An Extra Long Weekend

This was an extra long weekend for the Deegan Family. Everyone had Veteran's Day off on Tuesday, but since Aiden's school was closed on Monday as well for teacher workshops, Andy and I and Haley decided to take the day off too.  With four long days ahead of us, we considered bugging out for a few of them to Boston or Rhode Island or someplace for a mini-vacation, but reality prevailed.  We just have too many house projects to get done while the weather is still mild.  Project numero uno was our new garden.  We rented a mean-looking rototiller from Home Depot (where the extraordinarily nice man at the tool rental counter showered the kids with Home Depot freebies- aprons and pins and build-it-yourself kits) and Andy beat a 30' x 12' plot of our yard with it until what passes for our lawn (barely) was minced into upturned dirt clods.  Then we spread on about 3 yards of loam mixed with compost, and covered the whole thing with permeable weed control fabric.  Voila!  We're ready for spring, and for the onslaught of seed catalogs that should be arriving now that the catalog-universe seems to have caught up with our new mailing address.  We'll have to deal with the overabundance of deer that frequent our yard by erecting some sort of fencing eventually, but for now we can cross this off the list.

Next up was a trip to Vermont to help Grandma Sally with her fall chores.  We mulched bags and bags of leaves and transported them to the garden in a never-ending caravan of lawn tractor and ATV loads.  Aiden drove the ATV with Grandma for most of the morning, and Haley got a few rides on the lawn tractor.  When the leaves were done we turned our attention to winterizing all the small engines in the barn, siphoning gas and running them dry for the cold months.  We had a full day of work, but also had time for a tea party, football game, potsticker dinner, and a movie later that evening.  In the morning we had breakfast at Papa Nicks, where a neighboring table of crusty (but extremely nice) old Vermonters in their wool plaid jackets made good conversation throughout our meal.  When we left, Mom said, "well, you don't find that in New London..." and she's right- I think we're all going to miss being in Vermont as often as we have been the past decade or so. We'll have to invent some reasons to visit...

Cruising along as fast as Grandma will let him

On Monday we embarked on more chores- laundry, housecleaning, painting the basement playroom, grocery shopping, etc. etc. so there wasn't much time for kiddo fun, but we did make over to tag our Christmas tree for the season.  This is the last year the Stanley's will be selling xmas trees at Elephant Rock Farm, so we'll have to start a new tradition next year.  Bittersweet, for sure, since the kids love climbing the elephant rock and picking out their special tree.  We have such high ceilings in our living room now, so we thought we might get a larger tree than we normally do.  But Aiden fixated on the first tree he saw that wasn't already tagged- the one closest to the parking area- and it HAD to be that one.  No other tree would do.  We walked the entire lot and he shook his head at them all.  Haley didn't seem to care one way or the other, so we relented.  It's not the most comely Christmas tree we've ever seen, but it's bigger than we normally have, and really wide.  Even decorated, our trees never come out Martha Stewart-perfect anyhow (more like an eclectic riot of color and oddity) so probably this is the perfect tree for us.  Can't wait to see what it looks like in our living room, and how many strings of lights it takes to illuminate!

And here it is, folks!

Babydoll wardrobe malfunction at the xmas tree farm

 Tuesday was Veteran's Day.  We started the day by attending the local Veteran's Day ceremony in New London, where the elementary school kids (including Aiden) sang a handful of patriotic songs for the veterans of at least 5 different wars who were assembled in the local baptist church.  They sang all the different service songs- Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard... and it was moving to see the different vets stand up and salute when their service song was sung by the group of about 30 kids. The whole ceremony was really nicely done, and I hope it made at least some of the veterans feel appreciated and loved.  It certainly gives us some perspective to think about the immeasurable sacrifices others have made on our behalf.

Haley chilling out in our amazing kitchen-dining-living room- THE room of our house.  

Kearsarge Elementary kids singing for the Vets on Tuesday