Happy Saturday!  This weekend should have been the start of our annual fall vacation.  But since I moved to a new job in June, my vacation time disappeared and I have to build up my vacation days again...hence, no vacation this September!  So I thought I would spend this week reflecting on some special vacation moments from the last few years...better than nothing, right?!  The picture above was taken in Maine...doesn't it just make you want to sail away on a grand adventure?  Did you know that one of my all-time favorite poets, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was born in Portland, Maine?  Here is a lovely poem to start your weekend on a cheerful note:

A Day Of Sunshine

O gift of God! O perfect day:
Whereon shall no man work, but play;
Whereon it is enough for me,
Not to be doing, but to be!

Through every fibre of my brain,
Through every nerve, through every vein,
I feel the electric thrill, the touch
Of life, that seems almost too much.

I hear the wind among the trees
Playing celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument.

And over me unrolls on high
The splendid scenery of the sky,
Where though a sapphire sea the sun
Sails like a golden galleon,

Towards yonder cloud-land in the West,
Towards yonder Islands of the Blest,
Whose steep sierra far uplifts
Its craggy summits white with drifts.

Blow, winds! and waft through all the rooms
The snow-flakes of the cherry-blooms!
Blow, winds! and bend within my reach
The fiery blossoms of the peach!

O Life and Love! O happy throng
Of thoughts, whose only speech is song!
O heart of man! canst thou not be
Blithe as the air is, and as free?



The "Bubbles" at Jordan Pond, Maine