a killer for the both of us!  We had to stop and rest at the Copp's Hill Burial Ground, LOL!

Anyway, we finally had seen what we wanted to see and headed back to the trolley stop.  We rode the trolley to stop 6 where we began the day.  We were able to sit and relax until the shuttle arrived to bring us back to the hotel.

We got back to the hotel somewhere around 6 p.m.  Tim and his mom watched the news while I checked my e-mail, then we went to dinner up the street.  Now we are waiting to go to bed, LOL!  We are planning on sleeping in until we wake up tomorrow!  We will be heading to Maine tomorrow.

Let me just say that we are sooooooooooooooooo glad we did not drive into Boston!  Will you get a load of that traffic!  Coming and going.....it was a MESS!!  We are traveling in the HOV lane where you are supposed to have at least 2 people per vehicle and the lane moves along quicker.....most of the time!  You can see that even it was crowded this morning!

This is taken from the top deck of the boat we took the harbor cruise in.  As you can see it was another beautiful day.....it was actually HOT!

These are just some seagulls I zoomed in on during the cruise.  I did not try to capture anything but the one on the post.  But it is interesting how I caught 4 all in different "poses."

We are getting ready to get back off the boat to visit the USS Constitution.

Tim and his mom posing with the USS Constitution in the background.  Beautiful ship!

Tim's mom resting in one of the North Church pews.

And here is the statue of Paul Revere.

The only difference in the traffic going home vs the traffic coming into Boston in the morning is that the HOV lane was much more empty than this morning!  For this we were very thankful because we figured it would take us much longer to get home than it took us to get there.

The restaurant where we ate tonight had a sports bar, pool tables, and a racing pit.  I would have loved to try out the racing, but it was expensive!  So I settled for Hawaiian pizza in the restaurant!  :D

Just a picture of the restaurant sign.....Ascari (a racer from the 40's and 50's who was killed testing a car).

Nite!

Day 3

We finished our trip to Boston today.  We left the hotel in Sidney, NY at 8:30 a.m.  Our first stop was Stockbridge, MA to visit the Norman Rockwell Museum.

Don't miss driving in fog (which we left behind in WV).  Within half an hour we drove out of the fog, thankfully!

Here's Tim and his mom reading and studying one of the Norman Rockwell paintings.  They read and I took pictures!  :D  Pictures were allowed WITHOUT a flash being used.  You were not allowed to get any closer than 12" to any of the paintings.

After we looked at all the paintings and visited the gift shop, we came out to this tent to eat lunch.  Tim and I shared a chicken sandwich with pesto mayo and lettuce on a bread type that begins with an "f" but I forget the name.  I also got some potato salad.  Delicious lunch even if it was a bit expensive.

Here's Tim and his mom posing for a picture at the edge of the picnic tent before we walked over to the studio where Norman Rockwell did his painting.

Here's the plaque outside the studio which shows a picture of him at work in the studio.

This was a nice fall display that was set up for a nice photo op.  Tim told the husband of the woman standing off to the right that he would take their picture if he would take our in return.  Obviously he agreed!  :D

We drove the last leg of the trip for the day into Braintree (a suburb of Boston) which was 2 1/2 hours from Sidney, NY.  Very nice and spacious rooms.  We will hop on a van at 8 a.m. to be transported to Boston to begin the trolley touring.  It will be another long day!  We will need to rest at home after our vacation!  :D

Nite!

Day 2

LOOOOOOONG day of traveling!  We might as well have not gone to bed last night.  We all just tossed and turned!  Tim's mom was thinking about the trip.  I'm sure Tim and I didn't sleep well because we were not in our own bed.

Everyone was up at 5 and so we packed Tim's mom's things into the car, brushed our teeth, combed our hair, changed our clothes and hit the road by 5:30 a.m. or so.

We made pretty good time, even with the bits and pieces of traffic we hit and the road construction that was here and there.  We stopped for lunch around 11:00 at a Denny's and set out to travel to Binghamton, NY stop for the day and find a hotel.  We ended up traveling 39 miles further to a Super 8 hotel in Sidney, NY.  It was about 5:00.....almost 12 hours on the road!

We brought the bags into our hotel room and then headed out for dinner.  We ate at Roma, an Italian restaurant with delicious food!  HUGE servings!  We only ate about half of our meal!

Now we are relaxing, watching 9/11 stuff on TV and getting ready for bed!

Here's a few pictures I took today.  TONS of goldenrod everywhere you look.  We will be leaving the hotel around 8:30 tomorrow since we got further today than we really had planned to travel!  I hope we ALL sleep well tonight!
 
Beautiful sunrise as we drove Eastward.

Some of the goldenrod we saw along the highways and byways today.

We ended the day with this delicious meal from Ramo's.

NITE!

Day 1

Well, I noticed as I opened up to make a post here that the last one I did was July 21st!  WHAT?!  Did you think I was never coming back?  Sorry!  Life has a way of happening, doesn't it?

So, we are taking Tim's mom to Boston, MA then up to Portland and Bar Harbor, ME this week.  We left the house at 7 a.m. this morning and arrived at her house here in Covington, KY at 2:30 - 2:45 or there abouts.  Such a lovely day for traveling!  When we left the house this morning, it was approx. 52 degrees!  Yep!  I'd say Autumn is on the way, WOOHOO!  We ate lunch at Bob Evans in Teays Valley, WV around 11 a.m.

Tim's mom was sitting on the porch enjoying the beautiful day when we arrived.  We joined her and enjoyed watching the humming birds.  The feeder is empty and one hummer came very close to me and made a noise while it watched me as if to say, "Why don't you fill the feeder for me?"  Sure wish I could've had it land on my hand, but the picture below will have to suffice.

What amazing creatures they are!

For dinner, Tim's mom treated us at Bob Evans.

After we came back to the house, we went over the trip details with Tim's mom.  Then some computer work and we are wrapping things up before bed.  Tomorrow will be a long day of traveling, probably 10 hours beginning at 6 a.m.

Nite all!

Day 203 in the Year of Our Lord 2012

Hope you have all had a great week and are ready to begin another one come tomorrow!

Everyone has had or will have at least one turning point in their lives.  This collab, by Angie Young, Aria and Cilenia Curtis, is perfect to scrap about those events. 

I chose the turning point in my life of becoming a mother.....motherhood.  And I also chose to scrap about my mom becoming a grandmother.  Hope you enjoy the pages.  I got teary-eyed when I found these photos.  I really think you can see Thad in the second one where mom is holding Jessica.

Day 197 in the Year of Our Lord 2012

I know I have been absent for 19 days!  Not really absent.....just not posting anything here.  Since it has been quite awhile, and since I did a couple of layouts this afternoon, I decided to drop by to see you!  :D

First of all I'll give you an update on Tim's cancer situation.  He had an appointment to see the surgeon this past Friday.  The wound is almost healed.  We thought he might tell us to switch from doing the wet gauze to just wearing a bandage.  Not yet.  He still wants us to continue doing the wet gauze for a couple of weeks.  He said it should be about completely healed by that time.  He wants to see Tim one more time before he releases him before Tim starts the ultrasound procedures in October.  He wants to make sure that he is healed completely, so he has another appointment to see him the week after VBS in August, I think on the 17th.  As you think about Tim, please pray that no cancer will be found when they start doing the ultrasound procedure.  We REALLY appreciate the prayers and the way the Lord has answered them thus far!  Praise Ye the Lord!

I've been creating a bit of art journaling elements and papers in my kits (it's all the RAGE in digital scrapbooking) and I've also been working on the CT of Angie Young, Aria and Cilenia Curtis, who are art journaling artists. Here are a couple of layouts I did using a combination of their "Follow Your Art - Journey" kit.  If you click on either of the layouts, you will go to the series of product in the shop at Digitals.

 

I just finished reading the book, "Follow the River" by James Alexander Thom, the story about Laura Draper Ingles.  It was really good!  I couldn't hardly put it down!  I just cannot imagine all that she went through after being captured by the Shawnees and what it would have been like traveling through the wilderness for 6 weeks in the months of October and November.  I cannot imagine eating the things she ate to keep herself alive, even if barely alive!  The diet was so poor that her teeth were falling out and her hair turned completely white!  By the time she arrived back, she was naked and woke up with snow on her from the last night of her trip back. They would've found me dead!  Talk about trying your faith!  She bounced between thanking God for each little blessing of sustenance to not believing in a God Who would allow His children to suffer the way she did trying to stay alive!  My recommendation.....READ the BOOK!    You will praise the Lord for allowing you to be born when you were born!

We have finally gotten some rain over the last week so our grass is not quite as brown and dead as it was.  Calvin could actually mow it this week!  But it is to get back up into the 90's this week.

The green beans Tim planted never did really do anything and the plants were just infested with bugs!  I think I canned 2 quarts and 1 pint!  The tomatoes are really looking good!  I'll probably be canning some this week!

Well, that's it for me tonight.  I pray you all have a blessed week!