Long time no see!

I have heard from a few of you through email and I think you were wondering where I'd got to. Well it's been a combination of life things.  Mainly I just haven't got around to blogging for a while, but here I am now and we'll see how we go.

Our stay in Maine was wonderful.  We originally had planned to leave Ottawa on Thursday and stay in Vermont overnight before arriving in Maine on the Friday for three nights.  Well, as it happened, Vermont was due for a huge snowstorm on the Wednesday (18 inches to be precise!) so not wanting to drive through that, we decided to leave on the Tuesday and get ahead of it.  We stayed Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights in a Marriott hotel in Concord , New Hampshire.  Our church has a temple in Boston which is only a little over an hour from Concord, so we went there on the Wednesday and when the storm hit Concord (not nearly as badly as it hit Vermont) on Thursday we hit the exercise room, and hot tub and played board games all day while the snow fell.  It was very relaxing.  When we arrived,our fridge wasn't working so they upgraded us to a deluxe room with a jacuzzi tub right in the room.  That was nice.

Friday we left for Maine and below is the view from our balcony.

We had our own private hot tub outside on our balcony and it was wonderful.

We lay in it nice and warm while the temperature outside was slightly cooler to say the least!

It was so good to see our litle town in winter at last!

Even more deserted than the Fall.

My sweetie putting the milk away.

And the view from our bedroom balcony and window.

It was a much needed break for both of us and we ended up staying an extra night. so a short vacation that started out as Thursday to Monday became a week as we came home on Tuesday.  The pace was slow and we drank it all in, walking on the beach every day and loving every minute!

The Billowhouse puts fresh cookies in your room every day and when we arrived, Judi had left this little message for us - it truly is our second home!

Our little Norah celebrated her second birthday in March and Adam & Alicia came down for the celebration.

She was a lot more interested in her presents this year!

The hit of the day was a litttle "Dora the explorer" She carried it around with her the whole time.

Life will be busy for the next few weeks as we are involved in our annual Broadway show at church in June and rehearsals are just beginning.  Wendell & Rebekah are Jean Valjean and Cosette in the finale of Les Miserables and Myself, Andrew & Kelsi are in the chorus.  It is always fun to be involved.  Don't think I posted photos last year, but Rebekah & I were in the finale which was "You can't stop the beat" from Hairspray.  We danced and sang and had an absolute blast!

This was taken in the dressing room just after our performance

 And this was after the show with "Alpheba" and Mark Mitchell who is the genius behind the show.  He writes the music arrangements and conducts the orchestra and pretty much puts his life on hold each year for a few months to do this.

So that's life in a nutshell for now. Hope life is treating you all well and you are enjoying Spring.  I feel like I come alive every year at this time of year1

Back from the seaside

We were in Ocean Park, Maine for a week at the end of October and I thought it was about time I posted some photos.  This is the beautiful Billow House where we stay in the Spring and Fall. I had accidentally hit some button on my camera and this setting came across on some of the photos.  I kind of like the antique look -- no idea how I did it though!!

We are literally on the beach when we stay here (just like our cottage in the summer).  We were here for hurricane Sandy last year.  Now you can see why our children were a little nervous for us!

But we were fine and weren't worried as we kept a close eye on things and thankfully we didn't see it nearly as bad as those poor folks in New Jersey and New York!

I love being near the water even though I don't actually swim and have a fear of water when I'm in it!

We love it here in the summer, but it really is a different world when we come in October.  We have the beach all to ourselves, except maybe some dog walkers now and then.  We actually prefer the Fall to be honest as everywhere is so quiet. You lucky people who live at the sea will understand what I mean.

I couldn't resist taking this photo.  This house is being raised to have a basement installed.

This was our first day there in a little place called Biddeford Pool

I love the Fall colours.

On the Tuesday we went to visit our beautiful Boston temple. The grounds are so well manicured and this plant (which I love) is called angel trumpets. Isn't it beautiful?

 Here is my BLT panini (bacon, lettuce and tomato)

Which we ate here at a picnic table while we watched the waves.

I have decided that this "little" house will do for me quite nicely thank you. Don't you think it's the perfect beach house?!

But as the little one below is on the market for $1.5 million, I can only guess what "my" beach house would sell for!!! Oh well, I can dream I guess!

My sweetie with his camera

Look what we found all the way across the Atlantic!

Right in someone's front garden!

We always hit Freeport for some shopping at our favourite store

They even had their Christmas displays up before we left.

Our little reading nook at the Billowhouse

Our summer cottage at 1 Casco Ave

We have booked a long weekend over Valentine's day at the Billowhouse next year. First time we will experience the beach in winter.  I'm going to try my hand at snow shoeing!

We love this place and feel very blessed to have found it. It takes us 7 1/2 hours to drive there and we are envious of all you folks in the UK who live close to the water (let's face it, everyone lives close to the water at home!) However, we also know we live in a very beautiful place ourselves.  We wouldn't trade it for the world. If we can't have England, then New England will suffice!

Three days after "Sandy"

Well, we are still here to tell the tale, and what a tale it was!  This storm had such a huge scope and left so much damage that I don't know if the U.S. was really ready for it!

We were very lucky where we are in Maine, but other parts of the East coast weren't as fortunate.  We kept a very close watch on the storm in the afternoon and evening and well into the early hours of Tuesday morning.  The winds and the rain were really strong here and caused some minor damage to some seafront properties, but we were fine.  We didn't lose power and were able to watch the weather channel all day.  It was kind of surreal watching videos about NY and Connecticut while listening to the waves crash and the winds howl, knowing that even though it sounded bad outside our window, it was relatively little compared to other areas. Even our part of the world in Ontario didn't escape.  Ottawa had heavy winds that night and Toronto, where our oldest son Adam lives, had very strong winds, and a woman was killed as a sign fell from a building because of the wind and struck her head.  This happened five minutes away from Adam's place.

Here are a few photos after the fact.  We didn't want to go out taking photos during all this.

 

This is the B&B where we stay.  As you can see, the only thing which separates us from the ocean are the beautiful dunes.  They are a real protection in storms. You can see, that during the storm, the water level came right up to the bench.  In normal days it doesn't come near that and when we come during the summer, you still have lots of beach area left at high tide - not so during hurricane Sandy!

This grey building is also ocean front and as you can see, it lost a lot of shingles.

These waves had calmed down a lot, but they still look like they are boiling up to me!

 

If you look very closely at the previous photo in the middle of the picture, you will be able to see a surfer.  Believe it or not, there were a few surfers out in their wet suits this morning and we watched this guy catch an unbelievable wave!

This beach is very sandy normally, with very little seaweed - not this morning though, all kinds of the stuff had washed ashore!

Dan Fogelberg wrote a song called "the sand & the foam".  He lived in Maine and we love to listen to his music.  This photo reminded me of him.

And finally, I couldn't resist these two photos of Wendell.  I think he looks like Moses, about ready to part the Red Sea!  He found that piece of driftwood washed up on the beach.  I am not joking when I say that he has it drying out in our room right now and plans to put it in his home office when we get back!

Thirty one years ago on November 6th we were married "For time & all eternity" in the LDS Washington temple (pictured here)

Our church has temples all over the world and yesterday we went to the temple in Boston.  Here is a photo I took when we arrived.

It was a very grey day and we were still feeling the effects of the storm, but inside all was calm and peaceful.  We always spend some time here when we come to Maine on our own in October every year.

I'll upload a few more photos tomorrow.  Right now, it's time to shut down the computer and relax.