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!