Saturday, December 26, 2009

Merry Holidays to you all

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and have a safe and happy new year.

This Christmas went by so quickly. It was really busy between my family and Dave's and we had a great time everywhere we went.

I'm heading south in the morning. My friend Kelly (Ab) and I are going on a roadtrip to Florida and then I'm flying home. She's staying there for the winter, lucky girl :)

Now I'm super tired and exhausted. Not the best way to start a trip but 7 hours of sleep will hopefully energize me for the start of the drive tomorrow.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

School's (just about) out for Christmas :)

Four more hours of school! I just might be counting down even more than the students.

I wore a (beautiful) Christmas sweater to school today, complete with a Christmas tree, beads, bows, and bells. One student, a girl who is rarely in a good mood, said "You just totally made my day when I saw you have bells on your sweater! My dad used to have one like that." (huh?)


Other students snickered, some said they thought it was really cute, another teacher said "Wow, your sweater is..... busy..." That one made me laugh. During one class a student asked his classmate where the ringing was coming from. He must not have noticed the (beautiful) sweater yet.

Tomorrow is the annual Christmas assembly, complete with letters to Santa, a Christmas play, and some caroling. Last year they kind of picked on me in the play and the Student Council Advisor told me today that I showed up in the play again. So we'll see how it goes...

Not Christmas related, but I had a great teacher moment today. The students (in pairs) had to choose a religion and write in a paragraph or two (concisely) how the religion spread. Two students were taking a long time with it and told me they were making it creative. I was looking forward to grading theirs and they surpassed my expectations. by far.


It's a song in the style of the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" tv show theme song describing the beginnings of Islam. I think I'm going to ask them to perform it so I can tape it and show future classes when we're discussing the foundations of Islam.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Sarah's Day

If you happen to see Sarah today or stop by her blog, wish her a very Happy Birthday!!

Sarah, I hope you're having a chance today to relax and enjoy your day. Happy Happy Birthday!

Saturday, December 12, 2009

My first deer

I got my first deer yesterday, an 8-pointer. With my car :( Hit it, dragged it a hundred or so feet and then deposited it back on the ground. I couldn't stop right when I hit it because a car was coming up behind me super quickly and was about to rear-end us.

Luckily there were no ill effects (for me and my passenger or my car, the deer wasn't so lucky). I don't even have a scratch or a ding on my car from it. Can't quite figure out how that happened but I am THANKFUL!

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Yay!!

I finished my final analysis paper so that means I'm done with homework for the next month. :) I'm pumped about that! It gives me a few extra hours every weekend to spend enjoying this snow.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Happy Birthday Heather!

Today is Heather's 22nd.... Happy Birthday to you!! We went out for dinner to celebrate and had some great laughs. What a fun night :)

In other news
  • It was soooo nice having a few days off for Thanksgiving. Dave and I ended up going out of town to visit some family on Friday for the rest of the weekend so it went by waaaay too quickly.
  • Back to school. and formal observation #1 for year 2. It's over, all of the meetings are over and it was successful. He (the principal) likes what I'm doing, I get to keep my job ;) Kidding. Not about keeping my job because yes, I still have it. But the stakes for this observation were not that high. Last year I got so nervous about them. This one I was able to relax and do my thing. Glad it's over and I'm hoping nothing out of the ordinary comes up before Christmas. Highly unlikely, but a girl can hope!
  • I put up some Christmas lights in my room and the students are loving it. I like 'em too. If I don't get sick of them I just may keep them up longer. It makes my classroom cozier or something.
  • This week is dragging by.
  • Tomorrow DII basketball starts in these parts. Heidi and I got season tickets - can't wait!
Hope you're all taking some time to enjoy the season. I'm afraid it's going to go by way too quickly.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Thankful

Today I brought my United States History class to a welcome home ceremony for some local soldiers (they were in Afghanistan for the past year). It's one of the greatest things I've ever witnessed. There was so much joy and emotion - everyone made it back safely :) Wow! A great day to be an American! Sometimes it's hard to tell if things make an impact on high school students but today I know made an impression on them.

AMAZING! I'm so thankful to have brave, courageous soldiers serving our country and protecting us and our freedoms. THANK YOU!

Sunday, November 22, 2009

The first break

We just about made it to the first break of the year -- three more days of work. Life sure is good. :)

I don't really have a post in me but here are a few randoms
  • Dave worked this weekend but he's on his way back so I have a date tonight :)
  • I scheduled my first formal observation with the principal the other day. It's going to be on December 1st. It's nice to get those over with and relax and enjoy being a teacher.
  • Did I mention we have a contract? We settled a few weeks ago and it's the first one since I started working at my school. It wasn't the best but it sure is nice having one.
  • I have two assignments left to complete for my online class. One is due next weekend and the last one the following weekend. It'll be nice to have a month or so off from doing that kind of homework.
  • What's with this weather? and the apples on the trees. Has anyone noticed that - no leaves left but tons of apples still on the trees?
  • Evenings this time of year are so cozy. They're long because it gets dark so early but I enjoy that when I'm inside and warm...
  • Have you started your Christmas shopping? I've been working on it.
  • I'm jealous of Katz, Heidi, and Greta. They're going east for five days on Thursday. They get to see David, Peter, Jim, Lynne, Braedy :) :), Bob, and Maria.

ENJOY your week!!

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Happy Opening Day

Oops, it's been awhile. I've been really busy but today I have some free time so here I am...

For a minute I'm going to tell you what I've been up to in the last week. Wednesday was Veteran's Day and our school puts on a ceremony for the local veterans and community as a whole. That's one of the jobs of the high school social studies teacher, so that means me. This is my second year doing it and I really wanted to make sure it was heartfelt and meaningful so that the veterans could see that so many of us are really appreciative and thankful to them. It's a big task because you don't want it to be "so-so" or "okay." Needless to say, I was completely focused on that until it was over at noon on Wednesday. It went really really well. My students did an awesome job ~ I was so proud of them. There were many different pieces that had to come together to make it successful and all of the practice and preparation was worth it because it all did come together.

That was the big thing for the week, but once that was over I had to focus on training some of my students for a presentation the principal wanted for some parents on Thursday and Friday. Then I had two more presentations to do on Thursday afternoon and parent-teacher conferences were Thursday evening and Friday afternoon. Plus all the regular teaching, preparing, and grading. I was exhausted on Wednesday, hit a wall on Thursday, and by Friday my head wasn't really into it anymore.

Then Dave came home :) It's been a great weekend!! He was away for two weeks this time but might be here for longer than a few days (I'm crossing my fingers).

Michelle was up here for a week with the babies. It was so wonderful coming home from work to hold them and visit with Michelle. She went back today.

Now, happy hunting to anyone who is going out.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Week 9

Tomorrow's the last day of the marking period... 1 down, 3 to go :) But that means that my mile-high stack of things to be graded has to somehow disappear and end up as scores in my gradebook. Students have been scrambling trying to turn in work, projects, or tests that they've missed since, oh, about September 8th. Every time I feel like my pile is going down, it goes back up. I'm definitely getting somewhere after some quality time marking with my green pen and I'll gladly put it away after this weekend.

Except not for that long because it'll be a new start and I should (at least try to) keep up.
That's all for now.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

... : )

Dave and I went on a "date" to NYC on Saturday. We were in Illinois visiting his sister and her family and we flew out early yesterday morning and got back late yesterday evening. It sure was a whirlwind day but so awesome!

Central Park in the fall. It's the first time I've seen it with the colored leaves -- beautiful!


I got to show him lots of my favorite places including this, the Brooklyn Bridge. This was our first stop - we walked across from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

I also received an awesome phone call on Friday night. Jim and Lynne had their baby!! A week early and everyone's doing great. I can't wait to see the little guy but I'm not sure when it's going to be.

What a great weekend!

Sunday, October 25, 2009

I Love Fall


Liz and I spent a couple of hours taking pictures yesterday and today... the colors are still looking beautiful! It seems like usually by now all of the leaves are gone so I'm soaking up every bit of color that's still out there. Pretty soon it's going to be a long, gray winter...

Thursday, October 22, 2009

A week off

We tried going back to school on Wednesday but there were not enough kids in school for the day to count. [Plus some of the kids that were there were definitely sick.] So we dismissed the students until Monday.

Pretty strange to have a week off in the middle of October. It kind of feels like Christmas break because I'm doing a lot of sleeping in and hanging out with Dave and my family.

Now I just have to figure out how to adjust my plans for the rest of the year to accommodate this week off. I'll have to wait and see how/if we're going to make it up.

Hope you're all staying healthy!!

Monday, October 19, 2009

Monday morning at home

This is really weird... it's Monday morning and I'm sitting at home relaxing. No school and there's no snow outside. A couple posts back I talked about school on Friday and how everyone was sick or getting sick. I guess our principal and/or superintendent talked to the Health Department and they said it would be a good idea to close school for a couple of days. So that means I'm off today and tomorrow.

I just hope all of my students are okay.
Take your vitamins or do whatever you have to to stay healthy everyone!

Sunday, October 18, 2009

4 Wheeling


Check out the bottom of my pants and shoes. Tons of mud. Out of eight people I was the only one with any more than a speck of mud... thanks Dave :)

Friday, October 16, 2009

They were "dropping like flies"

School today was pretty crazy. First hour about half of the students were absent and there were some rumors about kids being sick. Second hour, same thing. Only half a class and more rumors. By third and fourth hour we (the teachers) were sending kids home because they were so sick. At lunchtime more than half of the high school was absent and I wasn't feeling so great myself. I stuck it out, though, and came home right when school was over. I had a fever :( and was pretty miserable.

Officially the strangest day of school so far.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Philosophy

I'm enrolled in an online Theoretical and Philosophical Foundations of Education class for my Master's Degree and I'm halfway done :) with the class. (Not my degree.) Doesn't that sound like fun?? It's not so much, but I am (a little bit) enjoying being on the other side of education again... no grading, planning, answering questions, etc. Just learning.

Mentally I divide my school year up based on events going on throughout the year and on Friday we passed up the first one. The first part of the year is over :) The next one is early-mid November and I have a lot going on between now and then so I have a feeling it's going to go by pretty quickly. Have I mentioned this year is going a lot better than last year? I'm not nearly as overwhelmed, I feel like I have better lessons, and I can relate to the students a lot more (I know them and they know me).

Ready or not, here comes the second "chunk" of the year. Starting tomorrow.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

up and down and down and up and...

This has been one of those weeks. I don't even know where to begin (or end) so I'll keep it short and sweet and just say my emotions have been all over the place.

It's nothing big, nothing I can't handle, and it could be much worse.

So tonight I'm thankful for all of the people in my life who help me out, even if you don't realize it.

Thank you!

And I have a lot that I'm looking forward to. Life is good. :)

[Like I said, they're all over the place.]

Sunday, October 4, 2009

So lucky :)


I don't think this post needs any words. :)

Monday, September 28, 2009

Reminder of last year

Today reminded me of how I felt last year every day. I'm thankful it's only the first time this has happened. I got home around 6:45 (early by last year's standards), with my brain completely fried.

I don't handle stress really well and I was completely stressed out today. I wasted over an hour on a problem that I didn't end up fixing. ergh. Plus I'm struggling with some lesson plans for next week and I'm starting some duties for an advising role that I picked up this year.
It's probably not a coincidence that it's cold and dreary out today but I've been looking forward to these cool temperatures. My classroom feels like a furnace on those 60-70-80 degree days so today was a very welcome relief from that.

On a positive note: two problems I asked multiple times to get fixed last year have gotten fixed within the last week! A screw on my projector screen was loose last year and pretty much every time I pulled it down it got looser. I asked a few times to get it fixed, to no avail. This year the students started getting worried that it was going to fall on me (or them) so they started asking the maintenance people to fix it (so did I). One of our maintenance men came and when he pulled it down, it fell on top of him. (not really on top of him - he caught it before it hit him)
Another computer issue was fixed sometime since I left work on Friday. :)

Monday, Monday, Monday. Almost over. Whew.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

It must be fall

Another photograph from our "hike" yesterday. I told them to try to jump and reach the branch above their heads. When they pulled down on it, all the water from the leaves fell onto Heather.

She looks pretty pumped about it, doesn't she?

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Bad judgement/I don't do mud

I think I learned my lesson this time.
For some reason when I see things raised from the ground I like to get on them and jump off... today a couple of my friends and I were exporing in the woods by a waterfall and I saw a tree that was uprooted down a hill and the trunk/base of it was sticking up like three feet. So I decided to jump off. My problem is I didn't check out the landing area before I jumped... and didn't think about the extra couple feet up I was jumping.

It was going great until I landed on a downward sloping sandy/rocky area. on my knee and hands.

Left me a little light-headed and with a massive knee.

and muddy pants/boots.
I've jumped off of things before and missed landings but none hurt quite this bad. Makes a girl feel young (and kind of stupid) again...

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Dave&Karen


A few people have asked for a picture. This is from a couple weeks ago when Dave was up for a week and a half. Just about three more weeks until he's done south of the border. :)

Monday, September 21, 2009

Two days in a row when I'm talking about quitting...

I guess I'm not going anywhere...

The class I'm taking for my master's degree is online and everything is due on Sundays. I procrastinate so that means all yesterday (beautiful) afternoon I was working on homework. After dinner tonight I had the best intentions to come on and get some of my homework done so even if I procrastinate for the rest of the week, at least I'd have some of it done. I went online, checked out some of the discussion posts to see what I have to be thinking about and got completely confused. I guess technically I'm working on my homework because I'm thinking about the questions and discussions I have to reply to. The problem is that right now I don't get the questions so I can't start writing or replying. I'm all about working on critical thinking skills and higher-order thinking and all that jazz. Just not tonight. Maybe tomorrow?

I'll tell myself that I'm working on it because I'm thinking about it. But when it comes down to it, I'll probably be sitting here on my computer trying to formulate somewhat intelligent-sounding responses on Sunday afternoon. Shoot.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Update

I love rock piles. I'm not sure why; maybe it's because I have some great memories of playing on them when I was younger (middle school at Tina's house). Does anyone else have a feeling one way or another about them? I've been asking people lately (recently I noticed that some are disappearing) what they think about rockpiles and I've been getting different thoughts.

Tonight Heather and I went out to a rock pile and took in the surroundings. It was a beautiful night, some great views, and totally relaxing. Pretty awesome.


On our way to the rockpile we contemplated going to the lake to watch the sunset but settled for checking it out as we were driving down the highway.




I've been thinking about quitting my blog. I just haven't felt like updating lately. I've gone through spurts like this before and come back to it so I guess I decided to keep it and see if I come back around.
School's been good. Like I mentioned before, completely different than last year. I get to see the sun and I'm not living in my classroom. I have a more balanced life than all of last year so life is good! There are definitely challenges that I have to work through but there's going to be some every single year I'm a teacher. I'm still getting used to having homework again. I enjoy learning and I liked being a student so it's okay. Just something new to get used to.
That's all. Pretty boring, I know.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

What a difference a year makes

I'm back!

Last week was the first week of school and Dave was in town so I took a little hiatus from this page. He was up here for ten days and for awhile there it didn't feel like long distance. He left this afternoon for one more month in Mexico (3 down, 1 to go!).

So far I can't believe the difference between a first year and second-year teacher. Last year (if you've been reading this for awhile you might remember) I worked from 7:30am until around 8 or 8:30 every night and on the weekends, had no social life and was just plain exhausted most of the time. Last week it felt like a whole new career. I was done by 4:00 every day, things went smoothly, and I didn't have to go in this weekend. I'm all caught up on my grading and I know what I'm doing during every class this week. :) :)
I put in some quality time the last couple weeks of summer so I'd be ready for these first two weeks so next week won't be quite so easy. But I'm loving it :)

Monday, August 31, 2009

There's no in between

I just spent all summer relaxing and enjoying myself and truly being off. Last week one day, the switch in my mind was flipped to school-mode and I haven't been able to shut it off since then. It was crazy - I was completely relaxed, still in summer mode one day and the next day when I woke up I was back to Karen the teacher. Not just going to school for 4 or 5 hours to get stuff done, but more like 8 or 9 or 10 hours. So my summer vacation ended two weeks before the start of school. That's okay though because I feel so prepared for this year (I'm comparing it to last year....) and I'm really excited to see my students again. I got the class lists today and I can already tell there's going to be a couple of more challenging classes and one especially that's going to be awesome. The jury's still out on the other ones.

First day of school tomorrow!*

I'm ready!


*For teachers. Kids don't have to go back until September 8th. Are they lucky or what? :)

Saturday, August 29, 2009

A year ago yesterday

Yesterday was the "anniversary" of getting my job. A phone call that morning completely changed my life and it's hard to believe it's already been a year.

All day yesterday as I was working at school I was thinking about how (exactly) my life has changed because of my job. More security, some great benefits, I became a workaholic, I feel better about myself because I'm (positively?!) influencing young lives, I discovered a lot about myself and the world around me, the perfectionist in me came out, made some friends, faced some challenging situations and survived :)

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Visuals

I just thought I'd spruce up this page with a couple of pictures from last summer. Guess where? :)




Monday, August 24, 2009

Scratch that...

I said earlier that although my class officially begins today, I'm not doing anything. I was wrong. I reread the syllabus and saw a couple of assignments that are due soon that I don't need the books for, so I started them. It's been about four years since I had "homework" and I have to say, I'm not a fan of this. Hopefully I'm beginning this with better habits than I've had in the past. I remember doing a lot of procrastinating and therefore, lots of stressful last-minute work on projects and assignments when I was in college.

I have an extra incentive to get some of these things done now. Dave will be in town when the first three assignments are due, and I'll be teaching then so I really will not want to be doing homework too.

I think summer's over for me.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Another Beginning

I officially begin working on my Master's Degree tomorrow. Sort of. I'm signed up for one grad class for fall semester and tomorrow is the first day of fall semester at the school I'm "going to." Except my class is online so nothing really happens. I'm waiting for my books to come in so I can get started hopefully before this vacation is over. I've been dragging my feet on starting but I have a (state-mandated) deadline so I knew I had to just do it.

Two more weeks of summer vacation. September 8th is the big day and right now I feel like in some ways, I'll be ready to start up again. I don't think I'll ever truly be ready to give up vacation, but I love being a teacher so it's okay that it's going to start up again soon.

Does anyone have any good headache remedies? I've had one since Saturday evening and nothing I've tried is working. The only relief I've gotten is being able to sleep...

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

A Visit

My plans for today: a little trip to visit this girl.

Soon she'll be far away again so we're taking advantage of one of her last days around here.

Have I Really Forgotten??

I can't believe I haven't put some of these up already. They're some of my favorite pictures from the day we spent in NYC at the end of our east coast trip. Last spring I really wanted to go on a trip to a cool place just to take pictures. I didn't go in the spring, but when we got to New York, Liz and I wandered around, taking pictures of whatever caught our eye.

Here are some things that caught my eye.
You would think rain in Central Park would be a bad thing. On the contrary; it made the lighting awesome and there were very few people to contend with.

The Mall looks a little different with hardly any people in it.


I love a nice blue sky with a few clouds. I also really like flags.


Something about the colors in this one caught my attention.



Men on a mission. Or something.


You don't see a whole lot of bikes in the city. I don't think it's especially bicycle-friendly. At the very beginning of this blog I have a post about a bike event I took part in in the city and seeing this bike kind of reminded me of that really cool day.


For all of the times I've been in NY, I've never seen this before. So I made Karen and Liz jump into it so I could snap a photo.


Here's a guy making an honest living. :) This was on Wall Street. What a sharp contrast to all of the workers in suits.

I love the shapes and textures in this fence. When I recently looked back at some photos, I realized I must like cool fences in general because I have lots of photos of them. I never consciously realized that before.


They definitely looked like nice bananas!


Lunchtime in downtown NYC.


Lunchtime again. The lines at the street vendors a block or so away had different clientele. I have some pictures of those ones, too, but this one looks more interesting.
We did a lot that day, so this is just a little taste of it. No matter how many times I've been there, I still love to pull out my camera and capture these little things that make it NYC.
I hope if you ever get the chance to visit New York that you take it and when you're there, sit down and relax for a few minutes to just experience it. I can't wait to go back!

Saturday, August 15, 2009

The last two weeks

Wow, I did not realize I haven't updated since August 3rd. Must be summer. or something.

First of all, Happy 64th Anniversary of V-J Day! Think of the celebrations across the US when Japan finally surrendered to officially end World War II. :)

My week away was awesome!! Especially the weekend when Dave was in town. We definitely took advantage of the time we had and did some cool things. Unfortunately the weekend went by way too quickly and he's gone again. How do people do these long distance relationships? We get to talk almost every day so I guess that's how people do it.

M and the babies came home with me on Monday and we've all been enjoying them all week. We've had good weather so lots of quality time at the camp. Lots of our relatives got to meet the babies for the first time this week and that was fun.

I'm thinking tomorrow's going to be a beach day. I have to enjoy these last few Sundays of summer vacation because they aren't so relaxing during the school year.

Monday, August 3, 2009

South Again

Surprise, surprise, this girl's about to be on the road. I'm heading out early tomorrow morning until next Monday. I finished all of my unpacking from the East Coast trip on Thursday or Friday, finished my laundry and now it's all ready to be packed yet again. I get to go and see Michelle, Ed and the babies and then on Thursday Dave comes to town for the weekend :)
It's going to be another busy one, but I'm really really excited about it!!

So now I have to go and do the packing that I mentioned. and hopefully squeeze a few hours in to spend at the camp. I waterskiied yesterday for the first time this summer and I'm noticing some muscles I forgot about. It's a good reminder though, because waterskiing is always fun!

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Some more from vacation

Here are some from the rest of the Maine part of our vacation. As I was looking through, I realized I don't have a whole lot of them because sometimes we'd take turns taking pictures. Eventually we're going to get each other's pictures, but for now here are some of mine.

The Portland Head Light, commissioned in 1791 by George Washington himself. This was the one place Liz had to go on our trip and she had a couple of freak out moments when we got there. She had this idea in her mind what it looked like and it looked nothing like that. She kept saying I really don't think this is it. Shoot Karen, if this isn't it, where is it?
Well, we walked around a little and got a different view (the ones above) and she realized that it was, in fact, the one she wanted to see. Whew! It almost looks like just another lighthouse from some other views , but there's just something about it when you see it out on the rocks with the waves crashing in.

We met a local storyteller and historian at the Portland Head Light and ended up talking to him for about half an hour. He was pretty excited to hear I'm a history teacher and gave me some interesting things to add to some of my lessons - especially World War II. We ended up buying a cd with stories of haunted Maine lighthouses and a book with some stories about the Portland/Kennebunkport/York area.


There was a canon and this bell at the fort near the lighthouse, both used there during the Revolution.

Part of the fort was a pretty cool mansion from the 1700s that is in disarray. It only has the original stone walls left (no windows, floors, roof) but this sweet wall was part of the driveway leading up to the mansion.


Another fort in Portland. I think we saw three different ones.


World War II Victory Ship Monument. When I teach World War II, we talk about victory ships and the impact they had on the war so it was really cool to visit one of the places where they made these ships. I took lots of pictures to add to my slides for when I teach World War II :)

Checking out the harbor in Portland one last time before we got back on the road.

We stayed with Bob and Maria on our way to Maine, then on our way back down we met them in Boston for dinner. They took us to a neat restaurant, Fire + Ice. If you're ever in Cambridge, I highly recommend it! Thanks Bob and Maria for bringing us there!

Thursday, July 30, 2009

East Coast Part 1

Someone reminded me today that I said I was going to have some pictures up yesterday. I was busy enjoying the camp, but here are some now. I only have the first couple of days' photos on my laptop so far, and here are a few highlights.

Karen, Liz, Karen after a very enjoyable seaside lunch in southern Maine.


Acadia National Park from the air

Bar Harbor and Bar Island from the air. The sandbar you can see is completely exposed during low tide and you can actually walk to the island. When we walked around Bar Harbor later we saw this but didn't end up checking out the island.


One of my must-dos for the trip was to eat at an outdoor restaurant. We did it twice!


It looks pretty cold out with the fog but it was in the mid 70s. This is in Acadia National Park.


One of the many fishing towns/harbors we visited.



Another one. There's something about these little harbors and inlets that I think is so peaceful and relaxing.




My travel partners, enjoying the sights.


I loved the lobster buoys all over the place. I wondered if there was any meaning to them at this particular restaurant, or just a cool local way to adorn the outside of the place.



One of the main streets in Bar Harbor.

It's late and I cannot remember the name of this town. It's across the river from Fort Knox, which we checked out after hours. It's the history-lover in me coming out... the gates were open so I didn't want to pass up a chance to check out a fort from the days of the Revolution.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

31 days

We're back and it was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!

On our way home today I decided to look back on my summer and count the number of days I've been away from home (out of town) since school got out. That day was May 28, and since then I've been gone for 31 days.

No wonder it feels like I haven't been home all summer! and in a week I'm leaving again for a week. I guess I'm making up for mostly staying put during the school year, although I did sneak a few trips in then.

It's late so I'll upload some pictures tomorrow. We did some really cool things, had lots and lots of laughs, ate some good food, took tons of pictures, and just had a really memorable time. More tomorrow!

Friday, July 17, 2009

Sights I might see

We're leaving tomorrow, and here are a few things we might see in the next week.

We're thinking of making a stop here on Sunday.

Monday maybe?

I really hope I get to see this!! We don't have many set plans; it's kind of a "do what we want, when we want" type of vacation.


This is a must-see for Liz, so I'm pretty sure we'll make it there.



If we have time, we thought it'd be fun to make a stop in this historic suburb of Boston.



On our way home we're stopping here for the night. We have a lot to do in a short time period at this stop, but the thing I'm most looking forward to is just being there.
Look back in ten or so days for my actual pictures of these places. Until then, soak up some sun (if it's out) and enjoy this part of your summer!