Family Paint Night

Grandma Sally's new house is chugging along, so she will be making frequent visits to New London to check on progress and make appointments for flooring, siding, kitchen design, etc.  She made a quick visit last weekend, joining us for pizza and movie night (Indiana Jones, which was definitely too much for Haley but which Aiden enjoyed with every fiber of his being) and also a nice sunny walk with the dogs at Low Plain.

Aiden and Haley are back at UVAC for their annual fall swim lessons now, which will go through the holidays... after which we will probably be spending our Saturdays on the slopes, especially if the Farmer's Almanac predictions for a snow-filled winter are accurate.  We shall see.

Aiden just finished watching the first season of Master Chef Jr. - he's been inspired to learn how to cook since then and has been a big help with dinners (Haley too!).  Here he is making tacos.

On Saturday night we tried something new as a family- paint night at Muse PaintBar in Manchester.  I had been there about a  month ago with friends for my 40th birthday, and ever since Aiden has been bugging me about going for a family night, where they do a kid-friendly painting.  The one we did was of an owl, and in the end we had three different owls and a lovely picasso-inspired abstract piece.  Aiden did a great job following along with the instructor, while I did the same but modified the owl (on Haley's request) to have pink and purple plumage instead of yellow and orange.  Andy went his own way and painted a beautiful screech owl in a winter tree (who knew he had hidden painting talents?).  Haley was fabulous.  I was worried that 2.5 hours of straight painting would be too much for her, but she worked at her canvas diligently, asking for different colors and help with mixing to get the different shades she wanted.  After the paint night, we walked a couple of blocks to a wonderful Indian restaurant and filled up on garlic naan, papadums, samosas, curries, and mushroom mutter.

Finished products!

Andy's screech owl

Grandparents' Week

I don't know when Grandparent's Day officially falls in the calendar year- we're not gopd at keeping up with any of the holidays that are not bank holidays where we actually get a day off from work- but this past week was Grandparents' Week at our house.  We started off with a visit from Grandma Chris over Columbus Day Weekend.  Before she arrived, Aiden and I joined friends on a hike up Bog Mountain in Wilmot.  This is a hike I've known about for years but never done; it's local, great for kids, and has been on our bucket list.  So glad we checked it out on a beautiful fall day!  I'm sure it was total madness on the summits of Kearsarge and Sunapee, but it was just our crew and two other small groups on Bog Mt that day.  The views were incredible, and the hike was perfect (after you find the hidden trailhead).  We sipped mountain tea and had bags of homemade gorp while the kids ran around making "houses" out of strewn boulders and logs.

Grandma Chris arrived in the afternoon and we spent a lovely evening at the Andersons around our new fire pit.  Can I just say that I love that thing!  On Sunday we went out for breakfast at Bradford Junction Diner, where the prices haven't changed since 1950.  Seriously, two eggs, homefries, bacon, and homemade anadama toast is $1.85.  Chris folded the paper menu up and tucked it into her purse to show people on Long Island.  After we ate Andy drove us over to Bradford Bog to walk off a bit of that bacon grease.  Bradford Bog is not as spectacular as our Philbrick-Crescenti Bog here in New London, in terms of scenery, but it does have a cool and somewhat creepy Atlantic white cedar swamp you walk through before you reach the bog proper.  Also lots of cotton grass and pitcher plants, always cool to see.  The afternoon was Aiden's final soccer event- a 5-game jamboree.  His team, the Red Rhinos, played well- they lost a few games in the jamboree but were undefeated all season long.  Aiden learned a lot, and I know he really enjoyed playing soccer with some of his school buddies.  Andy and I are breathing a small sigh of relief at not having to keep up the 4-game/practice-a-week schedule anymore.  

On Columbus Day, we headed over for our second annual visit to the Heirloom Tasting Orchard at Poverty Land Orchards in Lebanon.  I call it the "tasting" orchard, because you really do have to spend more time than usual sampling different crazy varieties of apples if you want to end up with a pick-your-own bag that is edible.  There are hundreds of different varieties, most of them totally obscure and ancient, and some of them are, well... disgusting.  To be fair, the disgusting ones were probably intended to be used for hard cider when they were grown in the 1800s, so it's not as if they aren't good for something.   If you're willing to take the time to taste a whole lot of heirloom apple varieties, you can get a pretty neat and tasty bag of apples to take home.  Chris already had Tree #74 scoped out, the Granite Beauty, her favorite variety from last year.   She filled a gigantic bag to take home and share with Dan & Paulette and the boys.  Aiden brought his friend Sammy along and they had fun tasting and picking enormous apples close to the size of their heads.  I'm not sure how edible the apples that Sammy took home were, but oh well...

Right after Grandma departed, Grandpa Dada arrived!  The kids were in heaven.  Grandpa Dad spent half of his first day here watching Haley, who spirited him around the house involving him in one dramatic game after the next, dressing him in costumes and instructing him in how to act like Diego, Ryder, and Rubble the Dog.  When we asked Grandpa Dada which was more exhausting, watching the triplets for a day or watching Haley... he couldn't decide.  The best he could say was that they were so different, it was hard to say.  He described his day with Haley as a "non-stop imagination adventure" so I'm pretty sure I know how exhausting that was.  That night we whipped up a pumpkin entry into the 2nd annual Great Pumpkin Race, where speedy orange gourds go to show off their stuff.  Our entry was pretty much as lame as last year (same small wheels on crooked axles- we really need to scope out some garage sales for an old wagon this year!) but Aiden did a good job directing "Igor" down the race course, and we finished respectably.

Sunday started out blue and gorgeous, but within 2 hours had turned to chilly rain, so we abandoned plans to ascend Mt. Sunapee and headed to the Montshire Museum and Quechee Gorge Village instead.  The kids always love the Montshire, and all of us enjoyed poking around the antique mall at Quechee Gorge, riding on the train and carousel, and playing the vintage arcade games.  We had dinner at the Goose to wrap up a great visit with Grandpa Dada.  The only grandparent we didn't see was Grandma Sally... she was on Long Island helping Great Grandma Rising with her garden.  But we thought about Grandma Sally often, as her house construction is chugging along on the lot next to ours.  We make a visit over there several times a week to mark the progress, and I know the kids will enjoy seeing how a house is built from scratch.  

Long time no write

So, yes, I just took 6 months off from writing this blog.  The kids probably look a bit bigger, maybe Andy and I look a bit older (I did turn 40 last month, after all) but we're all still here and doing fine.  We live in a new house now, which is really the thing that killed this blog 6 months ago.  Somehow I made it through the last move from Vermont to NH without much of a cyber-hiccup, but this 3-mile move from one end of town to the other was way too much for me.  We had just returned from an amazing family trip to Costa Rica, and I had, like, 850 photos to sort through and lots of stories to get down, and then all of a sudden we were packing and moving (times 3 because we helped two other families move within the same two week span, in exchange for help with our own move) and everything was in boxes for weeks, we were without internet, a working stove, or a washer and dryer for what seemed like months- overwhelm time.  I had to start shutting non-essential systems down. Goodbye blog.

It's been a good break, but to be honest I miss chronicling our family's adventures and misadventures this way, and being able to look back over the years to remember exactly what we did that week of that year is kind of neat.  I take photos of the kids and post them on facebook, but it feels kind of hollow without the storyline to go with them.  So here I am at the computer again.

It's October, past peak foliage already in New Hampshire, and getting chilly quickly.  The kids carved pumpkins tonight, though it's still a few weeks to Halloween and they will rot before we reach it.  We won't get any trick-or-treaters out here in the boonies anyway, so it doesn't really matter what state the pumpkins are in, and the seeds were delicious roasted with cumin and garlic powder.  My mom is in the midst of constructing a house on the lot adjacent to ours (well, she's not personally constructing it...) so we have some built in entertainment out our bay window these days.  The kids are enjoying seeing what kind of trucks roll up the driveway next!  If all goes well, Mom's new house will be ready to move into before the end of next summer.  Big change for her, but all for the best.  She may have to start shutting down non-essential systems at that point too- we'll have to see on that one :)