This gallery contains 12 photos.
Last weekend was the 29th Annual Mushroom Festival a few miles away from here. We had wanted to go on Saturday night, but we got heavy rain and decided to try a restaurant around the corner from where we live. I lately haven’t been pleased eating out. I got lobster mac and cheese which was […]
This gallery contains 23 photos.
We went and brought my mom here to take her to Hershey Gardens which is a couple of hours from here. She hadn’t stayed with us since January! She had full charge of my brother’s old dog during the weekdays until the old fella was put down in July. I had taken my mom to […]
This gallery contains 17 photos.
We didn’t have a lot of time to see big attractions in Tampa, Florida when we were there in April. We decided to skip Busch Gardens and the Big Cat Rescue and check out mostly free attractions. (The first day is always a travel day and we were delayed an hour leaving as it was). […]
This gallery contains 19 photos.
We like to take day trips for our birthdays when they come up, that’s if we can think of a place to go. My friend mentioned ‘America on Wheels’, a fairly new museum in Allentown, PA. It’s a few hours away and we decided it would be something to do for hubby Brian’s birthday (which […]
Since Sean is off on weekends now, Sundays are our days to do a little investigating and caching. Last week, February 23rd, we went to the town where I was born, West Chester, PA. It’s the county seat of our area and a nice college town. I wanted to stop first in a cemetery to see where a cache was placed where a bomber plane went down in bad weather in about 1944. Never been to the cemetery, but my late uncle’s stepdaughter and husband are buried here. We went in a big circle because of the wacky GPS, and then went in the wrong entrance. The cache was down in a wooded area in about a foot of snow. We passed on that one until the spring.
We headed to a park next. We should have looked at the hint before we parked as the place we needed to look was on the other side of the park. We trudged through the snow in the park at first, but then started walking on a sidewalk and the street. I was huffing and puffing a bit, not knowing I was getting sick with a sinus issue (I missed two days of work last week). We had to walk in more snow, grabbed the one cache, but couldn’t locate another. I decided to take a few shots of the pretty Marshall Square Park area.
I had an Independent film maker from Instagram ask me if I took this shot. Of course!
We went looking for about 5 caches and only found 2 because of the snow. We kind of expected that, but it was nice to see the town with it’s covering of the white stuff. We will go back. The second one we found (we went out about 4:15 and ate a late dinner!) was also in a park.
Yesterday on the 2nd of March, we went down to around the Stanton area of Delaware. We wanted to check out not only caches but stores like Kohls (60-80% off!).
We do cache mostly from our phones and Sean doesn’t have a premium account, so he couldn’t count at least one find. A few stops we decided we’d skip or it wasn’t worth getting out of the car. It was raining also. Then I saw a FSC (First State Cache) at St. James Church in Stanton and we headed over. What a quaint place.
We want to come back and look around the cemetery.
We found a few in easy spots, but it’s the above places that really keep us interested.
This church was built in 1714.
We had a little more snow overnight again, about 3 inches. I decided to brave it and take a few photos. Here is one of my favorites of the day.
On a personal note, my mom was in the hospital over the weekend. She was down in her basement and all of the sudden her left arm and leg went numb and down she went. She managed to get up and crawl up the stairs! She called three of her kids first instead of 911! This was about 8:30 in the morning. When I got up to talk to her, her speech was slurred a bit. We went down to the hospital for a few hours, but her tummy was bothering her and she was waiting on a room, so we came home. She is 83 and apparently she had a mini stroke and they needed to watch her for a few days. They also found a small blood clot in her head, but she was sent home. Whew, that was scary!
I’ve been hanging low watching the 58.4″ of snow pile up over the last few months. I can’t do any shoveling, not with my back. The guys have done their share, but they have a snow blower this time around too.
I’ve taken at least 20 Instagram photos featuring the weather and snow.
I did a cupid theme for Valentine’s Day on my mantel
Sean gave me the ‘Love’ print (in Philly) and I got to see it in person at the end of December.
I have been doing a lot of sorting-yarn, fabric, craft items, etc and it’s still a work in progress, but it’s spread all over the house right now. I really have to downsize more.
I’ve knitted a few hats too! One of which is ‘almost’ in the colors of the Geocaching logo. I made it too big at first, ripped out about 5 rows and did a little crocheting and gathering at the top. I added a pin I had and wore it geocaching on Monday in Dover, DE.
I’m working on a cowl right now. I had pretty old knitting needles and bought some new ones and what a difference!
We all were trying to think of a local place to take a day trip yesterday. We were going up to Allentown to see a car museum and maybe the art museum, but it was a holiday and a Monday. so they were closed. We took a drive to Dover, DE which is about 60 miles one way. I am trying to get to 500 geocache finds, but this winter it’s slow going.
Our first spot was Pickering Beach. A few of us had to go to the bathroom and the little cottages were locked up tight. I completely forgot there were caches there, but the GPS was out anyway. I usually am very thorough with our trips to do caching, but I was aiming for Allentown, not Dover. I did notice there were several DGT (Delaware Geocache Trails) ones and we did find one when we could get to it. It was at a brewing company! I had brought a little beer mug trophy to add to the swag. When I ordered them, I thought they were much smaller. So glad to find an appropriate place to add one.
The other places, all museums were closed. We plan to go back in May to see them all. The beach should be crawling with horseshoe crabs from the Delaware Bay.
We did find 5 geocaches, but not the neat ones at the John Dickerson Plantation and airplane museums as the gates were closed at these locations.
I’ve only worked 2 days for the entire month of February because of the weather. The kids all have cabin fever and get a bit itchy.
Some things are going on like the orchid show at Longwood Gardens and the Flower show in Philly. Hope to get to Longwood in the next few weeks.
And last but not least, some Artist trading cards were made much to my enjoyment! It’s been a while, though I made 13 Valentine’s Day cards for the kids.
A few weeks ago, Brian and I drove down to Rising Sun, Maryland to do a little geocaching. Caching has been not happening that much this winter as we have had a classic ‘Alaskan’ winter. My pal was saying it is milder this year in Alaska than it is on the mainland. They can’t even have their iditarod races this year for lack of snow and cold. Wow!
So we hit a few caches and they involved mostly humongous oak trees. This one was near a school and cemetery. Brian looked like a peanut under it! The cache was pretty easy to find.
Just think of the history this tree has survived through. All the winters, storms, etc. and it’s still standing!
I’m sure the oak was planted around the same time this meeting house was constructed.
A few other oak trees along route one were not as lucky. One was near a little cafe, aptly named ‘The Spready Oak’. There was suppose to be a cache tucked in the remains of it, but we couldn’t find it. We went in the cafe, and sure enough the waitress knew all about the cache (she said it like a cache case) and it was gone as she use to put stuff in it. The cache owner knows about it and plans to add a new one.
We found a cute diary in the middle of no where. There were some goats and ponies too. The cache was kind of out in the open, but it probably under bushy leaves in nicer weather.
That pony nibbled my fingers!
It was lunchtime, but we didn’t want ice cream for the meal. Maybe we’ll come back another time if we remember the place.
Our last stop was this cemetery that would have been perfect for a Stephen King movie. It was up on a hill. The little church is so tiny (locked up tight and under surveillance). Out of picture range is a modern day housing development.
Well we looked for that cache high and low, and could not find it! I was kind of glad to get moving as the sun was hanging low by the time we gave up. My phone GPS was going too and we missed a cache in a memorial right down the hill! Brian can take about 5-6 caches and call it a day.
We headed to Oxford and got some produce and ordered pizza from one of the last Pizza Huts around.
A few days later, the three of us were off on a Monday (MLK day) and drove up to the Pottstown, PA area to the Philadelphia Outlets as we had never been to these. There were a few stores I adored- Crabtree and Evelyn and Vera Bradley! I got some long sleeved t-shirts at Talbots too.
We then headed to Skippack, but this wasn’t the best time of year to go there. We looked for about 3 caches and found two.
This past weekend (1/25 to 1/26) I had my mom here to treat her to a show. We sent down to Wilmington and the Dupont Theater to see ‘Ballroom with a Twist’ featuring ‘Dancing with the Stars’ dancers Cheryl Burke, Derek Hough, Tony Dovolani and Peta Murgatroyd. We also were pleasantly surprised by the talent of ‘American Idol’ finalists Von Smith and Gina Glocksen. Also the Cirque De Soleil acrobats and ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ performers. The many troupe dancers performed the most.
We had to climb up to the balcony (oops) but we had a very good point of view of the stage. I don’t remember seeing performers faces so clearly either. The costumes were sparkly and the dancing almost effortless, though certainly not easy.
My mom had a little trouble hearing the question and answer session, but all in all I think she enjoyed the show. I really thought the acrobats were amazing! They used ‘silks’ and twisted and turned on them-I don’t know how they do it!
When we were waiting for Brian to pick us up, we ended up chatting with some ladies who had driven up from Virgina to see the show. I went out to take a few shots and came in and saw the one young lady posing with Von and Gina! I took this quick shot and mine was better than her friend’s shot. I put it on Instragram and she did finally see it.
Next post will probably be a visit to the Longwood Garden orchid show! (Whenever that will be!)
This gallery contains 25 photos.
Wow, it’s been a while since I posted on my blog! With the short time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, life moved pretty quickly! I was making cookies right up to Christmas eve. Sean and I went to visit my mom on Christmas eve, came home and ate shrimp and ravioli with Brian and headed to […]
Our Christmas adventures begin!
On November 30th, we took a little trip up to Lancaster, PA to tour the Jame Buchanan house. To make the tour special, they had actors playing Clement C. Moore who penned ’twas the Night Before Christmas, his wife, a housekeeper and Mr. North/St. Nick.
We got there thinking we’d get in on the 4 pm tour, but had to wait until 5 pm. They couldn’t add us to the group. We went around the mansion and took photos of it outside to kill time.
We would get to see it in the dark all lit up (just the back). I just love when the sun sets at 4 something these days.
grape arbor
Colonial garden done for the fall
This was the door we would go in to start the tour.
When it was our turn, Brian, Sean and me were the only ones on the tour.
It was kind of interesting! We got to talk to the actors as if they were the actual people. We tried to take photos, but the lighting was bad.
This was Mrs. Moore. The tree behind her was gorgeous. It has a big peacock at the top.
We played 1820 parlor games with them. We were suppose to make someone laugh and I said ‘hello handsome’ to Mr. Moore and made his wife laugh! Then we had to read cards which were aimed at the humor of that time. Like the one card would say ‘when should we drink a cordial’ and the other card say, ‘not a quarter to midnight’. They all chuckled. Ha ha.
The mansion is really a lovely place. They did a nice job decorating it inside and out.
There were torches lit along the back too. We didn’t go around front to see it lit up!
The Lancaster Historic org is on the property and this is where we were waiting for our tour. We watched a short movie about Buchanan first. He was a bachelor and a lawyer.
Buchanan’s carriage
We thought it was different and fun. We headed to look for a few caches in Lancaster and couldn’t put our hands on them. Pizza Hut was calling our names, so we had dinner there. We did find one lone cache in a metal bus stop on Rt. 30. Brian found it on a ledge on the top inside-in the dark with my phone’s flashlight.
I can’t wait to see what Longwood Gardens did this year!
This gallery contains 26 photos.
I am definitely behind in my posts. October has proven to be super busy with us getting back from our travels, going back to work, cleaning up the yard (not finished) and changing out my summer to winter clothes. And Sean got a job in his field! He will be starting his GIS job with […]
Collages & Creative Goodness 