Yup, it’s true. I’m getting older along with everyone else…happens every year. Actually I had a great birthday week with many nice Facebook messages, cards, phone calls, treats and gifts. I recognize that I have such wonderful, thoughtful friends and family and am very grateful for all of you.
To make it easier on the family, we celebrated my birthday and Clark’s birthday together. Somehow I lost the candle blowing pie photo, so just a few fun family pics.
After nearly 30 years, I’ve started working again. I’ve been hired as a substitute teacher at Waterford School. So far, I’ve taught Nursery 3’s (preschool), All-day Kindergarten, and 4th Grade. I’m hoping to be able to teach a couple of days a week, but the nature of being a substitute is rather like being on call…so we will see. I don’t want to hope that some teacher will wake up sick tomorrow, but it would be nice đ
Tess and I spent a fun weekend in Arizona! We are both big Alfie Boe fans and when we found out that he was giving a concert in Phoenix, we decided to use our frequent flier miles to fly down to the concert and spend a few days with my sister Melinda and her family. If you don’t know who Alfie is, he was Jean Valjean in the 25th Anniversary cast of Les MisĂ©rables. Check it out here. Just before we left for Arizona, the Church announced that he would be the guest artist singing with the Tabernacle Choir in their Christmas concert this year. We are crossing our fingers that we can get tickets!
It’s hard to believe that we have been married 29 years! We celebrated with dinner and a date at the Salt Lake Temple which is where we were married lo those many years ago.
Eleven years ago we took all 6 kids to see Diane in Boston, our friends the Collettes in New Hampshire, Niagara Falls in Canada and the church sites and pageant in Palmyra in New York. Since Clark and Elliot were so young and don’t really remember the trip, we wanted to take them back as teenagers and this was the summer!
Our friends the Collettes have daughters Miranda and Jennica that are the same ages as our boys. They have been to our house often, so it was fun to spend time with them in their “neck of the woods” (literally!)
We arrived at Niagara Falls in the late afternoon, took the Maid of the Mist boat tour and then were there as it got dark and they turned the lights on the falls. The falls are just so amazing!
The next day we visited the Church sites in Palmyra and then saw the Hill Cumorah Pageant that night. This year the pageant is celebrating its 75th anniversary.
Alan’s sister Diane lives in Ithaca, New York, working at Cornell University. They have a saying there that “Ithaca is gorges” and so it is. Diane took us to see two beautiful gorges. It was great to see where she lives (with her dog, Happy) and where she works at the University. Brown family sleepover!
On our way back to New Hampshire we stopped to visit the Norman Rockwell Museum. He produced over 4,000 works of art – over 300 covers for The Saturday Evening Post magazine. We especially liked seeing his barn turned studio.
We finished the trip with a few more days in New Hampshire, including a day at the beach and a day in Boston checking out John Adams’s houses, Paul Revere’s house and The Old North Church. Can you have too much fun on a vacation? Â I think we did!
Guess who’s got hundreds of darling miniature daffodils in her front yard?!
You are right….me đ
It’s a good thing we all get older together! Â I actually like birthdays…they give me an opportunity to be grateful for so many friends and family. Â I feel so loved!
A day for sweethearts…mine offered to make us a special dinner of Steak Diane (my all time favorite steak). It’s actually not the steak I like…it’s the brandy and mushrooms! After dinner we watched The Lake House which turns out to be (yes, a sappy chick flick) an actual Valentine’s Day movie. Who knew?
Rather spontaneously we found ourselves in Hawaii last week with the Lundgrens, our good friends and neighbors. The stars all seemed to line up and we decided we were ready for a much needed get-a-way!
We spent our days lounging on the beach or by the pool, sightseeing with our friends, visiting with family, attending the temple, snorkeling in Hanauma Bay, playing games, watching movies and eating fresh pineapple.
The weather was perfect and we were in Paradise….
