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!

Whale Watching!

When we went to Quebec City, we went on a whale watch on the St Lawrence.

Read all about it!

Arrived in Maine!

Yesterday was crazy, with tons of driving in circles, dentist appointments, badly planned last-minute errands. But we eventually made it out to Maine!

Fondly remembering my first time in Maine, when I got naturalized! It is even more special to me now that Tom proposed to me here, four years ago, and naturally I said yes!

Too bad we already did Augusta, otherwise we could cross that state house off our list during this visit!

Fun Europe Trip!

We spent two weeks in Europe, first visiting friends and family, catching up with both my brothers, then off to do our own exploring.

We used points to stay at Hilton Hotels in The Hague, Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris, thanks to our favorite American Express Hilton Honors Ascend card. Between these and good friends, we managed to minimize our out-of-pocket spending. We lucked out and were able to visit the l'Orangerie for free!
Wonderful way to start the summer!

We Got to See The Goldfinch!

We went to the Netherlands for family day and stayed in The Hague. We were excited to find out that we were really close to the museum with The Goldfinch and other famous paintings (like 'The Girl with the Pearl Earring)

It looks totally different from this one!