California Sunset and Great Family Memories

This month my top tweet was a picture of a sunset we took when we were in Carlsbad last year, visiting family.

It was a great time when we got to visit our Californian family and hang out with them. The internet is nice to stay connected, phones are great, pictures are awesome, but the best connections really are when you are together in reality. Every time I see the sunset picture I remember the good times we had. 

I can't wait to get back there early next year!

Hoping for a Boring Day!

As you might remember, I got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis last year and have been working on dealing with it, challenging it and trying medication for it. My favorite way of challenging it was learning to surf in Hawai'i, my least favorite way was starting copaxone, which meant three times weekly injections.

Because the copaxone did not work, so today I am trying out a new for me medication, called gilenya. The good thing about it is that it is oral, so no more needles involved. The bad thing about it is that there are more possible side effects, one of them being it lowering your heart rate. To make sure it doesn't slow too much, or doesn't come back up, I have to spend the day in the hospital just to take the first dose.

So here I am, stuck in a small room in the neurology clinic, after taking my first dose a while ago. I am hoping for a very boring day. So far, I have had two blood pressure / heart rate checks and I am still passing. When I pass the rest of the day, I will get an EKG and can start taking gilenya daily at home.

Send vibes for a very boring day in which I can catch up on important things like blogging and facebook! I might even try to master pinterest.

UPDATE: I passed!!!! It was happily boring. My heart rate went down somewhat longer than they liked, so I got to stay seven hours instead of six. But I can take the gilenya now and hopefully that will stop the progression of my multiple sclerosis. Thanks for all the good thoughts and vibes, they clearly did help!

Do You Vacuum Your Smoke Detectors?

We are in Maine to have some electrical work done on the house which includes having wired smoke detectors installed. Up until now, we just had the battery operated ones, which are not as reliable. Not to mention that we spent a sleepless night listening to the smoke alarms telling us that the batteries were low, like every minute! When we were talking to the electricians about the battery operated ones, he mentioned that these should be vacuumed regularly. What? I had no idea.

I was curious and turned over one of the old smoke detectors. You know, what we should have done when we installed them. And indeed! It reads "Gently vacuum or use clean compressed air to remove accumulated dust monthly" . Good advice, I will start doing that at our home ones now that I know.

Did you know about vacuuming your smoke detectors? Do you actually do it? Let me know in the comments.

Happy Fall!

It is that time of the year again. Summer is over, the leaves are starting to turn. Yard work is easier and we can start dreading the arrival of winter .

We were happy to be invited to an equinox celebration at Harmony Farm. Enjoyed visiting my sister's awesome garden and catching up with old and new friends .

There was good food and even better: a magnificent bonfire! Tom enjoyed helping to feed it!

I hope everyone is enjoying fall! Do you have favourite fall time activities?

Fall Birding Happiness!

Today we were driving around in circles (places to go, people to see) when I noticed a turkey vulture. One, two, three, many, like twelve . I figured that was our reward for giving Erik a ride to his job .

Life got even better when we spotted an eagle in a tree on our way to the library! Tomorrow I will bring my camera and binoculars for sure!!!!

Mystery Geese

As you all know, I love birding, so I am always excited to see new birds I don't recognize. Heck, I am excited about seeing any birds, even if I do recognize them :)

When we were visiting family in Long Island, we were having dinner and noticed these geese:

Cool! I had never seen them before. What could they be? The only American geese I know by heart ironically enough are Canada geese and also snow geese, but these weren't either of them.

I took pictures to identify them later and we resumed our excellent meal at the White Cap Fish Market.

A few days later we were there again because we loved the location of this restaurant and were looking forward to seeing 'our' geese again. They still did not look like Canada geese...

Nope, they looked very different indeed. As in they were with their parents and suddenly the mystery was solved!

Yup, they were baby swans! So much for seeing exciting new geese! Oh well, I guess it confirms that I still have a lot of room for growth in my birding skills.

Check out some of my older posts about geese:

• Wishing to travel South with our local geese.
• Our first meeting with snow geese.
• And a very fitting cute Sylvia quote.

Statehouse Selfies Update

Good day to all! This has been a long and busy summer, but hopefully there will be more blogging time available now that the kids have gone back to school. Sylvia is a freshman, Erik is a senior in high school! Jane is a junior at Hamilton and Cees is at the University of New Hampshire using his GI bill benefits.

Meanwhile we have been visiting family in Long Island and explored some New England state houses. We are trying to visit all state houses in the USA.

New Hampshire and Vermont were easy since they are practically in our own backyard. We did Boston on our way back from a family visit in Massachusetts and found out that their liberty bell replica has been locked up! If you ever go visit the state house in Boston, make sure to ask about that bell, since it's supposed to be publicly available. The more people ask about it, the more I hope they will make it their priority to stop locking it up.

We were able to visit one more state house and our first capitol on our way to  and from Rhode Island. On our way there we visited Hartford, Connecticut and on the way back we took the Orient Point ferry, so 'almost' were in Providence Rhode Island. I haven't written about either of these yet, so you'll have to be patient for me to catch up.

Have you visited any state houses or capitols? Which one was your favorite?

High School Freshman!

Sylvia started high school this year! We must have blinked, when did this happen???

She is smart, strong and confident, I am looking forward to watching her grow and enjoy high school life and opportunities. I hope she takes chances, makes mistakes and gets messy!

Have a super school year, Sylvia!