The Rain in Maine

Wouldn’t you know that the weekend Irene blew through New England would be the weekend we were going to be in Maine?  We decided to go anyway, of course.  Irene will not keep us down!

All in all, it wasn’t too bad.  The wind was something else, but there wasn’t too much rain involved.  We stayed in Aunt Anne’s house, which is a small, two-bedroom house right on the water of Frenchman’s Bay.  It’s an adorable little house – my favorite thing about it is the view you get while you’re doing dishes:

Jake and Aaron shared one bedroom, and Lydia and I slept in the queen bed in the other bedroom.  The wind overnight was incredible.  Every so often, it would catch this rolled-up awning over the slider on the deck, and it would bang the living hell out of the side of the house.  It sounded like a giant was hammering his fist on the wall outside.  Every time it happened, all night long, Lydia would sit straight up in bed, stare wildly around the room for three seconds, and then flop back down.  Asleep all the while.  I woke up in the morning with her feet next to my head on the pillow.  Good times.

Once Irene was done with her little tantrum, we had a lovely day of sunshine, which we took full advantage of.  My Aunt Cheri has a little pine grove beside her house, and she has spent a lot of time gathering interesting bits of nature that she’s stored in a bin so that the kids can make fairy houses.  Jake spent a lot of time on his house.  He got eleventy billion mosquito bites, but it was worth it because he made this:

Here is Lydia’s:

We also went out to the camp to do some canoeing.  Jake canoed at camp this summer, so he was pretty good at it, and gave rides to the other kids with Grandpa.

I can tell the kids are getting older.  Just look at them, they’re all grown up.  You know how I can tell?  We drove for 6 hours with only one stop and no videos.  We listened to music, we looked out the windows, they ate their lunches out of their lunchboxes while we drove.  They held their pee.  I thought to myself, “We’ve finally made it into middle childhood.  We can take a road trip that’s not a nightmare.”

In fact, I thought the entire trip was going to be a nightmare, what with Irene and all, but instead it turned out to be a rather peaceful, laid-back adventure.  Thanks, Uncle Jeff and Aunt Cheri, for having us!