Three Days in Albany

We arrived in Albany late on Wednesday afternoon and went right to Molly and Mark's house. The kids were still at daycare and Mark was at work so Molly and I went shopping while Don attended to his courses on their computer.

After dinner and spending some time with the children before bed, we moved over to where we were staying, at the home of Andy Axler and Sheila Harrigan in Loudonville (10 minutes away). These are the kids who had been work study students of mine at SUNY-Albany when I worked there from 1976 through 1979. We stayed in touch over the years and have stayed with them in the past when visiting with Molly and Mark. (Last year they were in Italy and so we ended up staying in a Victorian B&B which turned out to be more like a haunted house with a troll in the basement, but don't tell anybody we said that.) They were dating college kids when I met them but are an "old" married couple now. Their children are two sweet Lhasa Apso dogs named Dusty and Smoky. They both enjoy single malt whisky and so we brought them a bottle from duty-free along with a tub of Malteasers (malt balls made with REAL chocolate). Andy also has his supply of single malts and so we had a nightcap of a different one each night we were there while we sat and caught up with one another. (See first photo above.)

On Thursday Molly and I went shopping for clothes while Don and Mark went to the Guitar Center to look at the Cajon drums (ka-HONE, not Cajun like the food). Don found one he liked at the Guitar Center in Rochester but it was warped at one corner. He also was in a quandary about how to get it home. The Rochester store told him they had a branch in Albany so he wanted to see if another copy of the same model would sound the same. It did. Still concerned about how to get it home, he did a Web search and found the same make and model online that we could order from the UK and have shipped to us. (I have since placed that order as it is his now very belated birthday present from me.)

The four of us went to D'Raymonds for lunch. This is our new favourite Albany Italian restaurant which a friend of Molly's had recommended last year and we had really loved. Molly and I were both lucky in finding clothes and so she gave us a little fashion show that night. We had Chinese take-away for dinner and spent as much time as we could playing with the little ones when they got home from daycare. This is exhausting work! We were ready for our single malt nightcap back at Andy and Sheila's.

Friday was the day of Cameron's birthday party. Molly was making cakes and I chopped veggies for the two soups she was making for that night. Don worked on his courses, I did some laundry, and Mark went grocery shopping. In the afternoon, our oldest daughter Shara (who had driven in to be on hand for the party) and her daughter, our 20-year-old granddaughter, Brittanie, came over too. Brittanie had to work that night so couldn't be at the party but it was great to visit with her. She looks terrific and is doing really well. In fact, both of them look terrific. Shara is working hard on her new career as a nutritional counselor and the changes she's made in her own diet have transformed her looks. We thought at this time last year, after several months on her new regime, that she looked 20 years younger than the last time we'd seen her. She still does. In fact, she may have shaved a few more years off! (See second photo above.)

We all started getting things cleared away so we could then set up for the party. Mark's Mom and her friend Ray along with Mark's sister Carrie and two of her children, Jonathan and Allison. Then Mark's sister Melissa, her husband, and their little Christopher arrived, closely followed by Jen and Marcus, Molly and Mark's close friends and their wee ones Liam and Sadie who are the same age as Iris and Cameron. There were 7 children under the age of 12 (most of whom were under 6) running all over, playing, and having a great time. The remaining photos above are from the birthday party.

Then it was time to clean up after the party, put food away, and get the wee ones in bed. Molly and Mark were exhausted and so were we.

At 3 on Saturday Molly and family were going to Jen and Marcus'es all afternoon and evening for Sadie's 2nd birthday party so we only had the moring and early afternoon to spend with them. The weather had been pretty good until then but Saturday it was raining--hard. We made a couple of stops on the way there and then had a nice long visit with everybody. Iris and Cameron were painting pretty pictures, just the thing for a rainy day. After lunch it was soon time for them to get ready for the party. We had made a date to take Andy and Sheila out for an early thank-you dinner at D'Raymonds at 5 but had time to do the last little bit of shopping. (Yes, I know. It does seem like a lot of shopping and still we didn't find everything we were looking for.) We kissed the kids and grandkids goodbye and took our leave for this visit. Or so we thought.

We had another terrific meal at D'Raymonds with Andy and Sheila and then went back to their place for coffee and to see a video presentation of their trip to Italy last autumn. Andy does a super job formatting these shows with music and intercut videos. Very classy production. We finished off with our single malts and a discussion of their next trip to Scotland, perhaps next summer. (We helped them plan their first trip to Scotland which was back in the late 1980s.)

Before going to bed we packed so that we were mostly ready to go the next morning as we had a long drive ahead of us from Albany to Hamilton, Ontario. Only we had to go back to Molly and Mark's at 9 the next morning because I had left my handbag!