From the Archives of our Lives

We had a wonderful visit from Steve, Jayne, Thomas and Paul (Dan's oldest brother and his family) several weeks ago, but it just happened to coincide with my work situation taking a left turn, so while I have had photos and things to say about it for a while, I never managed to do so. It's long overdue by now, but I will hope that "they" are right when "they" say, "Better late than never!" Unfortunately, I seem to have lost more than half of the photos from that time in the intervening weeks. I had, for instance, some really cool shots of our nephews hanging about in treetops like monkeys, but I have not been able to locate them. *sigh* I do, however, have a couple of the photos I took back at the house (after the boys went and got sunburnt at the nearby water park). The less camera-shy members of the family appear somewhat more often than the rest of us. I, for instance, never handed the camera over to anyone else, so I just don't appear at all!During their visit, we went out to eat quite a lot... in fact, I think we did more eating than anything... which was great, since it allowed us to try some of the restaurants we had not yet been to. We also went to Old Salem (which took much more time than anticipated) and did a few other things around town. I managed to cook dinner one night, but it wasn't one of my more shining moments. :) There were plenty of fun moments, including the time when a young girl tried to pick up on Paul in the local Fuddruckers, where the burgers are enormous and the clean-up staff ask for tips in not-so-subtle ways. Back to Paul's admirer... I won't repeat what her friend said in response since it was shockingly frank, but the admirer managed to tell Paul he was "hot" straight out. I, of course, found this to be delightfully funny. I can afford to find it amusing since I am not the mother of teenagers. Speaking of teenagers, Sonic seemed to be a favorite destination for the visiting family, so trips to get drinks and munchies were frequently on the agenda. I didn't object to that either.

Wherever we were, there was an abundance of silliness. I attribute most of it to the boys of the family. I am sure that Jayne and I always comported ourselves admirably. I'm quite sad not to have some of the other photos to share that would have captured even more of the levity, but these few shots will provide a peek at the Connecticut clan's visit to our spot on the globe. While this is arguably *not* the most exciting place to be, we hope they will consider coming again.