Scattered Thoughts . . .

I had previously written about Kenzie taking over photographer duties for me at a family bonfire event.  Later in the evening, I grabbed my camera and picked up where Kenzie left off. As the sun went down, it got colder and darker.  Kenzie was now having difficulty capturing people without motion blurring so badly that you can't identify the people in the shots so it was my turn to be the photographer.  She did an awesome job during the daylight hours though and that gave me a nice break!   As expected, Kenzie fluidly switched gears and focused more on S'mores and sparklers. We were in the yard out beyond the fairly new solar panels.  It was a good day for solar energy! We roasted hot dogs over the fire for dinner.  I brought along some bacon, shredded lettuce, chopped tomato and homemade maple honey mustard for some BLT Hot Dogs for anyone who wanted to try one.  Mmmm...  I could go for one now! It was definitely getting colder out at this poin

Way back in 1784 through 1789, when Thomas Jefferson was our US Ambassador assigned to France, he devised a decoder wheel to use for encrypting and decrypting letters sent between the US and his office in France. Being able to encrypt letters being sent between Thomas Jefferson and the US President became an urgent necessity because the European Postmasters opened and read all diplomatic letters passing through their command.  When I was a child, we would sometimes play a "Da Vinci Code" type of scavenger hunt game that consisted of written clues leading us to the following clue which eventually leads to the prize or solving the mystery. This was definitely an educational game and sometimes required some research in order to figure out various clues. I certainly enjoyed this game and have been thinking about sharing this game with the grandchildren as they get older. The grandchildren are now beginning to read so I've been thinking about this game again and wonderi

While I was sitting on the couch this evening, some movement caught my eye out our living room window in the road right outside our house. As I looked more carefully out the window, I could have sworn I saw a good sized Black Bear. I wasn't completely sure it was a bear since I only saw the rear half of the bear before he disappeared in our neighbor's yard.  Since there are quite a few kids who wander around this trailer park throughout the evening and early nightfall, I wanted to make sure I was seeing things clearly so I jumped up and quickly headed outside. Within a few feet of the house, I stopped in my tracks as a rather  big Black Bear was slowly sauntering toward me. He also stopped, looked up at me, and then turned into our neighbor's yard across the street. It was clear he wanted to avoid human contact and that is a good thing but I still had some concerns about a bear wandering through the streets in our little neighborhood. We continued to watch for the bear

My model of a Porter steam locomotive. One of the many attractions at the Amherst Railway Society's annual train show has been an operating steam locomotive running on 100 feet of track. This particular locomotive has made the journey from Maine to Massachusetts for the train show the past two years and it has been a really nice addition to this huge show. The Boothbay Railway Village loads their Edaville #11 Porter steam locomotive on a big truck along with 100 feet of track and makes the journey to Springfield, MA just for this incredible train show. I'm sure it is a lot of work but many of us at the show appreciate all their hard work to make this happen. All the kids at the show had an opportunity to learn about steam locomotives as the engineer showed them around the cab. They were able to pull the deafening whistle, ring the bell and even peer into the red-hot firebox. This is a great opportunity for everyone, especially kids, to learn a little bit about these st

We've always had a little fleet of boats at the lake house but, this year, we expanded our little fleet by also bringing along two new kid kayaks for Lukey and Kenzie. They are getting too big (heavy) to squeeze into our adult-sized kayaks (total weight capacities are the main problem) so it was time for them to learn to kayak on their own.  Lukey loved the idea... Kenzie hated the idea! For about two weeks, Kenzie consistently insisted that she will only be using Gee's kayak with Gee!  Lukey is more independent when it comes to physical stuff. Kenzie prefers to be dependent when it comes to physical stuff but will slowly ease into it when she sees Lukey is having no problems and even having fun. Truth be told, even though we purposely bought a kayak in Kenzie's favorite (but a bit sickening) color, we expected Kenzie to balk at using her new bright pink kayak. We started them off at our little beach. Kenzie, however, wanted nothing to do with it. Lukey was paddling a

Yesterday, while all the ladies were out bridal dress shopping, Lukey and I had some nice quiet time at the house. Naturally, we ran some trains on Lukey's layout while it was so quiet in the house... four different trains to be exact. That was fun. We then headed to the kitchen for some lunch.  After lunch, we knew the ladies would be back home before long so we didn't want to jump into anything time consuming. I then had an idea... I asked Lukey, "do you want to learn how to play a song on the piano?"   He enthusiastically replied, "YES!" while jumping up in the air like a little jumping bean. First, I attempted to teach him something simple... where to sit in reference to the piano... how to identify that middle group of two black keys. I doubt he'll remember this but he seemed to understand and it was his first introduction to this concept.   Then I figured we'd start with trying to play something simple like "Jingle Bells"...

It's been a quiet week since Christmas. As with any major event in our life, my health needs a long period of rest and recovery afterward. This is especially true after the long buildup to Christmas and Christmas Day celebrations. So, this week has been a quiet week of rest and recovery. Right now, I don't want to do anything else for the next three or four weeks... I'm tired and worn out! There were a lot of great presents this year and a lot of happy expressions as gifts were opened which makes a photographer's job a whole lot easier! I had some time to sort through well over 300 photos and found some from Christmas morning to share here...  Here it is, in the wee hours of the morning, as we wait on Lukey and Kenzie... Sheila is chatting with Adam on Skype as I prepare breakfast... Lukey was excited about this ferry boat with cars... the boat actually floats and can be used at the lake house!  And, this ferry sort of resembles the ferries we