Expedition Bliss: This home is just an address, you're my home

Running errands, visiting family and a wedding with a performance by Ellis Paul

We are back at the Brewer’s, Matthews childhood home. We arrived a week early to attend the wedding for his brother, Dan, to the wonderful Chris. I was happy to return to Judy’s amazing cooking and a real shower. Matthew and I used the pond we camped next to for ‘bathing’. Really it was swimming and getting less sticky but we continued to feel grimy. It was funny how lightweight my hair felt after using shampoo and combing out all the knotted hair. We spent the week taking care of our own things(such as car maintenance, laundry, doctor’s appointments, etc.), and trying to help out around the house. Matthew’s Aunt and Grandmother arrived halfway through the week. I grew to love them both in the first evening of meeting them. Both are a riot, his Grandmother, Betty, shared stories about her life, made us laugh and also shared her wisdom. Betty said, “We are so good at technology, we need to get good at relationships”, and I couldn’t agree more. I hope humanity will learn how to respect each others beliefs, and each others lives. Back to the narrative, I got the opportunity to style Judy’s hair! Judy is a no fuss woman, and keeps her hair in a pony tail or twisted in a bun. With her son’s wedding coming up I wanted to try doing something different for the occasion. She was willing to suffer through my experimentation. It was fairly quick and, as far as I can tell, painless. I found a very simple hairstyle online that I thought she would like. I did a test run and the first attempt was ‘okay’ as voted by Matthew and his aunt, Janet. I had to agree but I also felt I could do it again, better. She let me try a second time and it was unanimously voted better! She hired me on the spot to be her hairdresser for the wedding, I may have found my calling.. hah, just kidding. (although the thought of dolling up ladies who normally wouldn’t do it themselves does sound super fun to me). When the day arrived everyone put on our wedding day best and looked lovely. The wedding was held at the Curtis house in Ashfield, a beautiful bed and breakfast, with a barn. The house was huge and so was the barn. All of Ashfield looks beautiful and I would love to go back and explore. We passed many big and beautiful farms on the way, with large surrounding land. The ceremony was held outside, they had Ellis Paul play as part of the ceremony. He also did a concert performance after dinner. The ceremony was perfect, I cried a little but pulled myself together. The dinner was way more than I could consume. Everything was delicious, we had soup, salad, pumpkin and sausage stew, grilled chicken with fall vegetables. For the cake there were FOUR! They had the option of chocolate, spice, lemon and angel food cake. I had the lemon and tried a bite of the spice, both were divine. Seriously the best cakes and wedding food I have ever had! It doesn’t hurt that two of the recipes were from Judy’s collection of amazing meals. We had a blast dancing to random songs at the end of the night. With weariness taking over we drove home and I went straight to bed. We spent the next few days spending time at home, Matthew wanted to visit with his Grandmother and Aunt, he doesn’t get to see them that often. We went to doctors appointments, did some running(not as much as I’d like), reading, and a visit to the Big E. The Big E used to be called the Grand Exposition. It is a fair that is not just a state fair, it includes all of the New England states. There are several buildings, with some being dedicated to a specific state. We went through those first, they had a few products but mainly food. One of the big buildings was called Farm-a-rama, which housed the sheep and cows. We watched an oxen pull competition in the Horse Coliseum building. The class we watched were oxen that weighed 2,900 lbs and the winner pulled 9,750 lbs. It was a set of two oxen that pulled the weight, very impressive to watch there strength and the drivers that handled them. We were on our feet from 11am to 5pm wandering the grounds. We tried a sasparilla soda float, blueberry crisp, apple cider, fresh milk shake (from cows on the grounds), and clam chowder. The whole thing was interesting. I enjoyed most of it, except the main building in the center known as the Better Living building. It consisted of a bunch of useless crap for you to fill your home with, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. For some sick reason Matthew was determined to wander the entire place. We spent our last day doing laundry and preparing to head out the next day. In the evening we helped his dad move a ton, literally a ton, of pellets from the barn to the basement. That was fun actually, Matthew was moving fast so I tried to keep up and it felt like a game and we were racing.. if that were true he won. Our next destinations are PA, OH, IN and MO.

I have no photos from the wedding, I didn't have my phone on me. Here are a few others I took...all but the first are from the Big E.