A Birthday and the Weekend Before

The weekend was a perfect prelude to my 39th birthday....we had gorgeous weather for our yard sale at Sandy's and then came home to a newly leveled driveway....no more whiplash driving up our hill! To end our busy Saturday was a church picnic. As usual with our nutty crowd, the laughter carried across the park and lasted as long as the daylight.


I celebrated the beginning of my 40th year by sleeping in, job hunting with Suci and baking a box mix cake with Atira and Tell.


The two of them customized it once the frosting was added and
I thoroughly enjoyed a unique cake with family after a supper of grilled corn on the cob, Naomi's pasta salad and hamburgers...or were they charcoal briquettes? Hard to tell when I grill.....


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Saturday- Wasn't I Just Here?

Saturday found me traveling back down to the Saco area, this time to Funtown/Splashtown with the WWBC youth group.
So many elements of the park are the same as when I was a teenager: teacups, swings (one of my favorites),


Tilt-a-whirl, thunderbolt, and pirate ship (not a favorite). Even the music used on the Astrosphere is exactly the same as twenty years ago. This meant that throughout the day, distant memories of time spent there with my friends (circa 1992)


were easily recalled as I simultaneously made new memories with Atira and Nolan.


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Friday- Just Beachy

This week only Heather and I were in attendance for my Buxton Crowd beach day. This meant, without his cousin Timmy Brunk there, Tell had no competition for Julia Pendleton's time and affection and I think he rather enjoyed it. Stay tuned for the love triangle in later years.....


The end of this gorgeous day found Jim and I traveling down to purchase our "new" van from someone in Saco. Lately our Chevy Venture has had one issue after another. The electric window on the passenger side has been permanently down since the spring. It needs four new tires. It will randomly lose power when I slow down while on corners. The air conditioner is broken and the motor revs really high at times. The fan has been broken for a couple years and when Jim's dad was here last time, he rigged something up to have the fan constantly going or not going at all. It's definitely a conversation piece when you lift the hood and your friend sees an "on/off" light switch attached to your engine. You know when you need to decide...."How much money do I pour into an old vehicle?" Well, we made the decision and now have a Mazda MPV in the driveway.
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Done with the Duct Tape

We could live with the crushed ice cube buttons, the many missing shelves, the remaining duct taped one.......


the door that no longer shut by itself and even the water button, that when pushed, created a mini waterfall down the front of the fridge. When the door no longer remained closed, however, we had to give in and buy a new appliance. Although I hated to spend the money, I'll gladly admit how nice it is not to look at hunter orange and camouflage duct tape each time I want a drink of orange juice.

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Matinee

It's not often that the whole family gets to enjoy the movie theatre experience together, but today was one of those times. Jim and I packed our kids and the Foreman kids into our two trucks and went to see Ice Age: Continental Drift.


The place was so crowded that the only space available was at the very front, which is not the most comfortable viewing position. Atira and Riley opted to find a couple spare seats further back but the rest of us stayed put and settled in for a fun movie. We were not disappointed.


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Up And Down 295 A Few Times

Lots of travel in the car this week...Wednesday it was down to Crescent Beach in Cape Elizabeth to meet Heather, Annah, and Alyssa. I didn't realize that my cousin Jessie would be there also. It was a pleasant surprise when she arrived on the scene, kids in tow. Some of you will not be shocked that she didn't look for us very long but was tipped off to our location by hearing my laugh a half a beach away......later that day, after depositing Atira and Tell back home to Jubal, I headed back down 295 to meet Annah, Alyssa, Nicki and Heather at Oasis Nail Salon on Forest Ave. in Portland.


In honor of Annah Brunk, the baby of the Buxton Crowd, turning 30, we all indulged in a relaxing pedicure and then headed to Applebee's where we finished out the night. Upon leaving, cashless Nicki had to use her debit card to pay for one single cup of coffee and then during our parking lot conversation revealed that she uses the perpetual bird poop on her car (from parking under a nest) to verify her car's identity in a large parking lot. I'm sure the rest of you don't find that particularly interesting but I wanted to remember that Nicki Redlon actually said such a thing......

Thursday it was back down to Portland again, this time to Dr. Zappia's dental office for cleanings. We discovered Tell chipped one of his baby molars but other than that, a good report for all.


Friday, I picked up Nolan from teen camp at Camp Good News and ran into Chris McCarthy and His Bike....(there's never one without the other at CGN) Another nice surprise was Sue Batty's smiling face. You always run into someone that you know up there, it's just a matter of who....

I had no travel plans for today but Aunt Suci showed up at the house and changed that. We went to the gym, picked up some Subway sandwiches, made a fruitless trip to her storage unit and finally arrived at her apartment for lunch and coffee.


Can I just say that I have no plans to go anywhere next week?!

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The Snakes Crawl at Night

(an unpublished addendum to my April AT posts that I just discovered)

We tented close to Fingerboard Shelter last night after an exhausting day of hiking. Once in the tent I told Peg, "I will be asleep before you finish dressing." This morning she confirmed that my snoring began pretty much the minute my head hit the pillow. Inevitably I awoke before dawn needing to use the"Poo Loo". At the same time I recalled that the Fingerboard Shelter had a resident rattlesnake.



I also remembered one of my favorite childhood memories....my Grandpa Dan, in his yodeling, country twang voice, frequently sang "Oh the snakes crawl at night. That's what they say. When the sun goes down, then the snakes will play." So at 4 in the morning I was googling whether this song was accurate. I decided to hold it until daylight.



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