Charlene's 47th and Our 56th

The other day was Charlene's 47th birthday. To celebrate a bunch of us went out to the Orient Pearl for Chinese food. Jen's parents and brothers along with her grandmother, aunt and cousin that were in town from Florida for a visit and of course the three of us all went out for dinner. They have very good food there and very strong scorpion bowls which made for a good time for everyone I think. After that we came back to our place for cake and presents. There's some pictures from that and a few more from around the house last week here or on the picture if you want to see them.
Also last Sunday Ryan and I went for a hike up in Maine. We were headed for Sugarloaf and Spaulding mountains but missed our exit. By the time we got to an information booth to find the quickest way there from our current location we were already in Bangor. It was a beautiful day out and the guy there told us the weather was supposed to be nice everywhere that day so we decided to head for Baxter State Park since we were only 75 minutes from there at that point and the hikes there are best on good days. Well if you follow our recent hikes you know that the weather always takes a turn for the worse and this day was no different. Katahdin had clouds on the summit as we got near the park and the whole park was clouded over by the time we arrived. We got out of the car and a steady rain started to fall. We hiked up North Brother in the clouds and rain and within 3 hours were standing atop our 56th 4000 footer (only 11 to go on the New England list). The views of Katahdin are supposed to be spectacular from the top but we couldn't tell you as we saw nothing more than about 50 feet of clouds. We did see a lot of wildlife on the trip, including a dead moose, a lot of frogs, a few rabbits, a beaver and a cool spotted salamander. We had never seen one of those before so that made the hike a little better. Anyhow for a few pictures of this trip you can click here.Finally there's a video below of our little ballerina. It's actually her Halloween costume but below you can see her twirl around in it until she gets too dizzy. That's all for now but keep checking back, sooner or later there will be more pictures and videos.