I am not a career girl. Never wanted to be one because I would much rather have my name in lights for being just a good mother, wife and homemaker. Maybe it sounds dull to others, but I am never bored when I am at home, doing the things I enjoy....cooking, knitting and crocheting, cleaning, decorating and spending one whole day preparing a special meal for company.

My boys are my greatest accomplishment in life. I would love to have had a girl, but it was not to be, so even though I was brought up in a world of girls, having boys was a new experience to be tried and savored.....a real challenge.

Jay, you know, my first-born, was such a joy. He was a calm, adaptable baby, ready to smile at strangers when taken up from a nap and shown around. I thought all babies were that way, until Mark came along. He was the challenge I hadn't expected! His personality was so different from Jay that I was not anticipating so many demands from such a handsome tyke. He made his wants known in no uncertain terms from Day One.

Then came the Surprise....Kim! After ten years, along came this nice little son who enjoyed summer afternoons on the lawn in his playpen with me, sipping iced tea by the teaspoonful. As he got older, he would catch fireflies in a jar, bring home a pail full of tadpoles, turtles, and we even watched a snake trying to swallow a frog-to his consternation?

Now, he is a talented photographer of all sorts of nature from the caterpillar stage of the monarch butterfly to the lovely cardinal that I keep as a screen saver on my computer. He hopes to make photography his career some day. He makes lovely pictures of waterfalls from tiny trickles to huge spring-time flood-stage falls.

He makes trips to New Hampshire several times a year and was really saddened to see the "Old Man of the Mountain" (New Hampshire's trademark) lose it's face to age and weather. He has made a photo of the "Old Man's" site and superimposed the face where it belongs (shown below).

He was most upset that a monument to the motto "New Hampshire Makes Men" has gone after 2,000 or so years of being a landmark. He said he was going to ask his boss for bereavement leave ...