Mr & Mrs Davis in Maine - Day 1, Part 1

My son and his wife, who were married last October, came to Maine for the first time last week.




It was our first real visit with Jennifer, and though I was a bit nervous beforehand, I needn't have been...it was lovely and fun and lighthearted.

And busy. We packed a lot of sightseeing into the three days they were here.

First on the agenda: the area where we live now.

We started with a 20 minute drive to Camden to see the view from the top of Mt. Battie, in the Camden Hills State Park.









I love this tower at the top of the mountain!














Looks so much like a castle!

That's me and Jed, peeping over the top. :)












The view...365 degrees of breathtaking beauty.

Picturesque harbor and ocean in front...











...and mountains behind.








We slipped into a Thai restaurant in the quaint downtown area of Camden and enjoyed a scrumptious lunch - yay for daughters-in-law that like Thai food!! :)

Jennifer struck up a fast friendship with the owner/hostess/waitress/chef, who I believe would have adopted Jennifer on the spot had such a thing been possible.



Heading down the coastal highway to Rockland, we made a pitstop at the local thrift store.

Brad has been looking for a vintage raincoat for a while; although he didn't find one to suit him, Jed at least had a good time assisting in the search.



More to come....

Breaking the Water

I took Tracy and Jed to the Rockland Breakwater last month for the first time.




Actually, Jed has been before, one time when his grandma and grandpa were visiting, but he didn't walk it then, preferring instead to play on the beach. Grandma volunteered to watch him while Grandpa and I walked a little of it.

But this time, we all did it. Even though Tracy grumbled pretty much the whole way. :)

Jed had a ball, especially when we came up on a seagull here and there, feasting on sea urchins. We actually picked one up and brought it home (a sea urchin), but it had to be abandoned a few days later when it became more, shall we say, aromatic.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the breakwater is close to a mile long stone walkway to a lighthouse, which protects the coastal town of Rockland. And it just so happened that this trip down the breakwater netted us a peek inside the lighthouse! The light is a new-fangled LED light now, but it was still pretty nostalgic to be inside the house.



We found out there are more than 70 lighthouses in Maine, guarding more than 5500 miles of coastline. I'm thinking of making a bucket list just for lighthouses.

Octopi Veggies

Do you know what these are??





I didn't either, until a couple of weeks ago. These curly creatures are garlic scapes, the flower/seed stalks that shoot up from garlic bulbs. If left on the bulbs, they eventually straighten out and bloom, but farmers cut them off so the bulb has more energy to grow.

They can be used like green onions, but the taste is all garlic. Only milder. I've been using them to make pesto with baby bella mushrooms, served over pasta...mmmm.

I'm definitely out of my comfort zone here, but I've been learning all kinds of things since joining a CSA this summer. My farmer pities my ignorance and includes recipes along with the fresh veggies I pick up every week. Last week's surprise was sorrel. Never heard of the stuff before. Now I know it's an herb, and I have a recipe for soup. Dinner, anyone? :)

We broke away from the veggies long enough to go strawberry picking with Mrs Smith, Elijah and Josiah last month.


They were scrumptious! I have some of their sweet splendor tucked away in my freezer, just waiting for a rainy day.

Old Friends

We've had some nice visits from friends in the Augusta/Winthrop area since we moved.





Lois and her husband Jim joined us for an overdue birthday celebration in June.







Since most of you don't know Lois, you might be asking yourselves, "why does she think I would have the slightest interest in this picture?" If you find yourselves in that category, feast your eyes instead on that cute cake I made. :) I found the neatest idea...gummy Lifesavers as candle holders - function AND form in one instant decoration! Gotta love that.

A few days later we met Rod & Cynthia at the harbor in Camden for a picnic lunch on a beautiful spring afternoon.





And here are Jed's newest friends.





I have no idea who these ladies are, but somehow Jed managed to wheedle his way in to their group. He's a sucker for anyone who will listen to him. :)

Lori, I was disappointed to see that I didn't take pictures the day you and the boys visited...did you?

Happy Mother's Day, Olivia Style

One of Jed's favorite cartoons is Olivia.

Mine too.






She's a precocious six year old with a vivid imagination and a flair for, well, flair. One of our favorite episodes involves Olivia taking charge of the preparations for her mother's birthday dinner.

Olivia's favorite color is red, therefore it follows that everyone's favorite color is red, no? Thus, the entire dinner features red delicacies, such as spaghetti for the main course (naturally), but it's the birthday cake where Olivia really shines. Every ingredient is red...watermelon, peppers, tomatoes...and somehow this conglomeration turns into a delicious cake (the name of which is never mentioned, or I would so look up the recipe!).

Jed was horribly disappointed when his dad would not allow him to make this cake for me for Mother's Day, in spite of the fact that we had all the ingredients! However, Tracy did the next best thing and let the expert bakers at the local grocery store take care of baking a red cake for Jed to give me. A sweet gift from a sweet boy.

As you can see from the above picture, Jed recovers from disappoint pretty easily. :)



On a side note, this is a nice close up of the missing teeth situation in our house.

Proud Mama

We had been in the new house a little over a month when I caught sight of something magical...



...a family of geese, complete with three little goslings.

I had never seen baby geese before, and I was transfixed most of the day with the binoculars in one hand and the camera in the other.

You'd think I'd have gotten better pics, wouldn't you? :)

They hung around only a short while, a couple of weeks at most, but it madks me feel like a proud mama myself to think they birthed their goslings on our pond. I hope they're back next year.

And I hope I have some photography skillz by then. :)

The Pond

We left behind beautiful Cobbosee Lake when we left Winthrop, but we gained a pond right in our own yard in Union.

We've been enjoying exploring it and the stream that feeds it from Crawford Pond, which is a small lake about a half-mile behind our house.





Here's a view of the house from the pond.










Here is the beginning of the pond, at the mouth of the stream.








The rocky stream.















Tracy and Jed playing in it.









The end of the pond is just on the other side of the bridge, where it spills over a dam and rushes in a stream to Seven Tree Pond (another small lake), across the street from our house.

Living near water is so common in Maine, but I hope I never get used to it!

Back in Business

Okay, the break's over.

I spent last evening going through all the photographs I've taken since before we moved and I'm ready to get back to work.

So, without further ado....

Today's pictures were taken in Rockland, Maine, the weekend of March 20-21, where Mrs. Smith and I were in attendance (by ourselves) (sans kids) (yahoo!) at the Maine state homeschool convention. The convention was great, but get a load of the view from our room!

As difficult as it was to tear ourselves away from such luxury, we did indeed actually go to the convention.


And it was awesome. I learned a lot, got a lot more comfortable with curricula, and gained a new hero....Dr. Jay Wile. This man is brilliant and yet had the likes of me hanging on his every word. I went to every workshop he led and hated to see the conference come to an end. What a treat!

Speaking of treats, we did manage to sneak away for a few minutes at lunch on Saturday to walk the Rockland Breakwater, a 7/10s-of-a-mile jaunt down a boulder pathway to a lighthouse at the end. It was an unusually warm Spring this year, and an unusually warm day that Saturday, and it was pure joy.

After a brief stop at the Farnsworth Art Museum, we were preparing to head home when I got a call from Tracy with exciting news. I guess I had better back up a minute to explain, though...

We had been renting a lovely home in Winthrop since moving to Maine in August of 2007. The owners of the home purchased it just a couple of months before we moved in, with the intention of living in it themselves someday. Well, that day came, and they wanted to move in on April 1.

Tracy is not yet ready to commit to Maine long-term, so we were on the hunt for another rental house. It made sense to look in the area of our church, since it was 45 minutes away from us in Winthrop, and the VA hospital where Tracy works is in between the two towns.

The problem was, Union is a very small town in a rural area, and we were having a lot of difficulty finding a home for rent. We started calling homeowners with houses for sale to ask them if they would consider renting. This is simply not an option for most homeowners, and even for the ones for whom it is, most are not interested in becoming landlords. However, on that fateful day, Tracy called to tell me one of the owners we had talked to called him that afternoon and agreed to rent to us. It was good news indeed, as it was March 21 and we had to be out of our house by March 31.

Since we had to be drive right by the road the house is on as we headed home from the conference, Mrs. Smith and I made a slight detour and stopped to peek into the windows of my new abode. It was a harmless enough activity; at least it seemed like a good idea, until the owner of the house showed up. :) Probably not the best situation to find oneself in when meeting a new landlord in person, but thankfully ours is a very pleasant man who suggested we actually go inside the house and have a look around.

This house was built in 1850 - before the Civil War! - but was beautifully renovated several years ago and has been languishing on the market ever since, probably because of that beautiful (i.e. expensive) renovation. It's been challenging to get settled in, as storage is an issue that wasn't addressed in the renovation. However, that's been a good motivator to keep getting rid of things, and I'm content with what's left.

Some of the advantages of our new home...it's 4 minutes from our church and several of the families are now our neighbors, including a playmate for Jed; we're out in the country and the people seem friendlier; fresh eggs!, many of which were given to us; the area is beautiful; there is a pond beside the house that connects to two lakes by way of rushing streams; and we're just 15 minutes from the rocky coasts of Maine.

We couldn't be happier to have been kicked out of our old house. :D

Happy 5th of July

It's the story of my life...a day late and a dollar short. :)



I've been terribly neglectful of this blog...but surprisingly, I've not been inundated by woebegone readers threatening to do something drastic if I don't resume posting posthaste.

It's inexplicable, really.

Meanwhile I've been plugging along on my to-do list, as it pertains to our recent move and consequent settling-in, and have whittled it down to just a couple of items. One of which is washing the windows, and considering this house has 32 of them, I don't foresee marking that chore off the list anytime soon.

At least not this week, as we are in the grips of a heat wave with no air conditioning. Oh, the humanity!

PS - Blogger isn't sending comment notifications to my new e-mail address, and I can't figure out why...but I did figure out how to find them on my dashboard...quite an accomplishment for a low-tech like me. Thanks for the comments on my garden...I'll update its status soon. You won't want to miss it!

It's Summertime, and the Living is Easy

Maine has completely changed my perspective on summer.

I've never considered living in the constant heat and humidity of Southern and Midwestern summers to be easy.

Now, for the first time in my life, I actually want to plant a garden. This seems infinitely more doable when the threat of heatstroke is not looming overhead like a dark cloud.

So it seemed appropriate to celebrate the first day of summer by planting my first little garden in Maine.

Unfortunately, the plants should have been in the ground before now, so they're looking a little worse for wear at the moment. However, I have high hopes that they'll perk right up with some luck. Here's what on the menu:




Tomatoes

There are two pretty healthy tomato plants here, of the beefsteak variety.









Cabbage

Also looking pretty healthy.


Here's where things start to go downhill a little...








Broccoli

Not great, but I don't think it will take much to bring these little ones around.









Brussels Sprouts

These are definitely at the low ebb of their life...but I'm hoping for a miracle. :)



Stay tuned for signs of progress!



And Lori, please don't hate me for not taking better care of your babies...I promise to do better, really!

The End of the Vacation

Who knew that taking a two month hiatus would help me win my very first blogger award??

For those that don't know, we moved the end of March. Things are finally settling down and I'm ready to pick up where I left off with the blog, but before plunging in again, I thought it would be a good idea to catch up on friends' blog posts for the past couple of months.

Imagine my surprise when I came to a post in my friend Azlina's blog Lin Handmade Greeting Cards that listed me as a winner of the prestigious Gorgeous Blogger Award! I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I'm thrilled nonetheless. :D

This is a kind of pay-it-forward award, so here are the details.

A. Accept the award and thank the person who gave it to you
Thanks, Azlina - what an exciting and fun surprise this was! I love reading about your life in Malaysia on your blog...it's been great getting to know you that way!

B. List 10 things about yourself
1. I'm a sinner, saved by grace (and I praise God for it!)
2. I married a man who fought for me
3. I have two boys, 20 years apart in age almost to the day
4. I'm a homeschool mom
5. I live in one of the coldest states in the US (and I love it) :)
6. I live 15 minutes from the ocean
7. I am constantly getting rid of stuff
8. But I like yard sales too :)
9. I like to strip and refinish furniture
10. I swam in a triathlon in a former life

C. List 5 additional things you DON'T like
1. Wal-Mart
2. Facebook
3. Cooking
4. Tailgaters
5. Dieting

D. Pick ten bloggers to give this lovely award to
Big Newtons and Fig Newtons

Missouri Trouble

Kitten Creates

Pieces of Lin

ScrappyGurl
Design Mom

The Meanest Mom

Cheeky Kitchen

Schmancy-ness

The Pioneer Woman

Now, I will confess that the chances of the last 5 bloggers ever knowing they received this award from me are slim-to-none. However, their blogs are great reads, even if they don't know I exist. :)

A Lesson on Taste Buds

There's not much funnier than the faces made by kids sucking on lemons.




Mrs. Smith thinks I planned a science lesson on taste buds for purely academic reasons.

Little does she know that it was really for pure entertainment value. :)


This, by the way, is the same Mrs. Smith after beating out our little kids in guessing the number of taste buds each person carries about in his or her mouth.

Mrs. Smith holds a math degree. The kids didn't stand a chance.

But from the looks of it, she probably didn't get to fully enjoy the spoils of her victory.

hehe


In case you're wondering, the correct answer is 5 million.

Happy Pi Day!

To all my favorite math geeks.

Fire Chief

Ken Brillant is the new fire chief in Brunswick, Maine.






That information wouldn't normally interest me, seeing as how Brunswick is a ways away from Winthrop and I've only been through the town a time or two.

However, Ken's aunt is my friend Cynthia, and she is a tender-hearted woman who likes to celebrate anything and everything. She looked for a card to send him to offer her congratulations and couldn't find anything suitable, so she turned to me for help.

That was her first mistake. hehe

I suggested that we use the fabulous picture of her nephew from a newpaper article about his promotion and she agreed.

So here is the result. I like it. I hope he does too.

This Apple Didn't Fall Far From My Tree

For as long as I can remember, my mom has occasionally mentioned how I used to walk around the house on my toes as a child.

My firstborn showed no sign of this trait, and I assumed it had been lost in our bloodline for good. You can imagine my great pleasure, then, when Jed began recently walking about on his toes, with absolutely no prompting on my part.

My mom will be so proud. :)

It's Like Deja Vu All Over Again

We received the cutest thank you card from our friend Debbie in Ohio after Christmas.

Jed had sent her a moose ornament that he made, and she took a picture of it hanging on her tree and made a thank you card with it.






I liked the idea so much I made a couple of thank you cards for Jed like it.



Just as I was ready to pat myself on the back for my cleverness (regardless of how much the idea was borrowed - I have to grab my pats wherever I can), I had a sudden flash of memory (which occurs less and less frequently these days) that I had actually done something similar before.



I started looking through my photo files and found it.

Pretty cute, hunh?



I wasn't much into color or patterns back then, but when you have a baby that yummy, who needs it? :)

The disturbing part of all this is how completely I had forgotten that I had ever made this card, so as to think it was a completely new idea.

Getting old is certainly not helpful for the addle-brained.

Of Fairy Dust and Pixie Glue

Remember the embarrassing tale I told recently about my propensity for accidents? And how I attempt to make them all better with appropriate gift baskets?

This is the card that should have been tucked into the car repair gift basket in that post.


It would have been, too, if I hadn't been too sick to make it at the time. What little creativity I have gets eaten up by germs pretty quickly.

This first pic is the best shot of the card, but it's hard to see that the little thing in the groom's hand is a side view mirror.




This is a better angle to see that what he is holding is a part which was confiscated from one of my son's toy cars.




Hopefully the car will get "lost" in the upcoming move and my son will never find out about this particular accident. hehe

Printed inside the card is the following verse, adapted from "My Little Lovely" by The Moody Blues...

Fairy tales sometimes come true
Use fairy dust and pixie glue
Then all the love will stick to you
Like your mirror, tried and true

Hitting the Jackpot

It's always exciting when I see Jed coming in from getting the mail with a manila envelope in his hands.


Today was even more exciting when I saw TWO manila envelopes...
and then, lo and behold, a business envelope addressed by hand also (always a good sign!).

When I saw that the two manila envelopes were from artist friends, I could hardly believe my good fortune. It is the sweetest thing in the world to receive something that required someone else's time.





Tracy sent the cutest pins and pin cushion I've ever seen, along with pages from an old hymnal to use as backgrounds for collage. Look at those pins - they're like little flowers! Perfect from a friend in California.




Debbie sent some tags she dyed and then sprayed with different colors of Glimmer Mists, so I could see what the sprays look like. And what they look like is gorgeous! All of these tags were dyed the same...then the one on the left was sprayed with Olive Vine, the one in the middle with Antique Brass, and the one on the right with Patina. You can really see the sheen on the Antique Brass tag in the middle, but the picture doesn't do it justice.

The plastic canvas bookmark was from Brad's grandmother in North Carolina, along with a sweet letter. Staying in touch with her has been one of the nice things to come out of a very painful time.

It's always good to hear from friends!

While We Were Sick

The drugs haven't kicked in like I was hoping they would already.

So it's been another uneventful day.

Thought I would share with you some of the things we've been doing to pass the time the last three weeks, since I started with this mess...like taking pictures from the couch of Jed looking over the loft railing.

Or Jed looking over the stair railing.

{Don't you just love the way the backlight showcases his ears}


And the piece de resistance - the Staley store, open 24/7, locally owned and operated.

Come shop with us and save!

It's a Hard Knock Life

Sorry for the pitiful recent posts...it's hard to be witty/
amusing/
insightful when you feel like a train wreck.

{As if I was any of those things on my best days}

All should be well shortly, though, as I am the proud new owner of drugs.

Have you ever given any thought to what it would have been like to live before modern medicine? I have, and it's not pretty.