Highlights from today: (click here for pictures)
I forgot to mention yesterday, that while we were eating our ice cream, Campbell and Graham were both sitting in the stroller. We heard Graham scream and looked over to see Campbell with her hand in his ice cream. She must have wanted more than the few bites that I had given her. Campbell must be craving something cold since she now has two top teeth to match her two lower ones. Also, we noticed last night that Anderson’s beloved teddy bear’s head is about to fall off of its body. Sara Ashley won him the bear in a game at a pizza place and since it was from a game machine you can imagine how well it is put together. Hopefully he will not be fully decapitated by the time we get home. Grannymom get your sewing needles ready.
It was another perfect morning waking up in the cottage. The big kids played in Graham’s pack n play for the longest time and begged for me to bring Campbell to play with them. I didn’t because she was laying happily in bed with Dad while she was drinking her milk. It was pretty windy last night so lots of apples fell so the kids had many apples to add to the apple pile. Reagan didn’t want to add all of the apples to the pile. She just looked for the apples that were without blemishes because she was convinced the “lady in the big house is going to make apple pie.” It worked out nicely, while the picked up apples, we loaded up the car.
The kids had eaten pop tarts and bananas by the time that we had made it to Walmart to buy ice. Robby ran in for the ice and came out with Red box movies for the kids and hot apple cider for me. I love it when he goes shopping. The rain picked up a little on the way to Bangor but it was never a very heavy rain-just a messy one. But when it was time to stop in Bangor, the rain slacked off and we were able to get out without a problem. It has rained on us some today-mostly getting in and out at the trolley place and supper but we have been so fortunate with not having to deal with the rain much. This was the perfect day for it to rain since we were in the car and only had a few stops.
In Bangor, we stopped by the statue of Paul Bunyan to take a picture. Robby took a call from work so that meant we had a few minutes to play around the statue-a water fountain to touch, a stage to sing (Graham), dance (Reagan) and play instruments on (Reagan played the fiddle while Anderson played the guitar). And there was also a skate board park so they had fun trying to climb up the ramps but of course the ramps they did climb out, they slid down on their rears which made for some very dirty seats! We finally made it over to Paul Bunyan-Reagan and Anderson decided that he wasn’t as big as Goliath but they were still pretty impressed. Reagan wanted Robby to take a zillion pictures of her-she is all about posing right now-just glance through the pictures and you can see what I mean.
We drove through Augusta and Robby and I jumped out at the capitol building for a quick picture. We told them where we were and Reagan said that it didn’t look like our capitol (which it didn’t). Then we had a few more hours until we made it to Kennebunkport. Before we left and even last night, Robby and I had tried to figure out what all we would do today. We couldn’t really find anything that caught our eye. We had planned on LL Bean but since we had already done that we just couldn’t find anything else. We were just going to have a very early evening since our trip today was only around 3.5 hours. But this morning, I was looking through one book and saw an ad for a trolley museum in Kennebunkport and it looked like it was worth checking out.
We drove near it as it started to rain pretty good. We had read that they had trolley rides but before we decided to get out I ran in to check and make sure that the trolley rides were still going (and were in an enclosed trolley). They were and I was told that they get out the right trolley for the weather. We unloaded and entered into a little boy’s heaven: trolleys, trains, buses! The first thing we did was ride on an enclosed trolley (similar to the one downtown) for about a mile and a half and then turned around and came back. The guide told us a few things about the trolleys and the line as we went. It wasn’t very crowded on the car-just us and another person. The kids loved it so when we came back to the station, we turned right around and rode an the next trolley-it looked more like a bus than a trolley. Reagan and Anderson had the hardest time picking out their seats. The driver even let the kids ring the bell as they exited.
Graham shouted “here we go, ding ding, this exciting, trolley fun, hold on, bye, bye” He couldn’t have been more pleased. Anderson looked stoic but he was pretty excited too. He really takes all of this stuff in-he listened to the guide, looked around and noticed everything. Reagan enjoyed it alot but just not like the boys-there is just something about a boy and something that has wheels. Campbell knew she was on something going fast and so she kept her legs going fast too-she was kicking away.
After the end of our second ride, we hoped off and headed to a few of the trolley barns. We only went into 2 of them and even skipped the restoration barn because of the rain. Each barn had 3 tracks of trolleys in them-well over 20 in each barn. And you could look, go in and play on each one. They could have stayed there ALL day long-seriously, all day. And since they knew where the bells where they looked for the bells in any trolley they could find.
Back inside the main museum there were a few more things to look out and then a train table to play at. After a shoving match between Reagan and Anderson, we headed to the car (with much crying and wailing). They are getting tired and it was really time to go anyway but the point was made. We drove past the Bush compound and watched a few cars drive around (which they probably just do for all of the tourist). We also marveled at how ugly and foggy the weather was-sure wouldn’t want to live on the beach in weather like todays.
We had just a few more miles to go until we made it to Portsmouth New Hampshire. It was just long enough for Robby and I to work on our list of travel places that we would recommend. We will post it when we are done-I am sure you will all sleep better tonight know that you can soon read it! Ha! Portsmouth has a really neat downtown area that would have been fun to walk around-if not for the rain and the late time. After spending almost 3 hours at the trolley museum we would no longer be getting into the room early. We still had to do laundry but we decided that we wouldn’t go swimming tonight-the kids were a little disappointed until we told them that they could have popcorn tomorrow and call Grannymom tonight.
We found the restaurant we had been looking for: Common Man. The had eaten in one before and this one was just as good. It is “a very fancy” restaurant as Reagan said. It is a nicer restaurant but what made it fancy in Reagan’s eyes was the brown paper they had on the tables that you could color on. I was a little worried if they kids could handle it after the train table incident.
But they did alright. Graham managed to stay in his seat fairly well and we were without a high chair for Campbell for awhile (the place only had 3). Reagan and Anderson were quite and who wouldn’t be-there were crackers, dip, white bread, raisin date bread, pizza and then a huge serving of ice cream and brownie. Robby had crab cakes and I had pork tenderloin (Campbell made a meal of my mashed potatoes). When we finished everyone had a tiny piece of what chocolate too.
Skip this paragraph if you don’t want to read about me bragging on the kids: As we were getting jackets on to leave, the lady at a table beside Robby mentioned how cute the kids were and asked their ages. She then said how well behaved they were. Robby thanked her and then the lady at another table said she was about to say the same thing about how good they were. She also said that it was good for kids to go out to eat-I agreed and said we do go out to eat often (I didn’t mention that it was because I don’t cook though). Anyway, we felt like the kids had been okay but they must have done pretty good! We were pretty proud of them again. Reagan keeps asking if we will ever go on a trip this long again-I guess we will take them on another one.
Our hotel was just down the road and we were in our room before long at all. After calling Grannymom and all of the usual stuff, the kids were going to sleep. We are about to work on laundry so we have a little bit more before bed. Tomorrow is Boston, so Robby has to decide what to do and where to go first before he goes to bed.
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