Dotzour Family.com

Click here for Part I and Part II to hear the start of our story!

…After spending the afternoon at Lands End, we split our group.  Joe and Dad and Terry and Michael went to Joe’s Baccalaureate ceremony at Bowdoin.  The rest of us drove over to Freeport to visit the LL Bean mothership store.

Joe and I had visited the store back in 2005, and for the past five years, as I browse their catalog, I’ve thought to myself, “I won’t order that now…I’ll wait until I go visit Joe and get it at the store!”  Well, it turns out that I never did visit Joe at school (sniff!), but I took full advantage of visiting the store this time.

I got the kids fleecey-lined hoodies (orange and purple).  Evelyn got a pink one.  I got a pretty green shirt for myself.  That’ll be my version of our Maine souvenirs.  Sylvia was tired (no nap for two days) and really, really, really wanted some pink flip flops that she found.  So she threw a class III tantrum as we were departing.  Ahh well.  Memories.

From LL Bean, we traveled back to Bowdoin where we met up with the Baccalaureate crew (who were running late because the fire-alarm had been pulled mid-ceremony by a wayward child) and headed to the all-school Lobster Bake.

Ahh, lobsta.

Sylvia had a bite of lobster and liked it, but then she didn’t want any more.  She was much more interested in eating just plain butter (see below as she finishes off a pat).  I sit nearby pretending not to watch.

So that finished off our first full day in Maine!

We headed back to the cottages to put the kids down for bed and to relax.  Joe headed back to his dorm for his last night as a student with his college friends.  Good night, Maine!  Thank you for sharing a wonderful day.

If you missed Part I, you can find it here!  I’ll start you out with a slideshow of photos of our first day in Maine.  There’s 100…sorry, I usually edit things down more, but I couldn’t.  I think 25 is a great number of photos to share.  100 is just me being lazy:)

After our Bowdoin College visit, Joe got us some yummy sandwiches from the Big Top Deli – The Goose sandwich was delicious and contained key words including “Gouda” and “avocado.”  Yum!  We took our sandwiches and drove from Brunswick to Lands End on Bailey Island…about 20 minutes from Joe’s school.

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Then we picnicked next to the ocean.  Ahh…

After a day of air and car travel, spending several hours exploring a rocky, ocean shore was just the ticket.  We adjusted our schedule so we could stay and play longer.

My brothers took Andrew down the rocky shore for some adventure, and Sylvia and I dipped our toes in the chilly salt water.

We hunted for sea glass and found lots of beautiful rocks and tiny shells.  After carefully collecting a pile of our favorites, the kids gleefully hurled it all into the sea.

The kids and I had fun dipping our fingers in the water and tasting it.  “Salty!!!”

We got a perfect day of weather for our outing.  Sunny, a little breeze.  Our lungs full of ocean air.

Vacation Time!

Bryan, Andrew, Sylvia, and I flew out to Maine on Thursday, May 27.  We’ve been anticipating this vacation for months, and we were all so excited.  The kids now love waking up “in the middle of the night” (somewhere between 3:30 and 4:30am) to go on trips.  We had a long day of travel with layovers in Detroit and LaGuardia. However, Sylvia has really turned a traveling-corner, and both kids were champs.  We flew with my dad, and fortunately we all got in to Portland with all our bags (to avoid the checked bag fees, we had four suit cases and three backpacks.  Plus two carseats checked.  So much stuff!).  We met up with Terry, Tom, my sister Maretta and her husband Kyle (who live in St. Paul), my brother Michael and his wife Lisa, and our friends/”cousins” Heather, Michael, and little Evelyn (who live in DC).  For those of you who are counting, that makes 14 of us including Joe.  Quite a crew!

I love being together with my family.  Makes me so happy.  I think we all particularly missed having Mom here for this occasion.  She’s our hub, and she would have so enjoyed the weekend and the successful launching of her last little chick.

Terry found us some wonderful cottages to rent about 20 minutes from Bowdoin.  I think it’s fair to say that I was blown away by them.  They were beautifully decorated.  The kitchen was amazing.  The details were so thoughtful and well-crafted.  And yet they had a nice cottagy, not-too-big feel.  The 14 of us split between two cottages (we stayed at Cottage #516; The Calderwood), and we spent some lovely hours in the evening sitting by the fire or chatting on the porch looking out at the river.

On Friday, we visited Bowdoin and explored a little of Maine.  Terry took me and Maretta and Heather to a wonderful yarn shop called Halcyon Yarn.  It was by far the biggest, most well-stocked yarn store I’ve ever had the pleasure of browsing.  Apparently they do most of their sales via internet and catalog, so look them up!  Terry found some un-spun cashmere fiber ($185/lb) that we enjoyed petting for a little while.  Maretta got a set of the Addi Turbo interchangeable knitting needles, and Heather got a book on knitting two socks at a time.  A very Heather thing to do:)  I got a kit to make felted balls with the kids.  Such pretty colors!  Should be fun!

Then we met up with the rest of the gang, and Joe gave us a tour of Bowdoin and showed us his dorm.  Now the last time I was at Bowdoin, Joe was a high school senior and Andrew was three months old (see the album here!).  Joe loved Bowdoin, but he was rather scared out of his mind that he wouldn’t get in.  So it was really cool to have my second visit to Bowdoin be my happy brother showing us around the campus he has grown to know and love so much.  I’m really proud of him!

Wow!  This post is getting long.  I’m going to take a break and come back at you with more details tomorrow.  In the meantime, if you’d like to see more pictures from our first day in Maine, you can see them (all 100 of them from day 1) here!

I’ve had several friends and family members send me notes the last week asking where on earth I was.  Why wasn’t I posting?  How’s life??

Well, friends, I have been busy.  In the last two weeks, I’ve taken and mostly edited about 5,000 photos for Althea Dotzour Photography.  Pictures of the Dotzour children during that time: 0.

In the last month, I think I’ve put more hours into my photography work than ever before.  I’ve been sneaking in an hour or two of work during the day.  I’ve asked friends to take my kids so I can get some time to work (thank you!!).  I’ve been staying up until midnight or one or even two on a very regular basis.  And the most amazing part (to me) is that I’m so productive.  I’m not reading blogs or hanging out on Facebook (unless it’s to “friend” and post pics of clients).  I’m burning through my to-do lists.  Despite my slight exhaustion, I am so happy.  I love my work.  Love love, passion, love!

However, while I’ve been preoccupied with my work, there’s been quite a few events happening in our little world that I want to share.

The first is a sad one.  Bryan’s grandma…LuAnn’s mom…suffered a bad stroke last week.  She’s been in the hospital since then, and this morning, she passed away.  Bryan’s mom has been in Wichita since last week, and it sounds like there’s a good community who have been helping and supporting each other and Grandpa Harvey through this hard time.  Grandma Harvey turned 92 a few days ago.  And she’s leaving behind a beautiful legacy.  A 70-year marriage, three wonderful kids and lots of grand kids and great-grand kids.  We’re going to be flying to Wichita over the weekend.  I believe the funeral will be on Monday.
I’m sorry that I didn’t share news about Grandma Harvey earlier.  For those of you who didn’t know her, I knew her as a sweet, tiny grandma who simply adored her family.  She and Grandpa were clearly so content and gentle and upstanding and honorable and loving.  My heart goes out to Grandpa.  It’s got to be a tough thing to lose your life partner.

Sweet Grandma Harvey.  We’ll miss you.  We’re so glad we go to spend such a nice time together last month.

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Here in Madison, Bryan’s had a tumultuous week.  He’d been approached about a new by a local company and spent the last few weeks interviewing.  They offered him a position (Bryan’s a software engineer) last week, and then he spent what felt like a month but was really only about four days trying to decide if he should stay at OpGen or if he should move.  Two days ago (Tuesday), Bryan accepted the new job.  He’ll be working for an online designer retail company called ShopBop.  It’s owned by Amazon.  So starting on June 7, he’ll be going to a new place of employment.  I’m really excited for him, and I hope he’s challenged and inspired and that he has a great time.  Their offices are much closer to our home, so that will be a nice change!

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If you’d like to see a little of what I’ve been up to, visit my photography blog: http://altheadotzourphotography.com/blog

Lots of cute kids to see there!  And if you’re interested in booking a session with me this summer, contact me in the next couple weeks.  My session fee goes up on May 31, so book now to get a low rate.  And spread the word:)

Chow friends!

~Althea

While we were in Wichita last weekend, we had the pleasure of spending our Saturday evening with our friends Julie and Jerry.  Bryan and Julie were good friends in high school, and it’s always a treat when our Wichita visits include some time with them.  Julie and Jerry have two boys.  Grayson just turned five (so he’s a few months older than Andrew) and Carter just turned one (so he’s about a year younger than Sylvie).

The evening of our visit was warm and spring-ish, so we spent a lot of time outdoors.  I took, well, a lot of pictures of Grayson and Carter.  All of them can be seen (and downloaded if anyone’s interested) in the gallery.  My favorites are below.

While Andrew didn’t remember Grayson from our visit last year, they played so sweetly together.  After spending a few hours together, Andrew seemed to add Grayson to his internal “best buds” list.

There’s baby Carter with his mama.

Dads with babes.

Looking up toward their front door.

Grayson has a John Deere Gator.  They drove it all around the cul-du-sac.  Andrew took a turn driving and did really well.  Sylvia was really interested in taking a ride, but then when the time came, she had second thoughts:)  It’s a very big truck!

Carter was often walking with his hands up in the air.  Such a cute baby move!

What a little doll.

Look at those eye lashes!?!  Grayson has always had cheek-kissing lashes.

Carter walking up to mom and dad.

Grayson is riding his bike without training wheels, and boy, does he fly!Andrew and Grayson had a lot of fun kicking the ball around the yard.  Well, they mostly had a lot of fun.  Grayson is a bit more skilled in the art of dribbling a soccer ball.  Andrew got a lot of practice chasing him.  Then they’d roll down the hill together.

Dad (and Sylvia) get into the action.

Julie and Jerry, it was such fun to spend the evening with you!  I wish we could all play together a lot more often.  Maybe we’ll be able to plan a trip some day:)