Blueberry Festival 2017

This year's Blueberry Festival was eventful to say the least!  Nannie and Harold came on Friday to do the downtown events while Gabe did some more work on the shed.  The kids loved the wagon ride and especially the firetruck ride around town.  That night we all participated in the road race.  Nannie ran in the Fun Run with Ben and Audrey and they all did so well!  James and Gabe ran in the 5K and James ran his fastest time yet despite the difficult course.  Noah set the goal last year to run a 10K when he was 10, so that's what we did.  The race course was hilly and much more challenging than either of us realized, but we still reached our goal to finish under a hour (barely, but we did it!).

There is no photographic evidence of us running the 5 or 10K though because while Gabe, James, Noah and I were running, little did we know what was happening back at the school.  Ben and Audrey were playing with some friends and happened into a ground wasp nest.  One girl got stung 14 or 15 times, Audrey got stung 4 or 5 times and Ben got stung just once.  Everyone, but Ben turned out to be fine, but Ben had an allergic reaction... and bad one. Thankfully someone picked him up and ran him over to the ambulance (which was certainly there for the race participants, but we were glad they were so close by!).  The paramedics were wonderful in evaluating him, giving him epinephrine and whisking him off the the emergency room which is where Gabe and I met him.  I should have known something was up when Gabe rode past Noah and I in his car while we were finishing the race.  All in all we spent a few hours in the ED, Ben was a trooper getting an IV for steroids, Benadryl and fluids (This he calls the blue shot, it was his least favorite).  After all was said and done Ben was so proud of himself (and we were too!) for riding in an ambulance all by himself and getting a shot by himself in the ambulance.

The next day was Nannie's birthday and we were crunched for time, so we had breakfast cake.  Ben was a bit tired, but seemed to be doing fine given his escapades the night before.  We all traveled down to the parade. When it started Ben started having a secondary reaction where his body was covered in head to toe hives that were unbearably itchy.  He tried hard to stick it out and not miss the festivities, but he was pretty miserable.  I grabbed some bags of frozen peas from the local grocery store which helped a little.  Eventually things calmed, but not until we had given him more than an adult dose of Benadryl and several other histamine blockers.  We spent the rest of the day watching the fireman's muster, visiting with friends and enjoying the beautiful day.  This will be a Blueberry Festival to remember for sure!

New Jersey Visitors!

Our friends Gerry and Emily, from our New Hampshire days, their son Matt and dog Vax came to Maine for a few weeks this summer. Their arrival overlapped with our stay at the Clubhouse so we got to spend our first day on the boat and tubing, hiking Mount Philip and more boating. 

After returning to our house and back to the reality of not living on a lake in Maine in summer, we enjoyed the pool, campfires and more hiking.  Gabe had to work and Noah is at robotics camp this week, but the rest of us took Gerry, Emily, Matt and Vax to the peak of Bald Mountain in Weld.  It was a perfect day and the view was fantastic.  The kids did so well again, in fact, Ben cried when I had to break it to him that we couldn't continue on and hike the new trail that would have taken us to another peak and added 3 miles to the trip... legitimately cried... we will have to do this hike again later in the summer and add the second part on to it.  

On Wednesday night after Gabe finished work, we got our awesome babysitter to come and watch all of the kids and the adults went out for dinner at the Kawahnee Inn.  It was a pretty spectacular evening that summed up why we don't travel far out of Maine in the summer:)  

Thursday, we said a temporary goodbye to the Carroll Family who were venturing to Rangeley for a few days.  We really wished we could have joined them, but it wasn't meant to be.  Instead, the kids and I got to visit Noah at robotics camp and see what he had been doing all week.  They students were thrilled to show not only the robots they made, but also their programming skills to bring the robots to life.  

Belgrade Lakes 2017

The day after we got back from Millinocket we made a quick turn around for our time at the "Clubhouse" on Long Pond.  We had beautiful days for tubing, water skiing, swimming and general relaxing on the lake.  Gabe golfed on Sunday so the kids and I did a little hiking on "The Mountain" literally across the street from the Clubhouse.  I tried to get them to take what seemed like a more reasonable loop, but they unanimously decided they wanted to do a longer loop too.  Who was I to say no to more hiking?  We hiked for more of the day than I anticipated, but all of the kids did so well.  I carried Audrey for most of the way, but even she didn't mind.  I have been impressed so far this year with not only how well the kids are doing hiking, but also how much they really seem to love it.  

Visit North 2017

With the meat birds in our freezer, we had new found freedom to leave home together.  Our first stop was north to visit with Grampy and Grammy for a few days.  The weather turned out to be much nicer than predicted so we enjoyed lots of swimming, kayaking and paddle boating.  We also got the opportunity to visit with lots of family we don't see often and the kids for to meet Aunt Jeannie and Uncle Phil from Arizona for the first time:)  

We hiked into Blue Berry ledges and got to dip our feet in the cold water.  There were lots of blueberries to pick and everyone got their fill.  The morning before we left we got to fish with Grampy and all of the kids caught more than one fish.  We were not planning to keep any of them, but some of them were so big we couldn't throw them back.  Certainly it was a successful morning of fishing:) 

Golf, Art and the Meat Birds

As always, Gabe throughly enjoyed his time with family and friends at the Civiello Invitation which celebrated it's 50th Anniversary this year!  

While Gabe was enjoying golf the kids and I were getting back into "real life".  Nannie came to visit for a bit, we had a "let's clean out the freezer" dinner and did lots of swimming in the pool. 

On Saturday, Shannon and I took all of the kids to Reid State Park to the beach.  Well, apparently over the last year everyone grew up... we were at the beach from 10:30-3:30/4... like real adults. At no point did anyone complain, fight or whine to leave... no one had a break down.  The kids literally played in the water or sand (and seemed to enjoy themselves) all day.  AND Shannon and I got to visit like actual adults!  It was very surreal and we probably won't be going back to the beach for a while until the stars align perfectly like that again;) 

On Sunday, I had to have the meat birds in Skowhegan by 9am... I had everything prepared the night before as well as a perfect plan (there is a chance I was still a bit traumatized from the pig loading incident and since I was alone, it raised the stakes). The kids were all on board with what we were going to have to do in order to leave our house that early with 20 meat birds in back of the car. Everything was going smoothly until I went out back to load up the birds and saw white feathers and bird parts strewn everywhere. Only expletives were going through my head at the thought raising the birds for the past 8 weeks just to have them all eaten by someone else the night before their slaughter date.  I regained my composure to count the now free ranging meat birds that were supposed to be in the pen for easy wrangling.  Mercifully, we only lost two!  I was so happy I almost cried, except now I was running behind schedule and had to chase the birds around to cage them.  Luckily, full grown meat birds are not super smart or fast. Like old pros, Noah, James and I grabbed chickens while Ben and Audrey opened up the cage door and made sure no one got out.  I am sure it was quite a scene, but everyone did great.  

At the start of our 50 minute drive to the farm I realized that I didn't have my wallet... I had left it at the Bennett's house the night before in a beach bag I had not bothered to turn around and get last night because I thought it only contained towels... Naturally, the gas tank was empty and without a wallet I didn't even have the ability to withdraw money from the credit union... I raided the kid's wallets and scrounged together $10 for gas, which I sent Noah into the register to pay for partially because I haven't bought gas with cash in years and partially because we were now super late.  To summarize, there is no direct route between Skowhegan and Wayne Maine, so I spent the entire two hours waiting for the birds to be processed driving to get my wallet... The upside is that the kids were super patient and the meat looks amazing!  Tessier's Farm in Skowhegan did such a fantastic job I felt like I had walked out of Hannaford with the chicken:)