Ice Storm

The first weekend in December had us setting up our "recession" Christmas Tree. We picked a tree from the back yard this year. We think our free tree is simply beautiful. We are finding the holidays to be sneaking up on us this year. It's been so busy with traveling out of state for something or other during 3 weekends in November and lots of extra activities going on that it hardly seems like December yet!

We have had very little time in our yard lately beyond splitting and stacking wood or just trying to keep up with the routine maintenance. I guess we were due to notice our surroundings when the ice storm hit!

Wednesday the rain started and Thursday was hail at first, and then freezing rain to end it. The power went out around midnight Thursday and didn't come back on until suppertime on Sunday! We are very thankful to have a generator to run the necessities. We would run it for 4 hours at a time and then wait another 8 or 10 before turning it on again. We didn't want to run out of gas and there really wasn't a need beyond those short stints to re-cool the fridge and use the water.

The ice storm produced a stunning winter wonderland effect of our world.

The heavy buildup was a crystal palace when the sun came out. The kids and I had a wonderful time out in the yard taking in the beauty of it all!

~Rachel

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year was spent in Wolfeboro at my sister's home. They put on an excellent meal and we had lots of fun with family. We played Apples to Apples and went for a nice chilly walk to burn off the meal (before dessert.)

It was a nice weekend to spend together and we even snuck in a day trip to VT!

Here are the boys with Gramma & Grampa. We enjoyed visiting for the way-too-short time we were there. We felt fortunate to find a neighbor close by who was willing to do the evening chores around here as well as to walk our dog mid-day.

We spent Sunday in a recovery mode and beginning preparations for the month ahead.

Nice to visit with so many of our family in such a short time!

~Rachel

Knitting

The name of this pattern is Frost Flowers and Leaves and it's from the "Gathering of Lace" book that I have. I gave this one to my Mom for her to wear during this holiday season.

It's Alpaca with a twist...70% Baby Alpaca and 30% Silk.

I've also done some socks lately, finished a little bolero for my niece and have a sweater on the needles right now!

~Rachel

November

John is putting in lots of extra time at work, both there and working from home. The work at home is often in his robe, at the comfort of the dining room table and at times with the company of Tiger Lily! She is apparantly a very good editor as she is often very attentive to his e-mails.

Here is our young man with his brand new driver's license! It has been a big relief to me to have him driving himself to and from school for his early morning French class as well as to drop off his brother at Guitar lessons or just to run to the local store or library for errands. NICE!

We spent the weekend of the 22nd & 23rd in "Beantown". Brian had classes at MIT for Splash weekend. Loads of fun for him and the other teens which we carpooled down with. Some were strictly for fun such as Rugby or Duct Tape Design...but others were more serious about solar power and LEDs. Lots of fun at a wonderful event.



Andrew and I spent time at the Museum of Fine Arts and then over at "Old Ironsides." The USS Constitution is going through some repairs so she is not currently rigged. Here he is at the bow of the ship and enjoying the trip tremendously. Mom was a bit cold with the temperature holding at 28 and wind chill bringing it to zero or below quite often. The Constituion's museum was a warm and welcome place to be!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!

~Rachel

Activites!

Our fall has been filled with activities. Here I am coaching soccer...I'm the tallish kid in blue. It was too cold for my coach's tee alone. Coach French did better with the cold than I did. My "little guy" is there in his white hoodie...he might also have had an aversion to the cold too! Or he could just be stylin' in his sweatshirt.
We played 7 weekends with practices on Saturdays and games on Sunday afternoons.


The boys also had another year of their Shakespeare Theater group classes this fall, Guitar & Piano, Kindermusik, Book Club, Swim Lessons, Magazine Club, Milton Homeschooler's Meetings, Driver's Ed and French at the local High School. I'm very familiar with the "Mom's Taxi" game now.

Here is a little fun we had on the last day of that session of swim. And some more "serious" parts of the lessons too.

The boys have been growing and learning and playing. I just can't believe how fast time is passing!

~Rachel

Fall

Well, here they are and growing! Fall went by very fast and we're not quite sure who's fault it is that we haven't been blogging. Any ideas?

So it's eveyone's fault!

We've been ultra busy! I'll try to put up a couple more photos today. I've been kicked out of blogger several times by my finicky computer so I'm keeping these short!

Here's hoping your busy fall has been as much fun as ours.

~Rachel

August

Flooding seems the appropriate way to start this blog. We've had lots and lots of flooding. This might have been the storm which had the Tornado (about 10 miles north of us) or it was one of the daily thunderstorms we had...it's hard to tell anymore. We've had lots of rain! The back field has been a swamp. Many local roads have washouts. We've replaced lots of electrical devices after the storms and had several candlelight dinners. What weather!

We did get down to Portsmouth with our son and friends for his birthday during August. See that ship? It's the Friendship and see those clouds? They are the reason we didn't get to go on the Friendship. We did tour the Roseway and the Gundalo, but a severe thunderstorm rolled in and trapped us with another 200 or so people in a tent for over an hour. Par for the course this summer.

We took one Tuesday to go and visit my folks up in ME where they were camping. It rained for most of our visit, but we did get a break long enough to take a walk. My niece joined us for the day and it was a nice time for all.

Here is a giant sunflower that our youngest boy planted himself this spring. The sunflowers are doing well, so are the cucumbers and tomatos. We have good basil too. The carrots, peas, beans, corn and pumpkins have not done very well at all in this weather. We felt very fortunate to get in 120 bales of hay as many farmers have only had their first cut in the 2nd half of August! That would be haying your second cut with the old first in the mix. Not very good hay this season.

Another field trip we took was up to the Fort at No. 4 across the state. It was a fun day for sure. There was an encampment going on with a Sutler's Row (marketplace) and our history buff kids were in heaven. We watched a mock battle of the French and Indian War and spent the afternoon in the 1700s. Of course we went home a little early due to what...you knew it!... another thunderstorm.

I'll end this soggy blog with a September photo from yesterday's cache run. This is a bridge built in the 1800s for the railroad. It is still in use today with a daily train from Ossipee, NH to Boston, MA. It was a very nice trail. We spooked a fox and although Tide wanted to take up the chase he did come back right away. Good boy. And a dry day!

~Rachel

July

Here's my Niece, Hannah! We had lots of fun for 2 weeks in July playing with her while my very busy, working-mom sister was out. My sister is a licensed therapist and has a busy schedule doing family counciling. Usually this post of babysitter goes to my mother, but she was away on vacation. We took Hannah to the beach and she just loved it.

The 4th of July parade here in town was cute and small. We enjoyed the entries of antique cars and our local firetrucks. There were floats from some local businesses and churches as well as this adorable horse entry. We spent the afternoon taking in the local bar-b-ques and activities.



Some of the day's fun included swimming downtown. Brian is the boy in the blue trunks on his way in. The local teenagers stuck together in a big mob and had a great time playing capture the flag and bar-b-que hopping in a group of about 20 or more.
In the evening we took the kids up to watch the fireworks in Wolfeboro. They were a spectacular show! One of the best in recent years.

We've been having our share of woes in July so we really enjoyed a nice day. A Thunderstorm took out a bunch of our possessions. Many of which we just don't want to replace. One of our TVs for instance. I've wanted to get rid of that thing for a long time anyway! John's computer and our modem got the shock too. We were without internet for many days before we could find one day to stay at home and wait for the repair guy. We had the brush-hog, our riding mower and weedwhacker all die together. Get eating there King! The horse could not clean up 11 acres of grass for us. Too bad. We've fixed or replaced them all. The truck & little ATV each went to the shop...it was not a boring month! On the upside...John spent lots of time golfing and I got to go riding a few times too. The boys spent some time camping in ME with their grandparents and have been to the beach lots and lots to hang out with their friends.
The kids have been working on their 4-H projects and here is one of our 7 year old's photos. He's getting a good eye for photography. We chose to have one pot of tomatos, but the rest of the plants are in our garden. He found these cherry tomatos to be a good subject. Very good work.
The older boys have been busy working at a local farm picking berries. Strawberries are done now and they are working at Raspberries. The boys really enjoy their jobs.
My youngest and I have enjoyed a few rounds of our own picking of our wild blueberries here at home.
With all of the rain we were very fortunate to get our 120 bales of hay put up for the winter. There was a break in our daily storms for 4 or 5 days last week. The hay farmers were very busy at long last. We have had spectacular storms here and it's really become a near daily routine of unplugging all sorts of things.
Here's hoping you are all enjoying your summers too!
~Rachel

Graduations & Visits

Well, she did it! Cory graduated from UNH with a Betchelors of Art in Women Studies this spring. The commencement was great, the weater was wonderful, and the 2500 graduating students (2023 undergraduates and 475 graduate students) were just a sea of colors. Thank goodness for the large video monitor and camera crew.








The projects at the home front continue... Here is the new horse run-in shelter that Brian and I built with our new framing gun. I can't imagine how long it would have taken with just the standard hammers. As this "movable" structure was built in our back field it was definitely a chore to put it up with just the two of us. Thanks to the electric generator, air compressor, electrical saws and 3+ weekends, the horse has shelter during the heat/rain/whatever..

Well, have to get to work now. More postings later. Love to all and have a great summer.

May

Here are 2 officers from William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. What a performance they had this year! The play takes up most of our time during the end of April and then the shows April 30-May4. All 5 shows went off very well and we celebrated another good year in the Young People's Stage Company.


Here is King having his "close up". He is a freckled guy...it's called a flea bitten grey. We're doing really well and I've been out riding now that the ground is ready. Very happy. We are very happy with him!


Here is a promise of berries to come. A wild bee working away at the wild blueberry bushes in our yard. Won't it be yummy!
My daily walking partner out on our jaunt. Tide is still my constant companion--a shadow really.
Another sure sign of spring's full return is this frog, sunning himself on a rock near our stone bridge. Ahhh. Spring!

~Rachel

Portsmouth caching

Hey! Kids! Wait up. You would think that they had never seen bare ground before. Okay. Well, they had not seen bare ground for 4 1/2 months. Portsmouth did not get the snow load that we did. Several of their storms were rain instead of snow. John would drive off to work each day in this springtime bliss and come home to the snowbanks and winter weather we were stuck in. We had had it! Into the cars with the kids and out to find a cache along this "exercise" trail.

Do you like the new look? I think he's handsome. He's a keeper for sure.



And there are 3 more handsome guys too. What a fun family day.

~Rachel

April

Okay, so you know what it's like when you have put something off for so long that you feel like it's just to hard to get going again. Yeah.

Sort of like this blog.

Well...

I'm just going to get started and see what happens!

I don't remember much about April anymore. It seems that we started with feet of snow and lots of ice chopping and outdoor work. But some interesting things were going on inside too. Here is Ben knitting and Brian's Ukranian Egg for Easter.

Okay. So, I've started. Maybe I've got another one to do today too.

~Rachel

Got Snow?

This is our horse fence. It is about 4 feet high. I took this photo before our last storm and now the fence has disappeared. It's a good thing that the horse does not want to walk through 4 feet of snow!



The next one is of Tide by our tent garage out in the back field We did move the snow off it as we were worried about losing that structure. There are lots of buildings caving in around NH this year. Through January we were able to plow over our stone bridge and into the back field. (We store hay in that tent.) Now we're limited to a path we make with the snowblower. The bridge became too narrow and icy to get safely across. It seemed to want to push our truck into the brook!

John was so good to plow the driveway Saturday morning for the latest storm March 1. He did end up using the snowblower as well as our driveway is getting really, really narrow.

This is what our parking area looks like.



















Here is Andrew packing up his guitar. What snowpiles!!


This is my view of the barn. I really can't see much from the windows anymore. Just a winter wonderland! The news is saying that Concord, NH may break the record for the snowiest winter recorded (past 200 or so years.) We're within 12 inches of that record now. I think there's been 109 inches or something like that, for the season. I love driving along the roads here as they remind me of what the roads looked like when I was growing up. In our old town they had done lots of tree clearing on the edge of the road so we didn't have the overhanging branches. Here we do. We also have the frequent power outages which go with the overhanging tree limbs...but at this point we like those too.



Happy March!



~Rachel

Winter Events and Fun

What a wonderful time we had through December and January. We had a chance to visit with the folks in Milton, VT and spend time with many of our family members. It's amazing how gray I've gotten and how much Dad and Mom haven't changed (what's with that??). The time spent was short, but fun. We are very thankful for the chance to say hello to many, and sad we didn't get a chance to spend time with everyone.




The snow this year has been a lot of fun for all. It really has made up for the minimal conditions we've had over the last two winters, and the boys have had a blast with it. The snow plow on the truck and the snowblower (when I haven't loaned it out to a friend) have been very busy. From the look on the kids faces it's obvious they enjoy the experience of a good New England winter.






One of the neat things about having a snow plow is the great snow banks you can create. The kids were having fun making snow tunnels and forts in the banks. I seem to remember times when Matt and I did much the same growing up. As it stayed in my mind, I'm sure our boys will remember the neat tunnels and snow-related times they've had this year.






In addition to the neat outdoor times in January, we had a good family get together for Ben's Birthday. He sure has grown and matured over this last year. He's been learning to read and doing great on the school front. All three boys are doing well in home school and are settling into our new home and community.
So ends our post of this day. Happy 2008 to all of you.


Our lives contine to grow
by the love and kindness we sow
by touching the hearts of our friends
we know that all bad times will end

We realize each day we are blessed
by family and friends that are best
for in our hearts we hold true
that at the end of the day "we love you"

December

Even though it's Groundhog Day...we thought it time to post! December had some completed knitting projects. Here are the "retro rib" socks which were given to my mom and 3 "honeycomb" hats in different fibers each. The shiny one is Silk/Mohair. Nice.

We purchased a used piano for our 4th year student. He has had a small keyboard for practicing and was in need of a real instrument. This spinet is a 1940 "Winter". Here is our student with his Grandmother enjoying music together. She is an organist and is delighted with our new instrument.

The Christmas Day was spent here at home with an afternoon meal for 12. What a nice day we had. Even the dog is enjoying his present in background! Army men, tools, books and good food. What a wonderful day.



~Rachel