A Wonderful Weekend

It is hard to believe how busy we have been lately. We have been meeting ourselves coming and going. We had a wonderful weekend while Aunt Jean and Uncle Mike who were visiting from Illinois. I did miss seeing two of my most favorite people in the world who went on a cruise of New England from NY to Maine this past weekend too. I am really heart sick about missing them. :/ I need to figure out how to be in two places at the same time!
On Friday night we left the kids with our fabulous babysitter, and we ate at Mill on the River. Wow, the food was fantastic. The menu was a little on the pricey side, but the presentation and taste of the food were top notch. The atmosphere was lovely too. A perfect evening out with great company. Too bad it ended too soon!
Our big and busy day was Saturday. We went to get our pumpkins, and then headed out to Essex, CT to ride an old steam train and riverboat. With the fall colors at their peek here in New England this was a fantastic way to take it all in! The kids, old and young alike, loved the train and boat. They even have a couple of Christmas trains, one with Santa and wife, and the other is a spin off of the Polar Express in which they serve cookies, hot chocolate, and you can participate in singing of Christmas songs too! That would be a fun way to ring in the Christmas season! FUN! FUN! We even discovered that the Essex Train Station was in the the new Indiana Jones movie. We just happened to be seated in the car that Harrison Ford was in. That was an interesting piece of trivia.
While aboard the riverboat, you can see the Gillette Castle rising up through the trees on a high cliff above the Connecticut River. This castle was the private home of William Gillette who is most famous for playing the role of Sherlock Holmes on stage in the early 1900s. Gillette even designed this castle himself. Since he had no heirs, and after a bit of other history, the state of CT purchased the property and turned it into a state park. It is beautiful, and I would like to return to tour the castle one day soon.
Have you had your fill of history yet? If not, then let's talk about the Goodspeed Opera House. This was also located on the CT river at the turn around point of our riverboat ride. The Goodspeed Opera House is the birthplace of a few musicals you may know, Annie, Man of La Mancha, and Shenandoah. The opera house first opened in 1877 for plays rather than operas. After William Goodspeed's death the house has had a colorful history. It was used as a militia base during World War I, a general store, and a storage facility for the Department of Transportation. The state of Connecticut eventually had the building condemned until a group of people formed Goodspeed Musicals in 1959 to breathe new life into the old opera house. They paid the state of Connecticut one dollar, the state agreed of course to sell it for that price, and the previously mentioned group then acquired enough funding to restore and maintain it. After nearly four years of renovations, the Goodspeed Opera House was rededicated on June 18, 1963. The first performance in the new opera house was Oh, Lady! Lady!. I need to go to a production there one day. I have lots of plans, and little time to do it all! Rude.
We did lots of other stuff like the consuming of lots of ice cream and cookies, pumpkin painting, movie watching, playing, and fun stuff like that. Aunt Jean and Uncle Mike went home yesterday afternoon, and now it is back to the five of us! :/

Make a Smilebox photobook