Holidays

Christmas Day.

We enjoyed the excellent company of friends and family in a very relaxed fashion. We have all "cut back" on the holiday gift-giving over a number of years and as it turns out...we spend more time together. Bonus.

This year, grumpy as I was, I decided to not even cook a traditional Christmas dinner. We had a soup and sandwich sort of day. John & I made Seafood Newburg Stoup and had sandwich fixings. My mom added a Minestone and more sandwich fixings and Auntie Lois added a Squash - Apple Bisque. We all brought fun desserts and set the table for dessert at 4:00. We snapped the crackers, and played with the toys, laughed at the silly jokes in the crackers and wore the silly hats. It was a very nice time.

There were lots of activities with Nerf gun battles and snowball fights, a 700 piece puzzle was worked on to 1/2 completion and many stories shared and memories made.

Daddy really enjoys his new gun. Too funny.

And Tide really enjoys his new "Jackolope" toy. He was seen carrying it around and sleeping on it.

The New Year had us going from gathering to gathering. There were many friends seen and lots of time to relax and enjoy.

I did find the time to knit up a "Honeycomb" hat...actually 2 of them during this break. We're gearing up for a nice January. We hope your holidays were as cheerful as ours.

~Rachel

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