By Sunny Matthews
This is the very first blog I wrote, and it never made it past my saved documents page. I had no idea where to put it! This year I started listing the 10 most overlooked sites around the Lewiston, Niagara Falls, Lockport area and got hung up when I ran out of pictures and nice weather to taking new ones. Today I found this and thought I would pass it on:
It had been suggested (in 2009) that I start a
“blog” to make my web site more interesting. Being reasonably
sure no one wanted to read that today ironed sheets and tomorrow I
was going to weed the garden, I checked with someone who has a blog
about what to put in this masterpiece. His suggestion was to skip
the day to day activities but to talk about what interested my
guests. The kind of conversational topics discussed over breakfast.
The question I am most asked by my
guests concerns what gave me the idea to run a bed and breakfast.
When my third son was born we lived in
a mobile home in a small town in southern Colorado. My parents were
invited to stand in for the godparents (who lived out of state) at
his baptism. Since they lived 6 hours away, I needed a place for
them to stay other then on the fold out couch (tho why they would
want to stay in a room of their own rather than with our three boys
under the age of 5 I'll never know). Anyway, the places available to
them were a bed and breakfast or a small motel. They chose the bed
and breakfast. The night before the baptism my mother was laying out
her outfit to see if anything needed pressing. She had the hat, the
gloves, the matching purse and shoes, the slip, nylons, shell, jacket
and....no skirt. It was still carefully folded on the bed at home.
LaVeta was a small town about 62 miles from Pueblo, to the north and 65 miles over a
mountain pass from Trinidad. Either way you looked at it, we were 60
plus miles from the nearest shopping center. The owner of the bed
and breakfast went into her own closet and selected a skirt that
would go with the rest of Mom's ensemble and altered it to fit my
mother. (We are talking about a woman close to 100 heaver than my
mother, so it was no mean feat.) The rest of the stay fades in my
memory, but the way this woman was able to save the day, to make a
difference in my mother's day, has stayed with me. I knew than that
I wanted to run a bed and breakfast and someday pay that favor
forward. And I have! Two years ago we had guests visiting in
October when they expected the weather to be cool enough to wear
jeans. Instead we had record breaking highs in the 90's. The man on
the party had one pair of shorts with him and these he tore the seat
out of on the first day of the visit. I was able to borrow a pair of
perfect fit shorts from my sons closet for him to wear for the
duration of his visit. I know we had stores closer than 60 miles,
but in October they were not going to be selling shorts!
