Maine!! Part 2

So where were we?? I think we left off at the Portland Lighthouse. After we left there, we drove about an hour to our first B&B - a beautiful 100+ year old inn called Grey Havens. The owner was a little kooky but the place was beautiful. Grey Havens is in Georgetown, Maine which is right on the water. It's near a little fishing village called Five Islands (where we had some amazing lobster!). The inn is just up the street from Reid Park, which has some of the only sand beaches in Maine. And the inn itself was bea-u-ti-ful. It was built in 1904 by the same guy who gave land for the state park, Walter Reid. He built it as an inn and in 1904 it had 26 rooms and only two bathrooms! Now things are a bit more even with 14 rooms and a bathroom in each one. Our room was on the 3rd floor with windows on three sides overlooking the bay. Mom tried to talk me into waking up to see the sunrise and while I was tempted (ha...) I never did see it. She did though and I hear it was breathtaking. You'll have to take her word for it however. Here are some pics from the second leg of our trip!

At Georgetown Pottery, on our way to Grey Havens. The watch dog who may have actually moved slower than molasses (but still managed to sneak up on Mom) and the really awesome artwork that I wanted to buy but didn't cause it was waaaay to expensive.
Grey Havens Inn. Our room was the top left one.The view from our room - eeeeek! I did a happy dance when I saw it.I had a crush on this tree. Really. I loved it and couldn't stop taking it's picture!
The view from the dock
A working lobster boat. You can tell it's a working one because of all the birds around it hoping to get a tasty morsel or two of lobster. Or of some of the fish they use for bait.
Possibly the best porch swing I've ever sat in. Easily top 3.Mom and I before heading to dinner at The OspreyView from The Osprey. Look at all those sailboats! I want one!!! My dream retirement plan includes a sailboat that I can sail around the world on. This dock was like a little slice of heaven.
My dinner - grilled scallops with some sort of citrus-y glaze and garlic mashed potatoesMom's dinner - Lobster Ravioli
Both of them were delicious!!Reid State ParkTide Pools! I guess these are kinda everywhere in Maine because of the rocky beaches but it's still pretty cool to see them. I didn't see a lot of critters living there though. Path down to Half-Mile Beach which is, oddly enough, about a half mile long. Imagine that.Mom and her ever-present binoculars. I'm not mocking btw, I was very glad she had them!!Half Mile Beach - apparently people do actually swim here even though the water is normally between 50-60'F. No thank you very much! I put my feet in and almost lost a toe to frostbite.UsI took quite a few pictures of the water crashing onto the rocks like this. It was like a sunset though, I couldn't not take pictures. The waves don't do this in Florida but I sorta wish they would. It's awesome to watch.Oooh, that's a good one!! Look how big it is!
Here we are just before leaving Grey Havens and heading Down East.... yes it really is us even though you can't see our faces. Stupid glare....

Next time - our lighthouse tour and dinner at a working lobster dock. Till then!

b

Maine!!! Part 1 of many...

Our Maine trip has come and gone and I really can't believe it. My mom and I started talking a looooong time (like maybe even 10 years ago??) about how we would like to someday drive up the East coast together. It was just sort of a daydream really. And then I got married and had Blayne pretty quickly so we sorta changed our daydream to be that we'd go to Maine and maybe drive a little of the coast. And then it started to be a real plan. And then my Mom decided she wanted to take me for my 30th birthday so it was a REAL thing. All this planning, all the talks and thoughts about what we were gonna do and where we were gonna stay and it's all over! I just can't believe it. Did I say that already?? Well, it's true, I can't. And I survived! (Btw, I'm not saying that I survived 5 days with my mother although that was a trial in and of itself. I'm saying I survived 5 whole days without my baby boy. And it was a little rough. I missed him like crazy!!) But we had SUCH a good time!! We did all sorts of awesome things! We went on a lighthouse tour, we went sea kayaking (and yes, Mom did paddle... some), we went whale watching and we saw some whales. We explored a couple National parks and saw Maine's rugged, beautiful coast. We ate lobster. Oh did we ever eat lobster!! We saw lobster boats and I learned quite a bit about the lobster that I never knew before. We discovered quaint B&Bs and saw beautiful scenery pretty much everywhere we went. So thanks, Mom, for the amazing birthday present. I couldn't have asked for a better one or a better Mom! Thanks for taking me and planning and everything you did. I wouldn't have wanted to go with anyone else.

Now, on to the pictures! I took almost 600. In five days. Four days really if you count the two half days for traveling. So we're talking an average of about 150 pics PER DAY. I may have gone a bit overboard but I couldn't resist. Everywhere I looked there was something beautiful. But don't worry, I will not be posting all 600 pics. I'm gonna break our trip up in to pieces and try to even things out that way. So today's post will be about traveling to Maine and our first day there and our first lighthouse. Oh and a cool story - all the times that we talked about driving up the coast or going to Maine we always said we'd rent a convertible. But when it actually came to the planning part and looking for a rental car we quickly realized that may not be possible. Convertibles are like $50-100 more per day. So Mom just went to some website to book our car and reserved the cheapest one for our trip. I think they called it the 'economy car.' How appropriate! So anyhoo, we arrived in Portland and picked up our car and we are out in the garage loading it up. First of all I should have thought something was off because it was a really nice Volvo. But I didn't. When I sat down in the driver's seat to unlock it, I did notice something weird though - a button in the middle that looked like a diagram of the roof folding off of the car. 'How strange!' I thought. And then I sorta looked at the car and noticed that the windows didn't really have that top layer to them. And since it was a sporty little two door I got curious. I opened the trunk and there was something even weirder. This strange little divider thing that said it had to be in place BEFORE YOU OPERATED THE CONVERTIBLE ROOF!!! Yes, we got a convertible!! It was so cool! Definitely a little gift from God to start our trip. We drove all over Maine with the top down and the heater on. I've decided now that I want a convertible. And I was very sad to close the roof for the last time and leave it in Maine. But it was such an awesome way to start our trip. So here we go! Pictures of my 30th birthday present trip to Maine...

Our first glimpse of MaineMom reading on the planeWe got a convertible!! I'm a little excited...First meal - Lobsta chowda (that's Lobster chowder for those of you unfamiliar with the Maine dialect) The Portland Head LighthouseView #2. I think these two lighthouses talk to each other. I heard them blowing their foghorns back and forth.Look at the wave crashing on the rocks!! So exactly what I pictured...Pretty much all of our pics are like this - self portrait at the Portland Lighthouse. My first attempt had the lighthouse growing out of Mom's head. I think I got better at it as the trip went on.Just in case you can't read that it says, "Annie C. Maguire shipwrecked here Christmas Eve 1886"Maine coastlineDid you see that?!?! It's totally flashing me...Awww, we're so cute!!Me... on the rocksThis cool old mansion that we read about in the paper on our way home. It's like 150 years old and they were going to have a town committee meeting to talk about destroying it!! I'm glad we got to see it first.

So that's not even all of our first day... but I think it's enough for now. To be continued!!

I am ashamed

It's been over a month since I posted anything. That's ridiculous. I have nothing to occupy my time (besides a crazy 2 year old who won't leave me alone for 10 minutes) but that is no excuse. People who have far more going on that me find time to update their blogs, right?? So I will strive to do better. Although this will hardly count as an update since I'm not putting any pics up yet. Check back soon though! I'm motivated, I'm already thinking of things that I can blog about, I have ideas...

I guess I could tell you, quickly, what's been going on in our world for the last month. Umm let's see here - trips to the beach with Kerri and kids, birthday parties for Natalie and a visit from the Terrell clan, Jordan leaving to go back to school (boo) then coming back 2 weeks later for church (yay!) then leaving again (I miss my little bro), planning for our trip to MAINE which we leave to go on in LESS THAN A WEEK (can you tell I'm excited?!?!), enjoying the last few days of my 20s (sniffle, sniffle), planting a new fall garden (and I'm sure I'll be the one doing all the work.... again), cracking up on a regular basis at the funny and adorable things Blayne does and says, and just enjoying time with my boys. They are the best. So as you can see, I have a lot of material.

I promise, it won't take me a month to get my butt in gear and post some pics.

She had her work cut out for her

My son has an unfortunate tendency to look as though he is in pain or constipated when he says "cheese." And then immediately after the cheese, he says "HUH!!" really loud and makes an even funnier face. (That means that he wants to look at the picture btw.) However despite the incredible odds that were stacked against her, when Carrie was in town she took a few pictures of us and managed to get quite a few good ones of him where he's NOT making either one of those faces. Here they are.
This is the "huh" face. See what I mean??But oh my gosh, how sweet is he here?!? I love profile pictures...
We were looking shapes in the cloudsThis is my favorite one of him

And really, with a subject like that, she was bound to get some good pictures. I mean really, have you ever seen a cuter kid?? =)

Thanks Carrie - you're the best!!!

Go to sleep...

I'm on a roll today!! Here are some ADORABLE videos we took of Blayne singing. The first song is his nighttime song. I think it was inspired by Hannah, when we go to visit she will sing Blayne to sleep and Blayne's song sounds a lot like hers. There's more than one video of this one because it is so stinking cute!! Enjoy!

I know this one is dark and hard to see but he sound so sweet I couldn't help but post it. You'll understand once you listen to it.

Here's one with better lighting so you can see his adorable little face. Oh and the words to this (just in case they aren't clear) are along the lines of "Go to sleep, go to sleep... Close your eyes, go to sleep." Or something like that. He changes it up every time he sings it!


This one is him reading some Elmo book about stars and singing "Twinkle, twinkle little star"


And finally, here's one of him being crazy!! =)

Food!

So it wasn't exactly "later tonight or tomorrow" when I posted this but oh well. Here they are - pics of the veggies that we grew and the awesome (if I do say so myself) food that came from them.

#1 - Squash
This one looks like a little duck I think
And then you just slice 'em up, add some olive oil and some spices and saute and viola!

#2 Eggplant

So I forgot to take pictures of the before eggplant but here is the Eggplant Parmesean that I made. And boy was it good!! Blayne even liked it!
Frying the eggplant...
Fried eggplant...
Layered with sauce and lots of cheese...Cooking...Ta Dah!! The finished product.

So far that's all I've cooked with our veggies but I'm sure we'll have more awesome food in the next few weeks. Can't wait!