Summertime

Time to plan our next vacation! The American Legion National Convention is going to be in Milwaukee, WI this year. I've never been to Milwaukee so this is a good opportunity to see another part of the country. We'll spend a week in Milwaukee and then extend our trip through the weekend, returning on September 5th. I've spent several days trying to decide which direction to go in. My first inclination was Door County which is a couple of hours drive north of Milwaukee. We're flying in and out of the Milwaukee airport so I had to keep in mind that we would need to return to Milwaukee to fly home. I also considered going to Green Bay and Madison. I checked Frommers and seriously considered going to the Wisconsin Dells, "the waterpark capitol of the world". The videos that I saw were beautiful. But, I wound up booking a 2-night stay at a B&B in Sturgeon Bay in Door County and now I'm really getting excited about this trip. One of the attractions in Door County is the lighthouse tour along the "craggy coast of Lake Michigan". There's also shopping and each town is supposed to be distinctly different from each other. We're going to be staying in the Water Lily Room at the Scofield House (pictured above).

What else is going on? We celebrated Father's Day with a cookout at Debbie's house. Jimmy had set up an elaborate system of umbrellas on the deck in case of rain, so when the rains came we were able to stay outside and keep relatively dry. I took John out to breakfast for Father's Day (Rocky's treat). Deb and I discussed the upcoming visit of Gram and Dorothy in two weeks. Meals have to be planned. Sometime during the weekend we need to have lobsters (and maybe a lobster roll and fried clams?)

I've been busy making "cards that move" for a card swap challenge. I love the designs at www.svgcuts.com! I bought a set of lever cards and went crazy making pinwheel cards last weekend. By the time I was finished I had it down to a science but it seems that I always pick the most labor intensive projects to make for swaps. Then of course I had to make Father's Day cards for John and Jimmy.

The first weekend of June was my 40th college reunion. It's tradition now for four of us (Roberta, Beesie, Ellie and myself) to crash at Ellie's house in Bedford, MA and go out to dinner, just the four of us instead of going to the class sponsored evening events. I drove up Friday afternoon and was the first to arrive. Roberta got held up in traffic and didn't arrive until after 8:00 and Bees came up on Saturday morning in time for bagels before we drove to the campus. I had pretty low expectations for this reunion because for the first time there was no charge involved since it was also the 100th anniversary of the college. Well, everything was perfect. There were about 20 members from the Class of 1970 who made the pilgrimage to the old alma mater. The first person we saw was Norman Dee, our science teacher. I saw people at this reunion who I haven't seen in 40 years. Lunch was excellent (a little hot served under a tent with no air conditioning). After lunch we took a trolley tour of the campus and then we went back to Ellen's to relax before dinner. I made assortments of greeting cards for each of the gals and picked up pots of calendulas.