On to Upstate New York for 2 months this year

 We bought a house in upstate New York in January, an area of the country that we lived in before coming to Alaska more than 10 years ago now. We've spent a part of every summer there (my son, my three stepchildren and their spouses and now six young grandchildren - in addition to siblings for both of us and my 93 yr. old mother still live in the area.) Now that we travel with our dog, Kira, it seemed important to have a home of our own, especially since we plan to spend more time there. It is a small house, about 1100 sq ft., and I decided that I wanted to live in the city, in a walkable neighborhood. Utica is a city of only 60,000 with a very active Refugee Center, a city-owned golf course, a zoo, a symphony orchestra, a community theatre, and my very favorite coffee shop - that one around the corner from my new house! 

The garage deserves it's own blog post, but basically Brian took a garage that was billed as a tear down and completely rehabilitated it, including heavy-duty jacks to jack up the sides, re-calibrating it so that the garage door worked, tearing off and replacing the roof, and then we scraped and painted the whole thing. Brian also replaced the fence after we tore down the wild vines growing like a wilderness into the yard, and I planted flowers. We ordered the patio furniture before we got there so that it was waiting for us, and we were very happy with the BIG umbrella for shade. It is a very comfortable house, and we were surprised by how comfortable we are there. 

It took some planning to be able to visit with family, but we managed to see and spend time with everyone, outside and socially distanced or with masks and not as much contact or time as we would have liked. Brian played golf a fair amount, and our one regret was that we did not put our sailboat in this year. Now we can look forward more than ever to sailing next summer - the border to Canada wasn't open anyway this summer, and we usually sail in Canadian waters. 

We have great pictures with our grandchildren - walking Kira to the tennis courts, going to the zoo. . . and I don't like to post pictures of children on the internet - but we thoroughly enjoyed the precious time with them. We live in a neighborhood of porch-sitters, we have found, so we're looking forward to getting our own FRONT porch set up for that next year. In the meantime, it is rented for the next 9 months, so that will keep!