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.