Brooke's new buddy

Tonight the Haas's came over with their daughter Anna, who is about a month older than Brooke. Brooke got to meet a new friend and the rest of us had pizza and beer. The girls seemed to get along pretty well. Anna can stand on her own if helped up and is much more vocal than Brooke. There's some pictures here if you would like to see them and a video below of Anna standing up. That was amazing to me. Maybe all babies can do it by 3 1/2 months but it seemed pretty early to me. It's hard to imagine that in a month Brooke might be doing the same thing. They're growing up too fast already.

Lightning!

I've traveled to a lot of places but I've never seen lightning like this. Until now Arizona and the Outer Banks of North Carolina were the best shows I've seen but last night had them beat for the amount of lightning. It was amazing, like a giant strobe light in the sky. The clouds were too low to see or photograph the bolts but the flashes went on constantly for well over an hour. It knocked out our power, toppled a bunch of trees up the road and rained like hell for a long time. Then we had 2 encores, an hour or so apart, after the big storm. It didn't end until 3 in the morning. The first video is about a minute long of the big storm just after it passed us. I went out on our porch and recorded some of it as it went over towards Portsmouth. It's kind of hard to see all the smaller flashes but the big ones show up nicely. The second video is of the 11:00 performance looking out our door for a minute or so. Brooke didn't care at all, she fell asleep during the second storm and slept right through the rest. It was a pretty good show, check it out if you'd like below. Try playing them at the same time, I think it looks like the real thing that way.

Brooke's Big Adventures

This past week Brooke has been busy. Now ten weeks old she can hold her head up by herself and smiles all the time. There's new pictures of her here. All week she's been visiting and going on walks, hikes and trams. Her cousins Tyler and Anna were down from Vermont and she got to hang out with them. Saturday Jen, Brooke, Charlene and I went up to the mountains to "Rediscover Franconia Notch" I believe is what our dopey governor called it. 2008 is the 70th anniversary of the Tram, 80th of the State Park and 200th of the Flume discovery so they made a day of it. Hey, it was free admission for NH residents so we took advantage of it. There's pictures of the Flume Gorge and the Cannon Tramway here. They're usually 12 bucks each so that was nice. We also walked to Sabbaday Falls while up there and did some touring. It was a busy week and there's lots of pictures so click the links if you want to see more or the video below of the Flume. It was actually a lot more interesting than I remembered, kind of like a setting from the Jurassic Park movies but I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

9 Weeks Old

Well Brooke is 9 weeks old now and weighed in at 11 pounds 14 ounces on Friday. She did a lot of visiting and going out to eat this week. She's a really good baby to do stuff with. Very quiet and happy for the most part. If not "Maggie" (her pacifier) comes to the rescue. She even started sleeping through the night after her hike, thank God, and has done so every night but one since. Now we can all get some good rest. Since there's not much else exciting going on around here I just have a few new pictures if you're interested and a video of her boxing her monkey toy around below. That's about it for now, thanks for checking in.

Happy Fourth of July!

On Friday we took Brooke up to the Mountains for the first time. We had been training her in the Baby Bjorn all week and everything went great on her first hike. We went up with Danny and Rachel and hiked up Mt. Willard. It is not very tall and the trail is as easy as they get but the view from the top is great. The books all describe it as the best "Bang for the Buck" hike in the White Mountains and with all I've seen on my trips up there I have to agree. The trail is easy and well maintained. It used to be a carriage road in the 1800's so the grade is not very steep at all. The 1.4 miles were pretty effortless and had a pretty little waterfall on the way up. If you're ever looking for a good easy hike up there this is one to look at.

After that we went to the Upper Ammonoosuc Falls to jump in and cool off with everyone else up there apparently. Usually there's only a few other people if anyone around but since it was a holiday weekend it was packed. There's a video below of that. We also saw a moose, went to see the bears at Clark's and checked out the Kanc for more moose. We had no luck with that at night but the rest of the day was great including the weather. There's a bunch of pictures here if you'd like to see some more. Now it's off to a cookout so happy 4th of July weekend everyone!

8 Weeks Old

Hard to believe our little girl is already eight weeks old. She changes so fast and is getting so big it's amazing to us. She's stronger, holds her head up, talks and smiles already. We've been getting her ready for her first hike this week with walks in the Baby Bjorn. She seems to like it so we'll see how that goes until she can ride in a real baby backpack. Here's a few pictures of her week if you'd like to see them.