Happy New Year!

Christmas is over. Time to reflect on the last year and make plans for the new year. After our Ice storm, power outage and missing four days of school we finally went back to school on Thursday. Friday afternoon we were dismissed two hours early due to another "wicked" bad snow storm. It continued to snow all day Saturday only to stop for the night. Sunday it started back up. Monday morning we had a two hour delayed start to school. Managed to make it through the day on Tuesday. Now we are home for Christmas break. Crazy! Here are some pics I took on Saturday when it snowed all day.

I always look out at the bird house to see how much snow we are getting. The snow was higher the next day.

On Christmas eve we went ice skating with our friends, the Lanes. Below is a picture of the girls with Erica.

On Tuesday evening we went to our church for an awesome Christmas service. The music was awesome. We met up with our friends, the Drakes, for coffee and tea beforehand. It was great to catch up with them. Christmas Eve we went to this little Congregational church here in town for their candlelight service. We started going there when we first moved to NH and keep going every year. It is a small, old, white church in the center of town. Very quaint and New Englandish.

Before the girls headed to bed Todd, as he does every year, read the girls The Night Before Christmas and The Grinch.

The girls were up by 7:30 Christmas morning. I have to say that is the earliest they have ever been up on Christmas. We were downstairs opening up presents by 8am. They came down and were very excited to see Santa came during the night.

Below the girls are opening their new computer. Their very own to play webkinz and school work, etc.
We had a short visit from Jim and Luke. It was fun to see Luke open his present from us. And we were able to wish Uncle Jamie a Happy Birthday in person this year!!

The rest of the day we hung out playing games, eating and stayed in our pj's until we went for a walk right before dinner. It was a good day.

Since then we have been doing some work around the house. Cleaning, purging, organizing. We hope to start pulling down MORE wallpaper today!!

The weather was warm yesterday and the snow is melting!! The girls and I took a short bike ride yesterday and a long walk as it was about 60 degrees out. Today it is colder but the sun is shining brightly!! The girls are bummed the snow is melting. Eleven more weeks until Spring....I am counting down.

I will leave you with a couple pics of the cats on Christmas morning! Happy New Year!!!

Roscoe was in the thick of things. But Bailey just wanted out on the porch. He wanted to get the heck out of there.
Please let me out!!!

Day Four....No School.

With school being out we have had some extra time to bake cookies and make Christmas cards. Yesterday we baked three different kinds of cookies. The girls were great. They really helped and we finished baking them all. Still need to ice the cutouts. Emily requested that we make green and red cut out cookies. So we colored some of the dough and did just that. I was a bit leery but they turned out really nice. Here they are cutting out the sugar cookies.
Here they are making Snickerdoodles. The girls chose what cookies they wanted to make. They also chose to make chocolate crinkles. They all turned out very tasty.

After my last post, the girls pointed out that I did not include a picture of our cat, Roscoe. I say "our" cat but he is really all Emily's. Roscoe and Emily have a very unique relationship. He acts so different with her than with any of us. Very cute. Here are a couple pictures of Roscoe.

The picture below is a typical position of Roscoe. Emily claims Roscoe talks to her. I have to say he really sounds like he says "out" when he wants to hang out on our screened in porch. He doesn't seem to get along with the other cats. I think he thinks he is human.

As some of you know, we got a new cat. Not something we planned on. We went to the animal shelter to get our Christmas tree as we do every year. And every year we go in and visit all the animals. Well, this cat approached me and all I could think of was Bugsy. He was so friendly to me and we all fell in love with him. His name is Benson, we call him Butler Boy sometimes, and he is already 10 years old. He doesn't act that old and is a funny cat. One of the things I really miss about Bugsy being gone is that he always came to sit on my lap when I was on the computer. The other day I was sitting here and Benson jumped up on the chair. I was so happy and thought, here we go....he has some Bugsy in him after all. But instead of sitting on my lap he just took over the desk and computer. Here are a couple pictures of that. I will get him on my lap sooner or later.

We are still out of school due to the ice storm. Some districts here have canceled school until after New Years. We still have downed power lines around town and people are still without power. To make things more challenging a snow storm has moved in and we are expected to get up to 5 inches of the white stuff. Right now it is nice to look out my window from my warm house at the beautiful sight of white everywhere. So we are making the best of it and enjoying our time at home.

Ice Storm December 2008

Today is day four with no power here at 21 Cabot Rd. We had a "wicked" bad ice storm Thursday night into Friday morning. All night long we heard cracking and crashing. Kind of scary. We lost power sometime during the night into Friday morning. Luckily, my wonderful husband was prepared. By 5:30am or so we had power due to the generator Todd bought a few years ago. We were able to hear on the radio that schools were closed. Of course at the time, I thought there must be something better we could spend our money on. I am so glad he bought it because it has saved us our house, food, money, etc. Not to mention sanity!! We have limited power but we have all that we need. The wood stove has been working non stop and the hot room is in full swing!! We can use the dishwasher, washing machine, dryer and computer as long as we do it one at a time. All outlets do not work but we have enough. The picture above is the little tree in our front yard. Most of the pictures I took outside came out a bit blurry. That is what happens, I guess, when you take them through the window. Oh well. Next time I will actually go outside.

The pine trees were drooping so low. This was right outside our dinning room window.

Our pool. Not too bad. There was a layer of ice on top so I don't think anything got through the cover. The fence looks intact as well.

The basketball hoop was not as lucky. Snapped right in half. Our neighbor next door had a huge limb come down on the back of his car breaking the windshield and smashing the rear end of his car.

The sun came out as it always does here after a storm. It was beautiful!! The ice was falling off the trees and glistening. Todd and Noel (Todd's dad, they just happened to be visiting us at the time) went out and cleaned up all the fallen branches. They were soaked when they came in.
We spent the rest of the day watching videos and enjoying each other's company. Cable and Internet were out until yesterday. Noel and Debbie were here and we had a great time with them. The Eelmans up the street joined us for awhile b/c their house was cold until Todd helped them get a generator set up at their house.

Our newest addition to the family, Benson, found comfort on Grandpa Buck!!
Here is Bailey relaxing in his favorite spot.

That is all for now. We are good and hoping that the power comes back on and we can get back to school. We have missed two days that we will have to pay back at the end of the year and it isn't even Christmas yet. Hopefully all our snow storms this year will be on the weekends so we don't miss a lot of days of school. They are predicting a bad Winter this year and we are just starting. Hope everyone is enjoying the Christmas season!!

Christmas Time is Here!

Regardless of the fact that they have been playing Christmas music in the stores since about Halloween, Christmas time has officially arrived this weekend. The girls are thrilled to be allowed to sing Christmas songs in the house. We had made a rule no singing Christmas songs until after Thanksgiving. Now we have changed it until the week of Thanksgiving. It just gets longer every year. Anyway....we had a great Thanksgiving at my Aunt and Uncle's house in Essex, MA. I forgot my camera so I have no pictures from that day. But....we had a nice round of singing there and Emily performed some Christmas songs on her flute. We even sang along to one. It was a very nice day with great food, great company and some wonderful conversations!! I have a new opinion of Queen Latifah now!!

Friday morning I got up early and decided I would try the early bird shopping. I made it to Kohls and after being there about an hour, half of that in line to check out, I decided it was time to go home. Too many people, too many cars on the road and I just wanted a cup of coffee. I did manage to get a few deals though. Later in the day we headed over to the ski swap. We found a great deal on a pair of snowboard boots for Callie. Callie has decided to snowboard this year instead of ski. Makes me a bit nervous since she is the daredevil of the family. But good for her for trying something new.

Last night, Saturday, Callie and the rest of the third grade from our school sang at the tree lighting ceremony here in Merrimack. They were invited to join the upper elementary and middle school choirs. It was fun and a nice way to get us in the spirit of Christmas. Santa and Mrs. Claus made an appearance and Mrs. Claus read a story.

Here is Callie and some of her friends getting ready to sing. From left to right - Kate, Alex, Callie and Sabrina. Ya think green might be a favorite color amongst the third grade??

Here we are after the singing. You might think, why isn't Todd smiling?? Well, my friend who took the picture was having trouble and took awhile to take the pic. His smile didn't hold.

After the tree lighting, we headed down to Nashua for the Holiday stroll. This is where they close off Main St. and all the shops are open. They have all sorts of performances and ice sculpting, etc. We rushed down to watch the Merrimack Valley Flute Choir. Emily's friend's sister is in the choir. It was amazing and in a warm church so we enjoyed a half an hour of warmth and some awesome music. There were flutes there I had never seen before. Long and fat flutes, curvy flutes and of course the piccolo. Emily was amazed and really enjoyed it.

Here is Emily and her friend Morgan.

That is all for now. I will try and keep this more updated for the Christmas season. You might wonder why I have a picture of the ocean up top. Well, this is the time of year I really miss the beach. So until I get a nice Christmas shot enjoy the waves. All I need is some sound on this blog of the waves rolling. Have a great Christmas season!!

The last bit of Fall...

Fall is ending here in New England. The Winter weather has come with a bang. No snow yet but the temperatures have been cold enough. We went from rainy, warm weather to cold, crisp, sunny and a bit windy at times. I guess everywhere it has been colder than usual. We managed to go on one more Fall hike before it turned cold. Our very good friends, the Waltons, have moved to Boston for a year from CO. It is great to have them so close. They came up a couple weeks ago and we went on a nice hike. Below are some pictures I took that day.

The place we went for the hike is called Joe English in Amherst, NH. When you start on the hike there is this tiny house sitting there. We were told a family of 10 used to live there. The girls and I sat there on the picnic tables the first time we were there and tried to imagine a family of that size living in such a tiny house. Then we imagined our family there. Still couldn't imagine that. Amazing what families did with what they had back in the day. Makes me thankful for what we have today.

We hiked to this bridge that went over some streaming water. One side of the bridge opened out to a huge beaver pond. Here is Todd and Emily on the bridge.

This is Jim and his son, Luke. Jim and Todd went to high school together in Shaker Hts.

Jim took this picture of the swirling water with my camera. I wasn't sure what he was taking but when I saw the pic it was pretty cool. Jim is an awesome photographer so any tips I can get from him is always nice!!

Here is Leslie and Luke.

Here are my girls by the beaver pond. No, Dad, we didn't see any beavers.

I took this picture near the end of our hike. We were taking a rest and it had started to rain. It was getting dark and when I looked up I snapped a picture. As you can see most all the leaves have fallen.

The next two pictures are of the girls birthday parties. I promised I would post some pictures but never did. I have posted one picture from each party.

This is Emily's party friends. She had a slumber party with a PJ fashion show. She really planned most of it herself with games and food, etc. It was our first big slumber party. Three girls ended up sleeping in another room while the others proceeded to wander around the house and get into mischief UNTIL.....the mean mommy woke up around 2am. Then all became quiet. But it was a lot of fun!!

Callie had a scrapbook party with her friends. I was amazed at how creative these 3rd grade girls were! They produced some awesome little scrapbooks.

As for what else we have been up to?? Having Jim (Jamie) and Leslie here has been great. Todd and Jim went to a Brown's Backers bar one Sunday. Todd thought they would walk in and see a couple Brown's fans sitting off in a corner. The entire bar was filled with Brown's fans. I guess they had a great time!

Last weekend we met up with them at the Science museum along with Leslie's brother and family, the Crumps. It was great to see them and the kids have all grown so much. Here is a picture of all the kids.

Now we are just gearing up for the Holidays and the Winter months. The girls can't wait to ski again. Callie is going to try snowboarding (like her daddy) this year. We will have season passes this year due to me co coordinating the ski club at school this year. This will be my third year skiing and I still don't think I will be able to beat my kids down the hill. I just hope I can get off the ski lift correctly this year. Yes, I had a problem with that last year. I will always remember since Callie wrote a book last year in second grade (AND her teacher bound it for her) called, "How to ride a Ski Lift'. Dedicated to me! Ugh!

On a sad note....we lost a very good friend this week. Pony (Todd Payne) was killed in a motorcycle accident in Ft. Walton Beach, FL. He and Todd were stationed together in Biloxi, California and Florida together. They even spent time together when Todd did his year in Korea. Pony was in Japan and would travel to Korea to work frequently. Pony was a great guy and always fun to be around. He made us laugh every time we saw him. He wrote a sweet letter to Emily when she was born. The girls remember him well. I didn't realize how well until they started telling us stories of Pony. All week Todd and I have been recalling some great memories!! He is already missed by so many!!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from the Beards!! We had a very festive day full of parties, pumpkin carving, costumes, trick or treating with friends, pumpkin seeds and hot cider. Life has kept us busy with soccer, after school activities and play tryouts. I woke up Halloween morning in a slight panic. Pumpkins hadn't been carved, no Halloween decorations had been put up, etc. So we made the best of our time and got everything done before trick or treating. Callie had a costume "Harvest Party" at school and Emily had a special pizza and movie day at her school. They watched the Legend Of Sleepy Hollow. They were both excited about their day at school. When we all got home we assembled in the driveway with the pumpkins and pumpkin carving tools. It was a lovely day full of sun and temps were up to almost 60 degrees. This is our fifth Halloween here in New Hampshire and we have lucked out every year so far with really nice weather. We have heard horror stories of gusty rains and sometimes snow on Halloween night. I think they are telling stories. Anyway.....the girls carved their pumpkins while I hung up some decorations. This is the first year that the girls really did all the carving by themselves. I helped a bit at the beginning getting their tops cut out and they did the rest. The picture on the top of the blog are the pumpkins they carved. Emily did the smiling one and Callie did the scary one.

Such concentration!!



They finished up their pumpkins while I started dinner. I made some fun mummy hot dogs. Kind of like piggies in a blanket but I made the blankets look like the hot dogs were mummies. The girls loved it!

We then assembled the costumes! Callie was a bat this year. I said, "Yes! That will be easy!" NO, I was wrong. I couldn't find bat wings anywhere except in a toddler costume. So I went online and found directions to make your own out of a black umbrella. Well, that wasn't easy either. I passed it on to Todd and he took the directions and tweaked them a bit and made the bat wings. He even sewed them onto a shirt with our sewing machine. I was impressed!! I braided her hair with black pipe cleaners into bat ears. There you have it....Callie the bat!


She was so cute!!

Emily went as our cat, Roscoe. Again...I thought what an easy costume. Well, most Halloween cat costumes come in black and Roscoe is gray. Emily was way ahead and used some birthday money back in September to buy a gray outfit. I thought I was going to have to make the tail but lo and behold we found a gray tail and ears at Joann Fabrics. It was the last one in the 50% off rack on the floor tossed to the side. Emily even bought silver shoes to go with her outfit. She was what I call, Hollywood Roscoe!!



Finally, it was trick or treat time. Our friends, the Eelmans, came down and we proceeded onward. Todd stayed home and played spooky music out an upstairs window and passed out candy. It was a beautiful night with leaves all over the ground. There was no wind and it was mild. We still had gloves on but no heavy Winter coats. The girls didn't wear coats at all.

When we came home Todd had made some yummy pumpkin seeds and hot apple cider. It was a great Halloween.

For a Soccer update: Emily's team finished in 2ND place!! They played in two playoff games but lost the second one. If they would have won that game then they would have played in the championship game. They played awesome!!!! We are all very proud of them! Callie had her pizza soccer party this past week and got her trophy. One more pizza party for Em's team and then we will officially be done with Fall soccer. I will post pictures soon.

Autumn in New England (it is long)

The peak of the colors here in New England is over. We still have a lot of color out there and lots of leaves on the ground. Last weekend was beautiful and the weather was warm with temperatures in the low 70's. We have taken advantage of our beautiful Fall weather the last couple weekends. We started off at the beginning of the month with apple picking at our favorite farm, Parlee Farm. It was a nice warm, crisp day. We went with our friends, the Eelmans. Here are some pics of that day.

At Parlee, they have a hay maze the kids can run around and jump on the hay. They had lots of fun with Rebecca and Melissa. They were full of hay from their hair all the way down to their shoes.

Next we took a hay ride out to the apple orchard. It is a nice ride through all the berry fields. This is where we come to pick strawberries, raspberries and blueberries.

We can't leave Parlee in the Fall without some warm apple crisp. It is the best!!! Yum!!

Last weekend we went to another farm that we have heard about. It is called Lull Farm. They have a huge corn maze that you can walk through. Callie and I drove out there to meet up with Emily and some of her friends. We entered the maze after they were already in there. It took awhile to find them. When we found them we didn't know which way to go. I would say we were in the maze for at least an hour or more. By the time we got out we were all exhausted. I was a bit nauseated. Not sure why. But it was fun and we got a lot of exercise. Here are some pics of that.

Callie trying to find her sister in the corn maze.

The shadows in this picture make it hard to see but here are all the girls lost in the corn maze.

After leaving the corn maze and had a yummy snack, we said goodbye to the friends. We then headed to the main part of the farm. It was beautiful. The leaves were so pretty and the weather was awesome. Here are just a few of the many pictures I took that day. The sunflowers were beautiful and I didn't even notice all the bees on them until I viewed the pictures on my computer.

On the way to the main part of the farm, the girls were asking why the apple trees leaves hadn't turned colors. I didn't know the answer but we found this tree in the middle of the orchard with red and yellow leaves hugging the trunk of the tree. Hmmm...interesting. We will have to do some researching on that issue.

This farm has older apple trees so they are bigger and sturdier. They were allowed to climb the trees here.

We then headed to the pumpkin pile. I love the picture I took at the top of the blog. The girls each picked out a pumpkin (one they could carry) and we headed home.

We had last Monday off from school and took full advantage of another beautiful day. We headed down to a place here in town and walked along some of the trails. I took way too many pictures but here are some I took.
This path here is where it flooded a couple years ago during the Mother's Day floods. Some of you may remember the pictures I took back then. The water was rushing through this area when that happened. You couldn't even go past where I was standing for this picture.

After our little hike, we headed over to the elementary school. The colors here were so beautiful but I just couldn't capture how really beautiful it was. I took a ton of pictures and of course as I told the girls it was time to go, the sun finally came back out and made it even more beautiful. So the picture above was my last attempt to get a good shot.

When we came home I took a couple pictures of my favorite tree in our front yard.

So there you have it....Autumn in New England! I will post again soon with birthday party pictures and soccer. Soccer is almost over with one more regular season game next weekend. Emily's team is in second place as of now. Playoffs begin after next weekend. I don't think Callie's age level has playoffs.

The weather has turned colder here this weekend. Highs in the 50's. Brrrrrr!! I know, Barb, it is colder there in Alaska. I am such a wimp.