I think I'm Bilbo

Mike is currently reading the kids "The Hobbit".  As I've listened over the past few evenings, Bilbo's reticence for adventures keeps popping up in the story.  He is described in the following way:  "People considered them (the Bagginses) very respectable... because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected;  you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him.  This is the story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected."

After we collected our bags at the London airport, we lugged our seven 50 lb. bags, carseats, five carry-ons and three children across the street and up to the fifth floor of a parking deck to pick up our rental car.  I waited outside with the kids and bags, while Mike went inside to rent the car.  All of this happened around 3am body time, with no sleep.  As I tried to keep John out of the lane just next to us where cars were zooming by, I decided that I was Biblo and that new adventures really weren't my thing.  Thirty minutes later, as we loaded and stuffed all of our belongings into the rental car (yes, they fit - we just had to unpack one bag to distribute the contents all over the car), I told Mike in no uncertain terms that we weren't doing this again.

We then drove an hour and a half to Cambridge.  Finally, the last thirty minutes of the trip, all three kids succumbed to sleep.  As we arrived at the house, I experienced a different side of Bilbo that is described in the book:  "Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick."  Upon seeing Hawthorne House, I was all of the sudden filled with the amazement of getting to live here and fell in love with the house.  The house is everything I would want:  quaint and old on the outside, with new plumbing and furnishings on the inside.  The garden is simply my favorite thing.  It is full of rambling paths, stone fixtures, herbs, flowers and even a plum tree.  The pictures below just don't do it justice. After wandering the garden, I turned to Mike and told him how glad I was to be here, with him, on another adventure.  I would gladly do the packing, logistics and travel all again.  He's the Gandolf to my Bilbo, pushing me out the door for a new adventure.