Scattered Thoughts . . .

S heila and our granddaughter, Ellie, share a birthday so we tend to celebrate both birthdays together each year.  For their birthdays over the past few years, we've visited the ECHO Science Museum in Burlington and then gone out for lunch and this is what we did this year too.  It was a really nice day for all of us especially for Ellie and Gee! Our drive up to Burlington was longer than usual with far more traffic because the interstate highway was closed due to a bad accident.  The traffic didn't actually get bad until the last 15 miles...  from Richmond into Burlington.  From Richmond on, we were in bumper to bumper, slow-moving traffic. We had to travel on US Route 2 which is only one lane each way.  Fortunately, I actually enjoy the drive on this road and we hadn't driven this route since last summer so it was a really nice change until traffic was too heavy.   I used to live on US Route 2 for many years and I liked that it is one of the lon...

L ukey and Kenzie's birthday is just a couple of weeks after Ellie and Gee's birthday so it is more like a birthday month! We picked up Lukey and Kenzie from their dad's house (he lives very near us while Liza lives an hour away so we saved her a couple of hours of traveling) and we spent the afternoon with them before we headed to Sarducci's for their usual birthday dinner.  There were no presents this year other than this nice meal since they will be joining us on our upcoming cross-country Amtrak journey.  We had to talk about clothes, packing and measure them for clothes so it was good we had some time to spend with them before heading to Sarducci's.   This annual birthday dinner at Sarducci's is always nice though!   We picked up Pop on the way to the restaurant... I always forget just how dark this restaurant is until I attempt to shoot some photos...  I believe this is the darkest restaurant we have ever visited!  I'm still learning about t...

I 've fallen way behind in blog entries once again!  I've been focused more on my health, daily physical therapy and resting in preparation of a hectic spring and summer.  We have a big cross-country rail journey coming up and I need to be as strong and as rested as possible.  Of course, I also have health struggles most days too so I always seem to be trying to recover.   About a month ago, we had a little celebration at our house for Ellie's seventh birthday.  She shares a birthday with Gee so it was also a little bit of a celebration for Gee as well.  This was mostly Ellie's day though... Ellie has a couple of Disney trips early this year so this year's gifts were geared toward travel and Disney... Gee made some brownies for Ellie's birthday rather than a cake since there were only a few of us present... Ellie is always fun and always smiling so we had a good time celebrating her birthday with her!

A s I mentioned in my previous blog entry, we spent the day out for Sheila's birthday.  Most of the day was really nice while some of the day was pretty disgusting as will be described later in this blog entry.   The drive up to Burlington was nice...  the sky was clear and it wasn't snowing for a change!  The mountaintops clearly have snow but the snow at our lower elevation was mostly gone over the past few days and wouldn't return until the following day.   Sheila had gone for a massage in mid-morning in Waterbury so we were heading up to Burlington a little later than we normally would have started out.  She enjoyed her massage so that is good.  By the time we arrived in the Burlington area, it was a bit later in the lunchtime hours so we were pretty hungry.  We had decided to have lunch at a new Mexican restaurant in Willison called "Casa Grande" since we had never been there before and we do like Mexican food.  I think we visi...