2004

Snow finally melts, Spring 2004, in our backyard, the water in the marsh is high (beyond the fence)

  Well, hard to believe that we could have two quiet years in a row, make you wonder.  But, there have been some quiet years with the empty house, and some noisy ones too.
  Hollie has adapted well to her home now, she comes to our house for overnight on Christmas Eve, other than that she likes her own bed.  Her class at High School always take a trip to Bar Harbor in late spring, they all stay as guests of a very nice Hotel, The Oaks.  She has been Whale Watching and done some other "island" activities.
  Work went pretty good, we bought a new building for the store, a former hardware store, it's 20,000 square feet.  The Salvation Army people at HQ want more paperwork than you could ever imagine, and I had to submit weekly reports as we replaced the heat/HVAC system an expensive project, also painted the entire place inside and out, new flooring and shelving (lot's of it), a huge investment.  The "Army" needs form that an Architect usually provides, since we didn't have an Architect I had to round up some of those forms, fill one out and send it along with the weekly reports.  The big bosses in the New York office do stuff the "big way"; which was okay after a local firm supplied me with the forms.
  Not too many trips this year with Hollie, just our two I think.  There were some Special Olympics that we went to, and a visit or two to the school.  Linda did a lot more of that and I did since work hours ofter conflict with those activities.  That still happens now that I'm not working. :)

Hollie takes part in the Softball Throw in Special Olympics, and some Track events too.

Big Mama at rest.  She was old when we adopted her and had been abused, she loved the quiet life where it was safe,
she never went outdoors it was scary.

After that snow melted (top), we could enjoy the Lupine Patch, I'm almost in the same place in both photos.

Elizabeth, our Great-granddaughter with her Daddy, Nick.