Graduation

Graduate!!

BA in 3 years, President's List every semester, President of Medieval Society, Student representing the Library (where he was a working student in the Archives), Major in History, Minor in Art History.  Switzer Excellence History Award winner.  This kid knocked our socks off with his accomplishments.

Commencement Day

Award Winners

There was an awards ceremony the night before commencement in which he and one other student were awarded the Switzer Excellence in History Awards.  Here he is with the history department heads.

Celebrating at the Tamworth Distillery

For the time being he's moved back home and is an apprentice to a Clock Maker.  He particularly enjoys the historical pieces they work with and doing research on old clocks.  I can see the wheels spinning in his head about where his future will lead him.  It's still unknown to any of us but with what he is capable of--the sky is the limit for sure!

Followed by some food at Hobbs Tavern

 After classes had ended and he had some time in his life again he finally got a haircut! and is enjoying family life here at home.  It's nice to have another man in the house as this is how John & I have been able to travel this year.  With Andrew in charge we have been free to enjoy a little R&R.

Father's Day cigars 

Celebrating Father's Day together.

Some of us feeling mighty on top of the world

July - Acadia

Enjoying a walk on the trails

The fawn we saw several times as we drove into or out of Wildwood Stables

In July we took a short vacation and headed up to Acadia National Park in Maine.  We stayed at a campsite at Wildwood Stables.  2 of my equestrian friends brought their horses along and camped too.  We enjoyed the carriage roads for trail riding.  And John enjoyed them for biking.  One of the best parts of the trip is that we were out of cell phone service most of the time we were there.  This year has seen us feeling quite tied to the devices.  Actually John was on the phone with work as we drove out of range and then it just got sooo quiet.  Peaceful.  Relaxing.  Great weather.  A needed vacation.

This is where my horse got to live while vacationing there.

This is where we got to camp.

The bridges out there are like something out of fairy tales.  So beautiful!

Enjoying a ride/bike with John one morning.  Lots of bikes out on the carriage roads.

Leaving the stables for another ride.

John on our way up Day Mountain.

A sunset dinner outside in Bar Harbor.  Live music, great weather and good food at the Irish Pub.

The view part way up Day Mountain

Our big boys abroad

Andrew on the glacier

Beautiful door in Iceland

For a little over a week in July our older boys went on a trip.  They went to Iceland on a 3 day adventure tour which included ice climbing on a glacier, white water rafting, seeing many waterfalls and thermal areas with gysers and hot spring and whale watching.  It was quite a tour!!  They stayed in a hostel in reykjavik.  It was amazing and wonderful and exciting and they were very hungry.  The food there was quite expensive as it turns out...

Andrew and crowd at a small waterfall

Brian beginning his glacier climb

A slightly bigger glacial waterfall

Whale watching (mostly dolphins)

Backpacking in Edinburgh

But then they hopped a flight and landed in Edinburgh, Scotland and then they ATE.  Good food cheap is what we first heard from the boys.  Our oldest was a very happy man indeed.  He loved the culture, the humor of the people, the whiskey, the landscape, the buildings and did I say the food?  Even the haggis.  Our middle son really appreciated the same things but also the history, having just completed his BA in history this year...it was amazing to go to the museums, ruins, lochs, distillery, islands and the different hostels on their bus trip around Scotland.

Andrew enjoying the history 

Brian enjoying the museum (you can tell he's an engineer)

Brian selecting a good year at the distillery

Neolithic stone formation

Magic wishing stump- those are coins hammered in there with a rock

They never replace bridges.  Beautiful.

Isle of Skye - their favorite place

Scottish humor - truthful sign.  The boys loved this sort of humor.

Happy Anniversary!

25 years is a good start!

We spent a few days in Montana and Wyoming to take time out for us.  A quarter for a quarter century together is the memento John has on his key ring.  We had an awesome time: perfect weather, issue free travel, good health and humor, and it was simply wonderful.

The cabin we stayed in at Parade Rest Ranch

We stayed 3 of the nights at this little dude ranch in West Yellowstone.  I think we expected to spend more time there and in that surrounding area but we ended up enchanted with Yellowstone National Park and spent most of our time at the park.  We did enjoy full breakfasts there each day and cribbage games on the porch.  We had the little creek right off the porch and enjoyed the soothing and relaxing sounds it made.  The air had a bit of smoke in it each day but early mornings the sun would come up and the sky would be clear so we could see the mountains off in the distance.  We did experience one small earthquake while we were there to remind us we were right near the continental divide and hanging out around a thermal area (read volcano) there.  I'm thankful for the quieter nature of New Hampshire...

The creek was right outside our cabin-a beautiful sound.

The Grayling Creek

John riding.  I think he's a natrual...

We did enjoy a 2 hour trail ride over the mountain to a "mountain lake" and back.  One of the other people on the ride shouted out at the small pond we arrived at "is this the lake?" to which our guide answered without missing a beat, "it was bigger earlier".  The banter on the ride was like that and we laughed and laughed the whole way along.  I loved riding through sage and seeing indian paintbrush.  The lodgepole pines are very different than what I ride through here at home. And at least while we were riding there were NO BUGS.  Very nice.  I'm sure that's not always the case but we enjoyed it.  

Beautiful View!!

Trail ride!!  John on a horse!!!

Elk in Madison River area of Yellowstone National Park

We really enjoyed the park.  It amazed us again and again.  Photos do not do it justice.  When we got home and looked through them we can remember how incredible it all was but we're quite sure they just don't quite cut it.  Everything was so big.  That elk walking across the road reminds me of a white tailed deer here.  Nope.  It's more the size of my little arab horse than it would be the size of a white tailed deer.  But in that landscape it does seem small.  The whole place is just huge.

Gibbon Falls

We drove in on the first day just through the middle from the west gate to Canyon.  I think in our heads we thought we might go to Cody but we stopped so often and took in so many sights that if we had continued on to Cody we wouldn't have made it back until midnight!!  This is sort of how things were.  Just not enough hours to get everywhere we might want to go!  We drove about 1000 miles in the days we were there.  One of the things I wanted to see was herds of "anything other than turkeys".  We were not disappointed.  Herds of bison, elk, antelope and small groups of black tailed deer.  It was such a beautiful experience to see so much wildlife in the park.  Bison jams would block traffic up and we enjoyed those traffic jams for sure.  Bison close enough to touch--not that we were silly enough to touch wild bison--but they were that close to us and other people/cars often.

Herd of elk

Herd of bison and one up close!!

Watching the eclipse.  We had a great view!

We didn't know about the eclipse when we booked the trip but my mom told us all about it excitedly one day at home and even brought to us these glasses she'd gotten at her local library.  I packed them in my bag for the trip and we were very glad to have them.  It was 98% where we were in Yellowstone Park.  The big hoopla was just down the road a bit in the Grand Teton park but we were heading for Bozeman that day so enjoyed the park--to ourselves nearly!  The huge crowds that were present on Sunday were all gone for Monday.  The roads were empty of cars and just the wildlife and a few visitors like us were there.  What a wonderful day to remember.  We drove the upper loop and spent the eclipse near Mammoth.  Then drove out through Lamar Valley to eat our picnic lunch out watching herds there.  We finished the park trip out with a stop outside of the NE entrance at Cook City.  From there we had a choice to either drive back through the part of the park we'd just come through and out the north gate to drive up to Bozeman or on the map it looked like about the same distance to drive up highway 212 and then west to Bozeman so we thought why not take the road we hadn't gone on yet.  Well.  This is what happens when you leave your guidebook at home and make such decisions....

August and throwing snow!!

Amazing highway.  

Highway 212 on the map said nothing about the elevation of the thing!!  I wanted my "this car climbed Beartooth" bumper sticker because I'm sad to say it but Mt. Washington's auto road is quite small compared to this 68 mile long highway that reaches the elevation of 10,947.  We took frightfully few photos on the drive because we were both white knuckled with curled toes for most of the drive!!  Crazy roads.  Crazy, crazy, crazy roads!  What a beautiful highway we got to experience.  

What a happy, happy anniversary trip we had.

Millie

Millie has been a good addition to our family.  she mostly sleeps when in the house and then has some varied behaviors when outside.  As I go about the work of the day of feeding the horse and doing barn chores she will go "on guard" and find a place to monitor what I'm doing while she is a pyranese or perhaps a german shepherd dog.  She finds jobs to do when she can.  For a very long time she had the daily job of carrying my plastic quart mug that I use to carry the horse's daily rations to him.  On the way back to the barn she would take the mug by the handle and head off to the barn to put it away for me.  Well.  As away as she wanted to anyhow.  But I'd reward her for her "work" and then we could go on our walk.  This is a short 15-20 minute loop through the woods on most day.  There are several brooks, streams and beaver ponds back there in the conservation land.  She becomes a labrador retriever as soon as we're on the walk.  Off she goes and chases rabbits, squirrels and basically anything else that moves.  We've had a few chases after deer and a few times when she strayed a bit farther than we liked.  And she ends up either back at our house or over at our neighbor's house to visit her and her dog, Fenway.  Millie is a very social dog...

Millie out on our daily walks through the conservation land next to our property

Strut Your Mutt fundraiser.  She loves this event!

We have been to this fundraiser with her now for the 2nd time.  Our boy raises money for the event to support the shelter where we got Millie.  This walk is on Mother's Beach in Kennebunk Maine.  We also returned this year to the shelter for their "Road Trip Home" reunion.  The ladies who fostered these puppies down in Georgia were there this year and I'm sure they enjoyed seeing Millie.  I enjoyed meeting them and thanking them in person for their generosity.  I also really enjoyed seeing one of the other puppies from the litter.  There were 6 of the 9 from that litter adopted on the same day and we saw all 6 when we adopted her.  They all looked so different.  So it was neat to see this puppy all grown up too.

See her brother from the same litter back at the AWS reunion.

Someone outgrew her bed....

We think she's all done growing now.  I think she's a good size.  Maybe around 70 lbs at this point.  We haven't checked for some time now.  But I think that's about right.

So this is where the legs go, right?  She loves to mimic.

She is an incredible mimic which has made training some of her tricks a little easier.  She will hold up a paw for "high 5" from across a room and if I hold out my other hand she will change the paw.  It's her desire to mimic that does that for us.  So naturally she needed to put her feet on the coffee table if we do.  

Check out the seagulls!  I love the ocean.

She travels really well, including camping with us.  I was so happy that she didn't turn into a very vocal dog at the campsite.  The only noise that I remember was when I stayed behind to "watch the animals" while my husband and son went off on their bikes to the pool to swim.  I maybe drowsed off in the reclining chair I sat down in.  I woke up to low growling by my side.  It was Millie.  I guess when I'm asleep she again goes on "guard duty" and noticed people walking by the campsite.  All the other times that people walked by she just wagged her tail.  But when I was asleep it was a different story for her.  We really got a gem of a mutt I think.

This foot makes an amazing head rest...thanks!

My father loves her too.  She knows it and cuddles right up to him when he's visiting.  I loved this head rest on his foot thing she was doing.  Too silly.

This is her favorite sleeping position.  Yes.  Really.  She sleeps "disassembled" like this every day.

She sleeps on her back a LOT.  And she will just stay there on her back and snore away.  I think it's because she gets hot.  We have radiant floor heat and due to this we've allowed her up on the futon to get in a cooler location.  Her fur is pretty thick.  Silly to see her all upside down and sleeping.  

A daily occurrence around here.  The walk. 

I guess it's been a good change for my health to go out walking with her every day.  Although there are days when I'd like to be in the truck and headed to work a bit earlier than later and my plans are altered by her wandering...most of the time it's just the best part of my day to be out walking and taking in the world.  I wouldn't be doing that unless it were for the benefit of the dog.  A good thing for me for sure.

I'm NOT a deer.  Nor am I chasing a deer.  Just a mutt sporting bells and orange.