Scattering to the Four Winds

Before starting a new week, I thought I'd add a teaser from our family photo shoot the day before.  

On Monday, before heading out of town, the Tallys shared this Uof U family portrait. 

They headed to Texas the next day, while Trevor's family went to San Francisco.  Dave's family was off to Colorado, as we prepared to head to NYC,

And Britt's family was at the airport to say goodbye to Kai as he headed back to continue his trek of the Appalachian trail. The rest of them would leave the next day for Idaho and the day after that Spencer's family headed to Wyoming to celebrate the fourth with her folks.

Yep, that left just Ashley and Becca, et al, to keep the home fires burning. 

and off he goes. Happy Hiking Kai.

As for me on Monday, I worked on getting my gallery filled. 

Including a framed artist's business card as well as a couple of mushroom paintings by yours truly.  I'm planning to pick up some tiny art to finish it up, on our tour. 

Some people over dressed for our little gathering at the pedi place Monday night.

Here are some of the girls.

and all the girls including Belle. If you enlarge this, you will see Alex and Mike at the far end.

Yep, Alex the man got colored toenails too, to match his most recent mani. 

How pretty is that sky, as we head to dinner afterwards?

Thumbs up says Bekie

The adult end of the table. 

I laughed when I ran into Barb at Becca's pool party the next day, as Barb had also gotten French manicure as well for our upcoming cruise, and Kylie does a little photo bombing ... with her patriotic nails. 

We all got some of our last turns holding Parks.  Thanks for all the fun Becca.

Here's our Abish.

Britt, Cam and Spencer

Parks and his Perkins Grands

And here's Barb!

And her family

It was fun for us and Spencer to talk to Kylie and John about her first marriage ... when Kylie and Spencer, age 3 or 4 were the subjects of a wedding game at Bear Lake, many years ago.  John is so interesting, and Kylie is so bright and beloved!

Darby and Madi

Cam and Brit

Spencer with Van, so today (The Monday following the week this blog is talking about, we met an Indian man, who grew up in the Himalayas, so of course we told him about our kids going to live in India.  After he left, I told the Moes and Heuers one of my favorite stories.  Evidently, when Van was asked what language they speak in India, he said, confidently, "Spanish" ... a natural conclusion since his father had to learn Spanish in order to go and work in India, as a competency in a foreign language is required to work in this field of government service, and since he would not need a foreign language in India, as most people speak English, he was assigned to take his 'Berlitz' language training in Spanish.  Yep, just another fun story I want to save.

Miss Madi

I had packed for our trip on Tuesday, then headed to work on Wednesday.

So back from work and we're all ready to go ...

Well cool, our Uber driver brings a Tesla!

A final photo with our favorite Uber driver at the airport.  Thanks Beckster  

The Heuer's Uber driver. They needed more cargo space.

Here we are awaiting our flight.

and us.

We flew into NYC, and left our bags at the Moe's hotel since they were able to check in early, and our flight was an overnighter.  Then we were off to see the city ...This is the Chrystler building and if you look in the bottom left of the picture you can see Barb taking a picture of it too. 

Here we are at the Hudson Theater to see, Merrily We Roll Along.

On our way to the play, we stopped at the Rockefeller Square for some fun photo ops.

My favorite word

Then we arrived at the theater, Lucky we got our tickets months ago, thanks Barb. The play received 4 Tony awards a couple of weeks ago, and is nearing the end of the run ...

A former box seat turned into a spotlight location.

The architectural bits of the old theater were wonderful.

Looking toward the stage, with someone reading the program, including an add for Book of Mormon, the musical.

Dad and I were both tired, and there may or may not have been a bit of napping, which probably didn't help us follow the play whose plot goes in the reverse order, though we did better after intermission with a little input from Barb. 

The Heuers chose a different kind of tiered seating for their afternoon.

Jeff is a huge baseball fan, and Robin is a very supportive wife. 

They had a great afternoon ....

And even took the subway.

Sailing out of the New York Harbor.

Can you see the Statue of Liberty?

There it is!

Look at the sea farers!

planning and planning

Oh Look, there it is .... (See the reflection in the window behind me!)

Going under the Triborough Bridge out of the harbor.

And the whole gang.

Meeting people around the ship is always fun.  The man next to me, Andy and his wife across the table, Debbie, own a house on the Cornish Coast, right where we will be landing.  How fun is that? The other two are their cruise friends, Robin and Rob, Americans from Australia. He gave me the low down on what to visit there. 

Also lots of game playing!

Then we headed off the ship for our first tour day. Fun sculpture.

Robin said these chairs are all over Canada for the use of although they are usually red.  So comfy.

This bus that we took for our tour of Halifax, was made in the late 50's or early 60's.  There were 3,000 made and 1,000 of them are still in operation.  The company is Antiquebus.com, so I thought we get to see some antiques, not the antique refers to the buses themselves.  The funny things is that once a customer got very angry, he shouted, "You can't have that on your busses!", upon questioning they realized he had misread the slogan as AntiQuebec, instead of Antiquebus ....  hahaha

Our two part tour in Nove Scotia was in this bus,  first around Halifax

We saw a church that had been built in a day.  In the mid 1800s poor Irish Immigrants asked the governor for permission to have a graveyard.  Since they were Roman Catholic, the Governor, not wanting to say no, said, "Well if you can build a church in a day, then you can have it."  over 2,000 people showed up and built the church in a day.

The maple leaf above shows all the plaids of all the provinces in Canada.

We headed back for lunch on the ship, then headed out again. I stopped at a Scottish shop ....

Here's the back of his shirt.

and the front too, how handsome is that? 

How cute are the kid's goods.

Jeff always sticks out his neck when there's a chance to be an astronaut. 

Our guide for the trip to Peggy's Cove. she is wearing the Nova Scotia plaid. 

Here we are with the light house.

Here I am at Peggy's Cove, a fishing village and artists' colony.  I really loved this man's work, and he sent me up to the 'Yurt', but it was really a round tent.  The two works of his that I like were already sold.

Barb took this wonderful picture of a stack of lobster traps.

But I loved this one.

I bought this sweet little painting.

I got a picture of the church he used as a model as we drove out of town.

This carved rock was done by a Finnish man who immigrated here as a young man ... 

This is his self-portrait. 

For some reason this sculpture of his reminds me of Minerva Teichert ... maybe just because he was working during the same period that she was. 

This is a portrait of his wife.

So wonderful.  He was a Swedish speaking Finn, having been born on the Finnish Archipielago. 

Such a beautiful place. 

Here we are sharing a lobster sandwich with Randy and Barb.

Back at the wharf, Dad with a pirate mast head. 

Robin needed to walk to a local grocery store. On the way we saw lovely hydrangeas, with multiple colors growing on the same plant. 

So pretty.

Here we are at the store.

me with a great statue. 

Trying out the classic red chairs. 

And we'll take a moment out of our cruising to wish a happy birthday to Adi who turned 12 on Friday!!