Sand Sculptures!

Hampton Beach, New Hampshire's most popular beach (Not that we have many...but we're proud of what we've got) annually has sand sculpturing contests. This year my friend Ben and I drove down to take a peek. I am just amazed at what you can do with some sand. Granted, it is special sand, and I believe they do use some kind of glue...but still, it's pretty cool.

And I saved my favorite for last. I think it's so cute and clever. I think it was called Fish out of Water or something like that. Fun!

 

And then there's this one...me and my feet at the beach. I know, I'm in pants...but it was kinda rainy and overcast, so I wore pants...so sue me.

North Carolina

I went to North Carolina for my friend's sealing to her husband and son. They've been married for a few years, but wanted to do the religous ceremony in the temple. I was so happy I was able to go and share in that special experience with them. 

 

They got some fun family shots afterward. Aaron, Sir'Netia and Derek's son was kinda over all the picture taking.

 

This one of me and Sir'Netia didn't turn out great. She looks great, but I am in the middle of telling Derek how

 the camera works...but it's proof that I was there.

 

I think this is my favorite one, Nina and her hands on her hips...ha, I love it.

 A good one of the fam. Aaron looks just like his Momma.

 

So after the temple ceremony, we took way too long trying to find a nearby Sonic Drive Thru, had some lunch, and then were late to the reception. Oops. But their ward put on a really nice party. There was great food (the watermelon was amazing) and there was dancing! I went on the search for the restroom, and found this instead...is that the Southern way to spell Restroom? Ha j/k.

 

Now, Derek is a good dancer, he and his mom were burnin' it up, but Derek is no good at line dancing, and Sir'Netia loves it. We did a lot of line and country line dancing at Snow College. But Derek...bless him, doesn't have the coordination. I think this was him attempting...ha. I had a video, but I must've deleted

 by accident. I bet Sir'Netia's grateful. ;)

The next day I went to church with them, and in the Relief Society room they had this cool piece of church history:

So I had a great trip. I had a rental car and an awesome GPS which made it so easy. I felt so independent! The flight back was really beautiful. There was a lot of low cloud cover, so we flew through it, and then above it, I took a bunch of pictures. I loved the big fluffiness of the clouds, and it was around sunset, so the light hit the clouds just right. Here they are in all their collage glory:

Dead Author #3

So as you can tell, there's been a theme of dead author's homes. It just turned out that way, Shirin was moving from Boston and hadn't seen the Longfellow House...so that just perpetuated the dead author thing. So now Shirin and I are making it our thing. Any suggestions for our next adventure? I've already been to Mark Twain's house...but not with Shirin...

Anyway, this time it was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's house. I volunteered there last fall, cataloging Longfellow's books. They're all indexed on those old school cards, but not on the computer database. It's slightly tedious, but I got to fondle all of Longfellow's books! How cool is that?

I've already done a blog post about the Longfellow House, it's really cool. But this tour we heard more of his poetry and...got to see where there was once an elevator. They disarmed it and changed it to a closet, but it was still pretty cool. Longfellow's daughter added it when she owned the house. She was sick and needed it. The controls are still there in the basement, it was a hydrolic elevator. Fancy. It was a fun tour, even though it was blasted hot.

I got to see the gardens in full bloom. They have a really pretty garden on the side of the house. It wasn't this pretty in the fall.

 

My camera randomly went into Sepia mode and I took these pictures of the surrounding neighborhood.

 

Oooo, look how dramatic they look! I love it.

Dead Author #2 and Salem

Yup, Dead Author #2 is Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The House of Seven Gables and the more popular The Scarlet Letter. The house in its original state was influential in Hawthorne's story. His cousin lived there at one point. The coolest part of the tour (which was way overpriced) was the secret staircase!!! And we got to go up it! It was behind a fireplace, in the space the chimney would've gone. That was added because it was in Hawthorne's book. The gardens were beautiful, right along the water. Loverly.

Here's Shirin super excited about the tall ship behind her.

These were yummy chocolates from the oldest candy company ever? in Salem? I forget.


Here's me climbing with the scurvy-ridden pirates.

Yup, it's a "museum" that tells the "real" story of Lizzie Borden. Do you know the rhyme? "Lizzie Borden got an axe, and gave her mother 40 whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41." The gift shop was the best. They had picture post cards of the Victorian-era crime scene, plus gruesome portraits that look normal from one angle and then creepy the next. It was all pretty funny. The Bordens didn't even live in Salem.

Hmm...


Peabody Essex Museum

Here are some of my favorite items in me and Shirin's whirlwind tour of the museum. At one point we had 5 minutes till closing so we resorted to running around the last room we hadn't seen so we'd at least get a glimpse of everything. I loved the room with the ship masts, so cool! And as you can see, I liked cute things with funny faces.

And Shirin would randomly break into dance...just like how I randomly break into song.

Dead Author #1

Robert Frost
 

My wonderful roomates from Boston came up to Derry to visit. They had both been up before, but separately. So it was a special treat to have them up together. In honor of such a special occasion, we paid a visit to the Robert Frost Farm, one of the only touristy things to do in Derry. Here's Shirin (in the green) and Amy Beth (in the blue) absorbing our tour guide's vast knowledge.

And here's me absorbing some knowledge...or pondering the knowledge I had just aquired. Of course I had to get a picture on Frost's toilet. As the guide said, this is the only guaranteed place he sat. Some older tourist with our group also got a picture of me...he showed me on his camera...weird. I love how my face is all red. I was slightly embarrassed cuz there were people watching me be silly.

The grounds of the farm are beautiful. There are trails to walk. You can walk along "The Mending Wall" even. Some clouds rolled in and we got a little rain too.

Oh, I wrote a poem that day too. The guide told us how Frost would listen in on their party line for "research". My poem goes thusly:
There were ten farms and one phone line
Back then it equaled party time
Listening in while others converse
Today some might think it quite perverse
But in the 1900s it was so fine
to listen in on the party line

Boston

My aunt DeRae recently came all the way from Utah to visit me. We had a really nice visit. Unfortunately she came early in the season, so not many of the "attractions" were open yet. But luckily hanging out in Boston is always a good default activity. So we drove to Alewife station and rode the T into the city. We got out at Copley and waited for Nate on Copley Square. The square was really beautiful with a big bed of tulips. DeRae and I were at a bench with a great view of everyone getting their picture taken in front of the colorful flowers.

It was a nice, sunny day. I enjoyed a "homeless moment" while I stretched out on the bench.

 Here's the view I had. It was such a nice spring day.

So once Nate got there, we satisfied DeRae's need of seafood by eating at a nearby Legal Seafood. DeRae had a bucket-o-steamers--clams (yum), I had a Crab Roll, and Nate had something weird and "healthy". Oh, and I tried Bananas Foster for the first time. That was really yummy too.

After filling ourselves and saying goodbye to Nate, we headed over to the Duck Tours. I had never been on one and it seemed like a must-do Boston activity.  Every boat has a different name and each tour guide has their own character. Our guy was...something to do with puzzles...bringing people together...he had a weird hat and knee-high rainbow socks. He was very knowledgeable. It was a fun way to see the city. And of course, we ended up in the Charles River.

Here's DeRae looking out at the river. It was really neat to see the city from the river. I recommend Duck Tours to anyone in the area. It's fun, and you get to quack at the locals. Who could ask for more? Oh, one company had a piece of the Berlin Wall in front of it. Interesting.

It was a really good day in Boston. I saw parts of the city I hadn't really seen before. There's always more to see in Boston.

Mansions

My lovely friend Renee acquiesced to my request of taking a road trip to tour the mansions in Rhode Island. She pushed off a day of furniture moving and other domestic pursuits to drive 2 hours to walk around someone else's house for 2 hours. She's a gem of a woman. It was a beautiful early spring day in Newport, Rhode Island. A bit chilly, but sunny. The story starts us here...




...at Salve Regina University. Why there? Cuz Tom Tom, the GPS told us to stop here. At first I was thinking it was the mansion...it's not, just a big fancy building on a Catholic university's campus. Why did I care enough to take a picture? Cuz Salve Regina is the name of the song Whoopi jazzes up in Sister Act. It's my favorite part of the movie, it's so great and makes me happy. My friend Ashley's singing group sang it too, which was awesome...so that's what I think of when I hear Salve Regina...not of some prestigious Catholic school...but of Sister Act, a great movie of the 90s.



Then we drove around some more, without Tom Tom and finally found the mansion we were looking for: The Breakers.

I don't really understand the name...all other house names are like surnames, like Pemberly or Netherfield--yes, those are houses from Pride and Prejudice. So, more info about Breakers can be found here, pictures too! I forget the whole history of the place...hence the link. But cool things I remember...the kitchen wasn't banished to the cellar like most mansions of its time, it was on the main floor. The owners had previously experienced a kitchen fire in another house that killed a lot of people, cuz they couldn't get out. So the kitchen was huge and open, with lots of windows, it was gorgeous.

Oh, and this was only a summer house! Can you imagine?! So the family, the Vanderbilts, would come from NYC or where ever they lived and bring 30 or so servants and then locals would take care of the yard and stables and stuff. There was 4 or 5 floors to the house, with the enough rooms for the servants to live on the top floor.

There was all kinds of original art, like old stuff, from the 1500s--just hanging (literally) out in the house. The formal dining room was amazing. The ceilings were crazy high with life sized marble statues of Greek or Roman guys...and the table was gigantic, this big square thing that could expand either way. The guide said the chairs were of some heavy wood (mahogany?) that you needed a servant to pull it out for you, cuz it was too heavy to do it yourself.

The fireplaces were the huge kind, you know from that movie The Haunting, with Liam Neeson...and Catherine Zeta Jones where he brought them all to the haunted mansion to "do a sleep study" but it was really to freak everyone out? And there were creepy children ghosts in the wood carvings? Remember the part where Owen Wilson's character walks into the fireplace and then gets beheaded by the swinging flue cleaner thingy? Well the fireplaces may not have been that big, but you could sure walk in them.

Oh, when Renee and I visited, I was still recovering from surgery, I still am, so I got tired from all the walking around. The tour guide was going to take us upstairs, but offered to take whoever needed it up the elevator. I raised my hand, and I think I will from now on. The elevator ride was sooo cool! It is original to the house. A lot of the time they'll add one in to accommodate everyone, but this was was put in when they built the rest of the house (which didn't take long to build, like a year or something cuz they paid for people to work on it all the time!). Anyway, old elevators are so neat! Behind a regular door, there's the grate thing that you pull closed...and it's all small and quaint. Anyway, super cool. I highly recommend it...feign illness next time you tour a fancy house just so you can ride in their elevator. Also, cuz we were then in another part of the house from the rest of the tour, we had to take all these short cuts through "restricted" areas to get to them quicker! Cool! It was just though a couple closets and hallways, but still, we got to walk right past the red ropes!

So that's the major stuff that I remember a month later. I had all kinds of cool facts a week after...but sadly those are gone now. I need to write 'em down quicker. Again, I'm sorry for the lack of pictures, there's hardly any online either, cuz they want people to pay for those expensive picture books. Dumb ripoff. Here are some from the outside though...

This is a view from the back, out to the ocean. Beautiful. Who knew Rhode Island was so pretty?

I think this thing usually has green vines growing all over it. We were there visiting off season, and remember, this was a summer house, so by the time the family got there, I'm sure it was all green and lovely.

I really liked this tree, with all the branches going every which way and the smooth, marble-like bark. How cute! A little elephant!