We spent a wet and rainy morning on Sunday at the WW&F Railway Museum. Despite the weather, we had a nice time. Erica loves train! We will probably be heading back in a few weeks as the foliage turns some more.
See more photos of our day at Flickr.
Woo hoo! The Johnson Family is taking Monday off and looking forward to a three day weekend!
Tomorrow will be a quiet day. Garbage to the transfer station and then gymnastics for Erica in the morning. Grocery shopping in the afternoon.
On Sunday we are heading to Alna to spend some time at SeptemberFest. SeptemberFest is taking place at the Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington (WW&F) Railway Museum and is hosted by the museum and the The Sheepscot Valley Conservation Association (SVCA). The WW&F is always working hard to extend the track up the old line and has a great collection of narrow-gauge railway stock.
Then Monday we are heading across the state to the last agricultural fair of the year in the state of Maine, the Fryeburg Fair. This is the third year Deb and I have taken time off to go during the week and we are really looking forward to the time off this year. Monday is Woodsmen’s Day, which is always a great treat.
Hopefully tropical storm Kyle doesn’t ruin any of our plans.
Let me know if anyone is going to be at any of these events. I’ll keep an eye out for you.
On Thursday afternoon, Erica goes to a soccer camp (football for my non-American friends) for 4 and 5 year olds for the next several weeks. 25 boys and girls is too much for one coach, so many of us parents find ourselves assisting.
Today, as I was helping a group with dribbling, a large dump-truck backed up into a parking lot adjoining the field. Most of the little boys lost all interest in the ball as the truck begun spilling it’s load of gravel out the back and onto the ground. Everything came to a stop as the gravel and truck rattled and shook.
“Can we go dig in the dirt now?”
Dirt wins over football for four year olds apprently.
While at gymnastics this morning, one of Erica’s classmates got a bit nervous working with the coach on the uneven bars. “I’m afraid I will fall” she said.
The coach asked, “Who’s here to protect you?”
Another little gymnast piped right up and said, “God!”
The coach, without missing a beat, replied, “Who’s standing beside God?”
The little girl on the bar asked, “You coach?” Everything was fine after that.
Out of the mouth of babes, God bless the children.
Erica is picking blackberries in the backyard. They are delicious! I was afraid we would not have many as the bettles had eaten most of the leaves. I got a late start on getting rid of the bugs and couldn’t keep up through all the rain we had in July and August. But it looks like we will get a few quarts in the next week or so. In all likelihood they will be eaten raw or perhaps mixed into a batch of pancakes. Erica loves fresh fruit so much I doubt we will be able to freeze any for a future use. But that’s okay, I like them too!
July 16, 2008 - I spent the day at the Maine Highland Games at Thomas Point Beach in Brunswick, ME, helping out my friends presenting a timeline of soldiers of Scotland. I portrayed 7th Kings Own Scottish Borderers circa 1944.
Our very busy summer weekends are starting to slow down. Last week I spent a day out with the boys at the Maine Highland Games. This is the second year I turned out with Dave and Frank to help with the Soldiers of Scotland timeline. I had a nice time away from the family.
Deb and Erica were at the birthday party of Erica’s cousins. We all arrived home tired and worn out.
Erica and I have been fighting some sort of cold for weeks. Now we are really sick. Chest cough and sniffles. But we are suffering through.
Even sick we have not slowed down. We went to the Union Fair on Friday night and enjoyed some fair-food and rides. Neither Deb, nor Erica care much about the livestock. So I didn’t get much chance to walk around the barns.
We painted the house yesterday. Deb wanted something lighter than the slate gray it was. Now its a bit too electric blue for me. Turquoise is a good description maybe. Hopefully this morning we can start painting the trim and clean up the mess. Plus I need to mow the lawn.
The Windsor Fair starts today. I think we will head up one night this week.
We have a birthday party to attend next weekend. Then nothing planned until Fryeburg Fair the end of September.
It’s been a really busy summer around the Johnson camp. The week we spent camping in July was perhaps the best weather of the summer so far. It’s pretty much rained 90% of the time since we got back from Connecticut. But despite the weather we have still be going pretty hard.
If you visit my Flickr page, you can see some of the pictures and video taken from the week camping and from Gabi’s birthday in Connecticut. I have a few public pictures there. Most are limited to friends and family only. Add me as a contact, I’ll approve you and you can see more pictures if you are interested.
Some of the highlights from our week at Lake Pemaquid Campground were the 61 pounds of lobster we had on Wednesday. The great weather. Karaoke night with Erica and her cousins singing “Best of Both Worlds”.
We then zipped off to Gabi’s birthday party. And we returned to Maine absolutely exhausted. Frankly, I’ve not recovered since.
A week later we spent a lovely day at Pemaquid Lighthouse.
The training-wheels are off Erica’s bicycle and she is doing well with that. I really didn’t expect to have to do that until next summer. But she was popping wheelies in the driveway and that seemed like a sign that we needed to increase the challenge for her.
I’m drowning at work with all that summer in a public schools has to offer. But school will start weather I am ready or not. There is just too much to do and not enough people to do it.
Deb is also feeling the weight of work these dys too. He company is changing the backend software that runs everything and she is intimately involved with that. Looks like long hours are ahead for her.
The upcoming weekend is the only free weekend we have this month. Then you can find me at the Highland Games on Aug. 16 and Deb and Erica are going to a family birthday party wthout me.
All preperations are underway at The Johnson Family homestead for camping on Lake Pemaquid next week. There are tents and totes and bags and baskets piled everywhere with the wide assortment of camping gear and other equipage and sundries that are needed to live for 6 nights in a tent. It’s difficult to move around our little reisdence with so much stuff out of storage and in various stages of inspection.
This is our third year doing this. Deb’s sister and her family and one of my brothers and his family will all be camping at Lake Pemaquid next week. A total of 13 of us. Plus my sister-in-law’s sister and their familys total 20 or so and are camping as well. With so many cousins it’s a great deal of fun for Erica. For me it’s rarely a vacation of relaxation but is usually enjoyable in any case.
The campground does have wifi. So I’ll check in from time to time.
We start camping on July 12 and then leave to go visit family in Connecticut on the 19th and returning to work on July 21.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
We joke in Maine that we have many more than four seasons. Depending on the Mainer and their geographic upbringing then you will get slightly different answers. This is probably true in other places but I’ve not heard many examples.
So for me there is the Fourth of July, Summer, Foliage Season, Autumn, Winter, Mud Season, Spring and finally Black fly Season. Yes, black fly season is in full swing now. The excessive amount of water that is around and the warm days make for perfect conditions this year. And the massive swarms are demonstrating some amazingly large examples. I could have sworn I saw some the size of a small house fly today.
I stopped for some road construction today and could barely see the flagger due to the cloud of black flies around him. I felt so sorry for him and was glad when I could move on.
So unless we are saved by a couple of days of overnight frost then it looks like this will be a particularly bad black fly season. By the middle of June they will pass and all of the activity and excitement around Independence Day will arrive marking the change of the season.
Oh, and for the record, I still have snow banks in the yard! Reminders of the long winter we had.
It’s been raining hard for over 24 hours now. All the brooks and streams have filled their banks and many low areas are experiencing flooding. The new lawn is gone. We have some erosion that will need to be fixed and then I’m sure I will need to reseed. Fortunately, the next several days look like fair weather.