Sand Sculptures

We did decide to go to Hampton Beach to see the Sand Sculptures. Here they are: We found out that they make wooden squares and stack them one on top of the other and pour the wet sand in and then pound it to make it solid.....sort of like patting down brown sugar in a measuring cup.

They have 21 hours total to make their structure. When they're finished, anything that's not sand or water must be removed.

This was the winning sand sculpture. It's called, "It ain't no yolk". The sculptor is from Groveland, MA.

After everyone is done their sculpture, it is sprayed with a mixture of water and white glue to protect it from the elements.

Some of the sculptures are created by merchants in the area to promote their businesses. After about 2 weeks, the sculptures are bulldozed because 10 tons of sand falling on someone could be dangerous.

This one was voted "People's Choice". There were sculptors there from Canada and the Netherlands.

This one was my favorite, and did not win anything.

Gotta love the weekends......

I wish for summer we'd have 2 days of work and 5 days of weekend. Wouldn't that be nice? If I ruled the world, that's how it would be. We needed a quiet weekend right now. So Friday night we stayed in and watched a Netflix movie. Saturday we both worked in the morning and then spent the afternoon/evening at my brother's house. We swam in his pool, ate a BBQ and sat on his screen porch and talked until it got dark. Today.......we'll see. We got out of bed decadently late. We're both puttering around, and maybe, maybe we'll do something later on today. Hampton Beach is having their sand sculptures, and we're (I'm) thinking about going. I'm just so afraid it's going to be a zoo. We both like doing things off-season; off-times, to avoid the crowds. But it's a bright sunshiny day and I doubt there will be any chance of avoiding crowds at the beach today. I do hate to waste the day though, by doing housework and hanging around inside. Decisions, decisions.

Am I that boring?

I just noticed that I haven't blogged all week. Why, you ask? Well, because nothing's been going on. It's been busy at work. It's been quiet at home. We did go to see Toy Story 3 Wednesday night with my 10-year old niece Laura. That was fun. The movie was good. We laughed, we cried. Good times. $22.50 to get into the movie. $30.00 on snacks. Crazy. Other than that, nothing.

Finally finished with the mega-gazillion dollar coffee table

Here it is folks. The moment you've been waiting for. Here is the coffee table I've stressed over for the past few weeks. This coffee table belonged to Hubby. When we re-did our living room, it was just about the only really ugly thing left in the room. I decided something should be done about it, and spent some time trying to decide if I should mosaic it, mod podge pictures on it, etc, etc. Hubby and I went to an open house at a vineyard nearby on Mother's Day, and there were crafters there. We met up with Rick Gates of Premier Imprints, and we were stunned at the beautiful tiles he could make with your very own pictures. After a series of emails, and some decision-making on what picture we wanted, we contracted Rick to make our tiles for us. The picture is one of the most photographed and painted buildings in New England. It is called Motif #1, and is on the shore in Rockport, MA. Even though there are many photographs of this building out on the web, the picture on the coffee table is one we took ourselves. We had to take the coffee table apart, sand it and re-stain it. I bought new legs for it, because I figured it would be way too much work to sand the old legs. Hubby bought new brackets to afix the legs. We used tile cement to anchor the tiles in place, then had to find something to fill in the area not covered by the tiles. After a lengthy discussion at Lowe's and Home Depot, we chose flat rocks that would normally be used to make a floor, and interspersed it with some shells, rocks and sand-dollars we'd found while walking out on the coast of New England. Finally, we covered the whole thing with a piece of plexi-glass to protect it. And here's the finished product:

It goes so fast

Is my vacation already over? Was it just last week? I think my vacation "glow" has disappeared already.

Back at work and it doesn't seem like I've even been away. Same old, same old.

And it's already the middle of June? But we were going to start hiking early this year, and make sure we got our canoe out for some spring canoeing. Didn't happen.

Our Vacation in Pictures....and a few words

Sadly our camera died a painful death on our trip to Pennsylvania. We did manage to get a few shots in before it kicked the bucket. Here they are in pretty much random order One of the most fun places we went was Chocolate World. The Hershey Hotel was extremely luxurious. We didn't stay there....just gawked.

You could go on a Segway tour. Who'd wanna do that?

Gettysburg was beautiful and very interesting. We borrowed the CD from the B and B we stayed at and did the auto-tour around the battlefield.

We saw dozens and dozens of these little buggies. There's a "buggy lane" instead of a breakdown lane.

Hubby did a fantastic job driving everywhere. He needed some time to relax.

We really enjoyed the trolley tour around town. This young man started out playing the part of a conductor, then jumped off the trolley, ran to the back, hopped on the platform at the back of the trolley and changed costumes while the trolley was moving then hopped back on and played a different character. He did this about 10 times throughout our trolley ride.

We went to Hershey Gardens. It was just the right time of year....the roses were beautiful.

We stopped at Indian Echo Caverns just outside Hershey. Pretty cool.

Went to the Hall of Presidents in Gettysburg. LAME!

Of course there were beautiful quilts everywhere. We saw these in the quilt museum.

After our camera died, we went to Strasburg, PA which was "Train Town".

They had a huge Thomas the Train store.....a favorite of both our grandkids. And then we took a train ride through the countryside.....very relaxing.

We also went to Longwood Gardens. I wish we'd had the camera there cause I can't describe how beautiful the place was.

Home Again

We're back home again after our longest road trip ever. Not very many pictures because A) our camera died- not just batteries either. It's pretty dead. Hubby is hoping he can get the card reader from work and at least get the pictures we did manage to take off the camera. and B) my new Bloggie only had a small memory card and we're still trying to figure out how to get them off the camera and onto the computer. That all being said, we had a wonderful time away. We started off with: * Hubby's niece's wedding in MA last Saturday night. She married Britt - our first Gay Wedding. It was beautiful and special and everything you'd want a wedding to be. It was held outdoors at a big pavilion in a park. Hubby got to play keyboard with the band. Since it was two hours west from our home we decided to stay in Hartford, CT for the night and continue on our great adventure the next day. * On Sunday morning we headed out to Hershey. We stayed at a very nice Inn and spent the day on Monday in Hershey. Yes, the air does smell like chocolate! We did not go to Hershey park, as neither Hubby nor I like roller coasters, but we did do some of the other touristy things. ***We went to Chocolate World where we went on the indoor trolley for a tour through the factory. ***We also made our own candy bar wrapper.....I'll post a photo when we figure out the camera situation. *** We went on a trolley ride around town that was wonderful. It was a mini-play with two characters. One was a female train "conductress" and the other was a boy who jumped off the trolley every five minutes, changed costumes on a platform at the back of the trolley where we couldn't see him and came back on as a different character. Hilarious! *** We went to the Hershey Museum where we learned all about Mr. Hershey and how he came to be the king of chocolate. *** We went to Hershey Gardens where they had millions of roses.....fantastic! *** We went to the Hershey Zoo - a small zoo with limited animals but beautifully done and lots of fun. *** We were handed candy everywhere we went.....it was great! * On Monday night we drove over to Gettysburg where we stayed at an Inn right on the battlefield. Some friends who live in PA came out to join us. We had dinner together Monday night and on Tuesday we used the CD in our car and took the Auto Tour around the Battlefield. It was very impressive to see all the monuments (it would have taken us weeks to stop and look at every single one). It was also very impressive to think of the number of lives lost in the three-day battle. *** We also went to the Hall of Presidents which was very lame and not worth the money. They had wax figures of each president and they talked for about 3 minutes each. Not very well done. * On Tuesday night we drove over to Intercourse, PA where we stayed at "The most romantic Inn in America". I had mixed feelings over this place. It was very expensive. I thought we would be immersed in luxury, and basically we had a little cottage that was nice but not terribly romantic. We usually love going to bed and breakfast places because they're run by a couple or a single person who becomes your friend and makes you feel like one of the family. This place was not run that way. It was a very nice place and we had a great time, but it certainly wasn't the nicest place we've ever been. They did serve a five-course breakfast that left us stuffed every day until dinner time. That being said, we had a great time in PA. We did all the touristy things there too: *** Went to a couple of the smorgasbord restaurants. My favorite was Millers, but we went to the Plain and Fancy as well and Hubby liked that one best. *** We saw an experiental movie called "The Amish Experience". It was about a young man who has to make the decision of whether or not to stay with the church. It's not just a movie, but adds in lots of lights, special effects, etc to make it a more interesting experience. *** We took a tour of an Amish house and learned many things about their lifestyle. *** We took a buggy ride (NOT comfortable!) and learned even more about the Amish from a grizzled old Amish guy named Aaron. *** We saw miles and miles of cornfield, cows and farms. *** We saw buggies riding down the sides of the highways. *** We saw many Amish men working their fields. *** We bought cold home-made rootbeer from a little Amish girl who couldn't have been more than six. She was minding the rootbeer stand. *** We went to see the play "Joseph". When I bought the tickets, I thought it was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It was not. However, it was a fantastic play on the biggest stage I've ever seen and included singing, dancing and live animals. *** We'd had three different people tell us about Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA. It's the original estate of Pierre DuPont. On Friday we took a drive over there and were absolutely amazed at the gorgeous acres and acres of gardens. I'm sure there's plenty more things we did that I'd have to think about to remember. It's going to take me a few days to digest everything I saw (AND ATE!!). Hopefully I'll post pictures and videos when we get things settled with the cameras. Tomorrow we get to sit back and relax and do nothing before we have to head back to work on Monday!

Surprise!

Hubby planned me a surprise party for my 50th birthday! And I was really surprised!! Doug and Kara offered to have it at their house. And Hubby did all the planning and running around and stuff. I'm so proud of him!! Before marrying me, he was definitely NOT a planner!!

Doug and Kara got me a little video camera called a "Bloggie". (how appropriate!) I tried it out a bit last night. I didn't really know what I was doing - but here's the result.

Thank you so much to my sweet, sweet Hubby, my wonderful kids Doug and Kara and Jamie, my brothers and sisters, dad, nieces and my darling grandbaby Emily for making my 50th birthday so great!

We're off to Pennsylvania for the week. A night each in Hershey and Gettysburg and four nights in Intercourse! I'll post pics and blogs when I get back.

It's just a number.........right?

Here I am in my last hour of being "in my 40's". In thirty minutes or so, I'm going to have say, "in my EARLY 50's". Can I get away with "I just turned 50" for a few months at least?

The end of babyhood

My Grandson Noah is 21 months old. The child was born with a head of hair and it grows like a weed. He's had several haircuts in his short life. But this week, he had his first "summer haircut".

AWWWWWW.........