Quebec

Soren and I were in for a treat this Summer.  Because Anne and Alan are amazing, they took Kj, Ivan, Ari Jo, Soren, and me on a trip up to Quebec.  It was so much fun to go up and experience the city with the whole fam.  Soren and I have a special connection to Quebec, since that's where we went on our honeymoon.

If you aren't familiar with Quebec, I will tell you a little about it.  It's in Canada, about 5-6 hours north of Boothbay, and it's the cutest, prettiest little city.  Okay, maybe it's not so little.  Because it was settled by the French originally, everyone speaks French there and just looking at the architecture and how things are set up, you'd swear you were in France.  Beautiful.

The history of the city is fascinating.  Let me explain...no, there is to much...let me sum up:  French colony, big battle, now English colony, eventually Canada.  Ta da!  Seriously though, the museums there are awesome.

We stayed in the old city at a cute little hotel.  Most of what there is to do in Quebec is shop, eat, go to museums, eat, and shop.  It was a lot of walking.  The most exciting (and most expensive) thing Soren and I did was go into a Medieval boutique where we bought some awesome costume pieces.  

Since a picture says a thousand words, here's the trip:

Inside our cute hotel room.  Love the exposed rock!

Outside the hotel.  It was also a restaurant 

Looking down a Quebec street

Soren and the Chateau

This is my favorite shopping street: Le Petit Champlain.

An interesting art exhibition was going on throughout the lower old city.  This was an alleyway stuck with pool noodles.  

Arianna learning to fire a cannon

Enjoying the beautiful morning.

They have interesting addresses here.

Here's another part of the art exhibition

This is "the silly pig." It's my favorite place we ate.

An adorable toy store we found had a swing inside it.  Heck Yeah!

The Boardwalk was Ari's favorite.  She could run and run.

 What a wonderful place Quebec is!  I highly recommend it.

Happy Birthday Harry Potter

Okay, okay, so Harry's birthday isn't until the 31st of July, but we had our celebration a little early this year so that Kj could be a part of it. Let me just say, it was epic.

We had a lot of fun decorating.  Kj is a master!  We put up banners and signs and the like.  The house became "the burrow" and was the center of all the madness.

Floating candles in the entryway 

Magical candy that can help fight off the dark arts

There were also puking pastils and licorice wands

A few weeks before the party, Soren, Anne, and I took some wooden dowels and transformed them into colorful wands.  The first 20 or so guests were able to select a wand (or rather, the wand selected them).

There were surprises all over the place.

When people first arrived, we tested their Harry Potter knowledge with some tricky trivia (written by yours truly).  We also had some gnome tossing action going on in the back yard.

The first real event of the evening was Quidditch.  Soren and Alan made the hoops out of sticks, hula-hoops, and PVC pipe. The morning before the party, Soren and I sprayed the lawn to mark out the field.  This was muggle Quidditch, so there weren't any brooms or flying involved.  The Bludgers were water balloons (thrown by the beaters), the snitch was a person (who had to be caught by the seekers), and the chasers could only take three steps once they had the Quaffle.  It was so much fun.  The first round ended pretty quickly, but the next two rounds were long because it took the seekers so long to find the snitch.

After Quidditch we ate...and there was a lot of good food to be had.  Aebleskivers made for golden snitch pancakes, we had meatballs, bread, beans, butterbeer, and lots of yummy fruit.

Check out the totally legit cauldron!

After Quidditch/during dinner, people tried out the zip line.  It really is so much fun, but we did have one friend biff it pretty good on her way down.  We gave her a special prize for her injuries. This next video is me going down the zip line with the camera to give you an idea of how epic it is.  Warning: it's a little shaky.

The next event was diving in the pond.  Soren and I attached 6 rocks to pool floaties and spread them out throughout the pond.  One of them was spray painted gold, but you couldn't tell which because they were wrapped in rags.  The swimmers had to pick a floaty and hope it was the right one.  I got out on the pond in the canoe and was able to watch the action from the water.  The winner was our friend Tom from South Pacific.  He was pretty stoked.

The third event was probably my favorite.  Soren mowed a maze in the field next to the Barker's house.  My first time through it took me about 6 minutes...so it was pretty hard.  We sent people in at intervals while we timed them from the road.  The fastest time was under 2 minutes.  WOW.  He was fast.

The evening concluded with the award ceremony, where prizes were given to those who won events.  The prizes were all awesome.  There was a Marauders Map, Time Turners, a pocket watch with the deathly hallows on it, head boy and head girl pins, etc.  Then, to end with a bang, we set off some fireworks.  And not the little sissy fireworks, the big rock 'em pop 'em sock 'em fireworks that shoot way into the air.

In the end, a good time was had by all.  It was so fun to get together with our friends to embrace our nerdiness.

Work and Play

What a blast Soren and I have been having here in Maine!  The tourist season has finally picked up, which means that our work schedules have finally picked up.  Soren spends his days taking people fishing, or sailing, or out to Monhegan Island, or on tours around the Harbor.  I spend my days housekeeping at the Welch House Bed and Breakfast.  I've also been lesson planning like crazy in hopes to be ready for this next school year.

This is the Welch House.  My parents stayed there when they came out for our wedding open house.  

Here's Soren on the dock where he works.  His favorite ship is the sail boat "Bay Lady"

The past few weeks we've been participating in the Boothbay Playhouse's production of South Pacific.  We have pretty small parts, so we basically get to go over and hang out all night...and occasionally sing and dance.  It's a fun show, but not one of my favorites.  Soren and I decided we'd probably rearrange some of the scenes and give more to some characters and less to others.  Still, gotta love that Rogers and Hammerstein music. 

We have a good time backstage with our new friends

Me in my "official" nurse uniform

On June 21st, we went down to Boston for our friend Maddie's wedding.  We went to a temple session in the morning, wandered around town during the day, and went to the reception in the evening.  It was a lovely day.

In front of the Boston Temple

We've also been enjoying having Kj and Arianna around.  It'll be fun when Ivan gets here because then we'll have the whole crew!  But in the meantime, we're finishing up the preparations for our epic Harry Potter party on July 14th.  (We already have the Quidditch pitch set up in the back field--oh yeah, it's going to be amazing).  

Jurassic Park

I am afraid of dinosaurs.  Many of you already know this.  I recently read Jurassic Park in preparation for the upcoming school year.  It was a great book.  Loved it.  Had nightmares for several nights, during and after the reading process.  Why am I telling you this?  I think we all need to take a few moments and thank Heavenly Father for making sure Velociraptors were extinct before placing us on this earth.  Thank you Heavenly Father.  Well played.  Now if you could just get rid of mosquitoes...