I have heard a lot of you asking for an update to my Blog. I know it has been awhile. I am going to take just a quick minute to upload a couple of pictures. This first picture is Dad, Mick and Mick's boy Dustin. They stopped in to visit today.
Thomas, Steven and I picked apples on Saturday at my friend Paul's house. Paul has a professionally maintained apple orchard surrounding his house. He also has about 80 trees on his own land. He and his wife lease them to the orchard owners. The orchard then maintains them and Paul has access to them. It is always a fun day and I usually think of it as the beginning of Fall.
This is a picture of RaeLynne and Josh's house in Smolan. It is a really cute house, with a full fenced in back yard. I think it has three bedrooms and a bath upstairs, a living room, dining room, kitchen and full bath on the first floor. The back porch is enclosed and has a washer and dryer on it. The house has central air conditioning and has that great front porch. I think it is a great house.
This was the first opportunity I had to meet Madi. Please note Beth, I am holding her before you!
As you can tell, I am finally getting my railroad tie curbing replaced with granite curbing. Here in New Hampshire granite curbing is everywhere. They use salt on the roads during the winter and so concrete curbing would just disintegrate. Besides New Hampshire is known as the "Granite State." I think you can see from both these pictures that in addition to the curbing, I think I am also getting about a foot or a foot and half more of yard. This first picture particularly shows where the road was and by that then, where the old curbing was. The granit curbing is about a foot and a half further out into the road. I wonder if they are going to discover the change or just leave it like that. I guess I don't mind, but it does seem odd that the road in front of my house is narrower than in front of my neighbor's house.
These are a couple of pictures of my freshly painted house. It also includes a picture of my newly redone porch. I am pleased with how nicely it turned out. The previous paint job was a little dull looking compared to this new paint. But I stayed with the same color. I love the red and cream color look.
The Pennsylvania Dutch are not even Dutch at all. They are not from the country that we know today as the Netherlands. Some say that the Pennsylvania Dutch should be more properly known as Pennsylvania German. Deutsch means German and the early English in America corrupted the term Deutsch to Dutch. The term German though had a different meaning before 1800. The Germans were not members of a formal country at that time, but were a loose collection of principalities, free cities, protectorates and confederations. The country that we know today as Germany came into being in 1848 with the unification process starting around 1800. German areas before 1800 included areas that are now part of Poland, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Russia, France and other areas as well as Germany. A more formal definition of Pennsylvnia Dutch then are those that came to America from those areas where the German language was spoken before 1800. Those that came after 1800 are usually referred to as Pennsylvania Germans or just German imigrants.So I suppose technically our family may not be able to trace our roots back before 1800. I have not done a geneology history of Gram Helm's family (Hardy) or Grandpap Helm's family, but I suspect that they were closest to being here before 1800. I know that Grandmommy Holdren's family (Mundrick) were only first generation American, so they probably came in the late 1800's. I don't know about the rest. I will have to check it out someday. But in the meantime, I like the looks of the Pennsylvania Dutch sign.
After this float my next favorite was one the local nursing home had. I didn't get a picture of it until they were finished, but you will get an idea from this picture. They had the float filled with residents all dressed in World War II uniforms. They had a truck decked out like a USO show (with the people that could stand for the parade) and then the trailer with the "soldiers" that needed to sit. It was great. 
One of the older gentleman they were helping from the float looked pretty tired, and maybe even a little "out of it." But when he walked past Lauren standing with Tommy, he patted her on the head. He had enjoyed himself. The whole parade was quite fun. They had all the local emergency vehicles as well as a few from neighboring communities. So they were noisy. Kathy and I both raised our eyebrows at the "Mass Casuality Unit" when it went by! It was shared by Raymond, Deerfield and Newfields, funded by Homeland Security.
fter a ride around the harbor in a speed boat and a water view of the Statute of Liberty, we had supper at the South Street Harbor. We ate at a Cuban restuarant. It was quite good! One of women I had supper with works for the New York health department. She had said that her daughter was late the morning of 911 and as a result she had to take the train to work instead of driving. If she had been on time that day, she would have driven and would have been parking her car in the WTC at the time the buildings were hit. As it was, her office was right there at the site. She talked tonight about what emergency actions her office took in response. She said that if her daughter had not made her late, she most likely would have been dead. Judge Teehan from Boston was having supper with us. He then said that his neighbor was supposed to be on one of those flights. He had run to catch the plane, but he was too late. So he caught a later flight. His family thought he was on the plane that flew into the WTC until he called them and let them know he was safe! It was amazing to be sitting in the shadow of all those buildings and hearing about some personal stories about 911.
