Assateague Island Wildlife Refuge

We were happy to see the sun come out this morning. Ed and I started the day with a long walk along the Ocean City Boardwalk.

Then, we headed over to Assateague Island to see the wildlife. We enjoyed the visitor's center, where they had a movie about the wild horses that live on the island.

We started out with a hike in the sand dunes, where we found out that we should have applied mosquito repellent before starting out!

We didn't find any horses, but did see a couple of small frogs!

Mabel took a nap hanging in her baby pack!

We did another short hike in a forest, where it was much cooler because of the trees!

We saw a snowy egret  and a few terrapins.

We took a break to introduce Mabel to the beach. The water scared the living daylights out of her! It scared us a little, too, as it was pretty cold!

Crystal, Ed and Brittany played a game, called "See how close we can get to a wave without getting wet." They all lost!

We got our closest view of the ponies just as we were leaving the park. It was like they lined up for the tourists as they left the island.

I even got within 30 feet of this last pair of beautiful wild horses. My dream was fulfilled. I've been dying to see the wild ponies ever since reading Misty of Chincoteague as a child. Glad we were able to do it before we left Maryland!

Memorial Day

Memorial Day dawned bright and sunny, despite the many dire weather forecasts about it! We took a morning walk down Oakland Road, while the sun was still shining.

OK, Mabel, took a morning nap along the road.

We drove to Ocean City, where we holed up in our hotel suite for an hour or so waiting for the rain to stop. We had made a strategic error, as it was sunny in Eldersburg all day!

When the rain didn't stop, we grabbed our umbrellas and ventured out onto the boardwalk. It was nice having it all to ourselves!

We enjoyed getting a bucket of the much touted Thrasher's French fries! They closed up shop after serving us, as there just wasn't enough people out to justify staying open!

We brought home a couple of buckets of Fisher's popcorn, which helped tide us through the evening as we played through a few more board games.

We went to bed fat and sassy and somewhat wet!

Ford's Theater and more Mabel

We went to DC yesterday afternoon to see Ford's theater, where Abraham Lincoln was shot. The balcony behind Crystal and me is a rebuilt facsimile of the site.

The Peterson house across the street from the theater has the original room where the president passed away.

The stairwell had a three-story stack of books written about Lincoln! It made me want to write another one!

Our home teachers dropped by in the evening, much to Mabel's chagrin! They made her a little nervous!



Crystal and Ed had fun with Mabel while Brittany and John went across the street to the Maisel Military Museum. If you watch the video, wait till the end to hear Mabel's happy sigh of contentment!

It's Vacation Time!

We're happy to have Mabel visit us this week. She looks pretty good, despite having taken the red-eye to Baltimore Friday night! Ed and I had fun taking selfies with her!

She was chipper all day, despite a definite lack of sleep!

We introduced her to some hot Maryland weather! She looks so cute with the dogwood flower in her ear!

We were also happy to see John, Brittany and Crystal, as well! We talked them into walking the fire trail with us in the afternoon.

It was fun for John to see the trees leaved out, as he has only visited us in December before!

Crystal brought some special tortillas from Colorado in an ice pack for us to try out. They were corn tortillas that you finished cooking at home. They tasted so fresh and were perfect with our fajitas last night.



We finished up the evening trying out board games lying around the house, to see which ones would make the cut for the big move to Utah. Tornado Rex made the cut big time! It has a mechanism that still works great after 25 years!

Blogging in the Rain

Did I mention I was sick of the rain? We've had 4.5 inches of rain so far in May. The average is 2.77. It has made it hard for Ed to find a partially dry day to mow the lawn. It has also made it hard to walk, and hard to find a place to go with the dog when we have an open house to sell our house!

We drove in the rain to the Stake Center last night where I gave a mini-class on blogging as a means of journaling.

Because I have completely lost my voice for the past three days, it was an inopportune time to give a class.

However, with the aid of a microphone, I was able to magnify my croaking enough to be understood. It was fun talking about blogging and sharing some of the ways we've preserved family online as well as in books.

Older Americans Day at the Senior Center

Ed and I celebrated Older Americans day last Wednesday at the senior center with Gudrun and Dennis. Gudrun is my very fun German friend from our monthly Stammtisch, The lunch was a very good meal catered by the Mountain Gate restaurant in Thurmont, MD.

There is nothing like eating lunch with 75 older Americans to make you feel young again!

Walkersville Mystery Train

Ed and I drove to Walkersville yesterday to ride the Mystery Train with the Rigbys. It was only a 45 minute drive away. The train ride was 2 hours, but only covered about 14 miles of track. It was slow enough you could really enjoy the scenery!

The served a nice dinner on board--as you can see by this nice cheese and fruit appetizer plate! It was catered by the Carriage House Restaurant.

I've had a cold this week and lost my voice, although I felt fine. This meant that everyone else had a chance to talk. There were points  in the conversation where  I thought they would have benefited from all the scintillating pieces of information floating through my mind, but it was to painful for everyone to hear me try to talk. Ed did a good job telling my stories for me!

The mystery was simple and fun and allowed us plenty of time to just enjoy the ride and the good company!

Collectible or Not?

Ed has a collection of comic books he bought mostly in the 60's. We cataloged all 370 of them and took them to a comic book store yesterday. We looked on line to see if they had any value. Ed thought maybe we'd get $100-$200 for them.

To our amazement, the owner cut us a check for $700! Woohoo! We'll put it toward our "Visit Boston" fund!

Fresh off our joy at selling the comic books, we took 4 boxes of vinyl albums to a record store today. Out of 370 albums, the owner chose 50 he thought he could resell. He then offered us $40 for them!

After some bargaining we settled for a mere $47! Not nearly as happy as the comic book adventure! Now, the worst part is we still have 4 boxes of vinyl albums to get rid of! I hope Goodwill will take them!

Electronics and Electric Pink Outfit

We've been really working hard on cleaning our house the past several weeks. We go to Goodwill 2 or 3 times a day. Yesterday Ed sorted old electronics.

Fortunately, the Carroll County Recycling Center accepts these items. We dropped off a couple of boxes full of computers and other miscellaneous items yesterday.

It finally warmed up enough  today for me to wear my new Mother's Day outfit to walk the dogs with Suzanne! We were both pretty in pink! Ed even got me matching socks!

Pet Show with Activity Girls

The Activity Girls had a very fun pet show last night at the church. They brought all kinds of animals: dogs, lizards, geckos, and bunnies.

The trick was to keep them apart from each other. Fortunately, no animals were harmed in the making of this pet show!

We even had a pet chicken show up!

Kaylene invited me to bring Coda and run her through her tricks. She was very good about it and enjoyed the attention (and the pupperoni)!

It was a fun activity, and very interesting to see the wide variety of pets the girls owned!

The Girls in the Boat

Yesterday the Book it Sisters reviewed The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. We were surprised that one of our own, Cheryl (2nd from end) was on a crew team in college! We enjoyed the book, although some of us thought the writing style was somewhat slow. Those that listened to it on tape thought that was more enjoyable!

In the spirit of the sea, Samantha fed us salmon for dinner!

For our review, see:  http://bookitsisters.com/the-boys-in-the-boat/

An Indian Evening

Saturday night Ed and I met at the Steiners' home for an evening out with them and the Mosiers. It was fun to see the community they live in at Maple Lawn. It was close enough to walk to an Indian restaurant called Ananda. The community is so unique, and the restaurant blended with the area, having no sign out front. You wouldn't have known it was even a restaurant, except for the fact that it was packed full of people in side.

I had the Shahi Korma lamb. It was tender and delicious!

Stake Primary Training

The entire Eldersburg Primary Presidency showed up this morning for the Stake Primary Training meeting. We were highly motivated to be there, as they fed us breakfast! It was fun just riding down together and getting uninterrupted time to visit with one another!

One of the new things we're excited about is Teacher Councils! We think they will give our teachers new insight and the opportunity to share with other adults some of the problems and successes they experience!

Beautiful Buckeye

I love our cute little buckeye tree. It is a late spring bloomer, but the flowers are really beautiful.

I must have walked past the tree a hundred times today moving boxes out of the basement and up to the garage. It was fun to take a minute to 'smell the roses'.

In addition, the clematis are gigantic, large and colorful. Walking past them on every trip has almost made moving fun!