I discovered a wonderful Mother's Day dessert-a mixed berry shortcake. Very simple-4 different types of berries mixed with red currant jam over Pillsbury biscuits. I think the best part though was the Devonshire cream on top with sugared almond slices. I had picked up the recipe primarily for a Girl Scout Mother Daughter Tea that Allison and I hosted on Friday night. We had about 10 people total-5 girls and their moms. Allison and I were busy making up finger sandwiches, chocolate covered strawberries and the berry shortcake. I took a few shortcuts and served prepared mini quiches and lemon poppyseed scones from the grocery store. Tom even brought me back tea biscuits/shortbread cookies and tea direct from England while he was there working the week before. I also had been collecting tea cups and saucers as well as tea pots from garage sales and the salvation army all last month. Overall I think the tea went quite well, and we had time to talk about what we did this year and what we would like to do next year. I was trying to see if the girls and parents would be interested in taking a trip to London and Paris through a GS travel agency. The trip is about 9 days and includes airfare, hotel, food and tours/tour guides to London and Paris and costs around $3000 each. Looks like my parents thought it was a bit too pricey and a bit too scary(some parents don't like the idea of their girls flying overseas because of the threat of terrorism). And we would have to sell an awful lot of cookies to cover the cost.
Instead, they liked my idea of road tripping to Michigan next summer-they would love to visit Cedar Point in Ohio, Greenfield Village in Dearborn and Mackinac Island, perhaps with a stopover at my parents place in Charlevoix. Tom said he would even help chaperone(which means drive). Perhaps Allison and I will look into the London/Paris trip on our own. It would certainly be a once in a lifetime experience.
So I spent Mother's Day Weekend hosting a High Tea, enjoying dinner on the patio with the family, dessert with friends on Sunday and a graduation party on Saturday night. Our neighbor Phil just finished his PhD and they hosted a graduation party. Scott was excited to see they opened up their pool(although I decided it was just a bit too cold). Tom was primarily interested in the hockey games. Also we had to run back and forth to get Allison to and from work that night. At least she didn't have to work on Mother's day. I also had to take her to a camp orientation Saturday morning. She received a scholarship to attend a Girls Nation Camp from the VFW. One of my residents at the retirement community was looking for teenage girls finishing their junior year of high school to sponsor for this week long camp held at Salisbury University on the eastern shore in June. The camp teaches girls about our government process and has them discuss and vote on bills concerning any up to date issues like driving and texting, gasoline tax hikes, permits for building casinos, or environmental issues such as pollution of the bay or building windmill farms, etc. Girls can write their own bills if they prefer and they can run for offices of the Senate/HOuse/Mayor/Governor. However, those candidates have to be available to attend the National camp in July, and we should be traveling across the US at that time so Allison opted not to run. This camp is just for girls-the VFW also sponsors a Boys Nation camp at Washington University. I think Allison is going to have a wonderful experience and hopefully some fun while she's at it.
In between all these activities I had finally gotten a chance to order some mulch. Tom spent the weekend cutting the grass and laying down mulch around our big trees. Before he put down mulch around the flower beds he decided to trim the bushes. And then he decided to spruce up our lighting system, but discovered most of the lights were fried. So instead he went out and bought a whole new outdoor landscape lighting system. And I was happy to see he had given up on the LED lighting system(which was much too dim). So he spent most of that weekend running electric cords and still has not had a chance to finish putting down the mulch.
The week following MOther's Day was just as busy. Tom was not home much after work-he attended a retirement party, a staff dinner meeting and then spent time having dinner with Matt Wagner(still recuperating from his separation- soon to be divorce) as well as consoling a friend at work whose wife is dying from Cancer and is on hospice(our age). So I did not see much of him this past week. I did attend SCott's end of the school year music concert. There are only about a dozen boys in the school choir and at least 50 girls. They even gave the boys a solo part this year. Tom was just happy he did not have to sit through the beginning concert band's performance. I also got SCott to his swim lesson, boy scout meeting and Allison to piano. I was a bit preoccupied though since we spent this past weekend camping with the boy scouts and I had to pack.
The kids were both off school on Friday, so we decided to join the scouts on a rafting/caving weekend. WE opted out of the rafting though since they left Thursday night so they could be out on the river early Friday morning. Tom had a half day of work teaching a class, and Allison had to attend an orientation meeting for her internship at Scott's school next year. She met with her high school instructor and the kindergarten teacher who will be her mentor next year. I think Allison is going to enjoy the experience as a teacher's aide. Allison also cut our entire lawn for the first time since I was busy packing and she has the blister on her hand to prove it! Way to go Allison.
We headed west to Pittsburgh PA on Friday afternoon. I had dropped Cookie off at the kennel in the morning and set up the turtle tank with an automatic feeder(thank goodness the cat is low maintenance). WE arrived at the campsite around dinner time and pitched our tent. We left Scott to have hot dogs with the boys and we had dinner at an old Stone TAvern just down the road. The area is actually south of Pittsburgh on the Youghigeny river near the town of Ohiopyle. There are lots of National parks including the Fort Necessity National Park-location of the French and Indian War. So lots of historic places. Apparently General Braddock from the British army is buried there next to Rt 40(the National Highway) and he loved to stop in for chicken and biscuits at the Stone Tavern. Naturally I had to try it out-I think Cracker Barrel serves just as good. Anyhow, we also ran into a prom going on in the banquet hall with a stretch Hummer outside(I think the entire high school class fit inside-small town). Allison guessed prom-the dresses and Hummer gave it away. ON Saturday we all headed to the local cave-Laurel Caverns. The boys did a 3 hour tour-climbing and crawling through narrow passages on their tummies in the mud and dark with lighted helmets. Tom, Allison and I opted for the bright, not so dirty hour long walk-through tour. As soon as Scott emerged, I grabbed him a sandwich and dragged him off to a 3 hour Geology Badge class. None of the other boys were interested, so they headed back to camp. So did Tom and Allison-she had some finals/tests to study for in math and english. Tom got caught up on his nap and some reading. They picked us up at 5pm and we were all pretty hungry and tired. I was hoping the boy scouts would have started dinner. I was ready to lend a hand. Instead the crew was sitting around watching an Eagle Scout attempt to build a fire for an hour. Tom gave up and dragged Allison and myself off to some podunk movie theater so we could finally see the Avengers. So it was a popcorn dinner for us. Scott stayed behind for boy scout bonding and Nachos in a Bag. When we got out, we had driven so far to find the theater that we were running very low on gas and lo and behold discovered most gas stations were closed by 10pm. Fortunately we found one open near the highway and also picked up a few sandwiches for dinner. Scott reports they served dinner around 9pm. I was certainly happy to pack up and head for home on Sunday.
But first I had a detour for our family to tour Frank Loyd Wright's FAllingwater house. You have to buy tickets online ahead of time-glad I checked. We had a few hours to kill, so we stopped into town for a hot breakfast(finally) and then toured the grounds of the house, snapping a few outdoor photos. The kids even had time to sit and study at the visitor center before our tour began. I figured I was going to enjoy the tour, but the rest of the family was shocked to discovered they really enjoyed the house tour(nobody was very thrilled with the idea beforehand). But afterwards they were all quite impressed, especially from the engineering side of things. Scott even designed a house on his computer game Mine Craft that looks just like the Fallingwater home. FYI-the house was built in 1935 as a vacation home for the Kaufman family of the Kaufman Dept store later bought by Macy's. The house was built into the side of a rocky mountain and juts out over a waterfall. I especially loved how some of the boulders were incorporated inside the house like the fountain at the entrance to the guest house and one near the fireplace. I hear my parents toured the place with Dan and Sheila when Dan was working in Pittsburgh for a few years. I guess we did our part monetarily to help keep the house from slipping into the river in the future(not a cheap tour).
So we lucked out and had a beautiful weekend camping and even had Scott finish up some boy scout requirements.
So once again, Happy Belated Mother's Day and a few Happy Belated Birthdays! Mark Seitz reached his 50th! Way to go Mark! And Stacey Seitz is trying to catch up as she just turned 24! Happy Birthday too Stacey!
Hope you enjoy photos from our caving/camping weekend. Bet you never saw chandeliers in a cave before! I included a shot of SCott's troop before they headed down into the bottom of the cave. The temperature is 52 degrees year round. There is also a shot of Allison from the bike/hike bridge over the Youghigeny river. We will have to go back and do the bike trail some time.
Enjoy! Happy Reading! Baltimore Blog
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