Dover, Foley, Princeton, Minneapolis, Denver

Bienvenido loyal reader. Bruce and Mary, stateside prior to their move to Puerto Vallarta,  find themselves relaxing at their granddaughter Aria’s home in Dover, NH, the Live Free or Die State. Oh, Sammy and Annah are around here somewhere as well. As usual for those of you  who prefer to view these posts and videos that will not embed on this site go to the original blog-site, please click here. Being that we are still working slobs, moderating news content for our Canadian company, we have to set up shop for our shifts. This is our Dover workstation, out on Sammy and Annah’s deck!

I’ve just logged off shift and now I’m watching Aria do her ABCs, IPad style.

It’s Monday night and no one feels like cooking so we head to Oriental Delight in downtown Dover. Aria is getting her first taste of a lemon wedge and…… she likes it! What a strange child.

This is my General Gau chicken, very tasty!

And for Annah and Sammy, this assortment of vegan sushi.

Mary was so excited to share this monster vegetarian Egg Foo Young with me that she sliced off a chunk before we took this food shot. It is muy sabrosa!

It’s Thursday and we had put in for holiday today and tomorrow. We’re on a walking trail headed to downtown Dover. We are sans Annah as she is still wrapping up her school year, she does not get her summer break until the 19th.

And where do the Kelleys go for a light lunch and a beer, in Dover? Well of course, to Kelley’s Row.

Of course we grab a patio table right on the river. We really like this place.

After Kelley’s, the Kelleys are headed back home. Dover is such a lovely town, what a great place to raise kids.

On Friday our youngest Joe and better half Meryah roll in from Thorndale, PA. When the General (General Mills) promoted him to Territory Mgr for the East Region they chose this small town outside of Philly.

Of course the first order of the day is play time with Aria.

For dinner we head into Portsmouth to Flatbread, the pizzaria. Joe says this may be a 200G pizza oven.

This is Mary and my pizza, there was very little to take home.

The whole fam damily at Flatbread. We were pretty impressed that they could accommodate vegan and gluten-free needs.

In Portsmouth the street musicians are harpists. Pretty cool town, eh?

We have the chance to rendezvous with John, Annah’s brother who is general mgr of the Prescott Park Arts Festival. He is working nearly round the clock prepping for their production of Willie Wonka which is opening next week.

We’re back from Flatbread and we had scheduled a video chat with Aria’s Aunty Helen, our daughter, and Uncle Caleb, back in Minneapolis.

It’s Saturday and here we all are at the start of the Bow Lake Cystic Fibrosis Benefit, a 15Km run and 5 km run or walk, we chose the walk.

We could not resist putting Aria in the cut-out.

Bow Lake is very picturesque as is all of New England, in our experience. But they could turn up the thermostat a little.

And here we are at the finish line.

After the awards ceremony and the terrific chow line (however, not so hot for the vegans and gluten-intolerant) we had Sammy and Annah, with baby Aria of course, pose with their good friends here at the benefit.

Later that evening, relaxing in Sammy and Annah’s home the kids decide to have a text-off. Mary supplied the phrase, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.” Guess who won. Joe, naturally.

It’s Sunday and time to see Joe and Meryah off on their six hour drive back to Thorndale, PA, but not without a little nourishment first. The kids cannot believe that this is my first time in a Chipotles which can easily accommodate everyone’s dietary desires.

Monday is a laid back day, It’s Annah’s last day with her students with one more service day tomorrow, and the rest of us hang around the house and I putz at this computer. Mid afternoon we head to Sears at the Mall and have pix taken with Aria (thoughtful Annah lined this up) and we pick up some Chipotle to go and head back to the house for happy hour and soon Annah joins us. After supper we just hang around the kitchen telling stories until it is time to hit the sack, early, as we have to be at the bus depot for the Logan shuttle tomorrow morning at 5:30. Tuesday comes much too quickly and our travel day begins. For some perverse reason we have a layover in Newark and if you look at a map it makes no sense to anyone but United, I’m sure. And because I’ve always heard (don’t always do) that if you don’t have anything good to say about someone/thing, don’t say anything so I will remain silent on the Newark Airport.

We arrive in Minneapolis and give Helen’s hubby Caleb a call and he picks us up in Mary’s mother’s Park Av (we’d used Helen and Caleb for our Park and Fly) and we drop him off at home and we are sailing onto Foley once more to work a couple of days in mother’s basement. But we have some fun along the way as well.

Happy hour on mom’s deck Wednesday evening. This is Rosie, Judy, yours truly, Mary, and Deb. We like to think that we are part of our moderation A-team. Funny, we have been friends for years and now we’re co-workers, talking to each other, virtually, nearly every weekday.

My mom, Margaret with Mary and Deb toasting around the dinner table just off the deck.

Rosie and Kevin. Congrats to them as they will be celebrating their anniversario number 39 shortly. I’ve known Kevin since the 8th grade, or for my Canadian friends, since grade 8.

Pete and Judy. They were our backdoor neighbors when we lived in St. Cloud, by that I mean that our backyards abutted and with no fences in the whole neighborhood, all we had to do was cross the yard to have a beer on their patio or our deck. Those were fun times.

Our in-laws, Caleb’s folks Roger and MaryLou were not able to make MDD this year so they were good enough to make the drive from Alexandria to mom’s place here in Foley,so….. we had another happy hour hour on Thursday evening.

Helen and Caleb had taken the light rail from Minneapolis to Big Lake where we picked them up and here we are on the deck, jump-starting this happy hour.

Caleb, Helen, MaryLou, Roger, mom, and me. I love Roger’s coffee mug. Right now it’s full of cheap red wine. Roger says nobody ever knows what he is up to.

We party late that night and sleep in the next day, Friday. We have some breakfast, do our final packing triage and we hit the road to Princeton.

Mary’s mother Harriet, sis Sue, Mary herself, Caleb, Helen, and me. We’re at Madre Loca, about the only place vegans can eat in this town. The owner Heidi recognized the vegan orders in the kitchen and came our to say hi. We said, see ya next year!

We said our goodbyes to Harriet and Sue and continue our travels down to Caleb and Helen’s place in south Minneapolis as we once again are using their place as our park and fly with them getting the Park Avenue back to Harriet at a later time. My nephew Eli and his novia Anja invited us to their place in St. Anthony for a vegan dinner for this evening so off we go.

Eli and Anja in their very nice place which is close to the U of M where they are still working on their studies.

Chef Eli slaving over the stove.

My vegan stuffed pepper. Our vegan daughter Helen was very impressed, as were we, with the meal as Eli and Anja are most certainly not vegan.

Me and mi sobrino, Eli.

We make our goodbyes early and miss the bonfire as we have a 3:00 wake up call for our flight to Puerto Vallarta, via Denver, in the AM. So we head back to Helen and Caleb’s, have a nightcap on the patio and hit the sack. It is a rather sleepless night for me and Mary as the excitement of our move is mixed about 50/50 with associated anxiousness. But 3:00 does come quickly and Caleb wheels us to the airport and Helen helps us schlep our 4 checked bags and 3 carryons to checkin. We say goodbye and she is off as are we.

Nothing is ever easy. Here I am at gate 32 in the Denver airport. Our AB320 had taxied the 5 miles, or so it seemed, to ready for take-off when the pilot tells us that these Airbuses are really computerized and they cannot figure out how to reset something, so back to the gate we go. After some more fooling around we are told to debark but leave our carry-ons there as we will reboard in and hour and a half or so. But that didn’t work out so well as they could not reset the thingy at all and we have to change planes. So we have to reboard in small groups to claim our gear and haul it down here. Right now, after paying the evil Boingo $8 to get online just for the one email I need to send to Pat, the property mgr of the condo we’ll be staying at the first month in PV. I need to update him of our flight as right now, is when her man Rene is expecting to meet us at the condo.

Thanks for visiting gentle reader. Next Sunday this blog tells of the adventures of that travel day and Bruce and Mary’s first week in PV, which is where they will be calling home for the foreseeable future. BTW it is Bruce and Mary’s anniversario numero 38, this day. Que Bueno!