Starting with pets, including Cooper, who demonstrated on our visit to Will's house that not just Poppy finds the smell of my feet enticing.
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 Post bath | |||
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Visits ... from Brie, Brad and Huidi, Maddy, Dana, Ethan and Tristan, and Meredith. Brie came over for the weekend when Alison was in Cali (bringing Finn, Pippin, and a lot of dog chaos to the house).
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And a week after Ethan, Tristan and Dana visited, I was seeing them on the other side of the country near Missoula, Montana. My younger brother Kyle was diagnosed with late stage four cancer a few weeks earlier, but even so the end arrived faster than anyone expected. I and Bill flew out to be with him his final few hours. We had time to visit with Shirley, Ethan and Dana's mother and John their stepfather, visit some of the beautiful countryside, and the day we were flying out did the five mile, mostly vertical hike to Mission Falls.
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 Hike to mission falls had it's fair share of extreme situations, like walking across a waterfall over a 20 foot drop |
 Tristan is wearing my mom's engagement ring, passed down to Ethan! |
The impromptu help-Rick's-mom-clear her flooded basement, and we finally get the driveway repaved.
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Trip to Maine 2, where tropical storm Elsa chased up up the coast and finally passed by while we were at Rick's cabin. It made for some spectacular surf at Schoodic Point the next day!
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Dogs have a new passtime in Maine, chase Rick's 60 MPH toy electric car
For Alison's birthday, I made home-made pho; Alison wanted a custom cocktail to go with it, so I made thai-basil and lime martinis. Both were terrible. But I did knock it out of the park with the Whole Foods buttercream birthday cake. Alison had a second small ceremony at Rick and Elizabeth's house for gaming night.
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The weekend after Alison's birthday, we headed up to North Conway for a couple of nights, the main point of the trip to drive the Kancamagus Highway (Kancamagus is Indian for "fearless one"). We stayed at the White Mountain Hotel and Resort, which made terrible cocktails. On the drive on Saturday, we stopped at the standard scenic points, took the gondola to the top of Loon ski resort, visited the old Albany covered bridge, walked around the Russell-Colbath House (which was closed and which you cannot find the hours of operation for anywhere), and hiked to the Champney Falls, that last part in the rain. The rain could not dampen our spirits even if it could dampen our clothes, and it was a great day of site-seeing.
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And last but not least, we had Brie over for her thirtieth birthday. The bottle of wine she is holding is something Kate and I bought when she was four, with a vintage the same year she was born, and saved ever since.
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