Snow Snow and More Snow

January in New England is supposed to be snowy, and until the last few days it had been. Brooke loves to put on her snow suit and go out and play and ride her sled in it. She loves to eat it too. She can barely walk to the car without grabbing a hand full for a taste. We made a snow-woman after the last big storm but she didn't last long. The 48 degree temps of the last couple days and the warm rain made our snow-woman look a lot like Frosty did when he got trapped in the greenhouse. That's OK because Brooke didn't really like her anyhow. I think she thought it was creepy.

Brooke is saying new words every day now but only talks when she feels like it and not when we ask her to. She knows her colors now for the most part and is very good with her puzzles also. Her hair is finally growing longer as you can see from the picture above but she doesn't like clips or pig/pony tails either so it's usually just all over but at least it's finally there. We also got Jen a new camera so there should be pictures to put up more often I would guess. We'll see, either way there's a bunch since the last ones were posted and you can find them all by clicking right here.

And if that isn't enough snow for you can check out the pictures from my latest hiking trip. This past weekend Ryan, Greg, Stephen and I made a trip up to Maine to hike Saddleback. It was the first overnight winter trip for Greg and Stephen and it was another of the 4000 footers in Maine that Ryan and I need for the New England list.

After a stop at a pub for dinner in Farmington Maine, getting stuck in a snowbank near the unplowed trail head and parking up the road in the breakdown lane we finally started hiking the first three miles or so around 8:30 at night at night and finally set up camp about half way up the mountain after midnight as the temperature dropped down to right around zero. The next morning we put our snowshoes back on and made our way another 3 miles through 4-5 feet of snow to the 4117 foot high summit. The weather couldn't have been much better and the hike itself was great with about a mile of trail above treeline. The views easily stretched to Mount Washington and the White Mountains 60 miles to the Southeast, to Mount Katahdin 102 miles Northeast and covered everything in between. There's plenty of pictures from the trip so if you're interested you can click right here and it'll take you to them.

Well, that's all for now but we're headed up to Vermont for a weekend with Brooke's cousins and a birthday party so check back soon. I'm sure there will be plenty of pictures from the weekend.