July:

Can't believe how fast July flew by!! This is how I saw it:

Cheers :)

VT . . . PA

I may have had a crazy few days traveling but I had such a great time and got to make a lot of memories!!

My travels started with a trip north to visit family in Vermont :)  I love it up there!! Something about the mountains and the quaint little shops . . . or maybe because I have nothing but good memories up there.  Whatever it is, I was really looking forward to going, even though I had to make the hike north alone.  

By the time I arrived, the rest of the family was winding down a little but we still had time for cards and a few laughs before calling it a night.  We were all cozy in the cabin . . . together :)

We packed a lot into the one day I was up there!!  We started off doing some furniture shopping at my uncle's store.  We always head over to look around when we're in VT.  I can remember winding through the maze of the store as a kid, trying to find every single room, and make sure I checked out every little cranny . . . then the real trick was trying to round up the rest of the family!!  All these years later I still love it!! You never know what you're going to find at Buck's  :)

Back at the house we were preparing for a fondue dinner!! In the past we've gone up to Canada to an amazing fondue restaurant, but this year we decided to do fondue Buck/Jewett/Michaud/Morneault style :)

 Everything was delicious!! Brian and John tried to take care of the leftovers . . . they gave it their best effort

And then there's what I was able to capture over the rest of the day:

I think my brother thought he was funny . . . ?

At my sister's request I can't post the cute pictures of my niece so this will have to do

We were finally able to celebrate Kim's birthday!!

Floyd :)

Our very intense game of Mexican "Monkey" Train Dominos

And I even caught one of the humming birds that was flying around the garden

It was a short but sweet trip!!  As always it was a blast!!  I drove straight from Vermont to the gym, went home, unpacked, re-packed, and headed off to Pennsylvania the next morning!!  PA was another very quick, but fun trip.  3 of our team boys were attending the Penn State gymnastics camp, and I tagged along with Sue to drop them off.  I'm sure most 12-13 year old boys are a little crazy . . . well, maybe entertaining would be a better word?  With these 3 there was never a dull moment!!

Yes that would be Chandler under the blanket in the back . . . 

 "Comfy Kev?"

 Our hotel was right next to the university so we took a walk to figure out where we would have to go the next day . . . 

  . . . we found it . . .

 . . . and the boys made some friends along the way . . . 

 Did I mention it was gymnastics camp?

 "How many miles is it?" The boys kept our hike interesting by riding imaginary horses ( think Montey Python), and danced around in a field with fireflies (it was very The Sound Of Music)

The next day we got the boys signed in, settled in, and after lunch and a stop at the campus creamery we were off again for CT!!  It was just the 2 of us coming back but I think we managed to make the ride home more entertaining then the ride there :) It's simply what happens when you put 2 tired friends in a car for 6+ hours and caffeinate them :) :)

 Took the NYC route home.

Just felt like changing up the scenery :)

The boys had a great few days at camp, and life is back to normal . . . or as normal as things get around here . . . for a week or two anyway!!  Off to the next adventure!!

Cheers!!

{Park}

Mohegan Park is such a nice place to go for a stroll. This was one of those crazy 90-something-degree days and a walk in the park seemed like the perfect way to spend my morning :)

Cheers!!

The Voyage . . . Home?

Ok so maybe we weren't on the Enterprise but we did spend the afternoon looking for whales!!  I had a vacation weekend a couple weeks ago so of course I had to go out and do something.  Lucky for me my usual partner in crime was game but unfortunately for us neither of us could decide what exactly we wanted to do.  Going into the weekend we had originally been planning on going out to Block Island, but for a variety of reasons decided to save it for another weekend.  So what to do? After a lot of research on our smart phones over breakfast and a few minutes twiddling our thumbs in the Starbucks parking lot we decided to head for Boston and see if we could make it out on a whale watch.  When we had visited a couple months ago we had put it on the list of things we should do one day.  By the time we got there the last boat at 5:30 was the only one available.  Why not? We were already there.  So we had a few hours to kill . . .
A nice flower garden entertained me for a while, lunch at a pub, some shopping, and a little laying around in the sun did the trick!!

So we were off to find whales!!  I had never done anything like that before and wasn't really sure what to expect.  It was fun and we found the whales Captain Kirk!!

Any time the whale did anything interesting it was always on the other side of the boat, but that's ok, it was still neat to see, and taking the later boat turned out to be a good thing because the sunset was beautiful!!  I tried but I don't think the pictures do it justice.

Cheers :)