July 10 - Happy Birthday to a lot of my favourite people!

July 10 - It’s my mom’s birthday.  And my aunt Shirley’s birthday.  And my cousin Becki’s birthday.  And my friend Pete’s birthday.  And one of Glen's cousins in Zimbabwe whom we've never met.  I I have been really good at avoiding the baked goods in the numerous bakeries we pass daily, but today I bought a nice little ‘flapjack with chocolate’ - basically some sort of oat cookie dipped in chocolate.  It was all in honour of all the birthdays :-)  

Happy birthday to my mom who is a rather amazing lady.  She cooks, sews and gardens, all really well with a natural flair.  And she keeps the family tied together and organized.  Every new year, we all get an e-mail asking us to ‘sign up’ to host one family event for the year (quarterly birthday parties, Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving)  She doesn’t have a mean bone in her body, and lives by the motto “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”.  I wish I had half her kindness, patience and reasonableness (is that a word?!?)

When I was little, I’d often wake up in the morning and there would be a new dress on my bed that she had sewn up the previous evening after putting the four of us to bed.  I don’t think I knew how lucky I was until I couldn’t meet those standards when I was a new mom.  I just went to Zeller’s for kids clothes!  My daughter got very used to ‘Gran’s Christmas dresses’ early on, and would eagerly await the beautiful creation mom made for her each year. 

This is a from their 50th anniversary party- mom and dad, my sisters, me and my brother

Same party with all the family - grandchildren, nieces, nephews, husbands,wives.
We had Hawaiian themed party at Christmas, because that's what we do! 

One of my fave pictures - Mom and her daughters at Jane's wedding a couple of years ago.
My cousin is in the background doing the photo bomb!

We drove to a small town today called Horncastle. Not only does it have a great name, but we had to travel through New York to get there.  Boston was away on a little side road, about 3 miles from New York.  Horncastle seems to be famous for really FULL antique stores.  They are everywhere, and one that we saw literally had so much stuff in it that I had to get out - it was too much. It had 2 floors and took up 3 buildings and a huge parking lot area in between the the buildings.  It could easily have held 30 cars, and was filled with only china.  I could have bought several pieces for myself, my sisters and my mom at about 1/10 of the price that was paid back home.  Shipping would be a challenge though, so I refrained.  We found many items that we would love to have in our home, but again . . .  So we just enjoyed.  The prices were very reasonable.  I didn't take any pictures because it was so cluttered looking I couldn't stand it.

Sweet little thatched-roof coffee shop

This house was hilarious.  Look at the roof line - completely
uneven.  

The two sides of the house are not at right angles.  The side kind of
slants towards the front maybe at an 80 degree angle.

Can't get enough of this place.  It reminds me of the old nursery
rhyme of the crooked man who lived in a crooked house and walked
a crooked mile . . . or something like that.  I have no idea how this place
stays standing.

  

We drove through New York today.  They have a police
car that says NYPD on it.  Fun!

We didn't go to Boston today.

Scrub Hill Dogdyke???  Who makes these names up?  

On our way out today, we took a small side road to get to Horncastle.  We wound up behind a farm vehicle that was travelling quite slowly, and so Glen decided to take advantage of that and stayed behind him so he could enjoy the scenery a bit more instead of just looking at the road.  After about 10 minutes, the guy stopped in the middle of the road and started to get out, so we pulled out to pass.  He was standing beside his vehicle with the most amazing look of rage on his face, and giving us a two-finger salute with both hands (those are quite rude here apparently).  We have no idea what we did wrong.  Probably should have stopped to apologize, but we were so taken by surprise that by the time we thought about stopping, we were quite a ways up the road.

It’s a rainy day today - we had planned a nice long hike this afternoon, but decided to work on the blog instead once we got home from our outing.  I usually try to write every day or every other day, and that part is quite easy.  Uploading the pictures takes a serious lot of time though, and that's why I tend to do a bunch of posts all at once.  Hurray for rainy days.  Tomorrow we leave for Wales.