Saturday, November 29, 2008

Old Camping Memories

Coreen gave me some pictures from Whit's End. I also just had some old film from that trip developed. So here they are... finally. Some of this trip has been up here before, but most will be new to the blog. I miss summer.

This trip was fun. Me, Scott, Walker and Kaylee went with Coreen, Steven, Amanda and Lillyin. We stayed 4 nights and 5 days. When we first arrived we didn't like the placement of our two sites. They were big, but no close trees for tying tarps. They also seemed very far away from each other, even though they were adjacent sites. We got permission to use a different site and the owners of the campground allowed us all on just one site. We set it up so that we had plenty of tarp space in between the two campers. Good thing because it rained the first 2 nights of the trip. The Bear Camp River almost crested. Scott and I stayed up until 3:30 one night, to make sure we weren't flooded out. Not this trip. Good. The river ended up going down over the next couple of days, so we were able to finally do some tubing down the river. Fun!

Walker and Lilly going a bit stir crazy. Too much rain.

Walker and Lilly playing a camp favorite, Staplemanchen.
All 4 kids playing Staplemanchen. It's amazing what they'll do camping that they'd never even consider if they were home with all their high tech games and such. It's one reason I love camping.

A little respite from the rain. It started up again a little while after this, but at least we were able to sit out around the fire.
Rain can't keep Scott from cooking meat on a stick.
Another rainy afternoon. Scott and I were playing cribbage.

Kaylee, Scott and Walker. Still raining.
Playing connect 4. You can see the water dripping off the tarp. At least it wasn't freezing.
Finally, some sun. Everyone line up and lets get to the pool!

We had the pool all to ourselves this day. It was great.


Ah, sun and fun.
No rain!


Getting ready for tubing.

Tubing.


Walker, in front of the Weather Channel forecast. It was foreboding. We should have scrapped the whole plan for that next trip, but we didn't. Pictures coming some day. That next trip was the one with the death and destruction. We were excited to head out to Ames Brook.

Friday, November 28, 2008

After Thanksgiving

Happy Post Thanksgiving! We had a wonderful day at my in-laws, Rita and Charlie. It was fun and yummy.

Rita gave me my Christmas present early... It's a new digital camera! I'm so excited. It came with a photo printer too. I'm so not technical, but I'm trying to figure it out. I got my first batch of pictures uploaded to try here.
The upload process is pretty slow... now I need a new computer!

Meet my new camera. Yippee! This is the best gift I could have gotten. Just what I needed and wanted.

Scott's brother, Uncle Ed.
Scott's dad, Grampie.
Me and Scott.
Grammie and Wags.
Walker and Scott. Happy Thanksgiving.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Thanksgiving Eve

Walker is home from school today. The three of us are on "vacation." Walker is having a play date with his friend, Jarrett, from school. Here is a picture of the two of them.


They actually sat at the counter and ate their lunch very nicely. Now they are playing X-Box games. I know they should be outside playing and using their imaginations, but it is chilly today.
Nanny and I took Walker, Kaylee and Walker's friend, Gage, to the mall Sunday. Why do we do that? It's like I forget every year how crazy it is this time of year and want to go do it again. Luckily, Kaylee is very good at wrangling the little boys for us. We rode the escalators, the carousel and went to Build a Bear where they each got a new bear. We also had their picture taken with Santa. Here it is:


Kaylee tried out and made the cheerleading team at her school. She is excited. She's really good. I went to a competition of hers for the first time a couple of weeks ago. It looks like fun and they make it look easy (but I'm sure it's not).
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. We are going to my in-laws. Rita is making everything. I spoke with her yesterday to see what we should make/bring and she said nothing. I'll bring some wine then.
Scott and I finally figured out how to use our fancy new recording/mixing/burning software. We think. So giving cds of us singing is still an option. Our very lucky families and friends! We're planning on figuring out what we are good at and practice recording those songs. Maybe next year we'll do a Christmas album!
Happy Thanksgiving. Eat a lot of turkey!

Friday, November 21, 2008

The holidays are closing in...

Well, we finally had to turn the heat on. It's been unseasonably cold here. We've been using only our wood stove, but last night was the turning point with temps below freezing. Now we are anxious about our oil, but we'll stay positive.
Lisa is coming over tomorrow when I get home from work to take our annual family photo. We usually make 100 copies and make it into a Christmas card, but the way things are this year, we''ll probably just use it as our annual 8x10 and forego the cardgiving except for a few close family members. I was going to skip it altogether, but realized I'd probably regret it since we've done it the last 6 years. I don't want to skip a year after all. I like seeing how everyone changes from year to year. We are hoping Lisa can stay for a while after the photo shoot. We want her to sing Led Zeppelin with us.
I have only a few more work/class days until Thanksgiving break. It's a fun time of year with the kids. I've been asking everyone what they want to eat most at their Thanksgiving dinners. I get some interesting answers. Some have been: cotton candy, apples, gummy bears. I've never had any of those at my Thanksgiving dinner. We're going to Scott's parents house again this year.
Walker is now taking rock climbing lessons at the YMCA in Haverhill, MA. Here are a couple of shots. It's so scary to me. I wouldn't want to be way up there, but he loves it!

He's the guy on the back wall with the black helmet (in the glare of the picture). He goes all the way to the top and rings the bell.
Walker on a different "face" of the climbing wall. This is a scary ledge to get up on, turn around and continue climbing to the top. He's really good at it.