Start at the beginning

I have decided the best way to chronicle my vacation is to start at the begnning. My last day of school was Wednesday, the 16th. That night my friend Stacey and her family came out to visit for two days.
Stacey was my best friend in Florida. Her son Kyle was 5 and Ali was about 18 months, and we did everything together while our husbands were out to sea. At that time, Stacey was pregnant, she had Ryan a week before I moved to Maine. We kept in touch through e-mails and phone calls. Her husband Nick has been transferred to Great Lakes, but while they were moving, they were coming up to MA for her sister's wedding. Perfect time for us to get together! Here is me and Stacey and Ryan, the newborn, our first night.
Thursday we had breakfast in Salem and then headed to Boston so I could give them the "Lisa's tour of the best of Boston in one day"
We hit the "Make Way for Ducklings" statues, here is a picture of the kids on them and the whole Lutze family on Mrs. Mallard.

Next was the Swan boats. After the Swan boats we headed down Newbury Street, admiring all of the shop windows on the boutique end, laughing at the tee shirts in the French Connection UK store, then we went to Hard Rock Cafe. Here are some pics of the kids with guitars and Nick eating lunch.
After Hard Rock, we went over to the Hancock Building to get the best view of Boston from the observation tower (not to mention a moment of weightlessness if you jump just as the elevator starts its' descent) only to find out it has been closed since Sept 11th 2001. Bummer. Guess I haven't been there in a while!
We continued on down Newbury street and I introduced them to some of the the classic Boston stores such as Newbury Comics where I found a perfect pin for school. It says "Gangsta Nerd" on it and I can't wait to wear it tomorrow. We then stopped for Ice Cream at Ben & Jerrys, here are the kids at their table eating.
As for my funny story for the day, well the Cow Parade is in Boston. They have all of these life sized cows (ceramic? porcelin?) around the city painted and decorated. The kids had fun pointing them out. At one point, Nick said (to himself) "What's with all these fu**ing cows?" Of course, Ali heard it, and the next cow she saw, she said "Look Nick, another fu**ing cow!"

Back from vacation!!

We are back!!!
We had a great vacation! We went through 7 states, visited with 11 relatives, 8 friends, I got together with 1 friend from college, talked to another on the phone and visited one natural wonder.

I have many stories to tell and lovely pictures to post, but I also have to unpack and run a million errands before school starts tomorrow. I will be posting all of our vacation adventures soon!

Another Perfect Day!

Yet another amazing Sunday. The weather was wonderful and I really wanted to go for a nice bike ride. I called my step-father and had a discussion, we decided to head to Topsfield and try out the state park there. My sister Katie unfortunately fell after about 10 minutes, so that ended her and my step-father's day there, but Ali and I continued on. First, we found this lovely stone house and gate.

We actually stopped and took quite a few pictures here, I will try to show more later.

Here is Ali on the back of my bike trying to look scared from all of the noises in the woods. (Such a dama queen) I think she was getting sleepy and did not want to fall asleep, so she decided bike riding there was "spooky."









Luckily while were riding, we found a "Fairy Arch" For those of you that do not know what a Fairy Arch is (which is everyone but me since I think I invented it), it is where bushes grow together to form an arch over a path. It is where Faries get married. You can go uner them to make a wish. Ali was all too happy to run over and make a wish. She also looked for fairies. She did not see them, but we think we heard them giggling a few times.
After our fun at the fairy arch, we finally headed back to the car. We took a "wrong turn" pulling out of the park (there is never wrong turns, just adventures) and found our way to a neat little farm stand. Right after we pulled in to take a look, two ladies on horses rode in. Ali and I decided to go and ask them if we could pat the horses. Not only did they let us pat them, one of the ladies offered to let Ali ride her horse!!!! Ali had a nice little ride around the parking lot on a beautiful horse. Of course at the time I did not have my camera on me, but here are the horses a little while later grazing on some grass.
While patting the horses, we noticed pigs! What was really funny was that one of the horses was terrified of the pigs. His eyes were huge staring at them, and he was trying to pull back. And the pigs were behind electric fences!

Despite the smell, I found them quite cute. They had these wonderful enclosures, big areas with lots of food and shelter and tubs of water. There were two seperate enclosures with a path going down the middle. They were rooting around in the dirt and mud and snorting like crazy. I have never heard such vocal pigs! I have to say, their faces and floppy ears were quite endearing!

What a perfect day!

Scooper Bowl!

Tonight was the Scooper Bowl in downtown Salem. What a blast! This is the second year we have gone. You pay a fee ($5.00 for adults, $3.00 for kids) and then get to sample ice cream from local vendors. You get trays and the go to each table and receive small cups with different flavors. It is held on the common, and they have face painting and a band playing.

Here are our Ben & Jerry's yummies and our tickets. There was "Chocolate Chocolate" which was chocolate with brownies in it, "Strawberry Cheese Cake" and "Lemon Sorbet"

Here are the selections from Treadwell's. There was Black rasberry with chocolate chunks and Mint Chip.Ali's favorite was the black rasberry with chocolate chunks. She declared it "The best ice cream ever"

We were going to get more (we still had three more vendors plus unnumerable returns) but the lines were very very long. We decided to get Ali's face painted. She decided on a ladybug on her armWe were even lucky enough to have Will out visiting before his deployment to Afghanistan, so he was able to experience the Scooper Bowl at Salem Common!

A great night had by all!

The rest of the week

It has been a few days since I blogged, mainly due to the heat. Wednesday it was 101. 101. WIth the humidity it felt like 115. I could imagine that in Florida, but in MA?? Thank goodness Ali's babysitter has a pool, she was nice and cool all day. Unfortunately for me, it was a long time in a un-air conditioned building. Some rooms are air conditioned, but not most. Of course I felt lousy by the time I got home. Thursday was cooler, and sometime in the afternoon the temp broke and went down quite a bit, but not in our building. Once again I went home feeling lousy. But now the weekend is here and the weather is supposed to be beautiful. We are going to yard sales tomorrow. I will be sure to post all the wonderful details. I think in the afternoon we are going to get a few of my students and take them to my grandfather's house to do yard work. He has had two surgeries this summer and has not been able to do any sort of yard work. I think it would be nice for the boys to do some community service, and I think it would mean a lot to my grandfather and his wife. Sunday we are either going to the beach with my aunt or we are going to an Animal Planet thing going on near here.

Today we went a toured a new preschool for Alison. We loved it. They have a nice fenced in play area outside, they have big windows and a pretty open building. The teachers were nice, they kids looked like they were having a ball, they have a pre-k curriculm, they serve meals and they are only $20.00 more than we were paying that the other place. I am very happy. We are going to register her there and she will start in September.

Power Outage

We lost power yesterday, apparently around 2:00 in the afternoon. It did not come back on until after midnight. Apparently a phone pole had been rotting and just snapped and fell, the weight of it bringing down the two next to it that were also rotting. Luckily my step-father told my grandmother, so when I went to pick up Alison (she stays with Nana on Mondays) she told us to stay put and avoid the heat. Thank Goodness for Nana!

It was an interesting end to an interesting day. I had called it my "no-good-very-bad-day" much to Alison's delight, but have since changed my mind. When I arrived at school I realized that I had forgotten to pick up the movie "The Outsiders" that I had promised one of my classes I would get. We had just finished reading it, and we were watching it next. Then a quick phone call to the preschool down the street that I had been hoping to enroll Alison in revealed that the opening was gone. At lunch when I stepped outside to run and get the movie a nasty little wasp landed on my hand and bit me right between the knuckles. I had to go back inside and make sure I didn't have an allergic reaction, then head back out (more cautiously) to get the movie. At the movie place, I realized I was a dollar short, then realized that my debit card was sitting at home next to my computer. I ran out to my car to get the change, grabbed the movie and headed back to work. As I pulled into the parking spot, my car stalled; I had run out of gas. The mailman helped me push the car into the spot, and I used the half full gas can the house uses for the mower to power me back up so I could get to a gas station. Then I found out there was no power. As I sat on Nana's couch I realized it really was not a terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day afterall. I mean, there are always other preschools, I didn't have an allergic reaction to the sting, I had the change in my car, the mailman helped me push the car in, I borrowed the gas and container from the school AND I stayed at Nana's to avoid the heat. I think I was actually pretty darn lucky.

And on a completely different subjuct, I just finished reading a great book. It is called "The Pilot's Wife" by Anita Shreve. Supposedly it was made into a movie, but I guess I missed that one. I actually grabbed it by mistake. My friend Deborah has amazing taste in books. She once recommended "gods in Alabama" by Joshilyn Jackson on her blog, I read it and decided I was definately going to follow her recommendations from now on. Recently in her blog she mentioned she was reading "The Time Traveler's Wife" and I filed it away in my mind. At a yard sale over the weekend, I saw "The Pilot's Wife" and was very excited that I had found one of Deborah's books at a great price. It wasn't until I was home looking at Deborah's blog that I realized the error of my ways. However, the book looked good, so I read it. It was great. I don't want to give much away, but after reading some in class (I know, bad me, but the boys were finishing The Outsiders) I was suddenly disappointed, even a little angry. I didn't want to read anymore. It wasn't until this evening when I was home that I realized that I was empathizing with the main character, which showed me the true brilliance of the book. I ad been so caught up in it, I was angry at it! I highly recommend it!

I leave you all with this.... "Do it for Johnny!"