Tonight's picture was taken in December of 2003. Mattie was a year and a half old and trying to capture him in photographic form was a riot! It was a riot because Mattie never stopped moving!!! So that year, we literally went to Lowe's and Home Depot. We placed Mattie in a shopping cart and wheeled him around the holiday decorations. Mattie always liked going to Home Depot type stores, so he was comfortable in that surrounding! Unlike a MALL! I am sure people in the store thought we were nuts. We took Mattie's coat off and were snapping LOTS of photos of him. Needless to say, this was the photo that went on our Christmas card in 2003.
Quote of the day: The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything. ~ Theodore Roosevelt
Today is Peter's mom's birthday! To celebrate the day, we drove to Rhode Island. Which is about 90 minutes away from Boston. We went to tour The Breakers, a mansion I have always wanted to see.
The Breakers was built as the Newport summer home of
Cornelius Vanderbilt II, a member of the wealthy United States Vanderbilt
family. It is built in an Italian Renaissance style. Designed by renowned
architect Richard Morris Hunt, with interior decoration by Jules Allard and
Sons and Ogden Codman, Jr., the 70-room mansion has a gross area of 125,339
square feet and 62,482 square feet of living area on five floors.[3] The house
was constructed between 1893 and 1895. The Ochre Point Avenue entrance is marked
by sculpted iron gates and the 30-foot-high (9.1 m) walkway gates are part of a
12-foot-high limestone-and-iron fence that borders the property on all but the
ocean side. The footprint of the house covers approximately an acre of the
13-acre estate on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
The Vanderbilts had seven children. Their youngest daughter,
Gladys, who married Count Laszlo Szechenyi of Hungary, inherited the house on
her mother's death in 1934. An ardent supporter of The Preservation Society of
Newport County, she opened The Breakers in 1948 to raise funds for the Society.
In 1972, the Preservation Society purchased the house from her heirs. Today,
the house is designated a National Historic Landmark.
The Breakers captured the The Gilded Age in United States history (the late 19th
century, from the 1870's to about 1900). The term was coined by writer Mark Twain
in The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873), which satirized an era of serious
social problems (between of course the wealthy and working class) masked by a thin gold
gilding.
The mansion was gloriously decorated for Christmas with trees and lights in every room, not to mention a room with gingerbread masterpieces and running toy trains.
We asked The Breakers staff today where to head for lunch! They recommended without a doubt, La Forge. What a great setting and wonderful food. I can see why Giada recommends it! it is situated on the grounds of the International Tennis Hall of
Fame, the Crowley family of Newport have owned and operated it for over
thirty-five years. Named after the original owner, La Forge, the restaurant's
menu, style and friendly atmosphere reflect the Crowley family's Irish
heritage.
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