For those of you in the Heartland......

Hubby and I went to the beach yesterday. It was a balmy 60 degrees in New England and, in our humble opinion, the perfect day for the beach. No traffic, no crowds. A bit chilly but comfortable and heart-lifting.

You can't tell in this photo, but the waves were actually pretty big for New England. Later in the day we actually saw a crazy person...in a wetsuit....practicing his surfing.

I don't think it was actually cold enough for Hubby's hat, but he likes wearing it and couldn't wait to bust it out.

Ours weren't the only footprints. There were other people there....we're not the only crazy ones.

Hubby spied a red wooden box bouncing around in the surf. He had to risk life and limb (and wet sneakers) to capture it.

Success!

As the day got later, the sun was hitting the waves just right to make them look flourescent.

The Sunset was so pretty!

And of course, we concluded our day with a trip to the center for some fried dough. Good thing there are no photos of that! Powdered sugar sure knows how to fly everywhere!

Life is Hard.........

Life is so hard sometimes. Sick Moms, injured kids, surgeries to look forward to, kids struggling to stay solvent, worrying about jobs and money and illness, stress at work, getting along with family...............How do I stay sane?



The only thing that comes to mind is Counting My Blessings.



1. I have the most loving, understanding, compassionate husband in the world. He listens to me gripe, gives me sound advice, treats me like a queen, cooks for me AND cleans up!

2. Everyone in my immediate family still has a job. Some may have jobs that are more precarious than others, but they are jobs nonetheless.

3. Good doctors are taking care of sick family members. There is hope for their recoveries.

4. I have a brother and sister-in-law who are my very good friends. My brother would do anything for me.....and often does.

5. My children are happy. They have good people in their lives and are wonderful people in their own right.

6. I have a job that is interesting and varied. I like (most) of the people I work with.

7. I have a grand-daughter that puts more laughter into my life than anything else. She is the light of my life.

8. Hubby and I have enough money for adventures. We're not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but we do okay and get to go off for a weekend every now and again.

9. I'm almost afraid to mention this one.....but we haven't had any touch of the F.L.U. in our family. Hope I didn't jinx us.

10. I have two wonderful parents.....and I'm so thankful for every day I have with them.

Why can't every weekend be a weekend?

At my job, I'm required to work almost every Saturday. The last Saturday I had off was when Hubby and I went away to New York. This weekend was the only Saturday I had off in October.

I only work until 1pm on Saturdays, but boy.....does it make a difference! Having just Saturday afternoon and Sunday off makes for a very short weekend. It makes me thankful for my "real" weekends.

Hubby and I went out on Saturday for breakfast at our favorite place, Parker's Maple Barn. It's about an hour from our house, so we only go once every couple months or so. Going so infrequently makes it seem like such a treat! Our excuse is usually that we need to buy more maple syrup. Whatever works, ya know?

Then we went to visit my parents for the afternoon. It was so warm in New Hampshire (70 degrees!) that we sat out on their porch.

And of course on Saturday night we went out trick-or-treating with Emily.

Sunday we got up late - despite the time change for daylight savings time - and went over to my brother's house for a belated birthday dinner for Hubby. My sister-in-law made some very delicious stuffed shells, meatballs and sausage, a salad and some very nice bread. A chocolate cake topped it off. We spent a nice afternoon chatting about everything under the sun.

We came home....I read the Sunday paper.....and watched Amazing Race. ( I wish the married couple had gotten eliminated....she's such a *itch and she doesn't deserve him).

It wasn't so bad going back to work today after such a nice weekend.

Halloween with Emmy

We are so lucky to be able to go out "Trick-or-Treating" with our grand-daughter, Emily. She is the happiest child imaginable. Everything is a game, funny or just plain fun. This year she dressed up as a cat. She loved the outfit....she kept rubbing her belly!

Before we left we had to take all the obligatory pictures. Emily loves her beautiful Mom, Kara!

She's all set to go out with her Daddy and Mommy.

Memere and Pepere are ready to go. And Emily's other Nana came along as well.

Emily really did "get it" this year. She went up to the first house and the person had to put the candy into her pumpkin, but after that, she picked out the candy (or a couple pieces) by herself. She wasn't concerned with what kind of candy it was.....she picked which color wrapper she liked the best!

Auntie Jamie came along too. Emmy had to walk this year....no running.....so as to avoid the same situation as last year - namely a face-plant so bad she had an egg on her head!


Towards the end, we went to a house that was playing spooky music with screaming, etc, and Emmy was a bit freaked out by it. We told her over and over that it was a silly ghost. She was tired and wanted Nana to carry her.

She had a wonderful time and so did we. It's a real blessing to be out trick-or-treating again, especially on such a beautiful night and with such a fun-loving girl!

Attitude Adjustment

Yep....that's what I needed. An attitude adjustment.

Yesterday was a very......shall we say......trying day at work. There's only about 6 people in our office and I really like 5 of them. Do the math.

And which group do I chose to dwell upon? The 5 fun, happy, delightful people? Or the one PITA?

Unfortunately I let the 1 annoying, irritating, aggravating person ruin my whole day. Aren't a lot of people like that? They let one person, or one situation, or one incident, color the rest of their day.

Luckily for me, I have a kind, understanding, patient and insightful husband who listened to me rant and rave, then discussed options with me, and gave me his experience and opinion. And thankfully, I'm smart enough to listen to him.

Today I went into work with a new attitude. I'm not going to bow and scrape to the PITA, I'm not going to be her BFF, I'm not even going to listen to her. I'm going to block her out, ignore her, and walk out to the room when she gets to be too much for me.

And I'm going to surround myself with the people I enjoy.....the 5 other people in the room who are delightful. And hopefully, I'll go home with a bit of joy in my heart.

The Soup Nazi

Every year, about this time, when the leaves are turning gorgeous colors and the air gets nippy and I have to turn the heat on, my thoughts turn to.....soup.

I like soup. Only home-made soup though. I like making it from scratch. I like trying new soups.

My plan this year, as it is every year, is to make a big pot of soup for dinner on Sunday night and use it for lunches for the whole week.

When I was a kid, we had soup on Sunday nights. One week my Mom would make soup, the next my Memere would make it. We ate it with buttered Hi-Ho crackers sitting in front of the TV watching wrestling. Memere liked wrestling.

Unfortunately, as with most well-laid plans, I've never followed through and actually made soup on Sunday nights all winter to have for dinner and then lunches.

THIS will be the "Year of the Soup". I've written it here, on my blog, therefore it will happen.

Anyone have any good recipes???

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Hubby and I got to babysit our 9-year old niece last night. We figured we'd take her to the movies and have a little outing at the same time.

My first idea was to take her to see "Where the Wild Things Are". The movie theater closest to us had it at 7pm.....with IMAX. Or, at 8pm without IMAX. I didn't want to do the IMAX because A) it's $4 more per person and B) more than one person told me not to see it in IMAX cause it'd make me seasick.

The movie theater a little further away had it without IMAX at 7pm.....and it's a smaller movie theater and therefore about $2-3 per person cheaper.

We picked up a very excited Laura and drove to the theater. When we got there, we saw that "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" was playing there as well. "I really wanted to see that," she tells us. Hey...it's HER outing, so we let her pick whichever movie she wanted.

I almost fainted when the woman at the window said it was $29 for the three of us to get in. WHAT???? The movie is in 3D, and so therefore is $2 per person extra. Huh. What? They don't have enough extra cash to provide 3D glasses for everyone? Even though they're not the cardboard kind and you return them at the end of the movie? Whateva!

It was awfully fun to see a movie in 3D again. It wsa funny to see Laura reaching out to grab things as they came towards her from the screen.

The movie had nothing to do with the book, except for the fact that giant food came down and threatened to annhilate the town. But it was fun, and entertaining. We ate candy and a giant box of popcorn.....okay, Hubby and Laura ate candy and I ate the giant tub of popcorn.

We like babysitting.