It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything here and I apologize.  I’ll try to catch you up.  Our son David is still enjoying the company of Cindy Evans who we adore. He works for the State in Olympia, WA.  Our  grandson turned 21 this year and has his own girlfriend, Tionna, who he has been with for quite a while.  She is becoming a Dental assistant.  Tessa turned 19 this past summer and is in her sophomore year at Washington State.  She has decided to go for her RN and during the summer got her CNA to get some practical experience on her way there.  She is also in the marching band and this December went to the Cheezit Bowl in Phoenix with the band and the WSU team.  Leila turned 16 in September and now has her driver’s license.

The end of May  two teenage girls and I painted the entrance floor of our public library.  This was through a cultural council grant.  For those who don’t know, our library is a beautiful, historic building that was never meant to house all that traffic and weight and we’ve had a long-fought struggle to get a new one.  In the meantime this one needs lots of work.  We finally got the town to agree to accept a State grant to build a new one but since that will take a few years I thought we could cheer up the place a little.  We painted the floor to say ‘welcome’ in almost 30 different languages.

June and July I spent painting, gardening, going to book and knitting groups and working at the Arts Co-op.  Going to Shelburne Falls in summer it’s always a treat to walk on the Bridge of Flowers.  It’s an old Trolley bridge that opened in 1908 and has a crew of master gardeners who are constantly adding and subtracting flowers depending on the season.

In August our youngest granddaughter, Leila 16, came to visit.  We decided to take her to Newport, RI to see the mansions. It was a lot of fun.  We toured 5 different mansions.  The first featured a topiary garden that had animals that were 150 years old.

There was also a magnificent old Beech tree at the entrance.

Then we toured one more mansion that day.

We also walked along the Cliff walk.

The next day we toured 3 more mansions.  The Rosecliff Mansion:

The Breakers:

And the Marble House:

As you can see they are quite opulent.  They were their summer cottages and only used 6 to 8 weeks a year! We listened to the tour of each of these and each had its own unique story.  All were very interesting but not all were happy tales. In many cases money didn’t buy happiness.  I liked the Topiary house where the house was the most modest of any of them.  They lived in view of the water but in a different area than the others.  There was a train track between their house and the water.  Each summer they’d take the train up to their house where they were let off and got back on when they wanted to go back to town.

It was a great trip and fun to be with Leila for 9 days both back at home and in Newport.

Also in August we went to the home of one of our bird club members to watch them band Hummingbirds. I think they ended up with 32 birds banded!  They have an amazing yard with tons of flowers and tons of feeders.  It’s quite remarkable around here to get so many Hummers.  We’re lucky to have 3!

In September I walked in the County Fair parade with the Franklin County Solid Waste crew.

October brought us the most beautiful fall colors we’ve had in a long time. This is a picture of the pond by our house.  Unfortunately pictures from my phone don’t really catch the glow you feel but you get the idea.

November brought us the Mary Lyon Spelling Bee where teams of three compete to win both the spelling and the best costume.  This is a fundraiser for the Mary Lyon foundation that offers scholarships to deserving students.  There were 24 teams and 6 at a time competed and then the winners competed in the final round.  Our team represented the Shelburne Arts Co-op and consisted of me, Denny and Cheryl Denton who is a also a member of the Co-op.  We’ve been doing it for years and haven’t won more than a first round win but we have gotten trophies for best costume many times.  We think they were tired of giving it to us again as we didn’t win but did get a lot of compliments and people telling us we should have won.  It was still a lot of fun.

We were the Honeycombs: (those are Bit o’ Honeys with the combs).

Also in November we had a wonderful Thanksgiving at our friend Beth Watrous’ house.  It’s been a tradition for many years and was its usual fabulous meal with old friends. Hope yours was as good.

December 27th brought us to our 55th wedding anniversary.  Our celebration was low-key with two couples joining us for chili and cornbread with a fabulous Pavlova for dessert.  Good friends, good food — what more could we ask for.

We are off January 17th for Arizona again.  We’ll be there for two months.  It will be good to see our friends there and hopefully some warm weather.

As our hair gets grayer or whiter and have more aches and pains we look at that as a badge of honor that we have made it this far. May this continue for all of us. Wishing all a happy, healthy 2020.  May the world take a turn for the better.