A Visit From The Cousins

My sister Mary and her kids visited today (Left are Colin, Courtney, and Brenna (Meghan not shown)). Plus see my other siblings Chris and Ken. Doug was very excited to get his long awaited Pokemon Battle Revolution (Nintendo Wii game), Max got Sonic Rivals for PSP, and Julia worked on sewing a top for Bridget on Mom's sewing machine. Bridget hung out with her new friend Jonathon and me and Pippin checked out the neighborhood. Also see pics below:

All the Black River pics can be seen at: http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=3x70wrv.5qvh9aaz&Uy=mdp5ak&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0

A Visit to Great Grandma's

Off we were to Syracuse today to visit the David's grandmother and Aunt. Doug told Grammie all about his Nintendo DS and Pokemon Pearl Game. He is very excited about a new game coming out this week and bent Grammie's ear for quite a while.

We caught up on Grammie and Jane's activities and shared pizza and the kids high jinx. Then it was back to Black River where Mom had a sumptuous ham dinner with chocolate cake for dessert. After dinner, Bridget made friends with the son of our neighbors eldest daughter. They rode bikes up and down the sidewalk and had lots to talk about.

Tomorrow we may have a visit from the cousins and David may hook up for lunch with an old grade school and high school buddy for lunch...

Of Strawberries and Sackets Harbor

Today we were surprised to learn Ken and Dad had raced off to pick strawberries before we got up this morning. They hauled in 38 lbs of fruit, of which all but about 3 lbs were frozen to make future jam and strawberry shortcake or rhubarb pies.

After lunch we headed out to checkout Sackets Harbor and the Battlefield there from the 1812 war. We thought we had stumbled into a mini Ren Faire when we saw some ladies in period garb around a campfire. Doug was full of questions for them. Turns out they were laundresses (sp?) and were full of historic info about the battelfield. Here are today's pics in short order:

P.S. Some have asked where Black River is....here is a link to Google Maps to show you!

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=124+West+St,+Black+River,+NY+13612&sll=38.625633,-77.354523&sspn=0.007292,0.019956&ie=UTF8&ll=44.009839,-75.797381&spn=6.873329,20.43457&z=6&om=1

Ah, The Cool North

Woke up to 46 degrees outside this morning. I was warm and toasty in the RV, but I was less excited about bundling up and going into Mom and Dad's house this morning. To be ready for the cold, we made a trip to the Ft Drum PX last night to buy sweatshirts. We hadn't planned on needing cold weather clothes until we got settled--but the weatherman said otherwise and also said it was to be this cold for much of the remainder of our visit. Strange summer so far swinging back and forth temperature-wise as it has. The thunderstorms we experienced in Ithaca have also followed us north and a late afternoon boomer has been a threat nearly everyday since arriving in NY.

We've pretty much settled on the next stop on our trip, Waterbury VT, the home of Ben and Jerry's. Sorry, our freezer is a little too small to bring samples along with us the whole trip, but we'll do our best to test as many flavors as we can for you. Let me say, we think this first part of our trip is more sightseeing than house hunting. We both are fairly sure we'd like to live in a place where you can get to winter fairly easily, but don't have to live in its gray, ultra cold clutches to find nearby skiing a few times per winter.

Enough talk about cold. Let me get you up to speed on what's happen the last couple days. As you may have guessed, internet here has been spotty...Mom and Dad are too low tech to have their own connection. That means we either have to travel to a hotspot or use a unsecured neighbors' net to get to you. So far the latter has been barely sufficient...but that's the easiest to do.

Yesterday, David made two trips to post without the horde. Before leaving VA, he picked up a tick bite and had to have the head removed by a Doc at the Pentagon. While here, having not heard back from his Dr on the identification of the tick, the sore started to look like Lyme Disease's tell tale bullseye, so it was off to test the Army's clinic. He first called the Tricare (HMO for you non-military readers) appointment line and was told, he was not in the local system, so he had to go into the clinic to get the appointment. Fortunately, Mom and Dad live about 7 miles from the clinic, so this was a minor inconvenience. And the appointment turned out to be almost a non-event, as we finally heard back from the Pentagon clinic that the tick was a Amblyomma Americanum or a Lone Star tick -- not a vector for Lyme. In the end, the Dr determined the bandaid was probably the culprit for the rash near the bite and gave him some cortisone cream--a relief for all.

Minor drama aside, we took lots of little walks with Pippin around the town and have been catching up on reading and family. Here are a few pictures of things you don't see too often:

A wasp nest shaped like a balloon...

And a wren poking her head out after feeding her chicks:

And an empty nest thrown from the apple tree by a nest-raiding squirrel: