Friends

Adam took this picture of Shelly and I at Fr. James 25th anniversary of his ordination back in February.

Getting ready to eat

Sue

Susan and Karen

Nancy hates having her picture taken but I was able to sneak one in

Gathering At Sue's

Last night we had a get together at Sue's home over in Falmouth. What a fun time! Good food and great friends--it doesn't get much better than that!

Sally

Susan and Sue

Charlotte and Connie--Connie loves being retired

Charlotte and Connie

View of the bay from Sue's living room--what a gorgeous site, even through the fog

Donuts

The Crew

Theresa Lane, Mavis Gardner Martinkovic, Steve Lane, Taylor Lane, and Shelby Lane

Taylor, Mavis, and Short Bus

On Monday (Memorial Day) each year, my cousin Rod and his wife Ada have a sort of birthday/welcome summer celebration at their camp on Ambejejus Lake. Rod makes chocolate donuts (fried in lard of course and very healthy), and family gathers to not only welcome summer but celebrate my Dad's cousin Mavis's birthday. This year Mavis will turn 91 and is still going strong. This was also the first year that I have been home to attend and we had a wonderful time, even though it was a wee bit chilly.

Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day Weekend was a busy weekend for us. I traveled to Millinocket so that we could have my Dad's interment service at the cemetery, and at the same time we buried my Auntie "M". While her real name was Harriett, I called her Auntie "M" because for much of her life she lived in Massachusetts. It was a very nice service and essentially we "killed two birds with one stone". Okay, that was gauche, but you all know me...and that's exactly what we did. I was surprised at the number of people that were there but I guess I shouldn't have been. There were some of Dad's friends that had not been at the funeral because they were in Florida at the time he passsed, and of course the family. Dad's cousins, my cousins on both sides of the family because Auntie "M" was Mom's older sister, and of course my sister and her hubs, as well as the remaining aunts and uncles.

Spent the week after finishing up the cleaning out of their home. I don't know how many contractor bags of trash we moved out of the house but there were a significant number. My sister took a fair amount of "treasures" to sell in a yard sale (I HATE having yard sales), I packed up some for our Christmas Sparkles fair, and some of course we saved. It seems strange that 80 years of life comes down to what is left that can be put in boxes, sold, trashed, or given to Goodwill. While my sister was there helping me sort through stuff, we were able to laugh at many things, marvel at the amount of bric-a-brac collected over 60 years, and we even had a few surprises. When I was alone with Art on Thursday morning, getting ready to come back to Portland, it felt strange to be leaving my childhood home for what might be the last time. So many memories, both good and bad. A bit of nostalgia as I remembered running down the stairs going to our bedrooms, carrying my sister (she was 2- I was 9), falling, and having her look at me and say, "that was fun! Can we do it again?" The back porch, the front porch....the basement seances, Julie and I watching the boys drive up and down the street from the kitchen and of course jumping up to see who it was every 5 minutes. It made for an interesting and thoughtful drive back to Cumberland that day, believe me.

More semester pics

Missy
Paula

Missy

After the final exam

Before the final exam

Semester Pictures

Victoria working hard

Tori

Renee

Okay, where's all the good stuff?

Buddies

Deb Poirier takes her camera everywhere with her during the semester so she can keep a record of what is happening with our class. These pics are of the second semester Freshman class from 1/09 to 5/09. Thanks for sharing, Deb!

Over a Month

Hard to believe that it has been over a month since I last posted anything on the blog. With school winding down, end of the year "stuff" has gotten in the way of taking any time to update things. Now though, most of the school things are done and it's time to take a couple weeks, wind to relax before I start getting next semesters curriculum together. As far as we know I will be one of two instructors starting a new satellite program in Bath, Maine this semester but nothing is ever 100%. We started interviewing new faculty this week and once we fill these positions we will have a better idea of where faculty will be placed. It is hard to believe that we're going to bring everything together in just 12 or 13 weeks to make this happen but when I look back at what Karen, Lisa, and I did to get York College ready for our first class 3 years ago in just a few short weeks, I know we'll do it. We graduated our first class in December and of 10 students, 9 have taken their NCLEX exams and passed.

Graduation was last week and 4 of our students that graduated in December were there which made us very proud. Here are a couple pictures of Lisa and I at graduation lat week.