Friday, June 26, 2026

It’s Friday and time to link up with Andrea and Erika to share some favorites from the week!

I’ve been a little MIA from reading blogs and from responding to the comments section this week. I was out of my routine.

Sunday was a really nice day. It was Tom’s first Father’s Day with no kids living at home and no kids able to do anything on that particular day.

We had a friend playing music on the river – literally – on a barge bar on the river. Tom asked if he gets sea sick because you do have to have your “sea legs”.

It was a great way to spend a few hours and bonus that we got to see some other friends, too! I ordered Tom some wings for dinner on our way home.

Meanwhile, one kid was at work and one kid was on a trip.

I was getting lots of photos from Mason in NYC! Tom’s German cousin’s son Moritz lives there now and offered Mason a place to stay. Mason’s main goal was seeing the Raphael exhibit at The Met but he did so much in 5 days! Moritz is from Bremerhaven, Germany and he did a MIT Master’s after college in Munich, Germany. Now he is living in Hell’s Kitchen and he started a company!

We actually know Moritz pretty well. He stayed with us for almost a month one summer, we visited them for two weeks a couple years later, and Moritz came here a couple of summers ago after his MIT graduation. His English is better than mine and he also speaks Spanish. He is now learning Portuguese. He’s super smart. I need to see if Mason took a photo of him and I will share that in a future post.

Moritz sent me these:

My baby in New York City! New York City! I went to NYC at about Mason’s age, too. My sister had an internship at The Guggenheim and my roommate Heather and I went there to visit her and see the sights.

Monday was admin day – laundry, phone calls, a quick food shopping trip, and prepping for a little overnight.

Tuesday morning, I left for my hometown for a…

I like to make a doc! This had all of our purpose, goals, and activities.

My sisters and I hadn’t been to our hometown since Christmas when we stayed in an airbnb with the whole family so it was overdue. We picked weekdays since they are teachers and off in the summer.

Our little hometown has become a golf cart town! So, we rented one and joined in the fun!

Molly, the baby of the three of us:

Me:

Kate (the middle) loved driving it and became our main driver – she’s not mad; she’s focused.

We started cruising around in the golf cart and quickly found out that many businesses are closed on Tuesdays! That became a constant joke of our time together. We found a cute sandwich shop in an art gallery for our lunch, though.

We could get in our Airbnb after lunch, and it was so cute! I would say it was bougie western themed. It was in an old building atop a flower shop right on Main Street. I really appreciate when someone has paid attention to detail. We would definitely stay here again.

Ignore the stuff we had already dropped:

It had a candy machine!

On the way there, I prayed that we would honor my parents and keep our connection strong through doing this.

In the kitchen, there was a bowl of mints by the back door…

These were the type of mints my Dad always had. Coincidence? Kate the cynic says they are “only the most popular mint for people to provide”.

Molly and I chose to believe it was a sign.

We wanted to see our church that recently caught on fire. They are already hard at work on the repairs. It was hard to see and made us emotional.

We did a bunch of weird things that won’t make much sense to anyone! Kate had to drop off viola and violin bows to our friends’ mom. This is the mom of one of Kate’s besties and one of mine. So, we were riding around in a golf cart with a box of bows.

Shipley’s Tavern is a staple in Madison. It was open on a Tuesday!

Molly had a “Mommy Shark” cocktail:

We got a hot dog from this stand after that:

Someone suggested we go to the hotel on the river that has a bar (since nothing was open) – the Fairfield Inn – there we had margaritas with a view.

My hs boyfriend is the deputy mayor, and we had a shadowbox to give him for his mom. This was a shadowbox my mom had made of the hydroplane race in the town. (She enjoyed making shadowboxes with miniature scenes during the last 10 -15 years of her life).

He came and had a margarita, and we laughed and laughed over old stories. I started dating him in 8th grade when Molly was 7 years old and Kate was 10 years old, so it was funny to hear what he remembered of them.

Then, he went inside to the bar and saw Bo Duke/John Schneider, who now lives in our hometown, so the deputy mayor brought Bo Duke out to meet us and Bo Duke bought us a margarita. You can’t make this stuff up – lol.

This is what my hs boyfriend sent us after:

I’m telling you – the whole day was WEIRD and WONDERFUL because we were together and weird things just happen when you are in this town!

We were riding around in a golf cart with a box of violin bows and a shadow box, then we had margaritas with the deputy mayor and Bo Duke, but we also got a wiener slinger wiener for a snack. You think I’m crazy, right? But, it’s all true! While we were outside, our realtor (that just sold our mom and dad’s house) and my 6th grade teacher (!!!!) came out and we laughed with them some more.

We stayed talking and laughing until it looked like this:

We had 13 minutes to order a pizza and golf cart it over to The Red Pepperoni for our very late dinner.

The next morning we had only an hour or so left with our golf cart so we drove it to find some breakfast.

We turned in the golf cart and walked back to the airbnb and then drove to visit our mom and dad. We talked to them and gave my Dad some “brewsky” as he would say and my mom some candy/treats from our childhood. Molly made a nostalgic “snackle box”.

Don’t worry – we didn’t leave them there.

The weather both days was simply gorgeous. We couldn’t have ordered up better weather.

Things open up again on Wednesdays so we went shopping for a bit and then ended our time together at The Lighthouse, which is a restaurant, bar, and boat docking place on the river. When it was called something else, I worked there for a few summers in college and right after college before I started teaching.

Anyway, it was a wonderful time for us to be together and it was everything I hoped and more. I get to see them again in a couple of weeks!

Don’t forget the July Currently is coming up! It will be Wednesday, July 1, 2026. Here are the prompts:

Sparkling – What is currently “sparkling” in your life?

Grilling/Cooking –

Heating up –

Using –

Celebrating –

What was your favorite this week?

Amy