A Few Updates

     The end of July passed very quickly and a new school year is fast approaching. We have been a little busy in the last couple of weeks, so here are a few little updates.

     After the baby shower, the next two weeks were pretty low key. I spent time in Scarborough around the house doing some cleaning and working on a few projects. One of those projects was finally starting our wedding album (only took me a year to get started).

 

    Elliot was here visiting for three weeks while Danielle was in Greece, and Prescott was here with us off and on. We went on many walks/hikes and Sage and Elliot even managed to get locked in the bathroom at one point in time. Thankfully everything turned out all right. But, I think Sage is missing her puppy pals!

     At the end of July Mike and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. Because it was the paper anniversary we decided to incorporate paper into different activities throughout the day. We started with a scavenger hunt, watched our wedding video, read through some of our old cards/letters, and then enjoyed some champagne and a nice quiet dinner. We didn't get to the crossword puzzles or paper mache. Afterwards we decided to give our year old wedding cake a try. Surprisingly it didn't taste as bad as I thought it would! We had a few bites and then tossed the rest. 

The flowers Katie had left for us when we returned home!

Many clues...

The last week in July I headed to NYC with my mom and Jon. I will post more pictures and info about the trip in a separate post.

     Now it August already (CRAZY)! In the first two weeks we have spent some time with family. Mike and Dave participated in a homerun derby at Marshwood to raise money to fight breast cancer (article). My cousin Sam came and visited for a night.  We enjoyed some Wii and a little disc golf with him.  Mike has had some vacation time the last week and a half to spend with his sister Kelly while she was home. We have been to Peaks Island, visited here in Scarborough and spent some time at the Oslin home in Littleton. I am sure we will be making a few more trips to Peaks in the next few weeks before school starts.

Mike and Dave relaxing before their turns to hit.

    Finally, since Mike had some time off we have worked on a few house projects. We have started to power wash the deck in hopes that we will be able to stain it soon. We also finally stained the shed.

Oh and I almost forgot, Mike got a new car (very exciting)! Toyota Highlander.

     Well, I think those are all of the quick updates I can think of for now. Looking forward to enjoying the last few weeks of summer vacation and hopefully more blogging to follow!

Fourth of July

Well, I have a bit of blogging to catch up on.  It has taken me a while to get this post ready, because I have been playing around with imovie.  I am finally ready to unveil my creation:

As usual we spent the holiday with the Oslin family on Tripp Lake.  This year was certainly much more dry than last year, so we spent more time in the lake.  The weather was perfect for me: SUN, SUN, SUN (not so perfect for Mike)!  Here is a little video of the weekend festivities!  I am not too happy with the quality in some parts, but I think I just need to play around with our new video camera some more.  Enjoy!

It is about time!

The guestbook is finally finished!  It has only taken me ALMOST a year to complete, but I am really happy with the final product.  

Baby Love

Well Ashlea and Nick are officially back in the states and are trying to get settled in Kansas before Baby Eva arrives (around Aug. 28th).  Ashlea was able to come back a few weeks earlier than Nick and while she was home we threw her a baby shower.  

We had some delicious food and played a couple of games...

Ashlea opening a few gifts.  Everything will be sent to Kansas as soon as her and Nick are settled in their new place.  Hopefully everything from Germany will follow shortly after!

It was great to spend the day with family and friends celebrating Ashlea and baby Eva!  I wish her and Nick the best with their new home in Kansas and the arrival of their first baby!  I hope that I can make it out to meet her sometime in the fall!

Sewing Project Revealed

We had a baby shower this weekend for Ashlea (more to blog on that later), so I can now reveal photos of the sewing project.  

The onesies are for Ashlea to take photos and document Baby Eva's growth and hopefully share on facebook, snapfish, etc for family/friends to see, since we won't get to see them very often while they are in Kansas!

A Little Sewing Project (Sneak Peek)

     I have had an idea for a sewing project that I've been wanting to try, so I finally started it this  week.  Below are just a few sneak peek photos, because I don't want to give too much away before the project is complete.  

     If I had written this blog earlier in the week it would not have been as positive.  I was having a real hard time with my sewing machine.  It was not going very smoothly, I had to continually stop, rethread the needle, go a little bit, stop again.  It was very frustrating.  I also was not doing very well with curves/turns on the sewing machine.  The first few attempts were not very impressive!

Before:

     But, I am happy to say that I have figured out the problem and tonight was much more successful.  The problem was I needed new sewing needles. The old ones were too worn out.  So, I bought some new ones, fixed the thread tension and it made a huge difference!  I was able to complete two parts of the project in much less time and they looked better than my original designs!  I am getting really good at maneuvering the fabric, so that the curves look more polished!  I am halfway done, and will share the completed project soon!

After:

Off to a Great Start

Summer vacation has finally arrived and it is off to a great start!  School ended on June 15th (half day) and we had a really fun staff party to celebrate.  Then Wednesday morning Katie and I packed up the car and headed to Martha's Vineyard for the week.  We have been going to the Vineyard for the last three summers and we look forward to it every year.  We had Sage and Prescott with us, and Danielle and Elliott met up with us later in the day.  Here are just a few of the highlights from the week.

* Beautiful weather! We went to the beach EVERYDAY, because it was sunny/hot all week.
* The first day on the beach Katie spotted a cute guy, but then we saw him smoking, in his minivan & then he pulled out his metal detector and scanned the beach.
* Kim (Katie's mom) joined us Friday-Monday and Sarah came over Saturday-Wednesday.
* We took the dogs for a walk everyday and they behaved (for the most part).  We found some really great trails and a nice dog park.
* Sage went into the water a few times (but she is not a very good swimmer, always looks panicked).
* We hit up all of our favorite beachs & restaurants: Aquinnah, State Beach, South Beach, Sharky's, Jimmy Seas, Mad Martha's Ice Cream, Black Dog Tavern & the Lampost.
* We took the tiny, 2 car ferry over to Chappaquiddick and tried a new beach! The picture below is our view from the car, because we were the first car on the ferry. A little scary!

* While on the nude beach (we had to be on the nude side to legally enjoy our drinks) a nude man stopped to ask us if we had any water, because he was really thirsty.  Who does that?
* We were really confused seeing a guy sitting at the beach with his potted plant (?).
* Enjoyed some shopping!
* Met a new group of people on the last day at the beach, hung out with them at the Lampost that night and listened to a great band.
* A 65 year old man asked Danielle if she wanted to dance with the world's worst dancer.  Her reply, "Um, no thanks!".
* All of us came back really tan (or a little sunburned) and it is only JUNE!  Can't wait to see what the rest of the summer will bring...