On the Road Instead of at Home.

Now that we have our house back and have resumed cooking in our kitchen and using any one of our three remodeled bathrooms, we are hoping life becomes a bit more routine.  Max has started her food blog again and, even though the title is In the Kitchen with Don, Max's blog is pretty much her own creation.  I do help in a very small way in pushing a shutter button, but the recipes, views and descriptions are all her creation.  Consequently, she suggested that I take over Windows on Wentworth in order to share our lives more broadly to friends and family.  Consequently, allow me to rewind back to March.

There is nothing like a spring drives across the country side, but our spring driving has been about 5,000 miles.  Since March we have motored multiple times to and from Chicago, Michigan, Arlington VA, Delaware, and Philly.  It has been a very busy spring.  We delivered baby stuff to an expecting Amber, baby sat for a Red Sox baseball game in Detroit, sat in on two Ph.D. dissertation defenses in Philly, attended a baby shower in Chicago (only Max), helped Brandy during her recent surgery in Detroit, went to Reeder’s first communion in Arlington and toured the Pentagon while we were there, killed some time on the beach in Rehoboth  Delaware before heading to Philly, met Sarah’s mother, Nazek who was in Philly for Matthew’s and Sarah’s graduation, attended and then celebrated their graduation, drove back to Michigan to drop Max off to return to the heavy lifting of Elise during Brandy’s recovery, drove to Bluffton to celebrate my grandniece, Baily's, high school graduation and finally drove back to Chicago to meet Marshall Rudy Dushman, our newest grandson.  In the few spaces in between driving we had visits from Marianne et.al. (except Clint) and our good friend Gay from Florida.

I didn’t get pictures from all of these events, but I'll give you a sampling of what pictures I did take.  Since I am covering several months I'll include March and April in this blog and May and June in a second one.

Marianne et.al. (Clintless) visit in late March:

The Kappels came for Max's birthday just a little late because of a snow delay for the original party.  We needed lots of indoor stuff to do in March since the weather was very wet.  Roller tracks are great fun

And bowling is a sport anyone can play...

And it doesn't really matter how you get the ball going in the right direction...

Or how long it takes to get there.

And nothing ever seems to stop Marianne.

Our new kitchen sink will  hold a large load of dirty dishes or other dirty things...

 But our new "Guest Tub"  was made for grandkids.

And because the Kappels were supposed to be here for Max's birthday, but prevented by 12 inches of snow in Virginia, they decided we needed to celebrate "appropriately" for Max's enrollment in Medicare.  And yes, there are 65 candles on that cake.  She needed lots of help in getting them blown out.

And finally these last two are here because the Lenten Rose is always our first flower of Spring

And because I just like this picture a lot

A Quick Trip to Philly:

It's a real treat to have one of your kids graduate from college, but we have been fortunate enough to have all seven graduate, some with multiple degrees.  Our group "thus far" has accumulated 2 Associate Degrees, 6 BS degrees, 6 MS/MA degrees (2 more in process), and 1 Ph.D. (1 more in process).  Max and I were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to sit in on Matthew's and Sarah's dissertation defense at U. of Penn School of Nursing, Matthew one day and Sarah the next.  They certainly made it easy for us to be very proud of what they have accomplished.  Below are pictures from the those days and it should be obvious from all of the smiles that their defenses went very well.

Clint even drove up from D.C to join  us.

This is Matthew with his Adviser (in the grey dress) and one of his committee members looking at some of the data he analyzed for his project.

And this is Sarah with her Adviser just before she began her defense.

I'll stop here for now and begin again with our marathon trip in May.