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Hello to those who view this post. We
hope you are well and happy. We know we have not posted in a long
time, with little or no excuse.
2013 is different for us in many
ways. We have chosen to skip volunteering for a long season this
summer. We will only spend two weeks on a Habitat for Humanity
project in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Our selection of years to take the
summer off worked out very well for us. The arrival of Ryan
Murphy Miles in May would have made it difficult on us if we had been
on our regular schedule. Grandson number 3 is another beautiful
addition to Stephen's family. We spent two weeks down south to be
around for his birth. Many thanks to the crowd there for keeping us
happy.
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| Little Ryan - day 1 |
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| And on day 2 |
Outside of welcoming Ryan, we have been concentrating on our personal projects.
Tom likes to consider himself a
songwriter. He has written many songs, just nothing recorded and
playing on a computer near you. Our first long stop was in Nashville
for Tom to take advantage of a group he has joined called the
Nashville Songwriters Association International. He experienced two
mentoring sessions with successful songwriters and met Michael
Conrad. Michael and Tom have written one very good song, which will
be posted here if we can.
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| Ryman Auditorium |
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| View of the auditorium and stage |
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| Tom at the Nashville Songwriters Association for a working session |
After spending almost all of June in Nashville, we did a return trip to NOLA for Ryan's
Christening. It is always a treat to visit down there.
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| Sweet family |
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| The 3 little Miles boys |
Next, we did a hard and fast drive to Dayton
OH to visit M and D over the 4
th of July. Fun and games
included NTN (or Buzztime in some circles) national trivia. We scored
well on national boards several times. (Sally is so darn smart. And M had a
perfect game.) We also got to visit M & D's five doggies (down from
seven). On the 4
th, M and D's son-in-law Justin and Tom
played a few tunes live for the family. (Justin is a darn good guitar
player!)
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| Two of our doggie friends in Dayton |
We also got a quick visit with the
Sally's nieces, Whitney & Lauren and their families. Their
littles are so cute and fun to play with! Made us wish we could get all the families together for one big party. We were lucky to hear 4
th
Day Echo play Margaritaville. Lauren's husband Clark is another great
guitarist.
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| Lauren and Whitney with Meg |
Our next adventure took us to
Wilkes-Barre PA. Sally has ancestors from there and did some
graveyard hunting. We parked the motorhome at the casino and enjoyed
the experience. Tom spent his time playing guitar and poker. Between
the two of us, we made a profit (in the two figures, to the right the
decimal.)
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| Gravestone for GrandmaMay and Dad's father |
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| The gravestone on the right is for GGGrandfather and GGGrandmother Lamoreux |
It was between Wilkes-Barre and Bethel, Maine, we discovered our
refrigerator had died. An RV refrigerator is not something you can
stop by at Lowe's and pick up. We spent 11 days in Bethel waiting on
a new one, but we enjoyed the company and activities in the little burg,
like Mollyockett Days.
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| Mollyockett Day festivities in Bethel |
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| The tubing scavenger hunt begins at Bethel Outdoor Adventures |
Once we had a new refrigerator, we headed to Canada. We'll cover that in our next post.
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| Refrigerator replacement project - it only took 2 hours to install. |
