Naming the Blog

I've been considering a personal blog for quite some time. Last summer I created a Bucket Blog. I blogged about all the things I wanted to do last summer. I got the list up, posted some inspring pictures, and never posted again. I have several school blogs I have created. One was quite successful as my students' parents got to follow the adventures of our giant runaway gingerbread baby cookie. This one is for me. A place to write about me, my simple adventures, my family, the food I love and eat, my exercising habits, and maybe a story or two about my teaching life.
I love my front porch. It was one of the things I said we'd have to build if we bought this house. Mark was willing to let me have anything I wanted because he knew how much I didn't want to leave my old house. So, we had a large mudroom built, with a front porch. And to complete this front porch, I bought two Walpole Rockers. The wood for these rockers is manufactured right down the road from me in Chester, the home to our very own Miss Maine, Arikka Knights, one of my daughter's great friends.
Our front porch is a gathering place. It's a listening place. It's a watching place. And now, until the colder weather sets in, it's a place where blogs blossom.

About Me

I'm a Maine Girl. I was born in Lincoln, Maine, raised in Lincoln, Maine and lived in Lincoln, Maine for 40 years. As a matter of fact, I actually bought the house I grew up in and lived there for quite some time until the day came to sell it and move. That move sent me to Enfield, Maine, where I now live a comfortable, quiet life on my 7 acres of land with my fiance of 20 years, Mark and my two dogs, Daisy and Boomer.
My girls, Kristie and Nikki, also live close by. Kristie works as a marketing executive at the Penobscot Valley Hospital in Lincoln, the Credit Union in Old Town, and she also works for her husband, Brad Libby, CEO of Motorbrain.com. In their spare time, they enjoy their dog, Izzi. Nikki is working towards earning her degree as a dental hygienist. She also works part-time at Gilmoor's Ice-Cream stand and filling in at various dental offices. In her free time, she enjoys her black dog, Guinness.
I have been teaching for 15 years and currently teach second grade in Orono. I also teach a college course: Seminar in Student Teaching. I am also pursuing my second masters in literacy.

Geocaching

Today was a geocaching day, but we didn't have much success. We set out to search for eight caches, and only found one! I will say that one was kinda fun and made me want to go find more (another day). The one we did find was on an old deserted road near the Penobscot River. The dogs ran all through the woods looking for it, too, but they didn't have the GPS advantage to help them along. When I came to the GPS coordinates in the woods, I found an overturned rubber tub. I almost kept going, then decided to flip the tub over. That's where I found the cache. I screamed when I flipped the tub over because there in front of me was a great big plastic black rat! I put the tub right back over it and yelled to tell Mark I thought I found it. We picked the rat up and underneath there was a large slit. Inside its belly was a pill bottle. A tiny paper was rolled up inside. 12 names were written on the rolled up paper. We added the 13th: kimark. After the dogs enjoyed a swim in the river, we drove on to our next site, a spring. No caches at the spring today.