Good to be Home

Home again home again, we made it home again. I found some super deals on flights outta Boston so we last minute decided to make an appearance in MN. The flights were cheap mostly because they were crap but hey we made it home. In order to catch our 5 am flight in BeanTown we left Bangor after work to catch the last Amtrak from Portland. Sound inconvenient, oh yes it got worse. I decided we needed to bring a load of fresh seafood home, so I loaded up a cooler and put Ben in charge of carrying it. We had some time to kill in Boston, okay like 6 hours, and to my glee the new batman movie opened that night at midnight. Ben had never seen anything like the 19 screen megaplex I drug him to, it was huge and had escalators which was great because we had suitcases and a giant red cooler. We were hoping to put our luggage under a counter but were denied. Awesome, 5000 people waiting for the doors to open and Ben holding a cooler. Everybody stared, everybody commented and we just stood there like a couple of freaks in the midst of actual freaks dressed up like Batman and the Joker. The movie ended up being awesome, we got wheelchair seats to stash our luggage and we were able to go right to the airport without really waiting around at all. It ended up sweet!

The forecast for our weekend at the lake looked horrible but ended up perfect. I got to meet my new nephew, way cute, my sister's family's new puppy, also way cute and catch up on these two monsters, cute but trouble. We got some much needed boat time, family time and enjoyed a Seafood dinner party. As an added bonus some of my buddies from way back made it down to visit. Good times!

Now that I have two families and we live away our time is at a premium. Luckily our families get along well and we are able to do things together. Plus our families have quite a bit in common. For instance check out my Mom and Ben's Grandpa, they are both missing 3 teeth. And not just any teeth but those right up there where you can see them. How neat huh!! (If I don't explain my Mother's situation I know I will get a phone call, she is getting them fixed and has temporaries that she can take out, which she did for this photo)One of my favorite things to do when I am home besides play cards and waterski is to have Ben's Mom teach me how to make cool Vietnamese cuisine. Here we are making bhan com which is a dessert of coconut, mung bean and sweet flour. Sound yucky, well it's not, it's real good. While we were rolling the dough Ben's mom told me about the time she offered to buy Ben the stuff that would make his hair grow back but he said no. She said it won't have mattered because her friend bought it and it didn't work anyways. Oh I laughed at Ben's expense because it was so funny. No secrets are safe with us two Benjamin, I am sure you already know that

Our week in MN flew away and soon we were on the road, on the road in the new pickup truck we bought from my Papa. Ben is stoked to have a truck in Maine. Now we don't have to cut sheetrock in half to get it home and we can haul anything we want. Can you tell I am so excited to haul stuff. Anyways the truck was a pretty comfy ride in fact I fell asleep alot except when we parked at Niagara Falls to sleep overnight. Then I couldn't sleep at all, what a drag. Niagara Falls in the dark is really scary, a gagillion gallons of loud, roaring water that I didn't even want to go near but during the day it is breathataking and definitely worth putting on your bucket list. Now driving the 1700 miles from MN to Maine, not really bucket list material.

Trash talking is for fools

Woof 0 - Porcupine 2. Nice move blockhead. Dogs, like boys, they never learn.

I've learned though, learned how to make another quilt. I made this flannel baby cover for my buddy Kelly who is expecting in August. Happy baby day Kelly! Quilting has been good for me, it keeps my idle hands busy and distracts me from working on my thesis. Perfect!

Living in RedSox country has been a little tiresome for a couple of diehard Twins fans like Ben and I. "We won the World Series last year", "We have a great pitching staff","All our starters made the All Star Team", blah, blah, blah blahbahhhh! "Who won '87 and '91, huh, tell me who won?!" Anyways when the red hot Twins rode into Fenway for a series with the slumping RedSox I took full advantage of the opportunity to do a little trash talking to anyone who would listen. Unfortunately my talk came back to bite me as the series did not at all go the way we had planned. Wednesday evening we returned home to find a gift to reminds us how many games the Twins won against Boston. Oh there will be other games and ....I should probably just stop talking.

Back in MN we had a gigantic garden, about 100' by 50'. Ben loved it because he HAD to use a full size tractor to maintain the thing, I hated it because it took many, many hours to weed and water the thing. Here in Maine we have a sweet little 8 by 8 garden. I can weed and water this baby in 5 minutes flat. Now that is the kind of garden I dig and I bet my right hand we will pull more veggies out of this little fertile plot then we ever got out of the Minnesota monster.

The AT ain't bad

Last weekend we embarked on our first hike on the Appalachian Trail. It has been pretty wet here so the trail was real sloppy and I was a mess, I know how to find the mud. I also stepped through a bridge and up to my knee in a river about 10 minutes into the trip. By the time we set up camp 8 hours later I had smelly prune foot. Our camp was just below 4000 feet and it got pretty cool and really wet, oh and the bugs were horrible. Yes I spent the evening in the tent.

We met a thru hiker on our trek in, he must have left Georgia in like March to already be in Maine. I wonder how much snow he hit on the way and HOW he could do the trail solo. I think I would go crazy walking this by myself. Although doing all of it or a big chunk of it is something we would like to do someday.

Good times, here we are on one of the 2 peaks of the Bigelows. It was my first time at 4000 feet, on my own two feet. First time for Woofer too and he did awesome on the technical climbing with his new pack. Now if we could just get him to pose for photos we would be all good.