Summer Vacation: Concord, NH

The main point of our summer vacation was to see Mike’s family and go to his brother’s wedding reception. We spent an entire weekend with them. It was a blast!
We arrived just in time, too. Just as soon as we got to his parent’s house, it started hailing like crazy!

It ended up being fun to play in. Mike and his brother were even crazy enough to try to run around the house without any umbrellas. They made it about half way before it hurt too much and they had to take a shortcut through the garage.

As soon as the hail let up, we headed over to the church to set up for the reception. Tennyson thought it was one big game.

The reception turned out wonderfully. We were so glad we were able to make it!

Other highlights from the visit:
1. Candlepin bowling. Mike bowled a 97. In candlepin, that is like getting a 200. It’s hard to do. We were all very proud.
2. A Wedding Luncheon. We got to see a lot of extended family and Tennyson got to play with one of his cousins that he has never met before. She would guard the door so he couldn’t get through and he’d try as hard as he could to crawl around her.

3. Tennyson got to spend quite a bit of time with his Great-Grammy. She loved him. In fact, if the two were ever in a picture together, neither were looking at the camera… just at each other.

4. We took a drive through the mountains of New Hampshire.

5. We spent Sunday afternoon at the Joseph Smith Birthplace Memorial in Vermont. Tennyson got to sit on the doorstep that was a part of his house.

6. We spent a morning at the newly remodeled planetarium. Tennyson even got to fly a plane.
7. We stopped at Friendly’s a couple times for Mike’s favorite ice cream treat.
 
8. We played at one of the parks that Mike grew up playing at.
 
It was so much fun being able to see all the family. Tennyson was thrilled to meet all his aunts and uncles and cousins. We can’t wait until we can visit again!!

Summer Vacation: York, Maine

On our summer vacation, we got to spend a day being beach bums on the coast of Maine.
It was a perfect day.
Tennyson put his feet in the ocean for the first time ever. It was ice cold. And the waves terrified him.

But he loved the mud. 

And chasing seagulls.
And playing in the sand with Grammy.
 
Mike and his brothers went into the ocean to play. I think they are a bit crazy. The water was really icy.

We loved visiting all the local spots.
Like the nubble lighthouse.
And Brown’s ice cream.
We had to stop at our favorite taffy spot to watch them make their delicious peanut butter taffy.
And, of course, we had to get some fresh Maine lobster for dinner.

I love the beach. Our day turned out absolutely perfect. And it ended my favorite way.

We Love Summer (and Popsicles)

It’s a daily ritual of ours. After dinner we go out to the backyard. The weather is always perfect that time of day. We spend our evenings walking up and down the sidewalk, playing with grass, and dumping dirt in and out of a Tonka Truck. And we always finish our evenings off with a popsicle.

Evenings around here are perfect. Sure, we have some scraped knees. We have quite a few bug bites. But we couldn’t be happier.

Where We Live

Our new condo is all set up (finally) and ready for you to take a look!

Here is the main level of the home. You first walk into the formal living room.




Then the dining area is right off of that.



And then our kitchen (and around the corner behind the fridge is a bathroom and the door to our basement).



When you go upstairs, there is a nice landing that leads to a bathroom and two bedrooms.



So on the right in that picture is Tennyson’s room.




And our room is right next to that. Our room is now bigger (big enough to fit our desk! yay!) and has a ceiling fan (yay!) and a walk in closet (yay!).



The bathroom looks really bland right now because I need to add some ribbon to that shower curtain. And you can’t see in the picture, but the bathroom now has a skylight! It really brightens everything up.



The basement used to be nice, but now we’ve rearranged the furniture and it has become one of our favorite rooms. We’ve moved the TV to a much more open area, and the place our TV used to be is now a play area for Tennyson. No more toys all over the house! Hooray!



And here is, I dare say, the biggest reason we moved… the backyard!! Our old backyard was awful. In case you never got to see it… this was our view from the back. And behind that fence was some pretty sketchy apartments. And a family of very noisy bulldogs.



And now… we have this:



Such a complete (and I must say very welcome) change!! We really love it here.