Category: Family

Spring beauty is elusive.

We have been visiting Swarthmore College where Rebecca is a senior every spring for five years. This was the first time that our visit coincided with the full glory of the spring bloom.

The flowering trees were particularly beautiful.

The Scott Arboretum at Swarthmore is the custodian of the grounds and woods around the college and does a spectacularly good job as the photos in this flickr album attest.

The lesson to be learned from this is “In the face of uncertainty (spring flowers) don’t give up, keep trying.”  Everyone who has come in contact with Swarthmore knows that it is a wonderful institution for students and by extension alumni.  What is less well known is what a delightful resource the college, the grounds, the faculty and the staff are for the parents who choose to get involved.  For us joining and being active on the parent council was a way to be close to our daughter while she was 3000 miles away without hovering over her.  An unintended consequence has been that Swarthmore has also enriched our lives, intellectually and with its special beauty.  Life is Good!

Rebecca was driving in Yellowstone National Park today and it snowed.  It reminded her of a line from John McPhee’s book Rising from the Plains:

In Wyoming they have a saying “If summer falls on a weekend let’s have a picnic.”

We did some other things when we were in England like visiting Cambridge

And when it wasn’t raining I took some pictures and have posted the best of them on Flickr.

For the second event of our reunion my brothers and I rented a narrowboat for a day.

not our boat but this type

After 30 minutes of instruction from the affable and patient Gary we set off down the Rugby Canal.

I got to drive as did Tom and Matt.

The speed limit is 4mph on the open canal but is lowered to 2mph in congested areas.

This is a congested area

We went as far a the first lock and then because we had lingered over lunch and Gary had warned us not to go through the lock we turned around and came back.

a boat approaches the lock

Because of our incredible luck we were joined by our second cousins Chelsea Tom and Joe Barnes for a couple of hours. They were great fun to have on the boat. I failed to get their picture because I was driving and having to much fun.

It rained a few times during the day and we never saw a Kingfisher but we did see some swans, flowers and a long tunnel.

We even stopped at a Pub for lunch just like in the movies.

Click here to see even more Narrowboat pictures on Flickr

Click here to visit Rose Narrowboats our excellent canal boat provider. Our boat was the Rosette shown on the web site.

The second part of our England trip was a family reunion in Wolston our “ancestral home.” Its where my mother parents, the Ismays, lived. And many of our relatives on the Ismay side still live in the area.

The Ismay’s house in Wolston

Four out of the five brothers came to the reunion:

Simon, Tom, Matt and Andrew

outside St Margaret’s the village church

We had a Sunday luncheon at the Queens Head an excellent pub in Bretford with our Aunts and Uncle and many of their children and grandchildren. What a nice family:

That is Joe in the middle

We of course took the obligatory outdoor group photo and it came out really well:

The Ismays of Wolston

with their significant others and offspring

Almost of all of the photos in this section were taken by Eddy K. He is Matt’s long time friend and one of the worlds best photographers. Thanks Eddy!

Click here to see many more pictures of Wolston and the surrounding area.

Click here to see many more photos of the family reunion.

This will be a link to the canal boat section when it is finished.