Reaching the other side

Yesterday went by in a blur of last minute jobs and yet more sad farewells...

...and finally a drive to Boston ending with... a flight.

Somewhere over the Atlantic, America just seemed to fall away.

When we landed this morning the flight attendant announced, "To those of you returning to the UK, welcome home."

That's us, and so that is that - Albaniana has left the building. 

However, this blog is not quite over.  The Girl has been busy preparing a treat which we will share with you soon.

On the brink

Today has been too long, and yet too short, and full of too many boxes (now loaded onto a container and gone ahead of us, to catch up with us again much later), and far too many goodbyes with people we will dearly miss.

Tonight we are on a whole family sleepover with some very good friends who have fed us and given us refuge in their basement room.

Tomorrow will be our last day in America.

Boxing Day (2)

I'm drafting my post early today as I'm stuck at home with strangely little to do, even though there is activity going on all around me.

Here's the story (which most of you reading this know already, seeing as you are probably related to me):  we're moving.  Not just out of town or state, but out of the country, back to the UK. Although we have very much enjoyed living here, we never planned to stay in the USA forever, and for various reasons (principally, timing for the kids' schooling) this seems like the right year to go back.  So the house is in the process of being packed up as I write, and boxes are stacked at every turn.

We're excited to be going home, and at the same time full of regrets about leaving our friends and our life out here.  The last few days have been particularly hard, saying so many goodbyes.  As leaving day (Thursday) approaches, it's only going to get harder.  And meanwhile there is so much to do! Except for right now, when there's nothing much for me to do at all except watch the boxes stack higher and higher and wonder how we come to have so much stuff.

Without being asked, the removal men are kindly making use of some of our blog names:

 

 

Unexpectedly, tonight the whole family had another "last" night swim (in pouring rain) 

 

Labor Day...

...no kidding:  I have laboured all day and now I am bug-eyed and can't quite remember my own name. 

So much for it being an official holiday.

The Man adds...I managed to make it this evening to Saratoga Springs for dinner with work colleagues at Druthers.  The city and the bar were pleasantly busy on a beautiful evening.  The food was good and I'm told the beer is excellent (but, as you might guess, they do not offer a non-alcoholic beer at all).

Final night swim

Despite the drizzly weather and the freezing water, the Boy took the opportunity for one last night swim.  He'll be out at another sleepover tomorrow evening, and we're having the pool closed on Tuesday.

 

Party

Here we are, approaching bedtime after an exceptionally long and busy day. I was up early to bake for a party.  Cleaned the house.  Went to the farmers' market.  Cleaned some more.  Shopped.  Started welcoming guests shortly after 4pm and entertained fairly solidly for the next six hours. 

It was fun.

The Boy, coming off the back of a sleepover with multiple friends last night, looked about ready to drop by the time the last guests left.  An hour later, I feel much the same.

No time like the Crescent

A few more photos from Sunday, our last day in Maine, spent mostly on Crescent Beach.  Here are various kids braving the sea, Exile #3's beautiful paved sandcastle, and some hungry children anticipating their lunch.

 

Apple tart

Another day has whistled by, with jobs to be done but also a trip to Indian Ladder Farms where the Girl and I bought fresh apple cider made from the season's first apples - nicely tart. 

The Boy meanwhile was up at Thacher Park with his buddy, enjoying the sunny day.

I keep meaning to catch you up with photos from our recent trip, but it's late again, so maybe tomorrow?  Oh go on then, here's a teaser...

Discussion tabled

The Girl was poorly today and had to miss her skating lesson, so that was a pity.  Happily she's all better now.  The Boy had a successful percussion lesson plus time with his buddy, so that was good. 

This evening a friend came over for general chat and jollity and to discuss collection of the dining table she loaned us, gosh, coming on for seven years ago - it's about time we returned it, really.

Keep calm and party on

We're just home from a party next door, a happy gathering of neighbours.  There was a bit of a British theme going on, with homemade "Keep Calm and..." signs up on the walls, and Union Jack-style flags stuck in the cupcakes.  Almost like the party was for us. Which in fact it was.  But as to why...

...I'm still too much in denial to talk about that.

Staying afloat

Well, that was a very happy and relaxing stay with the Exiles - many thanks to them for their hospitality, for fun on the beach, enjoyable meals and great company generally.

It all seems a long time ago already, though, now that we're back in our house and suddenly overwhelmingly busy as end-of-summer rushes to meet us.

Meanwhile out in the pool, a chipmunk had a watery adventure this evening.  By the time the Boy spotted him he had managed to pull himself onto a passing raft, and although he then jumped off again we were able to scoop him safely onto dry land.

Life's a beach

Another lovely day in Maine with the Exiles, followed by a long and rather grueling roadworks-strewn journey home. More tomorrow, sleep is needed now.

Today's events: what, where and Who

Today has included early morning running, baked goods for breakfast, Saco farmers' market, sandcastling on Saco beach, a stroll at Scarborough salt marshes, fish and chips for dinner and...the latest Doctor Who.  And beer, so this is another short entry.

NH & ME

Setting off to bed right now, tired and happy after a fun afternoon on the high rope courses on Loon Mountain in New Hampshire, followed by a bit of a drive then a delicious meal and good conversations in Maine, chez Exiles. I'll tell you more another time.

Caves

We're mini-breaking again, looking for a change of scene.  Today we have made it to New Hampshire, after a drive through Vermont (so pretty, Vermont), stopping briefly for refreshments at the Baba-a-Louis bakery and cafe in Chester - oh, yum.

Tonight we are staying at a motel in the White Mountains we discovered a couple of years ago, the one where we saw a bear.  But before we got here we checked out the Polar Caves.  This is a great example of some enterprising person exploiting an interesting natural site for profit - but they're doing it quite nicely, and we had fun squeezing through a series of granite caverns and rock formations.  It was all very Famous Five - there was even an actual smugglers' cave.

Survivors

So today was very much the day after the night before.  Parents started picking up their bleary-eyed offspring from as early as 8am, and the last one left at noon.  None of us remaining felt particularly lively, however the Girl had a skating lesson scheduled and she managed to cope with that.

Tonight the Man and I were out with our fellow Amnesiacs, J & V, for an evening of trivia at Swifty's bar and grill.  It turned out to be quite a "destination quiz" - big turn out (14 teams) and opportunities to win free beer or shots with each round.  We did in fact win the first round (on a tie-breaker), but sadly it was downhill after that (and not because we were drunk - as it happened, we passed on the booze).  But we didn't disgrace ourselves, ultimately coming in joint fourth.

Now, time to catch up on some necessary sleep.

A houseful

The Girl and Boy have friends round.  Most of their friends, so that's plenty of kids. Many of them have been here since mid-afternoon, and the majority of them are staying the night.  Including ours, there appear to be more than a dozen in total.

They have been swimming and larking around in the yard, and down to the local playground.  They have eaten in quantity and drunk several gallons of fizz.  Sometime soon (I hope) the boys will gravitate towards the basement for the night, and the Girls will convene in the sitting room, and I don't suppose any of them will get much sleep, but as we know by now that's never the point of the exercise. I just hope they manage to not be too loud (12 year-old boys and 14 year-old girls not loud? Yeah, right).

Some of the parents of all these kids stopped to hang out with us for a while during the evening, so we've had fun too.  But now a long night stretches ahead of us...

Ship shape

Here are some photos of the USS Slater, which we visited yesterday. 

Over 500 of these Destroyer Escorts were built, and each could be built in a month, but USS Slater is the only one still afloat.

 

USS Slater

We took the Boy and his buddy to visit the USS Slater today.

It's the last World War II Destroyer Escort still afloat in America, built to defend the convoys of ships bringing supplies across the Atlantic to Britain, and the naval fleet in the Pacific.  For no specific reason, it resides in Albany, docked on the shore of the Hudson River.

We joined a rather large party for a tour of the ship, squeezing along passageways and up and down ladders.  We examined the guns and missiles up on deck and the quarters below deck and tried to imagine life at sea in wartime.  It was easy to picture the crew all noisy and joking around down in the mess or trying to get to sleep in their bunks; harder - moored on a river on a sunny day - but not impossible to conjure up the pitching waves out on the ocean, or the fearful intensity of an air or submarine attack.

It's always worthwhile, especially for us (lucky enough never to have experienced it) to visit reminders of war and to think about the sacrifices made.

Anniversary magic

It's the middle of August, and once again our neighbours two doors down are hosting the annual pig roast.  Food a-plenty, friends to chat with, pinata, juggling, live music, caricatures and magic tricks.  The same illusionist we've seen there before was back by popular demand - just as good as ever, with his distracting patter and mystifying sleight of hand (though the Man claims that this year he saw how the melon got under the hat).  Most magically of all, the rain held off until the very end of the performance.

We are not always here for this party, but it often falls close to our coming-to-America anniversary, and this time hits it exactly. We arrived on these shores and began this adventure seven years ago today.  But in just a few weeks time... well, that'll be a story for another post.

Stuff

The children needed gear for school so I took them shopping today.  We had some success, either side of lunch at Ruby Tuesdays (the one restaurant they could both agree on - Buffalo minis and salad for the Girl and a side of fries for the Boy).

In the afternoon I set about yet more sorting and discarding: it has become my regular business lately.  Ah, the stuff you can find at the back of drawers and closets - a bag full of used twist ties (sure to come in handy), a dozen bouncy balls, a clockwork dog, a church candle, a plastic duck call... I imagine myself as some future anthropologist, wondering how it all got there and what it all means.

It has not been a hot day, and this evening was positively cool.  Man and Boy went swimming and made themselves even colder - the Man had to put a sweater on for the first time in months.  The Boy briefly tucked himself in bed to warm up.

Standing out from the crowd

The Man and I made it down to Five Rivers this evening, and there it was, as lovely as usual. 

We chose the Vlomankill trail, and stopped to look at the stream-level measuring station at the first wooden bridge.  It's a "CrowdHydrology" initiative.  You read the measurement, then text it to a website that records the measurements over time and thus tracks the rise and fall of the stream.  We duly took today's reading (0.7 feet - pretty low, but still a nice enough flow) and the Man texted it in.

Here's a photo (from our archive) of the stream in winter at the measuring point:

When the Man visited the website he identified that at some point someone had (presumably by mistake?) recorded a measurement of 32 feet (a Noah's flood situation), which had thrown all calculations off by a crazy margin.  That is the risk with crowd-sourced science projects, I suppose.

Wednesday activities

This morning I had a long get together with a couple of fair tradey friends to discuss a few things and catch up on news.  I got home just in time to remind the Girl that she had a skating lesson, and we were soon out of the door and over to Troy for that.

It has rained on and off all day, so apart from a brief rainy swim the Boy has mostly been stuck indoors honing his Zoo Tycoon skills.

Haircut 2007

In my usual way I had left it way too long to get a haircut.  I did think about it several weeks - hm, months - ago, but then discovered that my regular hairdressers had closed down (they didn't even tell me!  And they used to send me valentines...) and that stumped me enough to give up the project.

But yesterday I was going through a pile of papers and found a photo of myself soon after a rather nice haircut in 2007. When I looked in the mirror, I knew that the time had come.  I broke out the phone directory and randomly picked another local hairdresser.

I chose well, and got a good cut - very reminiscent of that 2007 "do", since I took the photo along and said, "Like this, please!"  My hairdresser chatted about her parents (from Turkey) and her upcoming wedding and her degree in Math (her fallback if she stops enjoying cutting hair).  An hour flew by and I no longer have a wild fringe and fluffy more-bunny-than-pony tail.  Hooray.

Vintage vote winning game

This afternoon the Boy and I played a game called "Landslide".  I bought it a while back at the Salvation Army Thrift store, but this was the first time we'd given it a whirl.

Not bad!  It's a race to win the US presidential election by trading off votes.  As in the real thing, it doesn't matter how many individual votes you get, you have to win states and therefore the electoral college.  For added fun, there are "politics" cards that allow you to throw a spanner in the works every now then, by enabling you to steal a state from your opponent or force a voter bidding war.

The Boy was puzzled by the colour choices - in the game generally Republican states were blue and generally Democrat states were red, so that didn't seem right.  But the photos on the box suggest that the game is somewhat vintage, certainly pre-2000 which was apparently the year red became associated with the Rs and blue with the Ds.  Further research confirms that Landslide hit the stores in 1971.

Since it was a game of strategic trade-offs and bidding, of course the Boy won - by a landslide.

Bless this house

So, yes, an enjoyable evening with friends last night.  Today the kids each had people round, so they were happily occupied.  Meanwhile I was invited to my Karen friends' new house blessing ceremony.

Members of the extended family and other friends from their community gathered together for some prayers and hymns and sermons.  Since it was all in Karen it mostly washed over me, though I was pleased to share in such a special celebration.  And it turned out I had a walk-on - or a least a sit-down - part to play, as halfway through I was invited to sit on a chair (everyone else was on the carpet) and was presented with flowers and pompom garlands and a woven shawl.  I've been helping this family out for a couple of years now, including quite a lot lately through the house-buying process, and this was a formal thank you. 

I was very touched, but nothing meant more than seeing the kids happily running through the bright and cheerful rooms (such a contrast with the gloomy apartment they've lived in up to now), as their parents welcomed visitors to a home of their own.

Place marker

Sorry, it's another of those place marker posts tonight - we've just come back late from dinner with friends, which was lovely but now I'm too sleepy to write. See you tomorrow.

Evolving

Last day of farm camp for the Girl today.  Really she's aged out of it now, but she does love those goats and I believe she has made herself useful helping out the younger children, so she has had a good time.  This afternoon she was back at the rink after a week off - more spins and jumps and what not.

The Boy had a brief swim, but this August is turning out to be unusually cool (suits me!) and the water was chilly.  So he took to his drums instead - he's practising the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction - until his buddy came over to hang out.  They ended up playing charades, and I managed to guess the Boy's mime interpretation of the word "evolution", which suggests I may personally have evolved to be psychic.

Taxiing day

Today seems to have featured an awful lot of driving around - Man to work, Girl to farm, Girl from farm to JoAnn Fabrics, home, Girl to Irish dance class, Girl from dance to library, Man from work, Boy from buddy's house, Man home, Boy to drum lesson, Girl from library to home, Boy from drumming to home.

Then I cooked dinner, and it got dark.

Tomato

The Man has been tending tomato plants all summer.  Today we finally ate the first fruit, and it was very good.

Sole destroying

I've said it before and I'll say it again:  I don't like shopping for shoes. 

I last bought a pair of shoes for myself over a year ago.  They had fallen into disrepair, so I retired them a month or so back, realizing with relief that the pair I'd worn before them (that hadn't quite made it into the rubbish bin) still actually had a squeak of life left in them.  They've been getting me around just about fine, except on extremely wet days.  'Cause no-one really looks at your shoes, after all, especially not the soles.

But today I set out with the intention of buying another new pair.  I did better:  FOUR new pairs, all at discount prices.  This may be the most shoes I have ever owned at the same time.

I reckon I'm done with shoe shopping for at least the next eight years.

Witnessing the American Dream

Three and a half years ago, my Karen friends arrived in Albany from a refugee camp in Thailand with not much more than the clothes they stood up in.  They have faced many challenges here and life has not been easy. They've worked hard and lived frugally in their cramped rented apartment. 

Until today...

...when they bought a house!

The whole process, which they embarked on back in the spring, has been long, complex and fraught with setbacks (for a refugee with no credit history, getting a mortgage is not at all straightforward).  But with help from friends and professionals they have spent the last few months struggling past all the obstacles - and this afternoon at last everything came together and they were handed the keys to their new home.

Their American dream is becoming a reality.

I'm so happy for them I could burst.

Montreal views

As I noted a couple of days ago, visiting a new place can be exciting and fun.  It can also sometimes be, dare I say it, rather hard work.  Unfortunately, such was the case for us in Montreal.

Driving around the city was nightmarish, especially as our smartphone was unusable because it was running up roaming charges at such an obscene rate. And the Google directions to the Longueuil Metro that we picked up on the hotel wifi led us not to a large rail terminal but to a local branch of a Canadian supermarket chain.

The "old town" part of the city was attractively French, but not especially kid friendly on a hot, tourist-packed day.  However we were briefly diverted by a street performer, enjoyed a very fruity smoothie and a gelato, took in the views across the fast flowing Saint-Lawrence, and saw lots of brides.  The Girl, who is not a fan of cities, declared this one better than many. Praise indeed - but she still didn't want to hang around it for too long.

We also had a bit of an explore of Mont Royal, a Hampstead Heath-like park in the middle of the city.  This is where the trip nearly went horribly wrong, late in the day, after we followed a path for some distance in search of the Croix du Mont Royal - a metal cross which honestly wasn't that inspiring and didn't provide any views... The kids were quite disgruntled, until, by a happy chance as we crossed a bridge, the Girl spotted three raccoons sitting in a row on the path beneath us.  We stared at them and they stared at us, then they disappeared themselves into some undergrowth.  Everyone's mood lightened - hooray for raccoons.

It was cool to spend a little time in a Francophone environment, especially since both kids have been studying French at school.  Although it was not our most successful city break, I'm glad we went.

Tired

We're home after a long drive and it's very late - so, more tomorrow about Montreal, and for now goodnight.

Dome Away from Home

So, here we are in a new month - and a different country.  We have hopped over the border to Canada, to visit Montreal.

Our main destination today was the Biodome. It's a little bit like the Eden Project, but more like a zoo than that.  There are four environments featured, starting with a rainforest, moving through Canadian mountains and sea-life and ending in the antarctic with puffins and penguins.  We got to see animals like a capybara, caimans, a very busy beaver and a lynx.  There was also an otter - the Man swears it gave him a nod of recognition.  The puffins and penguins were fun to watch.  We were able to walk through the whole exhibition twice, which gave us the chance to see animals that were hiding the first time around.

Wonder of wonders, there was a gift shop but we didn't have to pass through it in order to exit - that has to be a first.

We also wandered briefly around the Olympic park and admired the Montreal tower.

Birthday Reflections

The Man was up at dawn for a run around Mirror Lake, and was treated to these views:

We spent another day here in LP, took in a short hike (not a popular choice with absolutely everyone, ahem) up Cobble Hill, spent more time variously on the lake (in kayaks), in the pool and just sitting around reading.  And I turned another year older, but that's OK.

A Placid place

The Man has some time off work and today we have come up to Lake Placid to enjoy it.

We're staying in our favourite hotel (the Golden Arrow) and we're doing all the things we like doing here, without having to think very hard about it.  So some of us have boated on and swum in Mirror Lake, and some of us have eaten at Wyatt's Mexican cafe; some have been to the bookstore and some to the popcorn store; most have swum in the hotel pool, and we've all been out to dinner at the Italian restaurant that serve fries.

It's fun and exciting to visit new places, but sometimes it's easier and more relaxing just to go somewhere familiar.

Zud!

The Man had never been in our local hardware store.  I went there with him this evening to buy some screws.  What a Shangri-la it is!  And with that lovely hardware store smell about it!  And it stocks some awesomely named cleaning products, including this one:

Just a few good reasons to shop local.

Making waves

The Boy has lately taken to being a one-boy wave machine, resulting in a lot of water washing out of the pool altogether.  So it was just as well that today we had one (in fact, two or three) of those torrential downpours typical of this time of year to top it up again.

It has been a this-and-that sort of day, but at least one of the "thats" involved taking a car-load of toys and sundry items into Albany to donate to Grassroot Givers.  I hope they will all find happy new homes.

A couple of old geysers

 We felt the need to get out of town, yet didn't want to to travel too far, so this afternoon we made our way up to Ballston Spa for the Saratoga County Fair. 

Fried food and noisy rides aside, it was a classic old-timey country-type event - with a few exotic twists.  A zebra in the petting zoo, for one thing.  Camel rides in addition to the more traditional ponies.

There was a tent full of rabbits and chickens (and - another twist - a couple of reindeer).  A shed full of goats.  Draft horses.  A big old barn stuffed with 4-H handiwork. An "agricadabra" show that involved a man with a balloon over his head.

And we watched pig racing, something I've always secretly wanted to see.  To be honest, it is not all that exciting, just pigs running round a pen, but the presenter did her best to make a show of it.  The pigs had punny pop-culture names, like Miley Swine-us and Lindsay Loham. 

On the way home we stopped in at Saratoga Spa State Park to collect some spring water (avoiding the nasty-but-allegedly-good-for-you [I personally don't believe that] mineral water) and to visit a geyser. 

There are springs of one kind and another all over the park, but the geyser (OK, OK: spouter) is fairly spectacular, as is another one we found which has made its own weird rock formation.

A (common)wealth of blueberries

This afternoon we took the Boy and his buddy fruit-picking at Indian Ladder Farms. 

The Man and I left the boys picking raspberries and crossed the road and a pleasant meadow in search of blueberries.  We have had mixed experiences of blueberry-picking at ILF.  Sometimes we've arrived just before or after the proper season and struggled to fill a punnet. But not today!  Blueberries were fat and ripe and plentiful, and very much delicious.

This evening some of the family got into the spirit of the Commonwealth Games and swam some races, including a keenly fought 10m freestyle final.

Seemed like a three way tie.