Amy and I sang in choir together years ago under Fred Jones; in fact, with her sister, Heather, we were 3 of the 5 founding members of the Girls Choir.
Amy went to Wellesley College, while I went to Mt. Holyoke. So we have the women's college thing in common, too.
We've managed to keep in touch sporadically, but only recently truly reconnected. When Fred died, Amy--who lives near Portland now--answered the call and came and sang for his memorial service. It was bittersweet to share that with her. She came to the house after we rehearsed to hang out with the family and spent the night at Mum and Dad's. Madeline had the same instant fondness for Amy that I had so many years ago and has wondered ever since, when will we see Amy again?
We've been promising to get our families together (Amy and her husband have two boys and a dog). We've also been promising to take the kids to Pirate's Cove to use the mini-golf tokens they got at the fun run in June. So all summer we've been toying with the idea of combining the two. Amy fortunately realized that Pirate's Cove has a group limit of five, so that wasn't going to work, and she and Dan invited us to Dan's mother's house in Belgrade Lakes instead.
It was a bit of a drive, but well worth it! Alan and I had run 13.1 and 6 miles respectively the day before, so we didn't really mind being seated for long periods. We packed our swim suits and a picnic lunch and hit the road. We'd never been to that area before and it was a beautiful location and a gorgeous house and the weather matched.
We had lunch and visited and then braved the lake for various degrees of wading/swimming, although it was a bit windy.
Later, we walked into town for Gifford's ice cream. When we returned, Dan took the kids and me out in their motor boat. He gave us a wonderful quick tour of the vicinity, took us into the next lake over briefly, let Jeremy steer for a minute, and even let Jamie actually drive a bit. He was a good teacher, shared lots of interesting tidbits, and managed to catch Jamie's hat, snagging it right out of thin air when it flew off his head!
The kids--ages 5 to 12--all got along really well with a combined Silliness Quotient of 42.6 gazillion megaparts per child.
After that we left in a rush. Hopefully Amy wasn't late for her telecommute.... We had a great time and went home tired and windblown and happy.
A very Maine outing. And way better than mini-golf.
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