At Grandma and Grandpa's for Easter

Finally getting pictures from Easter Sunday spent with at Grandma and Grandpa's house with the rest of them family. Grandma had fixed us a big meal; and it was delicious. The little kids had an egg hunt downstairs. Which I missed getting any pictures of since daddy and I were hiding eggs upstairs for our big kids. And we only took a few pictures of Jess and Brandon during their hunt.

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Duchess

She may be a senior citizen in dog years, but she is certainly a pup at heart! This rope is her favorite toy (as you can see, it is well chewed and pulled apart). While Duchess often drops it in your lap for some good ol' fashion tug-o-war, she also likes to just chew the knots and give it a good toss in the air. 

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Easter morning

Easter morning the kids were ready to go downstairs to see what the Easter Bunny had left for them. We've had our baskets out on the dining room table with empty eggs in hopes that Mr. Bunny would leave some treats and filled eggs to find. As the kids are getting older/bigger, I'm sure it must be more difficult each year for Mr. Bunny to hide the eggs around our living room. Maybe I will leave him a note next year to expand his egg-hiding terrain. The eggs that we colored together were taken to Grandma and Grandpa's house for the egg hunt that they had there.

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Easter Egg?

We have had a lot of rain lately. So when we noticed that the mulch looked a little washed away we thought that the rain ruuning off the roof of the porch had something to do with it. The sort of thing that the next time it is raining heavily, we will need to do a "look-see." This morning I as trying to be extra attentive to the Clematis growing, making sure that it grows UP the lattice and not just a tangled lump of pretty flowers, I didn't even realize that I had a surprise! Looks like somebody other than the Easter Bunny will have eggs for us. How fun is that?!?

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I will definately have to keep tabs on our guests...

At the Park

A couple of Sundays ago, Jess had an outing with her Girl Scouts. It was only a few hours, but we took advantage of the beautiful day and went to the park. This was one of the first really nice, sunny, Spring days that we had. The result was that everyone had the same idea!

Brandon decided to play a version of hide and seek... He wanted to go "hide" in/on the playground equipment and we would "seek" him out with the camera. It was fun trying to find him, and not too easy either! He was pretty much in constant motion. Almost all of the pictures are all from our game, so I did not add very many captions.

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Last one!

This is it for our Spring Break pictures!!

While I did have others that are random driving down the highway snapshots, I just put the ones from our little side trip. We added a "via point" on our route and went to see Punxsutawney Phil. This little town was the cutest! And the people were so friendly! It is too bad that it was so late in the evening when we arrived. Throughout the town, there are six foot tall statues of "Phil." We only saw about 1/2 of them, if that.

Sorry a few pictures are blurry. That whole moving vehicle, traffic, and lack of daylight didn't work to well on a few of them.

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More (Still??) Boston Pics

So I've been a bit behind in getting pictures up from the rest of our trip. I was a tiny bit sidetracked. But hopefully this will finish it up!

One evening, we walked a few (several? many?) blocks to go to Cheers. This bar/pub was the inspiration for the TV show.

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On our last afternoon, the guys had finished up early. We decided to go see the Old North Church and Paul Revere's house.

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I thought that I had more pictures of Paul Revere's house. But then I remembered that we couldn't take pictures while inside. Had I thought this through, I would have added these few pics to the other slide show.

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A visit to Trinity Chuch and Boston Public Library

 Each morning when the drapes and shades were opened, I had a beautiful view of Trinity Church.
On this day, the ladies group was going to a play in the afternoon (Educating Rita, It was pretty cute.). So I had some time by myself  between breakfast and meeting Steve for lunch. Then going to the play. It was a pretty day with blue skies and sunshine, although a bit chilly. But I admired this church each day and took this opportunity to go visit. Unfortunately, I had just missed one of the tours, so I was unable to go into the sanctuary. But I did enjoy looking around. So back outside I went for lots more pictures. Each and every side was beautiful to look at.



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Across the street is the Boston Public Library. I wasn't sure what to expect when I went in here. It was the big ornate lighting fixtures that drew me in. It was beautiful! I didn't even pull a single book off of any of the shelves and I still loved it. I'm sure that I would have lingered a bit more, but the camera battery was finally done. I guess it wasn't a bad thing though. I had time to go back to the room to put the camera away before my lunch date.

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A road trip to Maine

On Tuesday morning we headed to Stonewall Kitchen in York, Maine. A bus was charted for our big group of ladies. The trip was mostly uneventful. A small mishap. But overall a good. We had our lunch prepared for us. The chef prepared an example of each dish as it was being served to us. We were also given the recipes for them as well. I had taken a picture of the shrimp appetizer and the chicken and pasta main course. We were also served a ceasar salad with homemade ceasar dressing and french bread croutons and a dessert with lemon curd and strawberries. I forgot to take a picture of it. But I found it to be very tasty! There is also a retail shop connected to the cooking school. I browsed, but didn't buy anything. Lots of neat looking gadgets. :)
Afterwards, we boarded our bus and took a short trip to Ogunquit. It seemed to be "off season" for this little town. We did not have a lot of time to spend here. Most of which we (Deb and I) spent going on the Marginal Way walking path. Although we did have a few minutes to browse one shop for a souvenier.

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Oh, and to think that I almost forgot to include dinner that evening!! Steve and I try to find a Hard Rock Cafe when we travel. Geez, I type that out and it seems to make it sound like we are always on the road. Not true. Anyway, we had arrived back from our day trip in time for the guys to finish up....whatever it is that they would do... and be ready for dinner. Making the trip to HRC required us to ride the MBTA (the subway system aka the T). If only I could really put into words the adventure that this simple outing for dinner truly was! I could not possibly due justice, so we will just have to leave it as "hilarious!!!" And any indication to this- the MBTA officer that we saw on the return to our stop waved and gave us a thumbs up. I'm sure that we made her day!

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and I know that the Rock this Way sign looks odd sideways. I wanted a simple collage for the few pics and is was all landscape or all portrait. Majority wins.

Boston

Last week was Spring Break. We all did some traveling! The kids went to Grandma and Grandpa's house. The dog went to our friend's house. We went to Boston. There were a couple really nice things about this trip. First, it worked out nicely that it coincided with the kids school schedule. Secondly, Steve was traveling for a conference for work and I was able to go too. Although, we were not traveling with the kiddos, we were not traveling alone. Alan and Deb (Steve's coworker and his wife) went also. It was an uneventful drive. We broke it up into 2 days worth and the important decisions were along the lines of "where do we want to eat?"
We stayed in the same hotel as the last time "we" attended this conference. Six short years ago. This little conference is quite the "to-do" and welcomes spouses/companions as well. Even going that extra mile as to coordinate a breakfast on the first day so that everyone can meet and greet. Or see one another again, in some cases. Some of the wives in attendance have been to this conference almost as many years as I have had birthdays. Almost. But I digress. Outings are arranged, hospitality suites opened and new friends made.
After breakfast, Deb and I went on a Trolley tour. We decided to get off the trolley at the Faneuil Hall stop. It has all sorts of shops and food vendors in Quincy Market. We decided it was time to get back on the trolley to finish the tour. And then something funny happened. I was this young boy that I thought looked familiar. Which is really crazy since he lives in the same state as me. Then I saw the tall blonde guy behind them. It could not possible be that I see 2 people that look like father and son back home. So I am trying to see around the other people sitting on the trolley and debating whether or not to get off the trolley. Just to see if I know these people. (And just for the record, the trolley wasn't leaving this stop for a few minutes, waiting to pick up more passengers.) So I stand up to get a better look and decided I will just have to debark (unboard, get off of) the trolley. I see the whole family there. And I KNOW these people! What a crazy lark! That we would be on the same trolley in Boston, Mass, completely unaware of the other's travel plans. And if that wasn't crazy enough, it didn't even occur to me to get a picture of us together, even though I (obviously) had the camera with me and we have hundreds of pictures from this trip.
That night for dinner, Steve and I went to Cheesecake Factory. Alan and Deb said that since we were without children, we should be able to have some time to ourselves. While that is very nice of them, and we certainly didn't mind having dinner companions, I hope it wasn't code for "I've seen that girl all day and I'm tired from the extra walking we had due to that wrong turn she took. I need a break!"

BTW, the rasberry lemon cheesecake, YUM!!

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more pictures coming...