We're Home!

What an incredible trip we had this summer! We spent all of July and August in North America. We started with travels throughout Florida, visiting our great family and friends there. Then we flew to Portland, Maine and drove to Union, New Hampshire, where we got to attend the wedding of my sister's son Michael and his beautiful bride Aimee. I had a fabulous time visiting with my sister, and we even got to take a trip up to Sweden, Maine, where we visited our cousin Phyllis, who actually lives in our grandmother's old house up in the wood. It was an incredible experience. What memories! I had thought grandma's old house might not even be there anymore, but it certainly is, and Phyllis has done a beautiful job of remodeling it, without harming the original aura or the place! After a couple of weeks in New Hampshire, visiting and eating and gaining another 10 pounds (!), we flew to Chicago to visit with Ron and Marilyn. Ron is Gene's buddy from all the way back in high school, and we love them both and were so happy to have the opportunity to visit them. From Chicago, we flew on to Seattle, then took a bus over to Spokane, where we visited with my beautiful daughter Angelique and her awesome sons, Jorden and Mark. Mark got to go along with us when we drove over to Missoula, Montana for a few days to see younger son Rob, his incredible wife Polly and their amazing sons Evan and Logan. Wow! What a blast to get to spend time with my grandkids. Made me wish we could be around them all the time. Back to Spokane, then back to the west side of Washington again and a visit with our wonderful friend Madelle, in Olympia. The climax of the trip was getting to spend 10 days boating with our friends Judy and Bob, who live 1/2 the year in Costa Rica (on the Caribbean) and the other half in BC on their boat! Judy instructed me in various boating procedures and promoted me to a new rank each time I successfully accomplished a new goal! At the end, after learning to drop the big balls into the water when we docked, pulling them up when we left the dock, throwing the strings to a waiting person on the dock when we landed, and various other important sea tasks, I believe I was promoted to the rank of Boatswains Mate. Or maybe it was high ballyhoo assistant Boatswains Mate. Something like that anyhow. It was a blast! After a few final days in Seattle, we flew back to San Jose. We had thought that 2 months would seems like a very long trip, but everywhere that we went, I wished that we could spend more time there. To see more about our summer trip, see our summer trip blog.