Maine, Round 1

I'm barely a quarter of the way through all the photos, and I'm already overwhelmed. So many good ones to choose from! Must post for posterity! Whelp, I'm afraid I'm just going to have to bore you with multiple photo-heavy, text-light posts.

We left off at the end of our first day of vacation, merrily swimming in the lake and falling into exhausted heaps (what with the whole "4 a.m. wake-up" we suffered through). Our first full day in Maine had us heading up the Songo River. We boated in style:

Wasn't it a beautiful quiet morning for a boat ride?

 

SOMEONE demanded a snack within the first 10 minutes of the outing, per usual.

 

Then again, the rest of us WERE having Bloody Mary's, so I guess it was only fair

M. and Finn fished (no takers to be had)

My mom :-)

Sporting some new Spiderman sunglasses

We traveled through the Songo River lock before stopping to take a quick dip off the boat in Brandy Pond. Then we headed under the bridge into Long Lake (scene of the Great Crane Crash of 2011) for lunch and ice cream at Rick's:

Have you ever seen a cuter ice cream face?

 

Lucy fell asleep on the chilly, quick ride back home, just like this - on her Grammy's lap, clutching a teddy bear, snuggled under a blanket

Later that night we roast marshmallows and made s'mores

The next day, Monday, started out rainy/cloudy, so Lucy played dress up with a flower girl dress that I wore when 6-year-old me was in my Aunt Robin and Uncle Tom's wedding (handmade by Robin's mom!):

 

 My dad took me, M., and Finn on a 3-mile hike/walk that involved some fun woodsy scrambling and WAY too many horse flies, while Lucy and my mom baked brownies. At some point (that day? the next day?), there was more beautiful scenery and fishing:

There was also kayak-purchasing (we added two kid-sized kayaks to my parents' collection of boats), ice cream eating, actual kayaking (Finn was a rock star! Lucy mostly just let us do all the work while we towed her along), and jet ski driving (not my favorite activity!), and lots more swimming and hot-tubbing.

Tuesday afternoon my sister Kristin arrived with her three kids (and thus ended the quiet part of our vacation).

Next up - more photos! Of cousins! Stay tuned.

Back to Life

Back to Reality

Come on, you were thinking it too, right? A little Soul II Soul?

Moving along. Yes, we are back from a great, fun-filled, altogether too short (even though it was 8 days!) vacation in Maine. Yesterday found us, yet again, cursing the New Jersey turnpike (common theme of every return car trip from up north) and scrambling for alternate routes. But we made it back, safe and sound, only 4 Lucy meltdowns and 12 hours after leaving Lake Sebago. And we are back to reality with a bang - a kitchen full of ants (gah!), last-minute brown bag lunches for the kids with the scraps of bread I managed to find in the fridge, a weird beeping noise coming from our Verizon internetty-box-thing, a less-than-functional air conditioner in M.'s car, hundreds of e-mails to sort through, and piles of luggage contents to put away.

But first M. and I made our vacation last just a teensy bit longer with Thai take out and a (far-too-expensive) bottle of wine in front of the TV last night. Austerity be damned, I guess!

I have over 200 photos to sort through for a proper debriefing (assuming I get around to doing one). But I will share a few photos now from our first day of vacation, which was perhaps the most horrible and also most glorious. From 4:25 a.m. on, we spent about 9 happy-ish hours in the car with the kids (yes! I said happy! Good moods all around, and the kids were really good!). Then we hit the Saturday afternoon Massachusetts/N.H./Maine beach traffic, and groaned through the last 3+ hours of our trip. It was painfully slow, and we got to my parents house about 2 hours later than I wanted to.

Within minutes, we had swim suits on, coolers packed, and we were off on the boat for an early evening cocktail cruise and swim. We anchored the boat just off shore, and jumped right into the lake. All the stress of the drive was rinsed away in the just-the-right-temperature water. The kids goofed around with my parents, my brother, and his girlfriend, we had some snacks and drinks, and we watched the sun get lower in the sky. It was the perfect start to a vacation, really.

 

Who gave this kid a license?

 

Even scarier :-)

 

 

 

See? Relaxing.

Maine, we will be back!!

Gone Fishin'

4:15 in the morning on Saturday found us doing this:

Driving... (Delaware's largest feature)

Sleeping (for a bit)

Not sleeping - at all

Admiring my fun, vacation-colored toes

And after many, many hours of driving (12 and a half, to be exact), we made it here:

Worth it, no?

There has been boating

And hiking

Right after this photo, I raced this guy up a super steep hill. We got to the top and he reached out to feel my racing heart, a huge grin on his face. Vacationing rocks (literally and figuratively).

And kayaking (that's the kids in the mini kayaks behind us - new acquisitions for the "On The Rocks" flotilla (On The Rocks being the name of my parents' lake house)

 We're still busy relaxing, more photos to come later!

The Catch Up, Part 2: A Family Wedding in Maine

Thank you all for the kind words of sympathy - they've meant a lot to me over the last few days. It has been a bittersweet experience. We've all been throwing out wonderful, happy memories of Papa to each other that make me smile - they've brought back some memories I had almost forgotten! But it's still tough to accept that I'll never see him again. My grandmother held a service down in Florida today to let his friends there say goodbye, and this July we'll gather as a family to hold another memorial service and intern his ashes in Massachusetts. Maybe by then it will feel more real.

And in the meantime, things keep moving. Gardens get planted, zoos get visited, teeth are lost (Finn lost his second one today!), book fairs are attended, teachers get appreciated... it's been a busy few days, and that's OK - good, really.

And I carry on with my "catching up" here in this space. We left off with a whirlwind trip to Wisconsin that brought us back home VERY late on Easter Sunday. It was quickly followed by a birthday, where yours truly tipped the scale toward "late thirties" by becoming 36. We celebrated with cake and a Frederick Keys game - where I wisely chose not to bring my camera, since Lucy hung all over me for the entire 7 innings that we lasted. Girlfriend was a HANDFUL, let me tell you. But Finn had a blast, so I have a feeling we'll be heading back again this summer.

No photos from that part of the month, but it's for the best, because now I'm going to overwhelm you with them. OK, wait, scratch that - M. e-mailed me some photos from his iPod from the Keys game, so here you go!:

 

Finn posing with "Keyote," the team mascot.

 

This souvenir hat used to be full of popcorn. Then it was on Finn's head. Now I have to find a place to store it FOREVER because Finn and M. and Lucy are sentimental schmucks that won't let me throw out anything. It's currently stacked with my mixing bowls along with two other souvenir baseball helmet/ice cream bowls. Blarg.

 

But he does look cute in it.

 

She was so ANNOYING.

 

But also cute

 

Less than two weeks after my birthday, we flew up to Maine to watch my cousin Katy get married. Since the wedding was in Portland, we were able to stay at my parents' house on Sebago Lake. It was still too cold for any kind of water activity, but just being able to look at it was so peaceful and relaxing. I'll narrate a few of the photos here, but most of them speak for themselves:

 

Mom and Dad bought a "Pirate Castle" playground for all the grandkids, and it was a HUGE hit!

 

The grown ups were declared "The Enemies." Here, Ned plots his next move.

 

Josephine surveys her kingdom.

 

But also lets her mom in, grown ups be damned, because she can't bear to be without her.

 

A view of the whole castle from the house.

 

M. indulged in Maine flannel and a mid-afternoon beer - how decadent!

 

That's me on the right, Stacey in the middle, and Kristin on the left.

 

Looks fab, no?

 

We had a small birthday celebration for Lucy that Friday night, since we were only 6 days away from her actual birthday - this is how happy it made her. Look at that smile!

 

She received a jewelry box replete with jewelry, including clip on earrings. She was in total heaven.

 

 

Here are the girls primping in front of a mirror the next morning, while the house was bustling with frantic grooming and showering.

 

Followed by several attempts for photos before we left for the wedding. Some were less successful than others.

 

The best shot I had of all the cousins (from left, Cameron, Josephine, Penny, Ned, Finn, and Lucy)

 

God, they kill me.

 

I have LOTS of photos from the wedding ceremony, but they all suck. I had my ISO up pretty high because the lighting was dim, and it just didn't work out well. Alas. Perhaps this is the kick in the butt I need to learn how to take flash photos properly?

 

Here is Lucy after the ceremony, bellied up to the bar and enjoying some goldfish crackers we brought with us.

 

My brother Andrew and my dad

 

This was Finn's very first Shirley Temple. They have a special place in my heart, because my grandfather would always make them for us kids during cocktail hour so we'd have something special to drink, too.

 

Goofing around during the dinner and dancing portion of the night.

 

I made them pose for this, but it's still cute. God those eyes are blue!

 

My sister Stacey with her husband Jeremy and their daughter Cameron

 

This is the group shot of the bride's paternal side of the family - 4 siblings (my mom, her sister, and her brothers) and their spouses, 11 of the 13 children they spawned, several husbands and boyfriends/girlfriends, and 7 little "next generationers." We were only missing a few people - two of my cousins who couldn't make it, and my grandparents (Mimi was back in Florida with a sick Papa). All these people came from the little tree branch started by my Mimi and Papa - crazy!

 

Busting a move on the dance floor

 

 

Dancing, Gangnam-style

 

Lucy was absolutely OBSESSED with Katy (who was a beautiful bride, and I wish I had some proper pictures to do her justice!), and would NOT dance with anyone else. Nor could she be convinced to leave the dance floor. Here she is with her cousin Cameron, monopolizing the bride's time. Katy was so sweet and gracious about it, though, and it made Lucy's night:

 

 

We all became pumpkins at around 8:30 (wedding started in the early afternoon), and headed back to Sebago for bedtime (for the kiddos) and a cocktail out by the outdoor fireplace (for the grown ups). It was COLD, though, so bedtime was relatively early - which was good, because ALL the kids were up by around 6:15 a.m.!

 

 

Enjoying a sunny Sunday morning before heading back to Maryland. Much coffee was had.

 

I have one more "catch up" post to do until we're even - a rundown of Lucy's birthday party. Coming soon to a blog post near you!